Chapter 1: Following Hearsay

[Please see Author's Note at the bottom of the page before reading further.]

Chapter One: Following Hearsay
“Nothing good ever comes from the Stables. They’re old world death traps.”

Wasted.

A wasted world…

My sister and I grew up learning how to survive in the Wasteland. Our days were spent hiding out, treasure hunting, looting. Occasionally we’d trade with a traveling merchant, but we avoided the bigger cities. Even the smaller towns weren't something we wanted to be around. Mom had drilled into our heads that big groups in small places were dangerous. She didn’t have any love for communities, a holdover from whatever happened in the Stable we’d been born in. Considering what had happened in the whole of Equestria, I didn’t blame her. Once, the land was a wonderful place, ruled by the Goddesses, Celestia and Luna. A war hundreds of years ago reduced it to the irradiated deathscape I knew all too well. Maybe if that perfect world hadn’t ceased to exist due to balefire and megaspells, we’d live in a little town with lots of friends and maybe a normal job, and not be so damn scared of everypony else.

The Wasteland wasn’t a kind place, nor were those who lived there. It was full of radiation and all sorts of monsters, the worst of which were other ponies. Surviving wasn’t easy, but I’d found ways to deal with it. My coping method was treasure hunting, because it was a lot more appealing to think of the junk and scraps of ancient food we found as treasure, than to admit it was all just trash left over from long dead ponies.

“Hidden Fortune!”

I winced and looked back at my sister. She never used my full name unless she- I slammed into a wall.

“Stop daydreaming already,” she said calmly. Pointing a hoof past me, she smiled. “We’re here.”

“Ow... Why didn’t you stop me sooner, Lost?” I demanded. “Stupid wall,” I muttered, before I actually looked at it. My eyes went wide as I looked straight up at the chunk of stone I’d walked into. This wasn’t a wall; it was part of a mountain. How the fuck did I not see that?

“Why do you think I called your name? You should really be paying more attention, it was your idea to go out looking for this supposed ‘Dragon’s Cave,’” she said with a frustrated sigh. “I still think the trader was lying, Hidden.” She looked up the mountainside. “All the stories say their caves are at the top of mountains... This seems way too flimsy a reason to just trot off into the Wasteland without a plan.”

I frowned. Leave it to the thinky unicorn pony to point out the obvious. “Whether he was lying or not, we might as well check while we’re here,” I countered. “Where there’s dragons, there’s treasure and we can’t pass up the chance.” Everything we’d been taught about Equestria from before the War agreed with that. And when would we get another shot at a dragon’s hoard? I wasn’t going to lose the opportunity to find something more than scraps and leftovers. We could find gold, gems, or maybe even jewelry, and it’d be all mine. I’d fill my saddlebags to the brim with golden bits, cover my bed with them, and then-

“What if it’s been looted already?” asked Lost Art, snatching away the pleasant daydream. In the blue glow of her magic, she lifted her preferred gun, an odd boxy-looked gem-holding contraption that looked more at home in a pile of scrap electronics than in a firefight. We’d bought the magical energy weapon from the same trader who told us about the dragon’s cave. It wasn’t a rifle like mom’s was, but we knew what to expect from the energy pistol. Guns like it shot concentrated magic and hurt in ways I couldn’t describe. Lost preferred them though, since they didn’t have a powerful kick against her magic.

“We take whatever wasn’t already stolen and isn’t nailed down. If it is, we find a hammer and take the nails, too,” I answered. Lost was overthinking it, even if she was the thinky one. “I’ll check this way and you check for the entrance on that side?” I turned and began scanning the rocky face of the mountainside, searching for the entrance.

“Sure, but stay in sight,” she agreed, as she turned and headed in the opposite direction. Her voice sounded exhausted, just like always. She spent too much time worrying about me, not that it wasn’t justified. Without her, I’d have died more times than I could count. I’d gotten her out of bad situations before, too, but she didn’t get in as much trouble as I did.

I poked around the edge of the rocky outcropping, looking for anything that looked like an entrance, but nothing stood out. It would be hard to miss an entrance large enough to fit a dragon, but it was just a sheer mountainside for as far as the eye could see. A short distance away was a dead forest, but I’d never heard of a dragon living in a forest. I climbed myself up onto one of the smaller boulders, but found nothing. Ear flicking, I heard yelling.

“Hidden! Over here,” shouted my sister.

I hopped down and galloped over as quickly as I could.

“Think this is it?” she asked, pointing at a pony-wide crack running up the mountainside.

“Must be,” I answered excitedly. Not wanting to waste any time, I pushed through the opening. I had to wriggle side to side to make sure the battle saddle I wore would fit. I’d traded the gun I used to use for two new ones, from the same trader we’d gotten L.A.’s new pistol from. The larger size of the new guns made getting through such a small opening no easy task. The extra trouble would be worth it, though, if we did come across a dragon. While strapping weapons to my sides, reloading with a hoof kick, and firing with a bite of the bit was a hassle at times, having the extra fire power more than made up for it. I had to make do, since the rifles were too big to hold with my mouth, and I didn't have cheater magic like my sister did.

My sister squeezed in after me, the glow from her horn lighting up just enough to show the walls on either side of us. Once we were both completely inside, we started the careful trek forward. Past the light at the entrance, we found ourselves in complete darkness, broken only by the dim glow of my sister’s magic. There were no side branches, so we didn’t have anything like exploring or looting to distract us. At the same time, it meant nothing could sneak up on us from the side when we weren’t looking. Falling into habits drilled into our heads, we moved slowly and neither of us spoke. We didn’t want to alert any potential dangers, and gave us the chance to hear them coming first. If there was a dragon still here, we’d definitely want to know about it before it knew about us.

Just as I started to worry the cave was far too small for a dragon, the tunnel began to widen. The deeper we went, the wider it got, until it finally opened into a huge cavern. I couldn’t see anything once we made it out into the open. Lost’s telekinetic haze simply wasn’t bright enough to light up the entirety of the cave at the same time. So we stuck to the wall and kept circling slowly around, looking for something that stood out.

I’d expected to find something, but it was just so empty. This was just a... cave. It was ordinary in every way I could think, and completely underwhelming. Sneaking into a dragon’s lair shouldn’t be dull. “Kinda spooky isn’t it?” I whispered in a sing-song voice. I was answered by having my tail pulled. “Oof, I hope you get hair stuck in your-”

Pulling myself free from her grip, I stumbled into a metal... thing sticking out from the wall.

“You really need to look where you’re going,” she said with a snicker. “Are you okay?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m fine. If only I could see in here,” I answered.

L.A. slid her gun away and brightened the glow from her horn. In front of us, behind the little console-thing I’d tripped over, was a massive doorway built into the cave wall. Painted in the center of it was a large ‘12.’ “It’s a Stable...” she whispered, sounding like she was remembering something. She trotted closer to the entrance from the console thing it'd stumbled against and waved me over for a better look. “Looks abandoned...”

I looked at the gigantic door and stepped back so I wouldn’t cast a shadow over it and grinned. A glint from the far side of the room caught my eye. Tearing myself from the Stable, I walked over and saw an identical door with a large ‘21’ painted on it. Well, that was weird.

“Looks like we have two Stables to loot!” I yelled, positively giddy at the prospect. Sure, it wasn’t a dragon, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything worth taking. And if we could loot it before any raiders showed up, then more power to us. I trotted back over toward ‘12,’ and ended up with a hoof in my face. This time I managed to stop before running into it. “What was tha-”

“Shh,” she said, stuffing her hoof into my mouth.

“Oh Felestia, bwa,” I moved her hoof away, “did you step in?”

“The Wasteland,” she answered. Oh right... She sat tinkering with the console I’d walked into. “Mom explained how these work and what the codes are. Well, at least she explained how the Stable we came from worked. I can probably get it open, since they’re all made the same. I just need quiet so I can work.”

I stuck out my tongue and tried to scrape the taste off with my teeth. Knowing she would take a while, I rolled my eyes and I went further around the circular cavern to see if I could find a third Stable. After making a full round, I came up empty. I found lots of skeletons, but nothing else. There were bones all over in little piles, where ponies had once held each other as the world ended.

It was terrible, what had happened, how they had died. But, well, I grew up in the Wasteland and learned to get over it fast. The Wasteland was harsh, no matter what. Had I been born in a different time, maybe instead of mismatched barding and big guns, I’d be wearing a sundress and be sightseeing in Canterlot. But we didn’t get to choose when we were born, so this was my life: treasure hunting with my big sister in the remains of that world.

I prodded at the side of the console. “Are you done yet?” I whined.

“Yes, now stop complaining!” she said. “Get ready. It looks abandoned, but we don’t know what might be in there.”

I trotted back from the door with her. It always amazed me how she managed to find a way to make this sort of thing work. But given the gear and brush cutie mark on her haunches, it was just something she was naturally good at. At least she got a useful talent, all I had was a badass looking X and luck with finding more junk than most. While it wasn’t a dragon’s hoard, hopefully this Stable would hold enough stuff we could trade to the next merchant we come across to make this trip worthwhile. Maybe I could even dig up some old items that Lost can fix up for our own use.

Even if it wasn’t, it was more fun treasure hunting than getting wasted on booze or high on Dash. Not after last time... I brushed my mane away from my face and waited for her to get behind me. Bit in my mouth, and guns ready, I waited for her to open the Stable.

Lost looked at me nervously, the dim light of her magic reflecting off her blue eyes. “Ready?” she asked.

I nodded.

She flicked whatever switch she had jury rigged with her magic, and with a horrific screech, Stable 12’s door swung open on its gigantic hinge inward. Both of us shuddered, the hooves-on-chalkboard sound of metal grating against metal was... something intense. It seemed to last forever. Finally, with a thud, it stopped. The door had disappeared completely into the darkness. We both stared through the opening, waiting. I was ready if anything appeared, but couldn’t see a thing.

Then finally... Nothing.

Breathing a collective sigh of relief, my sister moved around me and into the darkness. “Guess it’s safe,” she said, her horn lighting up again. With those three words, I followed.

* * *

The inside of the Stable was very different from the Wasteland. Everything seemed quiet and... confining. I had no memories of the Stable I was born in, or what it was like, if it was like this one at all. What my sister and I were used to was... well, a Wasteland, the outdoors. It was all dirt and rotten everything. The metal floor here almost hurt to walk on, it didn't give like dirt would. It was far too solid, sturdy and cold. I felt like the walls were closing in on me, the air was stale, thick and heavy. Small spaces didn’t scare me, but I don’t think I could live like this. It was just too... gray and ominous. The cloud cover outside was imposing, but a maze of long hallways and low ceilings didn’t seem like the kind of place a pony should live. It was hard for me to imagine ponies living in a place like this, feeling cold steel on their hooves all the time.

We wandered for what felt like ages, stuck weaving from hallway to hallway and finding little but doors sealed shut by the lack of power. The corridors all started to blend together, and with no way to tell where we’d been or where were were going, I started to worry about getting lost. Any doors that weren’t already open wouldn’t budge no matter how hard either of us pried.

A few corpses dotted the hallways, all of which had long since rotted, leaving nothing but dried husks covered in tattered Stable barding. They had the flaked and rotten skin of Wasteland ghouls. It worried me, that we might be walking into an irradiated deathtrap with no way to tell. Although, we'd been wandering around the Stable for hours, and I wasn't feeling any signs or radiation sickness yet. It was unlikely that we’d be turning into ghouls ourselves any time soon.

Both the floor and the bodies we’d found were coated in a film of dust, as if they’d been lying there unmoving for decades. In reality, the entirety of the Stable was dead. Of course, everything we had seen was, but what seemed the most dead was the structure itself. The lights were all out, leaving us only the glow from my sister’s horn to guide us. I’d assumed there would be something down here, machines of some sort to keep ponies alive underground, but the only sound in the Stable was our hooves hitting against the floor. I could hear faint scraping echoing down the halls, like hooves slowly rustling against the floor.

Probably my mind playing tricks on me.

“This is strange,” L.A. said in a whisper. “Mom always said they built these things to last. Even if there weren’t ponies still here, the machinery should still be running...”

I looked at one of the corpses. “The door was sealed... so why are we finding ghoulified corpses?” I whispered to my sister. I looked at my sister expectantly, hoping she might have an explanation. All I got back was a shrug. “Maybe we should have tried Stable Twenty One first?”

“Maybe, but we’re already here, so lets finish before we try the other Stable,” she said. “Let’s see if we can’t find the room of the... what was it...” My sister paused for a moment and tapped against her head a few times while thinking. “Overmare.” She punctuated the word as she remembered it. “The Overmare’s office.”

“Okay, so where do we go for that?” I asked expectantly.

She stood there for a moment, looking around. The hazy light of her magic swung through the dark hallway, making the corpses against the walls cast eerie shadows. We had no idea where we were in the Stable, after having wandered for so long. I never knew the layout of whatever Stable we’d come from, and Lost must have been too young to memorize it. No matter which way we went from here, there was a chance that the winding maze of hallways would lead us nowhere. We’d hit a few dead ends already, leaving us even more turned around from all the backtracking.

“I have no idea, just stick close and stay quiet,” she said, her tone far too overprotective. There wasn’t a single pony alive here, only corpses. What could hurt us?

After what seemed like hours of searching and absolutely nothing to break the monotony, we came across an open door with a green glow coming through it. “Might be something there,” L.A. said, trotting closer to the door.

“Hopefully,” I said.

Lost looked inside, then turned back to me. “There’s a working terminal,” she announced. “Wonder how its on if the power is out?” She trotted into the room and went straight to the terminal. Sitting before it, she started to tap away with both her hooves and her magic.

I didn’t particularly like dealing with terminals, so I let her do... whatever it was she did to make them work for her. With what little light came from the sickly green screen and the blue haze of her magic, I looked around the rest of the room. It was very basic, with only a bed, dresser, and the terminal desk. I poked around the the dresser and under the bed, finding nothing but dresses that were too ruined to wear. With no treasure worth taking, I sat on the ancient dusty bed and watched as my sister did her sciency thing. All I could see was nonsensical, unreadable gibberish on the screen, but she somehow knew what she was doing.

“Got it,” she announced, looking back and me and smiling wide. Her magic clicked a few times on the keyboard.

I trotted over and read off the screen over her shoulder:

Dear Diary,

I’ll never understand why we have to be tied to Stable 21. I don’t trust any of them. The doors should be sealed completely, but no one here has any tools to do so. Maybe they do on 21’s side, but I wouldn’t even bother asking. If they did, they’d just steal everything we have and seal us in our own tomb.

Roselle

“Finished?” asked Lost. When I grunted an affirmative, she clicked over to the next entry in the list.

Dear Diary,

I finally went over to 21 to have a look and see how the other side lives. I snuck down last night, long after lights out so I wouldn’t be seen. I really hope nopony saw me. Their Stable is a lot nicer than ours. I think it was done on purpose… So we could see what Stable-Tec was capable of, what they’d do for the higher class ponies. They live in luxury compared to us! A guard was patrolling though, so I hurried back as soon as I heard him. Didn’t want to get caught. We don’t have guards either, which just isn’t fair. They get free range of everything, if only Princess Celestia and Princess Luna knew about what Stable-Tec was trying to do before the bombs hit. I suppose that if they were strong enough to stop what Stable-Tec was doing below their noses, they’d have been able to stop the War. So pointless.

Roselle

“Next?” I asked, nudging for her to click on the next. When she did, I started reading.

Dear Diary,

One of the ponies from 21 came over today. I managed to corner him and ask a few questions. Turns out they’re in the same boat as us. Apparently the guards patrol both Stables’ basements overnight to make it look like we both have guards. He said he’d never seen any guard ponies there, only the one on our side. I d n’t know why they built t7e basement tog^ther if w ’re not all9wed down 7here. Do3s the Over#1are kno ? %51he woul ’t kee-. thi& f%31rom us, w*u%20ld she%#12?

Rose09999#NaN={f885%i}h:$@465k>$?<ERR.trunc

Everything beyond that was corrupted, or too boring to read. The two were one in the same for me.

“Seems like somepony was teaching her the same lessons mom taught us, only with armed guards...” L.A. said as she tapped some more at the terminal. “Wonder what else they have- Oh. Hey, look.” She pointed to the terminal screen, and loaded a map of the Stable.

“But didn’t mom always say Stables were supposed to be for ponies to survive the end of the world together?” I asked idly. Then again, if Stables were all sunshine and rainbows, wouldn’t we still be living in one? “Why would they have guards and joined basements?”

Something dug at the back of my mind, seeing the Goddesses casually referred to as Princesses.

“I don’t know,” said Lost as she examined the map. Her eyes darted back and forth behind her glasses. “Let’s see... We’re here in the residential block.” She tapped one part of the map. “Over here are the kitchens, past the Atrium. Looks like they’re connected to a small... diner?” She glanced over to me, a playful glint in her tired eyes.

I finished the thought for her, “Maybe there’s still something to eat!” The mere thought of easy food made my stomach rumble.

Once Lost was satisfied she’d memorized the map, we left the room. With only her magical light and memory to guide us, we walked down the maze-like halls until we finally found right hallway. To our right were several dust-covered windows set into the wall, and through them we could see several dining tables and a kitchen’s counter. Lucky for both of us, the door leading in was still open.

I walked into the dark room slowly, stopping only when I realized the haze of Lost’s light wasn’t following behind me like it had in the hallway. I turned and waved a hoof. “Come on. There might be food,” I said.

She stared, eyes wide and a hoof pointing past me. Her horn dimmed, the pale blue glow fading away. She said nothing, but mouthed something several times. Finally she whispered, “ghouls.”

I went deathly still, before turning as slowly as I could to look where she’d pointed. At the very edge of my sister’s dim magical light, near a corkboard covered in ancient notices, stood three pony-like shapes, shambling slowly. Were it not for my sister’s warning and the quiet sound of their rough, rotting hooves on the floor I’d have missed them. They just stared at the papers tacked to the wall, as if it required their full attention. They hadn’t attacked us yet, like a feral ghoul would have. I prayed to the Goddesses that they weren’t as I backpedaled as quietly as I could toward my sister.

“Hello,” L.A. asked tentatively from the doorway.

They didn’t respond. They might have just been really enthralled with whatever was written on the board in the far corner of the room. And since zombie ponies couldn’t read... that meant they’d need to- wait. Why would a ghoul read in the dark?

“Anypony...?” she asked, her voice holding a distinctive waver.

The ghouls shifted and turned to face us, rasping growls of hunger, their cloudy eyes staring unfocused and unblinking. Okay, not ghouls. Zombies. All three ran toward us as fast as their rotten hooves would carry them.

Reflexively, I bit the trigger for the gun on my right. The room lit up with a flash of light, blinding me for a split second. The gunshot let out a deafening boom that echoed off the steel walls. The top half of one of the zombies disappeared, blown into a fine paste against the wall. The kick of the gun knocked me off my hooves and onto my haunches. “Okay! New gun is big gun,” I yelled, smiling wider than I had since I was a filly. That was some kick.

I lined up another shot, this time with the gun on my left and bit down on the trigger. It clicked.

Click? I bit the left trigger again.

Nothing.

Fuck.

“That bastard sold me a busted gun!” I screamed, after spitting the bit from my mouth.

Luckily, Lost had gotten her weapon out. She fired several shots, lighting the dark room up with pink lances of light that reduced the second ghoul to floating embers and pink ash. Every shot filled the air with a strange fizzling sound and a puff of multicolored smoke from the barrel. “This thing is a piece of shit,” yelled Lost over the gun’s PLZ-OWs.

The last ghoul looked between us, hesitating a second. With a groan, he shambled toward my sister.

She kept firing, the pink light getting dimmer and dimmer with each shot. They peppered into the front of the ghoul, but didn’t so much as slow it down.

With the ghoul too close for me to aim properly, I reared up and smashed my forehooves into its side. The flaked hide felt mushy underneath, and caved under my hooves. The air filled with a crack and a thump as the undead pony went down. As we both hit the ground, I forced my hooves down, shattering through the brittle bones.

The ghoul groaned and dragged its forehooves into the ground, uselessly trying to pull itself forward.

Lost silenced the groaning with another shot of her pistol, sending a beam of magical pink energy through the zombie’s skull. The last shot proved too much for the energy weapon. The casing shattered with a loud pop. Little shards of crystal fell from the cracked barrel to clink on the floor. In one fluid motion of her cheater magic, Lost flicked the spark cell from the back of the gun, and tossed the destroyed weapon to the far side of the room. “Fuck that thing,” she said over the clatter of it landing in the corner.

I crawled off the ghoul and backed into the haze of my sister’s light. There weren’t any other ghouls in the room, and I couldn’t hear anything nearby. I sat on my haunches and grabbed the broken rifle to pull it from my battle saddle. “Remind me to always do a test fire,” I said as I unhooked it. “The working one is worth the price of the trade, I think, but that could have gotten me killed...” Finally wrenching it free, I stuffed the busted rifle into my saddle bag. I stood and kicked the battle saddle’s reloading lever for whatever else might be hiding in dark rooms. The mechanism clicked several times, small levers ratcheting to load another bullet into the gun.

“I’m surprised mine could even fire,” Lost said, scowling at the corner she’d thrown the shattered pistol into. “That was a bit too close for comfort. We need to be more careful. Without any healing potions, we can’t risk getting hurt.” By ‘we,’ she meant ‘me.’ Sliding the spark cell into her own saddlebags, she walked over to the ghoul corpse. “Think they have anything?”

“Only one way to find out,” I answered. Together we dug through the two corpses, finding nothing but trash.

I swiveled an ear back and forth, listening for the faint sounds of more ghouls. For a second I thought I heard something, but the noise faded as quickly as it’d come. I prayed to the Goddesses these were the only three. Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I trotted over to the board the zombie ponies were staring at. Curiosity got the better of me. I brushed the thick layer of dust away and read the notice. “Apparently, Berrypip is getting married next week...”

I ripped the notice down and set it on the counter, blank side up. If there were zombies here, she wasn’t getting married anymore. I walked past the counter and got to work.

In the dim light of Lost’s magic, we scavenged through the diner and the kitchens. We spent our time rifling through cabinets and drawers, in ovens and under counters. It went slow, since we could only move as fast as her light would allow in the dark room, but we managed to find enough. Several of the cabinets had bare-bones rations, a few leftover boxes of Fancy Buck Snack Cakes, some bottles of water that hadn’t been opened, and even a rotting lump that might have been a carrot at one point.

Behind the counter were several shutters, all closed. I tried to open them, to search for more food, but they wouldn’t budge. After several minutes looking around for some sort of latch, or a lock I could open, or anything, I finally rolled my eyes and gave up. Whatever was back there obviously didn’t want to be found.

I stuffed the edible food we’d found into my saddlebag, glad to have something slightly better than the radiation-soaked vegetables we could sometimes get from traders. They tasted horrible and often had... I shook my head. Ancient boxed food was better than Wasteland scratch any day.

Happy with the meager pickings, I turned to the zombies’ corpses. I spotted something glinting in the light from Lost’s magic, nestled in the pile of pink ash. Trotting over, I pulled it out. “How did a Sparkle~Cola bottle survive that?” I asked myself quietly. With a look back at my sister behind the counter, I slid the bottle into my saddlebags.

It would be my secret, as Lost had a habit of downing bottles of the carrot-flavored soda without sharing.

* * *

After leaving the kitchens, we backtracked to Roselle’s room for another look at the map. Once we knew the path, Lost led the way down the empty dark halls. It didn’t take long before we found the Overmare’s office. Its door stood out, being the only one we’d seen in the entire Stable with a terminal set in the wall next to it.

“Did you notice?” asked my sister.

“Notice what?” I asked. I looked around in the darkness for something that stood out.

“They don’t have PipBucks, any of them,” she answered, nodding toward one of the bodies down the hallway. “I just thought it’d be nice to take one, having a map would save a lot of time. Not to mention all the other perks...”

She was right, not a single one of the ghouls or bodies we’d seen had the little terminal-like devices strapped to their fetlocks. Apparently, they were standard issue in every Stable, even our mother had one long ago. L.A. and I hadn't ever gotten one since, as mom explained when I asked, we were too young when we left.

Of course, we didn’t have mom’s Pipbuck, it had been broken long before she died. A Hellhound sliced it clean in two during a fight when we were fillies, but that saved her leg. I shook my head, not wanting to think about mom anymore. It still hurt that she was gone...

Lost turned back to the Overmare’s Office and pushed on the door. Just like every other shut door in the Stable, it didn’t budge. Frowning, she turned to the terminal next to the door and pressed its power button. Several seconds passed before the green screen flickered on, lighting up the hallway behind us.

As I stood watch, I thought about the beautiful lever-action rifle hanging at my side, and the power it had during the fight in the kitchens. With it, I could bring the ceiling down on anything that came after us. Or I could bring the ceiling down on us if it was particularly bad. Getting crushed to death in an instant was a lot better than being eaten alive or sold into slavery.

Lost groaned, tapping harder on the keys with her hooves. She’d stopped using her magic, instead sitting hunched over and nearly pressing her nose to the screen. “Open, dammit,” she said, tapping the screen several times.

“What’s wro-”

The terminal beeped repeatedly. Lost cursed and slammed both forehooves into the screen as hard as she could. The screen flickered several times, but the door didn’t open. “It locked me out,” L.A. admitted, sheepishly.

“Here, let me try,” I said, moving to the terminal. “I know a trick. It’s all in the hoofwork.” I lifted a forehoof and pressed it against the keyboard. “Like this.” Rearing back, I smashed both forehooves into the screen as hard as I could. When they hit, the terminal’s screen shattered, and it’s keyboard snapped halfway off. The hallway went dark when the screen shattered.

Standing in the dark, with the door still locked tight, I felt rather stupid.

“That... isn’t how they work,” Lost finally said. Her horn lit up, bathing us in its pale blue glow. She glared at me through the colorful smoke coming from the broken terminal.

“Sorry... But hey, at least we know Stable-Tec built things to last,” I said, forcing a smile. That should have broken it into little pieces. “Do you have anything we can use to blow the door open? Are we out of grenades?”

“Yeah, I had to use the only one we had the last time you dragged us on a treasure hunt,” she said with a glare. Sighing, she looked down at her forehoof. “If it wasn’t for our last healing potion, I wouldn’t have a hoof left.” She glared at me, but her expression softened as she gazed forlornly at the unyielding door... “You’re right though, Stable-Tec did build things to last, I doubt we could simply blow it open.” Stepping closer, she looked at the door in the glow of her magic.

The entire door was overlaid with the design of a unicorn’s head on it, facing to the side. Several etched flower petals surrounded the unicorn’s head. The mare on the door seemed to stare directly at the keyhole. “Maybe we can find the key,” she offered.

“That’s a boring way to get into a room,” I said jokingly, while rolling my eyes. This trip was taking far too long, but if finding a key was the way to get to treasure, I was all for it. “It’s worth a try. Any idea where we’ll find a key?”

Something about the design dug at me, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Assuming there’s a spare key lying around... Probably back in the residential area. If the Overmare had a room separate from her office, that’s where it’d be,” she mused. She yawned, and her hoof shot up to cover her mouth. “Sorry. I think we need to take a break. I’m exhausted from keeping this light going for so long...”

I nodded.

Lost wobbled on her hooves, and the haze of her magic began to fade. She looked up at me and asked, “Will you be okay if I take a-” She yawned again.

“Yeah,” I said, moving over to prop her up. “Let’s head back to that room with the terminal. I’ll stay up and keep watch so you can nap.” I rested my head against her. “Ghouls aren’t exactly quiet, and I’m too excited with hunting again to sleep.”

She nodded, and the two of us walked down the empty, dark hallways back to the residential block.

* * *

Once we’d made it back to Roselle’s room, Lost collapsed on the bed and passed out instantly. I sat watch, one ear twisted to the doorway. Aside from the occasional echoing scrape in the darkness, nothing happened.

I was bored out of my mind. Aside from the eerie green glow of the terminal’s screen, there was only blackness. It wasn’t even bright enough to pass time reading the copy of Equestrian Army Today I kept with me. To keep from being completely bored, I let my mind wander. Thoughts of other places I’d gotten stuck in, bad situations that Lost had rescued me from. I snickered. While normally I needed a hoof to get out of trouble, occasionally I saved Lost. One time I got to save her from manticores... well, a manticore... an elderly manticore. “Shut up,” I said to nopony.

My ear flicked, catching a noise through the darkness. The sound echoed through the steel hallways making it hard to pinpoint its origin. I strained, hearing four loud thuds, almost like somepony running. Jumping from the seat at the terminal, I darted over to L.A. “Wake up, sis,” I said as I shook her.

Lost barely stirred, with only a groan she rolled away from me. “Sleep,” she muttered. Opening one eye, she groggily looked at me, then fell back to unconsciousness. She was a heavy sleeper, and despite how little she got, when she did sleep it was impossible to get her up.

I tried shaking her awake several more times, but nothing I did roused her. Grumbling, I gave up, and instead turned toward the door. Lowering myself slightly, I stared at the darkness outside the room. I kept my ears swiveled forward, listening for any new sounds that might echo in.

I didn’t know how long I stood there watching and straining, but I heard nothing new.

* * *

L.A. groaned behind me, rolling back over to face me. She opened her eyes partway, squinting against the dim glow of the terminal.

“Sis! I heard a thing!” I practically shouted.

“Wha?” she asked as she lifted a hoof to rub her eyes. “I just woke up, let me turn my brain on first. What happened?” She rolled to her hooves and walked to stand next to me.

“I heard a bunch of thuds coming from the halls. They didn’t sound like they were just a part of the Stable,” I explained. Really, that didn’t tell her much. I slumped, my ears and tail drooping down, at the deadpan look my sister gave me. “Sorry, I was bored and probably imagining things.”

“That’s alright,” L.A. said, stretching and crick-cracking her back. “Shall we go look for the Overmare's key?”

“Yeah. Sorry, being stuck in the dark was getting to me I guess. Remind me to get all irradiated one day, so I can get eyes that get all see-in-the-dark glowy like the ghouls have,” I said, jokingly. I shuddered, remembering an experience long ago involving an embarrassing misstep overnight. Falling down an incline and ending up surrounded by zombie ponies wasn’t my idea of fun, and it wasn’t even the worst that had happened to me. I was a bit accident prone, luck was not a mare that loved me. More often than not, it was my own fault though.

“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it,” she answered, her tone lacking its normal playfulness. Maybe she was cranky from following my wild dragon chase, or the exertion from fighting and lighting the way. It had been a long day, or was it night... How long had we been down here? L.A. walked over to the terminal and pulled up the map again.

I heard the thudding again, echoing through the silence. “Shh!” I snapped, trying to get her attention. “Listen!”

“I wasn’t saying anything in the-”

Stuffing my hoof against her mouth shut her up. “Shh,” I hissed. I moved to the hallway and peeked out the doorway. My ears twitched, trying to pick up the thudding again.

I looked down the hallway, turning my head side to side to try and hear where it was coming from. My best guess was that it came from somewhere in the region of ‘down’, but that was only because we’d been through the entirety of the residential block and the kitchens and hadn’t seen anything. The only places we hadn’t checked were the sealed Overmare’s office, the Atrium, and the basement. Maybe it was the sound of the talismans and machines Lost had told me about starting up? Or maybe there was something past the doors to Stable Twenty One... “Must be nothing,” I said.

“Lets hope so. I found the Overmare’s living quarters. I think. It’s the largest room in the residential block, so I’m pretty sure,” she said, tapping the screen a few times to get ahold of me. She hopped from the seat and trotted out of the room, her purple tail disappearing down the hallway along with the bluish haze of her magic.

I followed, looking around for any signs of more zombies or whatever was making that noise. If Lost hadn’t heard it, it might really be my mind putting scary things in my head just by being in this tomb of a Stable. Was I really spooked this easily?

Lost led me around a few turns, using her magic to cut through the darkness. After several hallways, we stood face to face with another door, the last one here in the residential area. It stood out much like the Overmare’s office, as it had a dimly glowing terminal next to the door. A tentative push proved this one was locked like all the others.

“Well, the terminal still works here, too,” Lost said after pushing on the door. “Let’s just hope that means the doors still wor-”

I bucked it a few times, trying to force it, but it wouldn’t budge. I managed to bend the door inward, a tiny bit. Foal steps.

“That might just make it worse,” L.A. chided, her eyes wide. “If you bend it too much, it might jam and never open.” She had a point. If the door ended up broken, we’d never get anything worthwhile on this treasure hunt. No key meant no Overmare’s Office and that meant nothing valuable we could leave with.

I sighed... We’d probably just find a room with an old terminal and a corpse or two, with nothing of actual value worth taking. I hated the reality of what we did, the fantasy of treasure hunting was just... more fun. It was easier to choose the less soul crushing option.

“Maybe, picking the lock might work?” I whispered, hoping she wouldn’t hear the question. Neither of us had picked up mom’s skill with a bobby pin.

“Yeah, I’ll give it a shot if you’d rather try getting into this,” she said playfully. With a grin, she tapped her hoof on the terminal set into the wall.

Dammit. My ears flopped over in defeat. I hated lockpicking. I sat in front of the door and pulled a bobby pin from my saddlebags. With my other hoof, I slid a rusted screwdriver out. I pushed both into the lock in the door.

Snap.

I hadn’t even started it yet... Goddesses, I hate locks and bobby pins. “Lost? Give me one of your bobby pins, please?” I asked.

Without missing a beat at the terminals keyboard, she pulled out a bobby pin from her saddlebags with her telekinesis and floated it over toward me. Goddesses-damned unicorn cheater magic.

After a few minutes of twisting the bobby pin around slowly, I heard the telltale click of the lock popping. “Finally!” I shouted.

“Got it!” announced L.A. at the same time, with equal enthusiasm.

It left a small mystery to who had actually opened the door, but given that I’d spent the past minute blindly stabbing the lock with a screwdriver, I bet it was her. The door slid open to reveal a barren room, with only a made bed and a desk built into the wall. It didn’t even have a dresser.

“Well, this is... minimalist,” Lost said, breaking the silence. She sounded more than a little disappointed. “Maybe she spent all her time in the office...”

“She must have, there’s nothing here,” I agreed, stuffing the unbroken bobby pin in the corner of my mouth. Together we stepped in and looked around. While I went to look under and around the bed, Lost trotted to the desk. I flicked an ear back, hearing the sounds of her finding just as much nothing as I was. “Unless...” I muttered to myself. With my hoof, I flipped the mattress off the bed and looked at the frame. Underneath was... nothing, nothing, a safe, nothing, and nothing.

I sighed, “Nothing under...” Wait. A safe! I shoved the mattress away. “Here!” I popped the bobby pin back out from where it was nestled at the corner of my mouth and started working the lock while Lost dug around. I snapped two bobby pins in the safe before I realized it wasn’t even locked in the first place.

“If there’s nothing under the bed then,” said Lost, stepping over as I finished. She looked over my shoulder. “Oh, you got it open.” She let out a sigh and waited for me to check inside.

“It was unlocked already,” I admitted as I pulled the safe’s door open. Sitting right on top was a large bag, sealed with a clasp. I pulled it out and looked inside. My eyes widened. “It’s full of bits,” I said, lifting it up to show my sister. If the terminal logs had told me anything about what was going on here, these were probably pilfered from Stable Twenty One. Underneath the bag was was a note.

L.A. lifted the note with her telekinesis and unfolded it. Together, we read it by the light from her horn:

To Lindenleaf,

As you know, we have been in a slow waiting game for many years. Unfortunately another generation has come to control the Stable and with a new generation, comes a new Overmare. Congratulations on your new position! Attached are the instructions given by Stable-Tec from Vice President Scootaloo herself. Your counterpart in Stable 21, Heartleaf has identical instructions. As your first priority you will need to contact her as soon as possible while under utmost secrecy. Due to security concerns communication by terminal has been cut off, so you will need to go over personally. I have left a pittance to you as part of my retirement, a more personal perk of being in charge. I hope that when we are finally able to leave this place, it will serve you well.

Signed,

~Rosemallow

Well, that explains where the bits came from. I stuck the sack of coins into my saddlebags.

There was no other paperwork in the safe. There was a box of Blue Colt 5.56mm Hornets. However, they didn’t fit my gun and definitely wouldn’t have fit L.A.’s, so I stuffed the box into my saddle bags for later. Reaching to the bottom, I pulled out a key with the insignia we’d seen embossed on the Overmare’s office door. The same large five-petaled flower with the profile of a unicorn overlaid on it. I shuddered looking at it, realizing where I’d seen it before. The design reminded me far too much of poison joke and the bad memories accompanying it.

L.A. lifted the key in her magic and slid it into her saddlebags. With nothing left in the room worth taking, we turned and trotted back into the dark hallways.

* * *

Lost opened the door with a satisfying click. It felt good to get in, like a job well done. There were even bits in my bags.

I’d probably sleep with them later, beautiful bits...

We stepped into the large office. A rounded desk sat in the corner, with a series of terminals behind it. In the glow of my sister’s light, we could see a large map of the Stable tacked to the drab grey wall. On the wall opposite the map was a large circular window, overlooking the Atrium.

“Not much for color or decorations,” L.A. muttered. She walked around the desk and sat before the Overmare’s terminals. Within seconds she started tapping away at the keyboard.

“Seems to be the way of things. Just like her bedroom. Way to be mysterious, Overmare...” I muttered as I walked over to the office’s window. I’d gotten used to washed out bland colors, with the Wasteland being mostly brown. Still, Stable ponies could have livened things up a little around here. I looked through the window.

With the lights all off, I couldn’t see anything, but through the thick glass of the window, the floor seemed to move. I pressed my nose against the glass and squinted, but all I could see was vague shapes shifting around. I took a few steps back, something digging at the back of my mind. “Sis, I don’t think we’re alone here,” I said, giving a worried check to the gun at my side.

“Mmhmm...” Lost muttered, too caught up in her thinky pony work.

I looked back at the door and walked around, trying to take my mind off what I’d heard. There wasn’t much we could do with every door locked down. Hopefully the Atrium’s exits were knocked out by the power. To keep my mind busy, I checked under everything, looking for whatever might give us a clue to what was here, and if there was anything more valuable we could find. I didn’t find anything, not even an out of place scrap of paper. I kept one eye on the door, just in case.

“Nothing,” Lost announced with a shake of her head. “Well, I can restart the power, but that’s about it.” She tapped a few more keys with her magic. “Everything else is completely locked down.”

“So? Start the power. It’ll give us some light at least,” I said, knowing it would mean she could have a break from constant magic use.

“Ok, here we go!” she said. She clicked a button on the keyboard, and a shudder shook the entirety of the Stable. Flickering light rolled up the corridor as lights began to turn on, the room lit up and a faint hum filled the air. A moment later, the lights past the Atrium window lit up and with them came a loud howl, as if hundreds of ponies had just woken up at once.

“There’s more ghoul ponies in the Atrium,” I said as I stared down at the rotten fleshed ponies. Poor things, they just wandered about randomly changing directions in the tattered and threadbare remains of their blue Stable barding. Hopefully the doors to the Atrium were locked... We were safe for the moment, a floor higher where they can’t reach us... “Think any of them are still sane?”

“I don’t know Hidden,” Lost answered, sounding tired and forlorn. She looked down at them, but turned away from the window and trotted toward the door.

“Only one way to find out,” I whispered. Spinning on a hoof, I bucked the window as hard as I could. The glass only cracked, but a jolt of pain shot up my legs. I yelped and fell onto my side, my hind legs twitching. That really wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, and Overmare office windows were really strong.

Lost stared at me, deadpan. She shook her head. “So, these basements and noises you keep hearing?” L.A. asked in a quiet voice. “Are you okay?”

“Shhhhh... Pain now, think later,” I whispered as I curled up on my side. One of my rear hooves kept twitching.

“Stop being a filly and come on, I know you’re tougher than that. We can go over to Stable Twenty One through the basement now,” she said. “This place is a bust. We might find something good over there for you.” She trotted over toward the map and trailed her hoof along the faded paper. “It’s not a long walk.”

* * *

With the hallways now lit, the Stable felt entirely different. Even the cramped walls felt less like they were closing in on me. In the distance came the quiet hum of machines and talismans activating and providing the wonderful light for us. Lost smiled wide, looking quite pleased that she didn’t need to keep a light on for us the entire time. It was a nice change of pace, and even though the doors to the other rooms were powered now, we had no way of knowing if they were unlocked. Secretly, I hoped they were still locked, if only because that would mean the Atrium was and the undead ponies inside couldn’t get out.

I limped down the hallways, following my sister and the signs embedded in the walls that pointed toward the maintenance levels. Were it not for the limp and the lingering pain in my leg, I might have jumped for joy. This Stable had fairly slim pickings, what with only some pre-War money that wasn’t worth its weight in bottle caps, and some ammunition. But the diary entries led me to believe that the next Stable would be far more luxurious. And more luxury meant more treasure!

“Here we are,” L.A. announced, pointing to a staircase leading down to the maintenance level. She trotted down, stopping once we got to the bottom step. The floor below was flooded, with water that rippled and splashed by the constant vibrations of the machines running all throughout the floor. Given their years of neglect and disuse, they were far from their peak condition. Some machines clanked and jerked around, as if knocking loose all the buildup from the centuries.

I winced as the rough, irregular vibrations sent little shocks of pain up my sprained ankle. Lost was right though, I was a tough pony and I’d get over it. The water ended up only being a few inches deep as we stepped into it. It felt strange against my hooves, unpleasant and almost burning. Given the ghouls above, there was a very high chance the water we were walking through had lingering traces of radiation, but it was our only way to the next Stable without backtracking and breaking into it from the front door.

We pushed on, not bothering to talk over the deafening buzz that filled the floor. The cylindrical machines lining the path all working in unison made the path almost completely deafening, and how a pony could get anything done down here I’d never know. Rather than talk, I looked around to see what exactly the machines were. Adorning the side of each were small markings, each one as unique as the cutie mark on my sister and my sides. Some had trios of suns, which I could only assume were for the lights. Others had a rolling wave, most likely for water. Others still had more designs, ranging from fans to food, covering all the Stable’s needs. Anything a pony could want for, anything they needed to survive, Stable-Tec’s massive machines provided.

I flicked an ear around uselessly, occasionally looking back to see if any of the zombie ponies had managed to find us, but saw nothing. Turning back, I sloshed through the water after my sister down the path to the next Stable, hoping I wouldn’t find out whatever made the mysterious noises earlier.

* * *

The door to Stable Twenty One was far more underwhelming than I’d expected. It looked completely nondescript, like any other door in the Stable. It was open though, and even the maintenance level of Twenty One was flooded. The machines on the other side were also identical, all buzzing and vibrating away as they powered the Stable that hopefully still had ponies living in it.

With nothing worth looting in the basement, we made our way for the stairs up. Given the Stables were joined, Lost guessed they had the same layout, or a mirrored one, and led me down the long path. I took a deep breath, enjoying the cleaner smelling air. I hadn’t noticed before, being so used to the smell of the Wasteland, but finally getting a chance to experience something better, I loved it. It might be stale, but for the first time I breathed freely.

On this side of the entrance, the machines seemed different. I couldn’t help but notice subtle changes in the sounds around me. Stable-Tec built things to last, that was for sure. These machines ran smoothly, without the clanging of gunk and debris built up inside like on the ones that had been shut off in the other Stable. The only thing out of place was the ceiling, where the occasional light was burnt out. They’d had to have been on for more than a few minutes though, since the labels and signs all around us had completely faded.

The further away we got from Stable Twelve, the lower the water level got, as if it was built at a slant. Or maybe there were built in protections against flooding that died when the power went out? But, if the power went out and radiation leaked into the Stables, why hadn’t everypony just moved over to this working Stable to escape instead of being turned into ghouls?

Hopefully, I’d find answers once we started exploring this new Stable.

“What do you think will be in this Stable?” I asked, wondering if Lost had any idea, she was always the smart one.

“I don’t know,” she replied quietly, sounding far less enthusiastic than before. Despite the nap she’d had, her bags under her eyes were bigger than usual.

I frowned. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Anything I can do to help you? You look really tired…” I stared at her, worried.

“I’m fine,” she snapped back. She sped up to a trot and went up the stairs to the next level of the Stable.

The crack of a shot echoed through the hallway as a bullet tore through my sister’s throat. Blood filled the air, splattering against the walls and across the floor.

In a moment that seemed like forever, she fell to the floor in a heap.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Mare-Do-Ill (Rank 1) – With each rank of this skill you gain +5 to the Lockpick and Sneak skills.
Practice makes perfect, and you need a lot of practice.

Chapter 2: Lessons Learned

View Online

Chapter Two: Lessons Learned
“You see, it’s a… Very dangerous world out there. The Wasteland isn’t kind, and two little fillies like you really shouldn’t be out here.”

Mom...

She was going to die, just like mom.

Watching her fall reminded me of every detail. The splash of blood. Her body lying on the ground. The burning of my tears.

It probably only took a split second for her to fall, but it felt like an eternity.

“Lost!” I heard myself scream as I galloped up the stairs as fast as my hooves could carry me. I jumped the last two steps and landed sideways in a skid, facing the direction the shot came from. Across from me stood a tall buck. A gun rested, smoking, in his mouth. He stared, his yellow eyes wide with surprise. I bit the trigger, pushed by instinct and adrenaline.

My gun erupted with an echoing BOOM.

My bullet tore through his throat, splattering blood across the walls. He put a hole in Lost’s neck, I completely destroyed his. Still staring wide, his mouth open in silent protest, his head fell to the floor. His body stood for only a moment, before falling into a heap in the suddenly blood-soaked hallway. The sound of his gun clattering down the stairs echoed.

Looking back, I stared at my sister. She gasped for breath, twitching slightly. Her eyes were open, but stared blankly forward. Blood poured from her neck, painting her red. I couldn’t lose her. I didn’t remember dad. I watched mom die. I couldn’t lose my sister too; she was all I had left. I wouldn’t let her die. I turned and looked at the stallion I’d shot.

Running over, I dug through his saddle bags. There had to be something I could use, there had to be. He wasn’t a Stable pony, he wore the barding of a Wastelander. He’d be carrying healing potions. He had to have something!

“Come on! Anything!” I shouted.

His first bag was empty. I tried the second. At the very bottom, there was a tiny potion bottle of pink healing liquid. It was enough. It had to be enough.

I grabbed the vial and ran back to my sister. Skidding to a stop next to her, I gently grabbed her head and propped it up in my hooves. Biting the stopper off the bottle, I poured the contents into her mouth. This would work, it couldn’t be too late. She’d be fine, perfectly fine after just a few seconds. The pink liquid trickled out of the gaping hole in her throat. No, no... I pressed a hoof against the hole trying to hold everything in.

Her eyes suddenly looked alive and focused. She gasped a few times, her breathing coming with a wet gurgling sound. I could feel her blood bubbling against my hoof. She was in bad shape, but she was alive and that’s what mattered. I pulled her close and held her, not knowing what else I could do.

She twitched and shifted slightly, breathing still coming shallow and wet. Her pulse was weak, I almost couldn’t feel it. I don’t know how long I sat there, listening, feeling, trying to guess what was a sign that she was doing better, or what was a sign she was getting worse. Clenching my eyes closed, I leaned over her and cried.

I felt a faint tap at my shoulder, maybe a sign she was better? Pulling back, I looked at her and moved my hoof away from the bullet wound. The skin over the hole was beginning to heal, but she looked horrible. Her flesh was a disgusting mottled brown and yellow around the wound, and we were now both covered in blood. She tapped again and weakly pointed a shaking hoof. I turned and saw a sign that said ‘Clinic’ with an arrow.

“I’m not leaving you,” I argued. At no point was I just going to run off and leave her to die alone on the floor. The clinic might have something left, something that could help her...

Lost’s breathing sped up as she retched and choked. She shook her hoof in the air at the sign, groaning. Blood flecked off and onto the floor. Through the pained look on her face, she groaned. It sounded a lot like ‘go.’

“Alright... I’ll be back as quick as I can!” I said. I galloped off, following the sign.

Thankfully, the halls were mostly lit. Through the intermittent light I could see the signs at the corners and intersections. Skidding on floors obviously not made for running, I pushed myself as fast as I could. I slammed into the wall at an intersection that knocked the wind from me. I didn’t have time to be hurt. Without slowing down, I galloped down the next hallway. Twisting and turning down different hallways, I ran up a flight of stairs and finally found a large door with the word 'Clinic' painted on it. I hit the button and prayed.

The door slid open.

The clinic was small, with only a counter, a medicine cabinet, and a row of three beds, separated by movable walls. I ran straight for the cabinet, smashing it with a forehoof to stop myself and open it at the same time. It wasn’t locked, and the door bounced open. Dozens of different bottles and syringes lined little cubbies inside. “What do I grab, what do I grab?” I asked nopony. Reaching in, I pulled as much as I could out and looked through the labels. Didehydro... methyl...

I didn’t have time for reading technical names. I just took everything I could. I didn’t care what it was. Lost would know what she needed. I threw everything into my saddlebags. I knew some were healing bandages and some was Med-X. Those were the most important. Grabbing one syringe in my teeth, I turned and ran back into the hallway.

I barreled down the hallways, already out of breath. My hooves clattered on the steel floor, slipping and sliding out from under me. Every extra second I took was one too many. If I made it back only to find my sister dead, I’d never forgive myself. I slammed into the wall at a corner just to stop myself, and ran down another hall. I jumped down the flight of stairs and rolled. Getting back to my hooves, I galloped as fast as my hooves could carry me.

Rounding the last corner, I saw her. Lost’s bleeding had stopped. She lay on her side, breathing shallowly, with a grimace on her face. Thank goodness for the healing magic of potions. Her eyes were closed and the blood was starting to dry on her. I slid to the ground as I got to her, and jabbed the needle of Med-X into her neck and prayed. I really hated not knowing any what I was doing. Lost was supposed to be the thinky pony.

When I offered her the bandages from my saddlebags, she tried to lift them with her telekinesis. The haze of her magic was faint, and the bandages fell to the floor. “I’ll do it,” I offered. Awkwardly, I unraveled them, and slowly wrapped them around her neck. When I finally finished, having tied them off with my hooves and teeth, I cracked open one of the bottles of water we had found. Helping her to drink and seeing nothing leaking through the bandages, I finally let myself calm down a little.

She'd be okay. Thank Goddesses, she'd be okay...

* * *

“Tha...nks...” Lost Art rasped.

I placed my hoof on her forehead, below her horn. “Shhh. Heal now, talk later,” I whispered, looking down and smiling. “That was close, sis. I thought I was going to lose you... We got lucky.” I’d been sitting next to her for ages, anxiously waiting for her to get her strength back. “We’re always going to get an extra, emergency healing potion from now on. Deal?”

Lost looked up at me. She opened her mouth and whispered, “I-”

“Deal,” I answered for her. I picked up her glasses and placed them back on her nose. “Here, can’t lose these. Don’t know if you’ll ever find a new pair in the Wasteland.” I sighed, watch my eyes go bad too one day...

Without any actual training on how to help ponies in pain, and no cheater magic to make up the difference, I just sat with my sister and held her. The best I could do was comfort her while the magic in the potion and the bandages did its work. I stroked her forehead gently with a hoof, whispering what little reliefs I could. If mom had been here, she’d have fixed Lost up in an instant, but... I couldn’t do a thing to help. As she slipped back and forth from consciousness, I just watched, checking her temperature, her breathing, and looking for any sign that she might be slipping away from me.

When I finally felt she was stable enough for me not to risk losing her, I went to the headless corpse of our attacker. It had been eating me up as I waited, who had he been... Had he been looking for somepony? Had he been trying to find food for his family? Was he a bounty hunter or a slaver? Or was he another scavenger, trying to steal the treasure we’d come for? What was so dangerous here that he was firing at the first sign of... anything? Who was... My throat locked up as the words slipped through my mind, I felt tears rolling down my cheeks as what I’d done finally hit me.

I’d made a lot of mistakes in my life, and put my sister and myself into a lot of bad situations. I’d never done something this bad, though... Over the years we picked our moves carefully, always going out of our way to avoid fights with other ponies. And, in just one second, being careless, it finally happened. I couldn’t breathe, and everything felt tight, like somepony was standing on my chest. I had murdered somepony. Justified or not, I was a murderer. Could... Could I justify something like this? Did this mean I’d become the kind of pony we’d spent our lives avoiding? What if it became a habit? What if I started to like it...

I lost track of time as I stared at the headless body, taking in every detail. He obviously wasn’t a Stable pony, his coat was dirty and covered in scars, knicks, and empty patches where he’d been shot. What was left of was a dull brown, and he had a messy, tawny mane and tail. He was very plain, no bright eye catching colors like some ponies I’d seen. He must have blended in well with the stark dirt of the Wasteland. He wore armored barding that covered his shoulders and haunches, with tattered sleeves covering his forelegs. Despite having been repaired several times by somepony who looked to be quite skillful, he’d obviously been in many tight spots. His cutie mark was covered, and he lacked anything that would give away just who he was.

Why was he here?

I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind. I wanted to remove the barding and see his cutie mark, but I knew that would be invasion of privacy. It seemed odd to think that of a corpse, I’d looted dozens of bodies before. We’d taken things from the ghouls just hours ago. What made this stallion special? I shot him... He shouldn’t have been a corpse at all. Defiling him more was just another step I didn’t think I could take.

My hooves ached, my eyes burned. This whole place was horrible. What was it all for? Because there might be treasure, some pre-war bits that weren’t worth shit anymore. So a stallion could nearly kill the only family I had left? And... and then, I’d killed him... We should have just stayed at our hideaway. No treasure was worth this.

He hadn’t looked happy to be in the situation either. He looked surprised, afraid... His face was still locked that way even now, eyes wide and mouth agape. He wasn’t smiling, he didn’t look vindictive. He didn’t even wear the hides of those he’d killed like I’d seen so many raiders do. So who was he? His cutie mark was covered, but did... I looked back at my own. “An X... is it a target?” I asked myself. “A place to fire a shot, crosshairs. What the fuck... maybe I was supposed to be a killer, a perfect shot? Why couldn’t I have been the one who got shot? Lost would know what to do...” I slumped down on my haunches, and picked up the head of the buck.

It was still warm.

I stared into his hollow eyes, and lifted the head to mine. He was an earth pony like me, though far older. Scars covered his muzzle, and he was missing one ear. I couldn’t stand to look him in the eye, at that cold, terrified accusing glare. Pressing our foreheads together, I whispered, “I’m sorry.” Whether raider, bandit, slaver, or just somepony’s son, I shouldn’t have killed him. Not the way I did. I closed my eyes and held the head until it went cold. He needed a burial. I murdered him, and I’d put him to rest. Time passed slowly, but I snapped myself out of it.

I sighed. Waste not, want not. Cautiously, I dug into his bags.

* * *

He had a PipBuck.

I felt bad about killing the stallion, and didn’t want to defile him... but there were some things the Goddesses gave you that you didn’t pass up. I tried to pull it off, but it wouldn’t come loose. For several minutes I tugged and pulled at the metal casing, twisting and working up a frustrated sweat. I heard a tapping at the floor and looked back over to Lost.

She limply pointed at the wall again. This time the sign she was pointing to said ‘Maintenance’ and had an arrow pointing the other way.

“What’s there?” I asked.

“Tools. Mom showed me once. Special… screwdriver,” she said, wheezing. Her voice was a lot better than it had been before, but it wasn’t back to normal yet. Whatever damage was done inside must not be fully healed yet, hopefully the bandages would take care of it.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” I said, slowly trotting off towards maintenance. I checked my battle saddle, just in case. That buck might not be alone and I couldn’t dare be unprepared. Nopony had come running when shots were fired, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others waiting. If he was so eager to shoot, there might even be something more dangerous wandering the halls.

Following the signs leading to the maintenance felt somewhat crazy. We were already on the ‘maintenance floor’, which meant several stops into rooms that didn’t have anything like what I needed. Several were dead ends with entrances to the lower level and more machines, so much that it made my head spin. The trip was uneventful, with no random ponies jumping out to kill me, and no ghouls wandering around. Finally, I found a room nestled in the back corner of the floor, with a small PipBuck design on the door, and the word ‘Maintenance’ in bright yellow underneath.

I walked into the room and looked around. It was just... grey. It was the least interesting room I’d ever seen, just shelves and desks and neatly stacked boxes that were all grey. A little color wouldn’t have hurt... I had no idea what I was looking for, so I dug through every grey desk, box, and table I could find. Three screwdrivers later, I retraced my steps through the winding halls and laid the tools in front of my sister.

“I didn’t know which one you needed, so I brought all the ones I could find,” I explained.

“It’s this one,” she said, lifting one of the three screwdrivers in the blue haze of her magic. She rose to her hooves slowly, and her legs wobbled. Breathing heavily, she slowly walked over to the headless buck. Lowering herself back to the ground, she lifted his hoof and examined the PipBuck. The green screen on the little device flashed repeatedly, showing a little outline of a pony with the word ‘DECEASED’ over it. Under the screen were three glowing buttons, and it had a gauge of some sort on the one side. Lost flopped his hoof over, and dug the screwdriver in. Slowly she opened the casing, more dismantling it than ‘opening’ it. She kept working until she could open it part way and pull it from his leg. The second it left his coat, the screen went black.

Floating it over to me, I lifted my right forehoof and let her attach and reassemble it. It felt strange, having the extra weight there all the sudden. The PipBuck had a thick padding underneath it, to protect the hoof and fetlock from any sharp edges on the casing. It was already cold, and aside from some minor unease at wearing something from a dead pony, it felt like it belonged there. Her task finished, Lost slowly sunk back to the hard steel floor and closed her eyes.

I grabbed the two screwdrivers she hadn’t used and tossed them into my saddlebags as backups for lockpicking. It never hurt to have a spare. The one she’d needed for the PipBuck I picked and put into her bags. With a pause, I grabbed the snack cakes we’d snagged earlier and offered them to her. “Here, you should eat something,” I suggested. “Keep your energy up.”

“Thanks,” she whispered.

I sat across from her. “Now... While you eat, let me just,” I said, lifting the PipBuck. I pressed one of the three buttons. The screen lit up, and my world suddenly turned completely green. After several seconds, bits and pieces started to disappear, leaving me with several things flashing in the corners of my vision, just enough that I could read without it being in the way. Focusing on them, I made out little icons, symbols and bars, all telling me a bunch of things I couldn’t make out. I lifted a hoof to wave them away, but hit nothing. The letters and pictures were part of my vision.

How it worked, I didn’t know, since the PipBuck was nowhere near my eyes. I blamed magic. A banner reading ‘Start Up’ flashed on the right side of my vision. Underneath the ‘Start Up’ were several other words flashing in quick succession. The first one read Eyes Forward Sparkle. As soon as the word disappeared, the flashing compass icon-bar-thing in the bottom left of my vision solidified and filled with little markers. Above it, a series of bars appeared and filled to the edge of the compass bar, before a few disappeared. A little outline of a pony flashed repeatedly over the left half of my sight, indicating something about my sprained ankle. Thinking about it, the pain came back as a dull ache in my leg. Distracted by the sudden reappearance of pain, I missed the next several words, but managed to catch more green indicators and bars solidifying in the other corners of my vision. Too bad I’d missed what they were for.

On the compass marker was a little green bar, dead center. When I turned my head it moved, staying aligned towards L.A. wherever I looked. I turned full circle, and the compass marker filled with hundreds of little red bars, all together in the direction of Stable Twelve. Could this thing read through walls? Either way, I was glad we avoided that...

I looked down at the casing, twisting my hoof to get a good look at it. The gauge on the side had a little symbol on it, one I remembered mom explaining meant radiation, and to avoid it if I ever saw it. I ignored the meter, since it showed nearly empty. The screen showed the same outline of a pony I’d seen flashing during the startup, with little notices and alerts still ticking off near each limb. Wait, was it always a mare? It looked silly, but cute. I pushed random buttons with the tip of my hoof, causing the screen to switch to other readouts full of numbers and lists. One had a list of everything I carried on me, and another had- What in the Wasteland... quests? There were lots of them... There was another tab at the bottom labeled notes. It took me a while to find the little turny-thing that flipped over to that screen, but once there I found what looked like notes he’d taken down.

They’d be a good place to start in finding out who he was. I squinted to read the tiny text displayed. Something about Leathers, nonsense about Pommel Falls, and... there was a map. Just like mom’s! It was just what we needed, and would be amazingly useful. Just like being lost in the Stable, for years we’d wandered and hid, not knowing how far away we were to danger or towns. This would be a perfect.

I indulged for a few minutes, fascinated at what the mountain looked like from the PipBuck’s point of view. Technology was occasionally wonderful, as long as it wasn’t a terminal... There were a few markers listed, Leathers and Pommel Falls were marked, as was a marker for Stables Twenty One and Twelve. Weird thing was there was only one for both, with the ‘1’ of each Stable smooshed so close together it looked like like ‘2II2’ and not ‘21’ or ‘12.’ There was one other place called Skirt further in the mountains. I tried my best to trace a path back to any of our hideaways, but either they weren’t listed or I just didn’t know how to read a map. I smiled either way, knowing that them not being listed was safer for us.

“Hey L.A. There’s some towns and stuff nearby. With this we could travel and avoid them,” I said, staring down at the PipBuck’s screen. Slowly, I looked over at the corpse of the buck who owned it just moments ago.

“Ugh.... Whatever. Sounds good, can it take us home?” she groaned. Having finished her snack, she threw the wrapper away, down the stairs we’d come up.

I didn’t answer right away. Instead I stared at the stallion’s body. Something tore at me, whether guilt or something else I wasn’t sure. He might have been a bad pony but, did he deserve what I did to him? I could at least tell his family, if he had any. I know I’d want Lost to know if something happened to me. The idea of her looking for me after I was gone hurt.

“On second thought...” I muttered to myself. “We should go to these places... So I can apologize.” I stared at the head and shuffled a hoof. “I want to know who he was. I... should make up for it.” I hope it didn’t sound like I was begging.

“Why!” she demanded. “He shot me, you shot him better. You think he’d give a fuck if it was my dead body lying there?” She raised a hoof to point to her throat for emphasis. “He shot me at first sight! And who knows what other ponies might do? If you tell somepony you shot this asshole they'll probably just shoot you! Look at what happened to dad. Ponies aren’t good anymore, not like they were before the War. You heard the same stories I did from mom. It’s just not safe, and I do not want to get shot again!”

As usual, she was right, even if I hated to admit it.

“Please?” I begged.

Lost Art just rolled her eyes, and shook her head. “No,” she said. The discussion was over, just like that. Big sister made the rules...

Dejectedly, I went back to fiddling with the PipBuck. It had reorganized my bags somehow, and listed off values for everything we had. Apparently I had just over a hundred caps worth of stuff on me, and the bits that I had found were worth close to fifty. “Really, that’s all?” I asked the little hoof-mounted terminal.

L.A. looked up at the question, but my shrug seemed to be enough of an answer.

Clicking around, I noticed a radio... thing on the screen. I clicked it with the tip of my hoof. Nothing happened. Shaking my forehoof a few times I hit the casing with my other hoof. “Work,” I said, as if that would magically fix it.

“Work what?” asked Lost. She walked over and rested her head on my shoulder to look at the screen.

“The radio doesn’t work,” I explained, tapping it on and off a few times. Stupid broken thing.

“It doesn’t have a speaker,” Lost said as her horn lit up. The side of the PipBuck lit up with the blue haze of her telekinesis as she pulled a little piece from the casing. “You need to use this. It’s an earbloom. Remember mom’s?” She lowered the earbloom into my hoof.

“Oh...” I whispered. Lifting it up, I fumbled around until I got it hooked in place. Nothing but silence. I clicked the radio on again. With a burst of white noise, the PipBuck broadcast the worst excuse for radio I’ve ever heard. Yelping in pain, I pulled the earbloom away. I didn’t have much to really compare it to, but if that’s what passed for radio, I wasn’t impressed.

I turned down the volume and held the earbloom against my ear without actually putting it in. Through the static, I could make out a few words. “...Wasteland sacrificed... Got away... Goes out... Stable... Tails...” It was all gibberish. Whoever was talking on the other end went silent, replaced by a Goddess-awful amount of static. I gave a small smile and looked over to L.A.

“So, does it work now?” Lost Art asked. She stood, and walked down the hall a few steps, looking much better and not wobbling on her hooves. The bandages had turned a dour brown from the soaked-in blood, but she was alive, and that’s what mattered.

“Lots of static, but it works,” I answered, looking down at myself. Eugh, I was still covered in her blood. My neck and chest were a sticky brown semi-dry blood mess.

“Right. Let’s get out of this piece of shit death trap,” Lost said as she began toward the door back to the first Stable. “Back the way we came, out through Stable Twelve, the door should still be open, and at least the zombies won't shoot me in the throat.”

I’d been shot bad before. I knew how much it hurt and how it made you want to just go home and curl up. Going back meant walking through the Stable full of zombie ponies, and Goddesses knows what else, where that mass of red markers in the E.F.S. was. But going forward? I looked at the display in the corner of my vision and turned slightly. Given the choice between going back through that Stable, where I knew dangers waited, and leaving through this one...

“There’s nopony ahead of us. I can tell from the PipBuck,” I said, hoping it would convince her. “There’s a lot of ghouls that way, we should go through this Stable instead, it’ll be safer, and maybe we can find more treasure on this side? Maybe even find out what happened here? I have a map now...” Hopefully that would be enough to convince her. “We might find some good treasure here? It’ll be a good, safe, distraction until we leave, right?” I glanced at the map. Lifting my hoof I showed her where the Overmare’s office might be. “It won’t take long, we’ll still leave the Stables.”

“No,” she argued, stomping her hoof on the steel floor. “We don’t know what that doesn’t see. I want to go home, and I want to hide where it’s safe. No more treasure hunting. Not until I feel like we’re capable of handling it.” She pushed my hoof away and glared angrily. Her expression softened. “It’s not safe out here, even with a PipBuck.”

“Can we at least go to raid the Clinic’s medicine cabinet for any potions or meds I missed?” I begged, trying to show her a good reason for exploring more. If I could get her started, we’d probably continue. It wasn’t right to manipulate my sister, and I knew it. It was the best thing we could do though, stocking up on supplies we needed, and that beat out guilt.

Lost stopped in her tracks, lowered her head with an over exaggerated sigh, and turned around. “Fine. But that’s it,” she said, her voice having lost some of its bitter edge. She walked back and looked at the PipBuck’s screen. “Afterward, we leave.”

We turned down the hall, the same way I’d frantically run earlier to find the clinic. I stopped, while Lost kept on walking, and looked at the stallion’s severed head. I killed him, and it was my responsibility to give him a burial... I picked it up and gently put it into my saddle bags. The body was too big for me to carry, and I knew better than to ask Lost for help. This would need to be enough. As we walked away, I tried to forget what had happened.

* * *

I trotted after my sister, distracted by the new toy strapped to my forehoof and the fancy new E.F.S. lighting up my vision. I didn’t see anything red in front of me, and given that Lost Art was the only green light I saw, it was pretty easy to put two and two together. Not only was this Stable empty, but it was still mostly functional. If only there was some way we could make this place a home for us. It’d be quite the step up from our hideaways and the home we’d made in the Wasteland. Unfortunately, it would be just too big a job for the two of us, with securing the place, the machinery, and all sorts of other issues that were more than two-pony jobs.

With signs to follow, and no worries about anypony bleeding out if we weren’t fast enough, Lost and I casually walked down the same halls I’d been through before to the Clinic. Luckily this time, I wasn’t trailing my sister’s blood after me. I kept my eyes on the E.F.S. the entire time, but the trip was uneventful. I walked in and headed straight toward the open medicine cabinet. The pickings were rather meager, since I’d already grabbed the majority of what was left. I didn’t want to leave anything we could use though, in case we ran into another bad situation. Better to have it and not need it, than the other way around.

The extra digging paid off, and I managed to find another healing potion in a yellow box at the back of the cabinet, along with a bottle of something called Buck, and a single dose of RadAway. After emptying the box, I stared at the three pink butterflies on its front. Why hadn’t I just thrown the whole box into my saddlebags? I stuffed it in anyway, even if it was empty.

The rest of the room seemed incredibly sterile and inhospitable, even for a clinic. It felt more like a room to settle the dead than to heal the living. I made sure to check the desk in the back corner, but didn’t find anything useful. All I could find inside was a clipboard for a patient from decades ago, with some scribbling on it. I tried to read whatever had been written there, but the only thing I could make out was ‘radiation’ in big red letters. While I hunted for treasure, Lost Art idly looked around the room. The way she hung close to the door made it clear she had little interest in searching.

I gave up on the clipboard and looked at the terminal sitting atop the desk. “Hey sis?” I asked, motioning for her to come over, “Want to crack this open for me?” I figured giving her something to do would take her mind off being stuck here for the moment. At least we could work together to get through it faster?

“You need to learn to do it yourself, in case I get killed,” she said, the bitter tone returned to her voice once again. Instead of walking over to help, she turned to the door and stared into the hallway.

I didn’t want to learn, not after my last bad experience with a terminal. The PipBuck was fine because it was small and had lots of nifty things going on. It was attached to me and therefore safe. She was the smart pony and I needed her as much as she needed me.

“Not every terminal is going to have a grenade in it, and I’ll help if you need it,” she said, her voice softening somewhat. She sighed and walked over. We were family, and it was good to see she’s wasn’t going to stay mad forever. “It’s simple, and I’m here if you need help.”

I hesitantly tapped away on the terminal’s keyboard, trying to find the right string of characters that would let me in. Of course it couldn’t hurt to give it a try, if she had died I’d be down here all by myself. I shuddered and pushed the thought away, reminding myself that I did need to learn sometime. Even if terminals were imposing...

For several minutes I tapped away, making mistake after mistake, with Lost Art giving pointers whenever I messed up, which happened a lot. These things were too complicated! I couldn’t type well with hooves like she could with magic, so there were a lot of misspellings. I kept forgetting to set it to the proper mode to break in whenever I reset it. The fact that I couldn’t just hit it until it worked wasn’t helping my mood at all. I was about to give up on the Goddesses-forsaken thing when I finally guessed the right password and got in. The password had been ‘Relief.’ “Heh. Clever,” I muttered as I hit enter.

Patient 355A –

Patient seems to be suffering from advanced radiation poisoning. I am extremely confused as to where he came into contact with any, since the Overmare has assured me there have been no reports of radiation leaks from maintenance or internal sensors. I am considering the... possibility that it may have been exposure from our conjoined sister Stable. Heartleaf mentioned that Stable-Tec made our Stables conjoined for a reason, but she would not elaborate on the issue no matter how much I pressed her. I will continue to monitor the patient’s status for the next week while administering radiation therapy spells at 24 hour intervals.

“Well, that’s... clinical?” I said before closing the file. I clicked on the next one to see if it was more interesting.

Patient 355B –

Patient has not gotten any better, and there is now news of other ponies presenting the symptoms of radiation sickness. So far nopony has shown symptoms as bad as Patient 355. I have decided to break quarantine and contact the doctor across at Stable 12 and get a second opinion. I need to speak to Heartleaf as soon as I can to find out what the problem is at the other Stable and why there are radiation leaks. I know our Stable was built perfectly to specifications, but it would be nice to have been issued a PipBuck to assist in locating the source of the contamination. [REDACTED]

That was actually interesting. I turned to my sister, and said, “Well, he couldn’t have come from this Stable.” I held up the PipBuck on my fetlock. “Nopony here had one, apparently.” I clicked to the final file, hoping to get some more information.

Patient 355C –

Patient 355 has taken a turn for the worse. He was apprehended attempting to sneak down to the basement level. I presume he was trying to get back to Stable 12, though how he managed to leave the clinic, I’ll never know. I had a guard from 12 come and assist me in returning him to the clinic. I do not feel he will survive, and have switched my current treatment plan from radiation therapy to palliative care.

“I wonder if the... uhh, palliative care helped with the radiation?” I said, looking over to my sister. “At least we know there was definitely something going on between these two Stables.” I felt quite proud, being able to figure all this out on my own. I just needed to find out why one Stable was perfect and the other completely broken, and where everypony was. I looked down at the E.F.S. Maybe, but not until it was the only option...

With nothing more worth finding in the Clinic, I led Lost Art away and down the hall. She followed quietly, distant, not saying anything. At least she wasn’t arguing that I took her further than I’d promised. As we walked down the winding, identical corridors, I noticed something that stood out amongst the uniformity of the grey walls.

The corpse of a ghoul lay against the wall, splattered open and oozing black... something. The back of the ghoul had been broken clean in half, most likely from whatever made the pair of hoof-sized dents in the wall. Chunks of the body were still imbedded in the impressions, and the same black goo seeped from the holes to the floor. It smelled horrible. A trail of black hoofprints led away from the hall in the same direction we were walking.

“Guess he did some warm up,” Lost Art said, mostly to herself. She stopped for a moment to look at the chunks of flesh lodged in the wall, before walking past. Her mood shifting back and forth made my heart sink. Something was very wrong in her head and I had no idea how to make it better.

“This explains some of the sounds. That buck must have…” I said, trailing off, and remembering the head sitting in my bags. Curiosity got the better of me, and rather than follow my sister, I followed the trail until it disappeared. Turning a corner, I looked back at Lost. “There’s an open door, with a terminal inside,” I said. Before she could respond, I trotted down the hall and into the door.

Inside was another room nearly identical to the one Roselle had in Stable Twelve. A desk with a terminal sat against one wall, with the terminal twisted to the side. Past that I could see a bed and dresser. The bed lay half off its frame, with the sheets lying on the floor. The dresser was on its side, with a picture lying on the floor next to it. Shattered glass filled the corner of the room. Turning away from the mess, I sat down in front of the terminal. It was unlocked. Not wanting to touch it and break something, I leaned in and read what was already on the screen.

…want to get my last thoughts down. Something bad is happening, everypony is panicking and I don’t know what to do. I just wish we had sealed that Goddesses damned door when we had the chance. There are rumors there’s radiation coming in! They told us that could never happen. That this place was SAFE!

We should have learned to share and then everypony could just come over here. I know we could have, we have to live in harmony don’t we! We’re ponies. Maybe if I go over and offer to share my room with somepony from that side as a show of goodwill this will all blow over. There hasn’t been any radiation here at a█

A blinking... thing flashed at me at the end of the entry. Leaning back, I scratched at my mane. “That was weird,” I said to nopony. A massive crack ran down the side of the terminal, and the keyboard looked like somepony had tried to break it off. I looked around the room, at the bed and the broken glass. It looked almost as if whoever had been writing the entry was dragged away by force, mid-sentence. But at least now I had a better idea of what had happened.

“Never learned to share, did they?” L.A. whispered, having walked in to read over my shoulder. She looked around the room, then trotted over to pick up the picture lying on the floor. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she flipped it over. “It’s a mare and a stallion, they look happy.” She didn’t sound angry anymore, and had a little smile across her face. “This place might suck for you and me, but it was their world. Wonder what happened?”

That was the Lost I knew.

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty. Like you said, they couldn't learn to share or trust each other...” I said, looking down at the PipBuck. We’d always shared everything, it’s the only way we managed to survive. Even though I ended up being the one who messed up most and Lost often had to fix the situations. We shared the burden together, every time. It was only fair that meant I share the nice things I got with her. “Can we share this, too?” I held the PipBuck up. I’d share that, but the Sparkle~Cola I found was mine.

“Maybe. We kept the screwdriver for it, right? If we can find some scrap I might be able to throw a quick release latch together or something. That way we can both use it,” she answered. She set the picture down on the table, facing the bed. She turned to the door. “We should check the armory and the Overmare’s office while we’re here.”

“Good to have you back to normal, sis,” I whispered.

* * *

On the way to the Overmare’s office from the residential block, we managed to find the Armory. It actually wasn’t that difficult to find, a sign pointing it out directly down the hall from the office itself. We'd have seen it even without our new PipBuck’s map. Opening the door, we found a whole lot of nothing. The room was small, full of boxes of miscellaneous paperwork about patrol schedules. Apart from the desk against the far wall and the broken terminal atop it, we couldn’t find anything useful. A gun cabinet sat open and empty. Checking the lockers next to it, we managed to find a few pairs of armored barding, but much like the clothing I’d found earlier, they were in such poor condition that they disintegrated when touched.

“Well, this room was a bust,” Lost said, holding up one of the tattered uniforms in her magic. “Whatever went down here must have been bad, if they needed...” She trailed off and looked around the empty room. “Everything...” She tossed the uniform back into the locker. “There’s not even enough for me to repair here.”

“Wish I knew the whole story,” I agreed, tapping at the casing of the terminal. Behind it was a board on the wall, full of scribbles and names. I checked the PipBuck’s clock, then looked at the board. It would have been second shift, with a pony named Blue Checker leading for the afternoon. I turned away from the board. “Oh well...”

Sharing shrugs, we left and walked down the short hallway to the Overmare’s office. The door was closed, and the terminal here already locked from somepony else trying to access it. Probably the stallion I’d shot.

“That’s annoying,” Lost muttered, her horn starting to glow. She pulled the key from Lindenleaf’s office and slid it into the door’s lock. Turning it hesitantly, the door clicked and opened. “And... that was convenient.” She slid the key back into her bags and walked inside.

The office we found was almost identical to the one Lindenleaf had in Stable Twelve, the only difference being a couch against the wall with the map. Maybe Heartleaf was the kind to splurge for guests? A shiver ran up my spine as I looked around the room, thinking of the pony who once sat there. It still felt really weird to refer to them by name. The thought wouldn’t go away though. “I wonder if they were related?” I thought out loud.

“What?” asked L.A. She walked around the desk in the center of the room and pulled a chair up to the terminals.

“Nothing,” I said, waving her back to work on the terminal. I trotted around the room, doing my customary check. Through the window, I could see an eerily empty Atrium down below, with dozens of tables pushed against the walls. Turning away from it, I dug through the couch. Stuck between two of the cushions was a single Sparkle~Cola bottlecap. I added it to my ever-increasing total.

“There’s a recording here,” L.A. announced.

I walked around the desk and peeked over her shoulder just in time to catch her pressing the play button with her magic. A voice spoke to us through the speaker.

“Hello, this is Scootaloo, Founder of Red Racer and vice-president of Stable-Tec speaking. If you’re listening to this, well... the world ended and you’re in one of Stable-Tec’s Stables. Considering the scale of what must have happened, I hope that everypony in the Stable realizes how lucky you are that you’re in there and still alive. Wait, do I really have to read that? It sounds like... Dammit I’m going to need to start over on this one.”

“...”

“Hello, my name is Scootaloo, founder of Red Racer and vice-president of Stable-Tec. If you’re listening to this, it means the world probably ended, and we all pray that you’ve managed to save as many ponies as possible. We founded this company in an effort to do as much good as possible even... even in the event that something terrible happened.”

“I just pray... I. Okay. This is a... these are special Stables, I hope I’m able to address both Overmares at the same time. First, I want to... apologize for what happened. While you were chosen for the positions because we believe that you will lead your respective Stables in the right direction. The fact that you are in the sealed Stable in the first place is un- unforgivable. Celestia and Luna, please… Forgive me.”

“We messed up, and we need to find a way to do things better. I hope that in time, both of these Stables, and every Stable for that matter, can find a better way. Each of you have instructions in the office desks in each Stable. They will outline the social project we have designed for you both.”

“Your job is to do better at being ponies, to learn to tolerate each other, to learn to share. This whole War started because no one, not Zebra, not Pony, learned that valuable lesson.”

“I just don’t understand why everypony has to die for this. Why can’t we just save everypony? Apple Bloom tells me that we are saving as many as we can, and that it is the most we can do. I don’t believe that... We can do better, we can be faster... I-I need to stop recording these.”

There was a lengthy pause on the tape. For a moment both Lost Art and I thought that it had finished, until the sound of sobbing broke the silence. With a sniffle, Scootaloo continued.

“Please read the sealed instructions in your offices. Please find a better way. Learn the lessons that Equestria forgot. Leave the Stables as soon as it is safe, and make... whatevers left a better world.”

“Thank you.”

“And I’m sorry.”

The PipBuck automatically made a recording of the file, a little icon told me by flashing above the bar on the right side of my vision. I had no idea how it had done it, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember what I’d just heard.

“I’d hate to be in her position,” I muttered, turning away from the terminal. If this was Stable Twenty One, that meant she had to read off one of those for each and every one. I couldn’t imagine handling that sort of pressure. Still, there was a need somewhere in me, that had to find out what happened. I looked at the desk and started digging through the drawers.

“You that dedicated to finding out what happened?” asked Lost. When I nodded my head, she joined in the search silently. It didn’t take long for the two of us to dig through the entire desk and dig out the unsealed dossier. Several warnings and official looking fine print covered the front. “Here goes nothing.” L.A. lifted it in her magic and opened it, the blue haze pulling out sheet after sheet and laying them on the dusty desk in front of us. Most of what was written was Stable-Tec jargon, but the instructions on both Stable’s ‘social projects’ were clear as day, in bold print.

‘Stable 12 will begin to experience systematic simulated failure of all its systems approximately fifty years after the Stables are activated. The experimental protocol requires both Stables have independent populations that are mutually seen as distinct from one another by this time. The simulated faults will begin in the environmental systems and progress to waste processing, automation and atmospheric systems. The final system to fail will be the power system, 10 days after the simulation begins. The failure of power will begin systematically, in an effort to ‘suggest’ a direction to the residents. It must be noted that purification systems will continue to operate in limp mode regardless of the simulation.

The simulation has been designed so that it is impossible to rectify with Stable 12's allocated resources alone. PipBucks have not been issued to that population for this purpose. It is the intent that when faced with the insurmountable task and the unavoidable shutdown of their living environment, the Stable 12 residents will either a) demonstrate trust and humility by seeking assistance from Stable 21, or b) demonstrate trust and humility by evacuating to Stable 21 and integrating into that population.

In scenario a) you will find attached Addendum 1; a list of supplies and instructions necessary to repair the problem. Also attached is Addendum 2; a list of what plant equipment in Stable 21 is redundant and included expressly for the purpose of being cannibalized for the repairs of Stable 12. These Addendums are to be kept with the dossier at all times, and not to be shared with anypony.

In scenario b) it is recommended that the containment bulkhead on the basement level be sealed to maintain the narrative that the Stable is unlivable due to complete systematic failure and contamination. It must be noted that the containment bulkhead is a functional element of the Stable and will automatically seal on detection of non-simulated contamination. Once the contamination has been removed the override will disengage and the bulkhead will return to the position indicated by manual control selections.

Ten years after the simulation has completed it will become possible to reactivate Stable 12's systems from the control terminal in that Stable's Overmare's office. The office will remain accessible at all times via the concealed walkway that connects both Overmare's offices. It is at your discretion as to when/if that environment is to be reinstated, however experimental protocol requires that residents continue to believe that the Stable was unlivable in the interim and has through plausible means been rendered viable again.’

“Stable-Tec must not have counted on ponies not trusting one another,” L.A. said, as she looked through the papers. “Good job, Stable-Tec, you had unrealistic expectations. You were naive and didn't even have an emergency 'scenario C' prepared, so instead everypony failed the experiment. All they did was lock themselves up...”

“Mmm,” I muttered noncommittally in agreement, looking at my sister with a worried frown.

“In the end, the Stable itself ended up being what killed them,” Lost answered, slamming the papers down. With a swipe of her hoof, she pushed them all to the floor and pressed her forehead against the desk. “I don’t blame them for what they did... They must have grown up the same way we did, with horror stories of the War, and what other groups acted like toward strangers.”

“We don’t know that,” I said, trying to have a sliver of faith in ponies. The world was different, it wasn’t other ponies who were bad then, it was zebras. Those ponies were from that world, not the Wasteland. “Did you not trust anypony in the Stable where we were born?”

“We did... then dad...” Lost said quietly, rolling her head against the desk to look away. “What happened here was fucked up, these ponies were all dead from the start, no matter what they'd chosen, they’d have backstabbed one another for some reason eventually.” She raised a hoof and wiggled it in the direction of where she was shot. “He was a Stable pony, and he shot me.”

“Well, they’re all zombie ponies now, no matter what happened. We should go put them out of their misery,” I said, changing the subject. Nevermind I didn’t know how we could do that. “We could have wandered into that Atrium and been torn apart, and we can’t leave it that way. If anypony else came in and didn’t know...” The head in my bag felt heavy on my side. Somepony else had wandered in here, and it was me, not the Stables, that killed him. This place really was a death trap, no matter how I looked at it. My heart sank. Between the near death of my sister, the old world mysteries, and that whole... murder... thing... Today was just not my day.

The sound of grinding metal dragged me from my thoughts. Lost Art stood at the side of the desk, her hoof in the air where it had been a moment ago.

“I found the path,” Lost said as the desk rose above us. A panel in front of it slid away, revealing a staircase downwards. Lights that hadn’t been used in a century sputtered to life, illuminating the tunnel and my sister’s face with an amber glow. Lost nodded at me.

Without a word, we both trudged down.

* * *

The walk through the tunnel was entirely uneventful. The path was completely barren, without so much as scuff marks on the floor, as if it’d never been used. At either end, we found a small ante-chamber for the Overmare of the opposite Stable to wait, complete with a sign inlaid into the wall that read ‘NO ENTRY.’ The words still glowed in a red light under the Stable Twelve office, even though no Overmare had been in the office in ages. Lost Art hit the switch to open the pathway, but nothing happened.

“Being set to no entry must lock it from this end,” Lost said, poking at the glowing sign with a hoof.

“What now?” I asked, watching her hoof tap at the metal.

“Take apart and try and override it? I don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. With one of the screwdrivers I’d taken from the maintenance room, she went to work on the paneling.

I sat to watch, as for several minutes she tinkered and tugged, working over wires and little electronic parts. “Need help?” I asked, feeling completely useless.

“Actually, I might. Let me see the PipBuck” she said, grabbing my foreleg in her magic. “I think I can get in with this, just like getting into a terminal.” She pulled a cable from the open panel and plugged it into the PipBuck. Holding my leg up at an awkward angle, she tapped away with a hooftip at the buttons and screen attached to me.

“Will this take long?” I asked, twisting around to get comfortable. “This is hurting my leg.”

“Shh, I need to concentrate,” she said calmly, focusing on the little screen. “Really wish I had something to actually type on.” She kept tapping away, brushing her mane out of her eyes as she worked.

I wobbled slightly, my legs starting to hurt. I’d stood still longer than I cared to, with my leg twisted unnaturally. Between trying to shift my weight to the other side without losing my balance, and trying to not get distracted and lower my leg, it was unbearable. With a sudden screech, the desk above us lifted itself away to allow access up the flight of stairs. “Eep!” I yelped, caught off guard by the noise breaking the silence, and toppled over to the side. The PipBuck, still attached, twisted me around and I landed on my back with a thud. “Ow...”

“You okay?” Lost asked, offering a hoof to help me up. Her horn lit up, and she pulled the cable from the PipBuck.

“Just surprised,” I said, grabbing on and pulling myself back to my hooves. “Let’s just go up.”

Having seen Stable Twenty One, a pristine example of Stable-Tec construction, suddenly Stable Twelve looked… rotten. I hadn’t noticed before, but the walls were covered in rust, and cobwebs were everywhere. Living in the Wasteland, I’d gotten used to the terrible conditions of everything. This Stable looked like it had been banished to the Moon for a thousand years, while the other looked as if it had been built yesterday. The contrast was a bit jarring. I wondered, maybe this Stable had been designed to deteriorate faster, to help with the illusion Stable-Tec wanted the ponies here to experience? Or maybe their worksponyship was just terrible if there wasn’t constant upkeep?

Was it really so hard to learn to just ask for help? All of this could have been avoided, but I guess ponies never change. It’s not like they were dealing with raiders or slavers, they were Stable ponies who could have helped other Stable ponies. It should have been easy.

Then again... Stable ponies killed dad, so maybe they weren’t any different...

“You might want to move,” Lost suggested.

I looked about and saw I was standing in the gleaming and shiny patch of floor beneath the elevated desk. I stepped out onto the dust covered floor as she hit the button to lower the desk. Grinding along its gears, the floor panel slid shut and the desk lurched downward. When everything came to a rest, Lost started poking about the drawers underneath.

“What’re you looking for?” I asked, hopping up and looking over the desk at her.

“I want to see if this Stable had a dossier like the other one,” she answered, pulling open another drawer. Inside was a thick envelope with no dust underneath. “This might be it...” She picked up the envelope with her magic and looked it over. ‘Do Not Open’ was printed across the front, with scribbled fine print underneath that I couldn’t make out. Lost hovered it closer to her face, adjusted her glasses, and squinted. “It says to open only in the event of equipment failure in the maintenance levels with several consequences listed for anypony who might open it early.”

“Well, there were equipment failures, so I guess we can open it. You can be the Overmare this time,” I teased.

Lost smirked at me, tore the seal off, and pulled the paperwork from inside. While she read it, I tried to piece together the timeline of what might have happened. Couldn’t this have all been avoided? What happened to keep Lindenleaf from reading it, and why’d all the ponies assume the worst? This place was just a death trap where ponies had been given the chance to learn a lesson, and decided against it.

I turned away from the desk and walked over to the window that overlooked the Atrium below. In the corner of my eye was a sea of red, indicating the hundreds of feral ghouls that had been locked in a room for decades. Now that the lights were on, I could make out every individual pony. The doors were all closed. I prayed they would stay that way. With the power back on, we stood the chance of one zombie accidentally opening a door and the possibility they’d find and overwhelm us.

I wanted to put an end to their suffering, to let them pass on. They milled about, mindlessly herding. There were so many of them, more than I had bullets for. There was no way I could get them all. I looked back at the saddle bag hanging under my rifle. “Would you have done the same?” I asked quietly.

“Huh?” asked Lost from her seat behind the desk.

“I don’t know,” I answered, not quite sure myself. I stared at the central pillar of the Atrium, which they’d designed to look like a tree with the support beams for the ceiling as its branches. The whole room was designed the same, maybe to give ponies an idea of what the world outside once looked like. It was a nice touch, but I had a better use for it.

I took a step back and braced myself, raising the gun at my side to the window. Aiming for the crack in the glass I'd made earlier, I bit down and fired. Even braced, the kick was enough to force my hooves back along the floor. The window shattered, raining glass down into the Atrium. Beyond, metal sheared away from the pillar where the bullet struck leaving crumbling concrete.

The zombie ponies below erupted into absolute chaos, with all turning their attention to the window. They moved together, all swarming to the wall to try and reach me, mouths biting and cloudy white eyes staring unblinking at me.

“What are you doing?” Lost screamed.

I dimly heard her over the ringing in my ears. From the corner of my eye, I saw my sister barely peeking over the Overmare’s desk at me, her eyes wide and her hooves covering her ears. Without answering, I bit down again. My gun erupted with an earsplitting BOOM.

The bullet blew through the column near where my first shot hit. Shredded metal and shattered concrete fell to the floor below. I fired again.

I refused to blink, not daring to turn away from what I was doing.

Was it so hard to trust ponies? I fired again.

We’d lost our mother years ago and had grown up in the Wasteland, we knew to have faith in each other, to share and work together. I fired again. Why couldn’t these ponies learn? A pony can’t survive all alone. I fired again. It wasn’t fair, to force generations of ponies to suffer over the problems their ancestors created. I fired again. Not in the Wasteland, and not here.

Click. Click... Click......

The six shots tore through the pillar as the zombies stared up at me in confusion. The barrel of my gun glowed slightly from the heat. I bit the trigger a few more times, even without anything in the barrel. The tree-shaped pillar had been shattered into pieces and began collapsing. After what seemed like forever, there was a metallic creak, followed by a loud whine.

The ceiling caved in. Without the pillar to support the weight, the ceiling buckled and crashed to the floor below. The sound was deafening. Dust, steel, and zombie parts splattered through the cracks in the falling grey steel. The little red markers in the corner of my vision darkened and disappeared, one by one. Finally they could rest.

* * *

After what happened, I didn’t feel like scavenging through either Stable. It didn’t really feel like it mattered anymore. I just felt drained and hollow, like the sense of adventure that brought us here was ripped from me. Instead of looking around more, we just left, to go home and rest. The Stables weren’t going anywhere, and we could always come back to look when we felt better. Just in case, Lost locked the door to Stable Twelve.

We trudged back through the dark cave, our path dimly lit by L.A.’s magic. The murder of the stallion and the mercy killings of the ghouls weighed on my mind. The whole excursion had been my idea and it had been a total failure. The bits and supplies I did find would never be worth this, nor would the PipBuck strapped to my forehoof. So much happened I could feel my head spinning, I just wanted to get home and work through it all.

I followed my sister absently, walking after the glow in front of me. I couldn’t help but wonder about the head in my bag. I had enough clues to find out who he was, but... I had a severed head in my bags. I’d need to do something about that, find a proper place for burial. It would start to smell soon, and carrying around a head would get ponies thinking I might be a raider. And afterward I’d need to clean all the blood from my saddlebags...

“Hidden,” whispered Lost.

I shook my head, snapping out of it. We’d reached the edge of the cave and I could hear a quiet murmur outside. My ear flicked and I walked outside the cave first. Wait, when did I get in front of Lost?

“Hidd-dammit,” Lost snarled behind me.

“What?” I demanded, looking back at my sister. There wasn’t any reason to stay in that cave, after what happened. “It’s fine, the rain won’t be here for... an hour or s-ohh...” I noticed a group of stallions, dressed in ganger barding, sitting in a small group at the edge of the dead woods that met the mountain range. “Shit.” I groaned, wondering just how I missed them on the E.F.S.

The markers in the corner of my vision were all green, which I took as a good sign. They all looked just as surprised as I did. The chances of somepony walking out of the cave at this particular second must not have crossed their minds. The majority of them wore mismatched leather barding, all either dyed or painted the same sickly green as terminal screens. Every one I could see had a magical energy weapon, both the kinds that shot laser and plasma. I couldn’t imagine where they’d found so many. Every single one had a ring of pink around their left forehoof. Even though my sister and I spent our lives hiding from other ponies as a whole, even we’d learned that a band of pink or green around the fetlocks was an identifier for a gang called The Ashen. I’d never heard of them coming this far out of the city ruins, though.

Just what we needed today...

“Well...” said a voice from the back of the group. “What do we have here? A little filly out in the wilderness, just... waiting for somepony to come save her from herself?” The sarcasm in the stallion’s voice made me want to gag.

A massive orange unicorn stallion with a burnt and blackened mane stood up. He stepped around the others and walked over toward me. With a grin, he began to pace a small circle around me slowly. On his last pass, he slid his light orange tail under my chin in a disturbing caress. It smelled of so much smoke and wasteland that I could practically taste it. Worse, I could feel its greasiness through my coat.

He finally stopped circling me with his haunches right in my face. I didn’t dare say a word, instead looking away from the burning flower cutie mark on his flank, at the massive flamer tank he had strapped to his back.

“You see, it’s a... very dangerous world out there,” he said through his teeth. With a nod of his head, one of the other stallions jumped up and ran past me into the cave. “The Wasteland isn’t kind, and little fillies like you really shouldn’t be out here... all alone.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“I believe, Ashen Hooves would just... love to meet you,” he said, pausing between words to take a deep breath. He licked his lips, his eyes roaming over me.

A yelp echoed from the cave behind me, followed by the sounds of a struggle. “‘Nother mare in here boss!” yelled the stallion.

“Bring her out,” he ordered.

“Tryin’!” shouted the stallion from the cave.

“Let me go!” yelled my sister. “I can walk-”

“Oh for...” the orange unicorn groaned. He lifted the nozzle of his flamer in the yellow haze of his magic. “Come out now, before I torch the whole cave and both of you with it!”

That did the job. Lost stopped struggling and walked out behind the stallion. He pushed her to stand next to me, then backed away to stand with the rest of the group. He looked worried and stood shaking with his gun up. Their leader must not have been the kind that bluffed.

Lost and I shared a look, and I forced a weak smile. “Sorry...” I whispered. All I got in return was a glare. “Out of the frying pan, into the fire?” I joked, trying to make light of the situation. I turned and stared the stallion in the eye as Lost facehoofed from the bad pun.

“Oh yes, quite literally,” he answered, motioning to the tank of fuel strapped to his back with a forehoof, all the while flashing his forced smile. “But I suppose you noticed already.” He gave a chuckle lifting the flamer nozzle slightly, before putting his hoof back down. Unlike all the other stallions in his group, both of his forehooves had a ring of pink around them.

“What do you want?” I asked. We had no time for this, I had a pony head to bury and a home to return to.

“Oh, nothing in particular...” he muttered as he stepped closer to Lost Art, quite obviously eyeing her up and down. “We were here... just passing through.” He walked around behind her, his tail sliding along her side the whole time. Ignoring her shuddering, he continued, “You see... Ashen Hooves wanted us to look into this little cave. Something about a dragon.”

Were it not for the guns pointed at us, I’d buck the stallion in the face so we could make a run for it. Wait. “See, I wasn’t the only one who thought a dragon might be here!” I shouted, glaring at my sister for doubting me.

“It’s all nonsense, of course,” he said calmly, before Lost could snap at me. “Though, now that we’ve met... I would just love to...” He smiled at Lost, moving in closer and taking her forehoof in his. The second he touched her, L.A. jumped back. “How lovely...” he whispered.

“There’s no dragon, there’s nothing left in there,” I lied. I might not feel like digging through the Stable again today, but it was ours and I didn’t want some gang of ponies taking it up as their home so close to where my sister and I lived.

“Oh that’s fine, I’d much rather have two precious... little... fillies, myself,” he said, turning to me. “It’s quite a surprise to find anypony here. If I could just... show you our camp...” He flashed the disgusting grin again. “I’m sure I could convince you that we can be most hospitable.”

“I’m not a filly,” I argued, ignoring his offer. He wasn’t smooth, and there was no way that either my sister nor I would be drawn in by him. I shifted and raised the barrel of my empty rifle to him. In an instant, every weapon the Ashen held was aimed directly at my head.

“Now now, little fillies... calm down,” He said, waving the others away with a hoof. For a tense moment, every gun stayed on me. They finally lowered, several of the stallions looking reluctant.

“I’m not either,” Lost Art added, “and we can take care of ourselves, you creep.” Despite sounding exhausted, L.A. didn’t let her voice waver. She was looking around. I really hoped she had a plan.

He laughed, ignoring the insult. “Feisty. I like you two. Come now, we’ll have a nice little evening together. You can meet my boss, then all our other members...” He waved a hoof to the group of stallions behind him. “I’ll make sure you get a very thorough introduction.”

I stared blankly at the stallions and blinked several times. What in the... did he mean? A shiver ran up my spine.

“Judging by that gun there, it looks like you can handle a large piece...” the orange stallion said, bringing laughter and mutters of agreement from the other stallions with him. He leaned in close to me, close enough I couldn’t not smell flamer fuel on him. “Ashen Hooves is a very important pony, you see. He’s always on the look out for new talent to serve under him. To help advance our... Objectives.” He pulled back from me and looked my sister up and down, his eyes glazed and his voice thick with lust. “I could... personally introduce you both, so that you could help us with our... work.”

I looked at Lost, praying she had something planned. This sounded like a bad monologue, did he have a speech planned or was he just always creepy?

“I don’t care about you or your little colt’s club,” snapped Lost.

“Who you callin’ little!” yelled back one of the bigger stallions. The others laughed, one shouting, “You know she don’t mean your height.” The bigger stallion responded by hitting that pony in the jaw.

Lost ignored them, though she grit her teeth. “Search the cave if you want, but there’s nothing worthwhile in there,” she said, turning to me. “We’re leaving, come on.” Lost sidestepped the stallion and walked off.

“Oh, but you see...” he said, stepping back and blocking her path. “I was interested in who or what might be inside, not the location. If you two are the only ponies that are going to come out, then I’m... interested in you.” He pointed the nozzle of his flamer back and forth between my sister and me, as if to emphasize his point. With a quiet chuckle, he pulled it back and latched it to its fuel tank.

It was time for a different approach, given the gangers behind him muttering their agreement with his obvious intentions. I looked over at Lost and grimaced, hoping she had a plan, or that maybe she could read my mind on changing tactics.

“Listen, what did you say you were called?” Lost Art asked in the sultriest voice I’d ever heard her use.

“You can call me... whatever you want,” he answered, lowering his head and smiling at her. “My little filly. The boss calls me Seethe.” An appropriate name, but there were several other things I thought would fit him better, but saying any out loud would get me shot.

“Well, Seeeethe,” she repeated, fluttering her lashes a few times as she spoke. “You look like a big strong stallion that could protect lil’ ol’ me and my lil’ ol’ sister from the wild Wasteland.” Lost lying it on so thick only made me grimace. It played on what he wanted, but Goddesses was she overdoing it. “But we can’t just-

“Of course you can,” Seethe interrupted, as licked his lips creepily. “In fact, let’s start introductions now...” He looked back at the group of stallions and tapped his chin several times with a forehoof. “How about... Stutter Step. He’s new, and needs the practice. I’m sure he can break you in.”

“Oh shit,” Lost whispered.

“We’re fucked,” I agreed. Looking around, I desperately searched for any way we could get away. We were surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned.

“Yes, that would be the plan,” said the stallion as a smaller, blue earth pony stepped forward. With a black bandana to set him apart from the others with rings around their forelegs, he certainly fit Seethe’s explanation of being ‘new.’ That didn’t make the situation any less terrifying. “I’ll head inside so you can show these little fillies just what our organization is all about,” Seethe continued, patting the smaller pony on the head a few times. Waving a hoof, the group behind them split up, with several walking past us and into the cave. “You all, with me. The rest, you can stay here on watch.”

They took his command literally, leering at both my sister and me as they passed by.

The blue pony nodded furiously, eyes darting between Seethe and the two of us. He smiled weakly. “N-now, I-I,” he stammered, gulping and cutting himself off. Blushing, he took a step forward and raised a forehoof. “I’ll try to... Um... not be too-”

The other stallions laughed, making Seethe growl from behind us at the entrance to the cave. The blue stallion took a step back and stared at the ground.

“Shut the fuck up you worthless shits,” shouted Seethe.

While they were distracted containing their snickering, I launched myself at the blue stallion. “Run!” I shouted to Lost as I threw my hoof at the stuttering ganger. I caught him in the throat with the bulk of the PipBuck’s casing.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” lamented Seethe. A gout of flame erupted from his flamer’s nozzle.

Fuck.

I ran, only to trip and fall face first to the ground, my hoof went out from under me by the collapsing Stutter Step. I tried to scramble to my hooves but found the PipBuck tangled with the bandana around the collapsed stallion's neck. As I tugged frantically to come free, the flame whooshed searingly over my head past my sister and toward the distant treeline.

She screamed as she dove to the ground. The line of fire passed over her head. It was close, and her mane lit up a second later. She screamed and flailed her hooves in panic, rolling through the dirt frantically.

“Now you both burn!” Seethe yelled, laughing and waving the flamer nozzle through the air. He didn’t bother to aim, instead spraying fire at us and catching any of his gang that happened to be in the way.

Panicked, I ripped my hoof free, and scrambled out of the way of his flames. I swore I could see the dancing flames reflecting in his eyes. He was a complete psychopath.

As the jet of liquid fire swept past me, I made a break for it. All around me I could hear the gangers laughing and screaming, those who weren't on fire mocking those that were. “Lost!” I shouted, throwing myself over her. Desperately, I tried to smother the flames. Precious seconds were wasted as I stamped out the fire. Her mane was almost completely gone. I couldn’t be delicate, it’d grow back.

“You lot, dust them!” Seethe ordered as we got to our hooves and ran for the woods. “Now!” With that command, several of the stallions he led all started after us, hollering and firing. The Wasteland lit up green and pink as magical energy flew past us. The blasts tore through trees and dirt in front of us, leaving scorched lines where they struck. “The rest of you, inside!”

The treeline was too far away, and the gang ponies too close. I didn’t know how we’d make it. Behind me I could hear the other stallions rallying and yelling in agreement. The sound of their hooves hitting the dirt terrified me, but I didn’t dare look back. I just ran behind my sister, praying to the Goddesses.

“No use running!” yelled a voice over the sound of them running toward us.

“Shotgun on the purple one!” yelled another. Looking back, I caught him aiming a plasma pistol right at me. A B-KEW cut through the air when he fired, and a surge of magical energy flew past me, only to smash against one of the dead trees. The tree didn’t turn to ash or goo like a pony would when hit with plasma. Instead, it started to burn.

Lost weaved around it, breathing heavy. She shrieked when the trunk exploded, spraying flaming shards in all directions. Several pink beams of magical energy lanced around us, filling the air with PLZ-OW after PLZ-OW. Even through the sound of weapons fire, Seethe’s horrific laughter seemed to chase after us.

Something grabbed my tail as I made it to the tree line, and I heard myself yelp in surprise. My hooves dug against the dirt, slipping over it and getting nowhere. I grabbed onto a trunk with my forelegs, feeling my hind legs lift into the air. I held on for dear life, kicking at whoever had grabbed me. One kick connected with something, I didn’t dare look. I just needed to get free, get away from the fire and the stallions. If they dragged me back...

I fell to the ground, the stallion grunting. “Lost!” I screamed, scrambling forward. A pink beam cut past me and part of my mane fell to the ground with a sizzle and a lung-full of noxious smoke. I didn’t give the time for another shot. Running around the tree, I chased after my sister, following the trail of smoke coming from her mane. All around me, where shots landed, the trees started to smoke and smolder. Whatever magic powered those guns, it was going to burn the whole dead forest down.

“Running only makes us want it more!” yelled somepony close behind me. Goddesses, was there anything that’d make them want it less? Heavy breathing, and hooffalls on the dirt, they were getting louder and louder. Behind me, beside me. I saw them running alongside me, through the trees. Reds, blues, pinks, coats and manes. Grins and hungry looks.

“Ahh!” I screamed, as I was knocked toward them from the other side. I slammed into another tree, but didn’t fall. Thank you, Celestia, Luna. I kept moving, only to end up face first into the side of the pink-maned stallion I’d seen eyeing me through the trees. Skidding to a stop, I looked up at him. How’d he get past me? Panicking, I ducked, and ran underneath, through his legs. Luckily, I wasn’t the tallest pony around, and barely made it.

“Wha- Hey! Get back here!” he shouted as I passed through. The others were closing in, weaving through trees to cut off every escape route. The unicorn I ducked under swung his gun with his magic through the air, hitting me at the base of an ear. It hurt, but at least he wasn’t shooting at me.

As if to punish me for thinking that. The sky lit up with fire again. The roar of Seethe’s flamer filled my ringing ears, and the trees above and around me burst into flame. I pushed myself, turning to head into the deeper woods, through the thin gaps between the trees. Behind me, voices yelled in frustration as I got further away, where the bigger ponies couldn’t follow. I dared look back.

Behind me was a ring of fire, dead trees burning in an inferno, with ponies dodging the burning patches and looking for ways to follow us. Seethe's flamer ignited the already smoldering trees, turning the forest into a deadly maze. He charged after me, cutting through the flames as if he couldn’t feel them. It looked like he belonged in it, with smoke coming from his mane and his coat, and the nozzle of his flamer wildly streaming fire all around. A half-dozen ponies followed him, all wide-eyed and grinning wickedly. “Faster!” he shouted, waving the flamer toward his gang.

One unlucky pony got caught in the fire, and went down screaming in pain. He toppled over, rolling head over hooves and slammed into a fallen log. In an instant, it lit up just like the rest of the forest. With the ponies firing haphazardly, with Seethe’s fires burning, there wouldn’t be much of a forest left. Flames jumped from tree to tree, branch to branch, chasing after Lost and me just as fast as the Ashen were.

“Oh Goddesses,” I panted, forcing myself to run as fast as I could. I followed the little glimpses of purple ahead of me, trailing my sister’s tail as I dodged back and forth through the smaller and smaller gaps between the trees. If we just kept running, kept dodging, we could get free. They were bigger ponies, we were deep enough. Once we lost them, we’d...

We’d...

I kept running, praying they wouldn’t find a way to catch us and would give up.

* * *

I slowed from a gallop to a trot, my ears twisting back to listen. I couldn’t hear anypony following us, or the sound of their weapons firing anymore. We’d lost them, making the scratches from dodging trees worth it. Finally feeling a little safe, my hooves went out from under me, and I faceplanted into the dirt.

Lost turned around and looked at me, her eyes wide behind her glasses. “We have to hide,” she whispered, looking past me, back the way we came. “Now.” Her mane was almost completely gone, with only frazzled and charred remains hanging from the back of her head and her neck. “We can't risk leading them back home.” She started to pace, muttering to herself. “We have a map now, so we can...” She paused and looked back the way we came again. “The Stables are... and we came from...” She sighed. “They’re going to be right in our path no matter what.”

With a groan, I pushed myself up to a sitting position. “We’ve got other hiding places,” I said, wracking my brain to think of one that might be safe. “Or...” I looked down at the PipBuck. The bandana Stutter Step had been wearing was wrapped around the casing, twisted in the hinge. That must have been what I got stuck on... when I kicked him in the-- “Oh no, did I kill another pony today...” I thought out loud. It was just a bandana, that didn’t mean anything. He was a raider or ganger or whatever anyway, one less bad pony in the Wasteland. Pulling it free with my teeth, I dropped it to my hoof and offered it to L.A. “Here, for your mane? Until it grows back?”

Lost’s eyes opened wide, her jaw tightening. “My... my what?” she asked stiffly, her foreleg slowly, jerkily raising up to gently pat the red hairless patch on top of her head. She winced when her hoof touched it, and she looked away from me. Eyes downcast, she solemnly lifted the bandana with her magic. She slumped down across from me and wrapped it around her head, just above her horn. What remained of the purple mane poked through at the back, and hung down on either side of her face. Altogether, it didn’t look... bad, well, except for the self-conscious look on her face.

“It’s a good look for you,” I said, forcing a smile. “It umm, brings out your eyes.”

After a long pause, she smiled. “Thanks...” she whispered. “We still need to find somewhere to go, somewhere not out in the open. Hideaways are fine I guess.”

“What about the towns on the PipBuck,” I said, remembering that I still had the stallion’s... head in my bag. If we couldn’t go home yet, then a little detour couldn’t hurt. “Resupply, sell off some of the stuff we found. That bag of bits, remember? Somepony might want it.” I’d rather keep it to line my bed, but that wasn’t an option at the moment. “Plus there’s, y’know, that stallion...” I said, muttering about the pony from the Stable and staring back at my saddlebags.

“What about him?” she asked, her tone more annoyed than sad now. “You need to drop it, and forget about him. He shot me, sis, you could be all alone right now. He's not worth the thought, he got what he...” She trotted slowly towards me. “What are you staring at?”

“I kept the head so we could bury it,” I admitted.

“... What?” she demanded.

“Well, I couldn’t carry the whole body!” I yelled back. “It’s not like you were going to help me.” I stood up and trotted away from her.

Running forward, she jumped in front of me. “You kept the head, of the stallion who put a bullet through me, to give him a burial?” she asked, pausing and jabbing me in the chest for emphasis. “Keeping a lock of his mane as a damn trophy, his cutie mark, his fucking cock would have been less weird. Get rid of it!”

“I will!” I said, stepped away from the jabbing. “And that’s really gross.” I laughed, wondering why she’d think I would have kept any of those. “What would I have done with a severed dick? He’s dead. Am I supposed to wave it around to freak out other ponies?” I laughed some more. “We’re not raiders.”

Lost blinked several times and cracked a smile. “Says the mare carrying around a severed head,” she said. “Joking aside, he wasn’t a good pony. He tried to take my head off, and burying even a part of him is more than he deserves.” Reaching down, she grabbed my hoof and lifted the PipBuck to look at the screen.

I sat, letting her hold my hoof up and stared at the ground. I hadn’t meant to make her mad by bringing it up again.

“Fine...” Lost sighed after a long pause. “Bury that damn thing, and we’ll go to one town on this map. We need to find somewhere to go that won’t get us killed, or worse, by that psychopath and his stallions anyways,” she compromised. “After that, we circle around and head home.” I could see the gears turning in her head already.

“I agree to your terms,” I said, smiling. Placing a hoof on her shoulder, I stepped closer and hugged her. “And the bandana does look good.” Hopefully, the agreement would placate her. Releasing her, I looked at the markers in the corner of my eyes. “Ready?”

She nodded. “Yeah... Let’s- Oww!” she said, cut off as a drop of rain landed right on her nose. Crossing her eyes, she looked at it. She opened her mouth to say something, only to be cut off by another droplet hitting her right between the eyes. More rain started to fall around us, first a light sprinkle, but it got heavier by the second. “C’mon, let’s go!”

Together we ran off, through the dead, leafless trees to find somewhere to hide out the coming downpour.

* * *

The rain came down hard, bad enough that we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us, and spend the entire storm under a rocky outcropping we’d found. Thankfully, after what felt like hours, it finally let up to a more agreeable drizzle that Lost decided was light enough for us to head out into. We walked the line between the mountain and the forest in silence, following the marker on the PipBuck’s compass.

Without us talking, everything felt eerie. I was used to a dead world, but this far away from civilization I couldn’t even hear the distant echoing of sporadic gunfire that I’d grown so used. The only sound in the air was that of our hooves squishing into the mud. On the E.F.S., I didn’t see any little markers apart from Lost’s green one. It was nice though, meaning we could take our time to walk through and recover from the ordeal. Really, I was just glad to be out of the Stable, and away from its hard steel floors.

The only thing that broke up the monotonous walk was an gap in the mountainside, between two peaks. I’d seen it before, an old caravan path that traders used, left by the ponies who lived here before the world ended. As we passed it, I looked through the gap between the mountain peaks, but didn’t see anything showing up on my E.F.S. Breathing a sigh of relief, I kept forward, following my sister.

The sun was going down, gently sinking below the cloud cover that always hovered above us. Through the gap in the mountain pass I could see a sliver of orange sky at the base of the horizon. Hopefully, we’d find a place to sleep for the night, if we couldn’t make it to the town.

“We lost too much time waiting out the rain,” Lost said, stopping once we reached the far side of the pass. “How much further?”

I stopped next to her and sat down to rest my hooves. Lifting the PipBuck, I started to poke at the buttons with my forehoof, looking for the map. “Let me look,” I muttered, tapping another button. The writing on the screen vanished, then reappeared, showing what was in my saddlebags. A little ‘Repair’ button flashed. “Hey, this thing can repair stuff... somehow.” I offered the screen to her.

“That doesn’t answer my question, sis,” Lost chided, looking down at the screen. “The PipBuck doesn’t actually do the repairs, it just shows what parts are still usable in broken stuff. Now I regret throwing my gun away... If I’d known we would find a PipBuck, I’d have kept it.”

“You couldn’t have known,” I said with a shrug. I pressed one of the buttons under the screen to switch over to the map. “You could fix the gun that Goddesses-damned trader sold me, if you want. I mean, I could do it, but, y’know.” I tapped my forehead a few times. “You and your cheater magic.” I wasn’t ever any good at working a screwdriver with my teeth, and couldn’t really hold one with a hoof. I was just as bad at fixing things as I was at opening locks, all I was really good for was breaking things.

Lost glared at me.

“Sorry!” I said, sulking down. The map lit up the PipBuck’s screen and I showed it to her again. “Not far.” There was only one thing to do before we got there. I looked up from fetlock-mounted device. Really, this was as good a place as any. A nice forest, quiet and away from the chaos in the city proper. It’d be a nice grave site.

I slid my saddlebags off and sat in front of them. Reaching in with my hooves, I pulled out the head of the Wastelander out and looked at him. His jaw hung limply, and I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eyes, even if he couldn’t look back anymore. “Why was that town marked on your map?” I asked the head. “Were they expecting-”

“Hidden, you’re talking to a dead, decapitated head,” Lost said, cutting off my talking to myself. “It’s creepy and fucked up. Dead ponies can’t answer your questions. They’re gone.” She grabbed my chin with her hoof and made me look at her. “He was a bad pony. Just go put his head in the dirt and let’s go.”

“I just want to know for sure if he was a good or bad pony, and that town? It might be able to give me an answer,” I said, pulling my head free and looking back at his blank eyes. “I’m scared, too. What if they liked him, will they be mad that I murdered him, or will they cheer?” I stood up on three legs and walked through the dead forest. “I’ll be a few minutes, okay?”

“Do you need help?” Lost asked, looking over the rims of her glasses. “You might be insane to do this, but I won’t make you do it alone.”

“I just wish I had stopped to ask why,” I answered, walking further away. “I will find out who you are,” I said to the severed head. “If you were a good pony, I’ll make up for this.” I pressed my forehead to the head’s, by now it was as cold as the air around us. I sighed and gave Lost a real answer. “I need to do it alone. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

After some walking, I found a place that felt right. I didn’t know what it was about it, but it seemed like a nice place for a burial, regardless of whether he was good or not. I set the head at the base of the rotting tree, took a step back, and began to dig. It was a slow process, the soft mud falling back into the hole as I dug. Hooves weren’t meant for digging, and by the time I’d made a deep enough hole, my legs were covered in mud, mixed in with the dried blood from earlier.

Satisfied that he’d fit and be covered completely, I carefully picked the head up and lowered him down. He stared up at me from the dirt, his eyes unfocused and empty. I felt tears roll down my cheeks. I didn’t want to cry, and I knew Lost would yell at me for it. She had every right, but it just felt wrong to end a life like that, no matter what. Mom would...

I sat down and hung my head. I whispered a quiet prayer to Celestia and Luna. They’d know what to do with him, if he were good or bad. It was out of my hooves now. They were Goddesses, they’d do the right thing.

I pushed the loose dirt over the remains, and carved a marker into the tree with my hooves. I made a simple X, like my cutie mark. It wasn’t as fancy, but it was a marker I’d recognize nonetheless. As I finished, the PipBuck overlay in my vision flashed, making a marker on the compass for me. Now I’d never forget where it was...

I walked back to Lost.

“Done?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

We turned to Pommel Falls without another word, and as night fell, we walked forward.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Good Listener – You’ve proven you can follow instructions in life threatening situations, and as a result receive a bonus to skills when performing with assistance from somepony else. Yay teamwork!

Lost Art: (2 levels)
New Perk: (Lvl1) New Perk: Extra Special (Rank 1) – Not every mare lives through getting shot in the throat. Lady Luck shines on you tonight! +1 Luck!
New Perk: (Lvl2) New Perk: Momma’s Filly (Rank 1) – Being taught how to survive, you can even coach others in what to do, +5 to Medicine and Science skills per rank.

Quest Perk: PipBuck: You found a PipBuck! It has all sorts of old world technology to help you with both combat and keeping track of the Wasteland around you. Use it wisely.

“Wait, why did I get two?”
“You didn’t get a level in the first chapter because you were almost dead at the time, so you get two now.”
“Ohh... Is that really how it works?”
“Sure, whatever.”

Chapter 3: How The Wasteland Works

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Chapter Three: How The Wasteland Works
“The Wasteland is not black and white, everything is just shades of gray. Killing doesn’t just magically make it better.”

“Girls.”

“...and just think about it,” I said, looking at the leaning house in front of me. “If we lived here, we’d know all these other ponies here.” I pointed over at the other houses in the neighborhood, imaging if they weren’t ruined and mostly falling apart. “We might even have friends!”

“Hidden, you know we couldn’t be friends with anypony,” Lost answered, scowling. “They’d just get us in trouble, or worse.” She snapped her tail in the air and walked off toward the leaning mailbox at the far end of the front yard.

“Nuh-uh! Back then ponies were nice,” I shot back. “We would have-”

“Girls. Be quiet. There could be bad ponies around,” mom said, shooting us a glare. “So shhh, I’ll have this open in a minute.” She was crouched down, digging at the lock on the house’s door. We were at the far end of the little neighborhood, trying to get into the house mom figured had the best stuff. Most of the houses were still... mostly together, but this one was in better condition than the rest combined.

“Sorry, mom,” Lost said, slowing slightly but not stopping.

“Sorry, mom,” I said right after, sulking. Looking up and down the slanted house again, I sighed and put the fantasy of living in pre-War Equestria away. It would have been nice to have friends, ponies I knew and could spend time with living right beside me. I turned toward Lost. “Find anything?”

Lost blinked and hit the mailbox a few times with a hoof. “It’s full of so much junk I can’t tell what’s what,” she answered, grabbing onto it and shaking. When nothing fell out, she slammed the front closed and walked back.

“Oh well,” I said, standing and walking over to mom. “What do you think’ll be inside?” I asked, pushing myself against her so I could see what she was doing.

The bobby pin in the lock snapped, and she glared down at me. “Hidden...” she groaned.

“Sorry, mom...” I whimpered and scooted myself away. My ears drooped and I pulled my tail up underneath myself.

“It’s alright, I just need to focus,” she answered, smiling. She pulled another bobby pin out and got back to work.

“Alright,” Lost said. “How about Hidden and I go look around back. Maybe there’s another door?” She waved a hoof at me and trotted off the side of the house.

“Just stay close! Run back if you see anything!” mom shouted as we turned around the corner.

“Of course, mom,” I yelled back. I followed my sister through the gap between houses, looking around for anything the stood out. The walls of both houses were warped, but there wasn’t a door to either in the little alleyway. Around back, the ponies who lived here had put up a small fence, but it was in pieces, with several warped planks of wood lying in the dirt.

I turned and looked the house up and down. Aside from a broken window that ran the length of the top floor, there wasn’t any way in. “Why’d they build a fence if there wasn’t a way to get in from back here?” I asked Lost.

“No idea,” she answered, shrugging. “There’s nothing back here though.” She was right, aside from more dirt and rotten wood, we couldn’t see much. There wasn’t even anything dangerous around. It was just empty. In the distance gunfire rattled off briefly, but it was far away. “Let’s check the other side, mom probably has the door open by now anyway.”

I nodded and followed her back to the front, going around the opposite side. As we walked around, mom looked over at us and beckoned us to come closer.

“We’re good. Let’s go inside,” Mom said, pushing the door open.

I ran toward the door, only to run into mom’s outstretched foreleg. My nose hit her PipBuck and I fell back onto my haunches.

“Me first, just in case,” she chided, wiping the PipBuck screen clean. With a look around to make sure nopony dangerous was around and watching us, she stepped inside. Several seconds passed and she poked her head out. “It’s safe, come on in.” She closed the door once Lost and I were both inside with her rust colored tail. I never learned how she did that, such an interesting trick. “Alright, same as usual. Lost, you take Hidden and check the kitchen. I’m going upstairs. If something happens I want you to call for me as loud as you can and run toward the front door. Understand?” When we both saluted, she nodded. “Good. Meet back in five. Don’t be late.”

“Yes, mom,” I said, dropping my hoof back to the floor. The whole room was slanted slightly around us, but it wasn’t the important one we needed to check. I ignored the rotting furniture or the books on the shelf in the corner and trotted toward the kitchen. “Bet I find more than you,” I said to my sister, smirking.

Lost trotted after me, rolling her eyes. “You usually do,” she answered. Once we got to the kitchen, she went to the left and I went to the right. We dug through the cabinets and drawers in silence, slowly moving to meet in the middle. The ponies who lived here had plenty, and since nopony had broken in yet, it was all for us. We gathered a good supply of food and even a few unopened drinks. Whoever they were, they must have been prepar-

“Hidden, Lost! Come up here,” mom yelled from upstairs.

I looked over at my sister and she looked at me. Both of us dropped whatever we were holding and bolted toward the door as we’d been instructed.

“Girls, upstairs,” she yelled down, guiding us. Her voice didn’t sound scared, but we raced up frantically.

I looked over and saw a worried look on Lost Art’s face, and was fairly certain I had an identical one on mine. Running up the slanted stairs, I skipped steps, trying to hurry up as fast as I could. Whatever mom needed us for, I wasn’t going to make her wait. I jumped to the top step and looked down the hallway.

“What is it mom?” L.A. yelled, poking her head into the nearest door.

“Are you ok?” I asked, walking down the hall and looking into the next doorway.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” she answered, stepping out from the farthest doorway at the end of the hall. She smiled, her green eyes twinkling slightly. “I wanted to show you something, come in here.” She backed into the room again.

“What is it?” Lost asked walking into the room after her, with me in tow.

The room was in shambles, papers strewn about the floor, a chair toppled over. The windows on the far wall were the blown out ones I’d seen around back, and it was obvious rain had gotten in. Across from us was a plant, sitting in the center of a desk against the wall. The beautiful blue flower rested in the remains of its pot, which it had overgrown and shattered. Vines snaked along the desk and wrapped around the chair, with several working their way up the walls and even out the windows into the light that broke through the clouds. Somehow it had survived all these years inside the room. Tough plant...

“It smells like rot in here,” Lost said with a snort. The papers on the floor shuffled slightly in the breeze from the window.

“I know honey. This is important though, so listen,” mom explained. “This is called poison joke. It’s pretty harmless if you don’t tou- Hidden! Stay back ok?” She moved her hoof in front of me and pushed me back a few steps.

“It’s just a plant, I wanna see...” I whined.

“Shh, this plant can be very dangerous,” she said, her voice shifting from annoyed to protective. “I want to teach you now where it’s relatively safe, okay?”

The papers on the floor shifted again, but I couldn’t feel a breeze thi-

Everything turned to a blur. The floor moved again. Papers flew everywhere. Blood splattered against against the walls. Screams cut through the air.

~ ~ ~

“Aaah!”

I woke with a start, covered in a cold sweat. Scrambling to my hooves, I pushed myself up against the wall behind me. Wall? What? I looked around, and through my sleep-filled eyes, found myself in a shack. Right, a place we crashed in last night. I gulped, still trying to catch my breath.

“What! What’s wrong?” Lost Art yelled. She stared wide eyed at me, lit only by the dim green glow of the PipBuck’s screen.

“Nothing... Just,” I muttered, still panting. “A... Nightmare. I think? I don’t... remember. Something red, a flash of blue? I...” I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs away. “What time is it?”

“It was just a dream, sis, and the PipBuck you’re wearing has a clock,” L.A. reminded me as she turned back to the door. “Anyway, it’s either very late, or very early. It’s still dark out, so it depends on how you look at it. Might as well get up though, we have to go soon.” She pressed her nose against the door and stared out a crack between it and the frame. “I don’t want to still be here if somepony gets curious and comes over.”

Sitting up, I lifted my hooves and stretched as far as I could to wake myself the rest of the way up. “So, wanna just go to the town now?” I asked.

“Not yet, I don’t think,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s still too early for anypony to be up.”

“So, we go wait in the woods, away from the town and this shack?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t think so,” she answered, turning to look out through the crack at the doorway again. “The Ashen ponies might still be around, and it’s too dark to wander.” After a moment, she turned back to me.

“Alright... What do we do then?” I asked, staring at her. She wasn’t usually this indecisive. I checked the PipBuck again and looked over the map on it.

“I don’t know,” Lost finally admitted. “I can’t think right now. This wasn’t supposed to happen, we were supposed to get what we could and go back, safely.” She pressed a hoof to her throat and swallowed, staring right at me. “I’m tired...” She certainly sounded it, and the dark rings under her eyes were more pronounced than usual.

“Have you been sleeping at all?” I asked, standing up from the dirty mattress. I walked over and sat next to her.

“No, but somepony has to watch out for us. With mom gone,” she answered, turning away from me.

The dream flashed through my mind again. What was it that I was dreaming of... Whatever it was had been terrifying.

“...and furthermore, we’re still in the woods and have no idea what might be around us,” she finished.

“Well, I’m awake now, I’ll take watch,” I offered. I pointed to the mattress. “You just said you’re tired, and I know how you never sleep. You the need rest now.” I stomped on the wood of the floor and gave her a look to show I wasn’t going to argue. “Go.”

“Fine,” she huffed, but went to lay down anyway. “But only until daybreak, okay?”

“Okay. Just relax, I’ve got an eye for finding things and you know it, even if that means finding a pony coming toward us,” I said in my most reassuring voice. I looked out the crack that she had been using, but it was still pitch black outside...

I twisted an ear back, not hearing grumbling anymore. Checking, I saw Lost had managed to fall asleep. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad she’d finally let herself get some rest. Turning back, I laid down in front of the door and kept looking. It was still too dark to see anything, with the clouds hiding the stars and moon. Keeping watch was boring, nothing happened aside from the occasional sound of an animal off in the distance.

* * *

“... then I said, that’s why we cut it off,” said a voice. Other voices laughed, making my ears skew forward. They sounded close, rousing me from my place on the floor.

I opened one eye and snorted, wondering where I was. Blinking a few times, I stretched out my back legs and- Wait, what were those voices?

“Well, all in all it was a good night,” said one of the laughing voices. “Let’s get some-”

The door I laid at shifted and slammed into my muzzle. My eyes shot wide open, and I fought back a squeak of surprise. Somepony was outside, I’d fallen asleep. Lost was going to kill me. I put my hoof against the door and pushed back as hard as I could. This was bad, very bad.

“Huh?... It’s stuck!” yelled the voice outside. He pushed again, and the door slammed into my nose again.

“Lost! Pssst. Lost Art!” I whispered as loud as I could, digging my hooves against the floor and pushing as hard as I could. I really hoped she would wake up. We needed to leave, now. All alone, I couldn’t fight off... I didn’t even know how many ponies were out there. I tried to look through the little crack just as the door pushed back on me again. I dug my hooves in as hard as I could, looking back and forth between my sister and the door. “Lost!” I hissed again, praying to the Goddesses. She needed to wake up so we could get away. Now.

“Fucker won’t open! Somepony’s in our shack,” said the voice again. The door shook again, rattling on the hinges.

Shit.

“Want me to shoot it open?” the second voice asked.

“Then we won’t ‘ave a door you idjit!” said a third voice.

Okay so, at least three ponies, and they sound pissed off. Might be raiders. In the corner of my vision I could see three little red markers on the PipBuck’s E.F.S. This was very bad. I looked back at my rifle. If I could just get to... Oh right, no ammo. Okay, maybe... I lifted my right forehoof and looked at the PipBuck. Frantically, I started pushing buttons with my nose. Ok, items and then... I was not a thinky pony and I didn’t have a plan for this. I looked at Lost again. “Lost, please,” I begged.

Plan. I needed a plan, and something to fight with. I pushed against the jostling door as hard as I could. This was the worst possible time for L.A. to actually be asleep. I hooked some of the trash with a fetlock and kicked it over at her. “Pssst!” I whispered at her. “Lost, please!” I kicked a bottle at her.

She groaned and rolled over.

"Fuck it," the second voice said coldly. "Get back."

I scrambled away as soon as I heard the cocking of a weapon. Right after, the pony outside fired. The door erupted into thousands of wooden splinters. The pony fired again, and the remainder exploded toward me. I covered my face with my hooves. It did little to shield me from the shrapnel. Dozens of shards dug into my legs, face and chest, sticking painfully.

“Ow!” I yelped, unable to hold it back.

Lost shot up in panic. "What's goin-”

“Lookie what we ‘ave ‘ere boys...” said the owner of the third voice, a mangy yellow earth pony in... oh no, raider barding. Lifting a hoof, he pushed a pair of goggles from over his eyes and stared at me, before looking over at my sister. He dropped his hoof and grinned.

“What the fuck’re you two bitches doing in our shit?” demanded the owner of the first voice, another raider barding-wearing stallion, who stepped forward to block the doorway. The older-looking unicorn’s horn lit up, and a length of pipe slid from his saddlebags.

“Can I shoot them?” asked the last pony, a grinning green earth pony with a battle saddle on. The shotgun jury rigged onto it was still smoking from when he blew the door open. Like the other two, he wore raider barding, with what looked like a pony skull on his left shoulder. He stared at me, his disturbingly bright blue eyes wide and leering.

I backed away a few steps, stammering, “We were just-”

My vision flashed white and I found myself facing the wall.

“...looking over here now?” I finished in a disoriented slur.

The side of my head began to throb as I slowly realized that the unicorn had smashed me across the face with his pipe. Shaking my head and wincing, my hooves scrambled to keep me from toppling over.

“Don- -re. More poni- -ave fun with and sell,” the stallion said, but I couldn’t hear half of what he said over the ringing in my ears. He pushed past me and walked past toward Lost.

I watched hazily as the unicorn lifted the pipe into the air with his magic. Focusing as best I could, I shifted my weight and bucked with both rear hooves as hard as possible. I caught the stallion in his haunch and knocked him off to the side. The magic haze around the pipe disappeared and it clattered to the floor, clear of my sister. I glared at the other two in the doorway, as both stared in surprise that I was actually fighting back.

The pony with the shotgun shook his head and, regaining his focus, fired. His aim was terrible, most of the buckshot missed, but more than enough hit me. I cried out as the searing hot metal dug into my shoulder and side.

Gritting my teeth, I charged and dove headfirst into the green pony’s chest as hard as I could. I got an ‘oomph’ as a reward as the stallion dropped back off his hooves. Recoiling in pain, my wounded leg gave out under me. Really, after taking a pipe to my face, that wasn’t my best plan. The ringing in my ears gave me a reminder that I’d have to cut back on the head trauma. I dropped next to him, scattering the trash on the floor into the corners of the shack.

Behind me, Lost Art joined the fight I’d started. She stood up from the bed and began stomping at the unicorn I’d bucked onto the floor. Floored and struggling to keep conscious, all I could hear was a repeated, muffled thud as she bludgeoned the pony’s body with her hooves. The stallion fought and yelled, but went silent after only a few stomps.

The earth pony with the goggles reared up on his hind legs and slammed both forehooves into my side. I coughed, feeling the air forced from my lungs. I fell to the floor, right onto my bleeding leg, and yelped in pain. Looking up, I caught the yellow bastard rearing up to hit me again.

Before he could lunge forward, the metal pipe slammed into the side of his head, engulfed in a blue glow. As he fell to the side, it swung a second time. A sickening crack sounded from his skull, and he dropped to the trash-covered floor with a meaty thud. L.A. stood on the mattress, both of her forehooves covered in blood, panting and staring wide-eyed at the stallion’s body.

Lost flinched, her eyes shifting to look up at the doorway. “Hidden!” she yelled.

I looked back, catching the green stallion reload his shotgun with a kick. He twisted around and aimed the gun at Lost. He was shaking slightly, looking back and forth between the two of us. When Lost took a step forward and swung the pipe at him, he backed away from the doorway.

A loud clang echoed off his gun as the pipe hit it, and the stallion flinched away as he fired. It missed, and his buckshot dug into the floor right in front of Lost’s hooves.

Lost yelped and reared up, moving her hooves away from the now smoking floor. When the stallion turned to run, she charged after him. Panting, eyes wide, she swung the pipe wildly again, cracking it against the raider’s rear leg. Just outside the door, the two tumbled down to the ground, as Lost tripped herself over his grounded body.

“Fuck! Lemme go!” he screamed, sounding far different than the confident pony who had blown apart the door only a minute ago. The two scrambled around in the dirt outside, the pony struggling underneath Lost while she tried to keep away from his flailing and kicking hooves.

Pushing myself up onto my three good hooves, I limped over toward the door and watched the two roll around in the dirt. I knew I should jump in to help my sister, but... I looked down at my leg. That might make things a lot worse and just give him another target. She was my sister though. I ran over, gritting my teeth against the pain.

A flailing hoof caught me on the side of my muzzle, pushing my against my weak leg. Wincing in pain, I went down and they both rolled away from me, still struggling against one another. I wasn’t sure if it was my sister of the stallion who hit me, but it hurt.

Lost swung the pipe down on him, and his hooves jerked in the air, before falling to the ground. She pulled away, tearing herself from his grip and swung against him again. Her face twisted in fear and rage. She struck him again and again, until his legs went completely limp and he stopped struggling.

I forced myself up and grabbed the pipe in my fetlock. Pulling against her magic, I managed to force her to stop. I could feel the metal tugging, and she even wrapped the blue haze of her telekinesis around my hoof. Though she struggled to pull it, to hit him again, I held tight. “He’s dead,” I said.

Finally, the pipe stopped moving, and she slumped to the ground on her haunches. The haze around my hoof and the metal dimmed, and it fell to the ground. For an uncomfortable moment she was quiet, trembling and gazing vacantly at the dead pony.

He didn’t look much like a pony anymore...

I sat down beside my sister and leaned against her, favoring my leg. “Lost, are-”

“I was nearly murdered yesterday!” she yelled, cutting me off. Turning to face me, she stared wide-eyed, her lower lip quivering and tears rolling down her cheeks. “Do you have any idea what it-” She hiccuped, cutting herself off. Tenderly, she placed her hoof against the scar on her neck.

“Yeah, I do,” I said, motioning to the holes in my shoulder, and the blood running down my leg. They hurt, but I’d had a lot worse... I absently pressed the bloody hoof against the scar on my belly. “It’s just been a long time...” Not that I was going to let her see me in pain anyway, after what she’d been through today. I could handle a little buckshot, easy. Wrapping my good forehoof around her, I pulled tight, and turned away from the dead pony. “Come on, let’s... just get our things and go. The sooner the better.”

She gave a weak nod and I helped her up from the ground. She took a deep breath and shook her head a few times. “Alright, alright... I’m fine,” she said, sounding much calmer. “We should.” She shivered. “We should get whatever we can from these three first. I’ll go check the ones inside. I can’t look at...” She stared down at the mess that used to be a pony. “I can’t look at that anymore.”

“I’ll take care of all three, you just go get our things,” I said, knowing full well I’d find more anyway. Letting her go, I dug through the remains of the stallion. His barding was worthless, especially if we wanted to get into town and not get shot at first sight. I grabbed the pipe again, since it wouldn’t need ammo and could be used in a pinch. It was a mess, with chunks of... Goddesses. I wiped it off against the stallion’s only unbroken leg until it was mostly clean, then tucked it away. I even took the time to rip the shotgun from the earth pony’s battle saddle. He had a few shells left, but I wouldn’t be able to use it myself unless I made some adjustments, and I couldn’t do that here in the woods. Into my saddlebag the shells went, along with the gun, opposite my rifle. Walking inside, I passed the pipe to Lost. When she took it, I forced a smile and said, “Here, since you seem to be good with it.”

“Not funny, Hidden,” she said, glaring at me. Looking it up and down a few times, she put it into her saddlebags anyway. “Waste not, want not...”

I dug through the other two stallion’s as quick as I could, while Lost watched and shifted on her hooves. All they had were some broken guns, ammo, and caps, which found their way into my saddlebags to worry about later. Just in case we ran into anypony else on the way to town, I pulled my battle saddle on. I might not have any ammo in my gun, but they wouldn’t know that.

With the pony’s things, and a whole lot of emotional trauma, we left the shack and headed back
into the woods.

* * *

I checked the compass and sidestepped another tree, barely missing clipping it with my wounded shoulder. Giving the rotting wood I glare, I turned back to the town up at the edge of the woods. We still had a short walk, and the sun was high enough over the horizon that it was starting to disappear behind the cloud cover again.

“Really wish we could see the sun for more than a few minutes in the morning,” I muttered to myself, squinting an eye. Dull light all day under the clouds, and blinding orange every morning and evening wasn’t the right way to live. Then again, neither was the way we’d spent the morning, if the bloody hoofprints we were both leaving said anything...

I had high hopes for the new day, though. My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t tell if it was from excitement or if I was scared. New ponies weren’t something I had, well, any experience with. It felt weird to walk toward an actual town, and not just flag down a single pony after tailing them for an hour to make sure they were safe to trade with. I did have the PipBuck now though, and I hadn’t seen anypony showing up that wanted to attack us, so this might just be something fun. My stomach felt off, but not bad, like when I found a new treasure hunting spot but then it looked like other ponies had been there. I was practically shaking. It was so long since I’d been to a... wait, had I ever been to a real settlement with normal ponies?

I stopped and looked up at the sky, squinting one eye and cocking my head to the side. There was... no, that didn’t count I don’t think. It was just two traders that were already doing business. That didn’t count as a group. Did it? I shrugged. “Hey, Lost? A group only counts if its more than two, right?” I asked, walking forward again.

For that matter, would these be normal ponies, or just a town of bad ponies? Mom always taught us that groups were bad because they tended to care more about their own than any new ponies. That’s exactly what Lost and I did though. We looked out for one another, and let everypony else fight the Wasteland for themselves. We survived the same way everypony did, according to mom. We looked out for the ones most important to us. Lost looked out for ... “Lost?”

She hadn’t ever answered me. I spun around as quick as I could, already bracing to find myself alone.

Lost stood a short distance behind me, staring forward blankly. She muttered something to herself, lifting a hoof. She set it back down right where it had been, then did the same with her other hoof. While I watched, she did the same thing a few more times, just raising one hoof and setting it down, then again on the other side.

“Lost, what... what are you doing?” I asked, mimicking her by lifting my shot hoof and setting it gingerly back down. A lance of pain shot up my leg as it touched the dirt. Wincing, I gritted my teeth and focused on my sister.

Blinking several times, she turned to me and stared as if I’d grown another head. Taking a deep breath, she set her hoof down again and walked over to me. “I’m trying to do this for you,” she said. “We can’t though. We can’t do this.”

“We can’t do what?” I asked. “Can’t go into the town? Lost, we have to...”

“No. We don’t. We don’t have to at all,” she shot back, her voice sharpening. “We’re under exactly no obligation to do anything for anypony. We were minding our own business and the Wasteland just happened.” Turning away from me, she looked back into the woods. “All we have to do is turn around and go home.”

“No, Lost,” I said, thinking of the PipBuck and what happened. “We-”

“Circle around this way,” she interrupted, finishing for me and pointing her hoof out in the opposite direction of the shack we’d come from. “Where we didn’t see any psychopath fire-ponies,” she added, grumbling about her mane. “Then we go straight home.”

“I need to-”

“You don’t need to do anything, Hidden!” she said, her voice raising. She turned back and pressed her muzzle against mine. “There is no obligation here. This is the Wasteland. Ponies die every. Single. Day. We’ve been lucky it wasn’t us, since every pony we’ve met around here has wanted us dead. What if that town is where the psychos came from? We go home, and forget this whole business of towns and ponies. We stay out of sight, like mom taught us. You remember, right?”

I saw another flash, screaming and blood. A thud when a body hit the ground. Shivering, I suddenly remembered. I wish I hadn’t... It was that dream. Again.

“I... I remember,” I said sheepishly, backing away and swaying slightly. To keep from losing my balance, I plopped myself down on my haunches and stared at the dirt. “I just figured, y’know, we could sell our stuff and get a quick answer. Then we’d be able to head home. This doesn’t have to be a lifetime commitment.”

“When is anything not?” she asked, sitting across from me. Hesitantly, she looked around, leaning to look past me, and then twisting to look behind her. There wasn’t anything showing on the E.F.S., but she couldn’t know that. When she was satisfied we weren’t in any danger sitting, she continued. “What if we go in there and it becomes a lifetime commitment, because they get mad and end our lifetime?”

“Do you really think a pony is just going to murder somepony in the middle of a town?” I asked, trying my hardest to give non-raiders the benefit of the doubt.

Lost deadpanned and stomped a forehoof in frustration. “Yes!” she shouted. “Don’t you remember?” Her voice wavered.

“Remember what?” I asked. I didn’t remember much of anything, if it didn’t involve treasure hunting. My memory wasn’t the best as it was, and I always tried to live in the present. The past was painful.

“You were too young at the time, so you don’t remember. That’s... it’s good, but, I’ve watched ponies kill in front of their own,” she said, baring her teeth. “In front of their little clique.” Sniffling, she wiped away the beginnings of a tear. “They do not care who sees, they’ll justify it, claim they just did what everypony was thinking. They’ll say ‘She was an outsider. She threatened our safety. She wasn’t one of us anyway. One pony for all of us to be safe, it’s a fine price to pay.’ and the others will agree. It’s just how ponies work.”

I shifted my weight and looked down at my hooves. Goddesses I was still covered in blood...

“Please give up on this,” she whispered, scooting closer and leaning her neck against mine. Resting against my shoulder, she sighed. “I just don’t want to lose you, too.” She reached up a hoof and grabbed onto me, then squeezed tight. “Are you okay?”

Joining her in sighing, I leaned back against her and closed my eyes. Snorting, I blew part of her mane from my face and nuzzled. “You won’t lose me, Lost,” I promised. “I am, I don’t want to give up on this. It’ll be a quick trip, in a shop and out again, and then we can leave right away.” I could ask there, and if we got no answer, I’d agree to leave.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, releasing her grip and looking at me. “You’re ice cold and shaking.”

“I’m fine,” I shot back, my ears drooping. I was so close, and all she did was try and change the subject.

“We need to go home, where you can rest. Where we can both recover,” she said in a protective tone. “Come on. Home is the safest place we can go right now. Especially with how bad you’re looking, the last thing we need is new ponies thinking the worst.” Waving a hoof, she stood up and turned away.

Longingly, I looked at the town behind me. There went that... Lost made the rules, and she’d put her hoof down. When she got like that, I knew there wasn’t any arguing with it. I forced myself up onto my hooves. Wobbling, I had to take several steps to keep from falling over. My head felt light, almost like it had popped off and was floating away. I looked down to try and get my bearings, only to see a massive pool of blood below me. “Lost... I think... I need a docto...”

I fell forward onto my face.

“What?” Lost asked calmly, still walking away. Her ear twitched when I hit the ground, and she spun around. “Oh Goddesses, Hidden!” Running back to me, she grimaced and looked at the wound on my leg. “That’s why you’re shaking...” Her horn lit up and she grabbed me. “I hate you for this, but yes, we’re getting you to a doctor. Right now.” She lifted me up, pushing me over to lay across her back.

“Sorry,” I muttered. This wasn’t how I wanted to convince her, at all.

* * *

“Lost,” I muttered, staring lazily at the empty street that ran through the town. Though it’d only been a few minutes I was off my hooves, I was already feeling plenty better. I didn’t even have the sun in my eyes anymore. “Let me walk, please?” I didn’t want to look helpless for the first time meeting new ponies.

“You really shouldn’t,” she answered, stopping and looking back at me. “We just...” She turned back and forth, then sighed. “We need to find a doctor, but I don’t see anything that stands out.”

There were only three real buildings in the entire town, one with the word ‘General Store’ painted on the front, and another had ‘Inn’ hastily scrawled across it. The third sat near a waterfall right against the mountainside, but didn’t look like a place anypony could live. Half looked normal, but the other half’s walls were gone, leaving only the supports holding up the roof. A massive saw stuck into the air from the floor, which really couldn’t have been safe for anypony. A faded sign reading ‘Split Log’s Sawmill’ hung off one hinge above the saw, with a picture of a log being sawed in half underneath the name.

It was immediately obvious why three dangerous ponies were able to set up shop not even trotting distance away. The only defense set up was an empty balcony with a gun mount facing the woods, built on the back of the Inn. It didn’t even qualify as a guard tower.

“We just need to ask somepony...” I suggested, wriggling off my sister’s back. Groaning, I landed on my hooves and faltered. My head still felt a little empty, but I was tough enough to walk on my own, as long as I didn’t move too fast.

L.A. glared at me, but rolled her eyes when I waved my hoof dismissively. “Best to check the store then, I think. Worst case, they won’t have a doctor here, but we might be able to buy a healing potion or some bandages or something,” she said hesitantly. “And maybe a new gun. I don’t like being without some protection.”

“Good point. Plus I can ask about this,” I said, motioning my bloody hoof to the PipBuck. “And, y’know, the stallion I killed,” I said, trying to take my mind off the bleeding and the light headedness.

Lost Art simply sighed and walked off, heading toward the store with an anxious gait. I followed, and when we opened the door a blue unicorn with a teal mane greeted us from behind the counter.

“Hello, welcome to...” he said in a droll voice, slowly looking up at us as he spoke. “Oh... Haven’t seen either of you in town before. Welcome to Pommel Falls.” He grinned at us. “ New ponies, hmm... Have you come for the amazing deals? I sell everything, guns, ammo, information, armor, tools! You name it, I can get it for you.”

“Umm... Well,” Lost Art said, walking up to the counter. “We were looking for a doctor, actually. Or if you don’t have one here in town, maybe some medical supplies. We have some stuff to sell after I get my sister tended to.”

I jabbed Lost in the side and motioned to the PipBuck. “And that, too.”

“That’s really not important right now,” she said, earning a confused look from the stallion behind the counter. When I didn’t stop motioning, she slumped. “Fine. Do you have anything I can use to make a latch for that?” She pointed to the little hoof-mounted device.

"Doctor, yes. Trading? Sure,” the salespony said. “As for a latch?” He propped his chin up on his hoof and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Yeah... I got nothin’.”

“I thought you said you sell everything?” I quipped, giving a grin.

“Well, everything is... relative!” the shopkeep stammered.

Lost glared at me. “Can we focus on the doc-”

Before she could finish her chiding, the door to the shop opened and a unicorn mare waltzed in.

“Broker, I was looking to get- Oh, I didn’t know you were already helping customers. I can...” the purple pony said, trailing off as she looked over the two of us. She looked Lost up and down, then glanced at me, before idly looking down at the blood and PipBuck on my forelegs. With a smile she stepped over and offered a hoof to my sister. “Nice to meet you both, allow me to introduce myself; my name is Hydro. I’m in charge of the town here.”

“Pfft, so you think,” muttered Broker. “Don’t forget about Waterwheel and Rainfall. What’ll they think if you go ‘round telling everypony that you’re in charge, all while interrupting my sales...” He ducked behind the counter and rummaged through his supplies. “Now, my good mares, don’t you worry. I’ll find something to make a latch for you.”

“Getting to the doctor is more important to me than the latch right now,” Lost Art said, hesitantly shaking hooves with the mare. “Are you aware there were raiders just outside your town?”

“Well, there are raiders everywhere,” she answered, pulling her hoof back and wiping the blood smear off a rag from one of the shelves. “We do our best, but this is a small town and we can’t be everywhere at once.” Once again she looked at the blood covering me and my sister. “That said, if they were outside, I take it you two took care of them?”

“Yeah...” I answered, looking over at Lost and frowning. Waving my wounded hoof and splattering blood on the floor, I changed the subject. “About that doctor? I’m starting to shake again.” I could feel my legs wobbling, and it was starting to get to me.

“Of course, I’ll take you to Grinder,” she said, smiling. “He’s our resident doctor, and should be able to take care of whatever you need.”

“I keep telling you to put a pony up there at all hours, Hydro,” said the merchant pony from behind the counter. In the pink haze of his magic, he floated a few strips of metal and several screws up and set them where we could see them. “I do not want to have to worry about raiders or bandits showing up to steal my things. All I’ve got is here and I won’t let carelessness take that from me.”

“The town is safe, you know that,” Hydro shot back, her tone harsh. Turning back to my sister and me, she waved a hoof. “Please, come with me? We’ll get you patched up before any of the townsponies see the blood. Can’t have a panic, after all.” She tossed her blonde mane to the side, and started toward the door.

“Hey now, don’t go stealing my customers after I’ve just found what they wanted,” Broker said, finally popping back up from behind the counter. He dropped another few pieces of scrap metal, and what looked like a hinge, into the pile. “I found something you might be able to use. It’ll be 50 caps though.”

“For those?!” both L.A. and I asked in unison.

“Broker, that won’t be necessary,” Hydro said dismissively. “They are our guests, and I won’t have you overcharging ponies who took care of raiders so close to home. Put it on my tab. I’ll return later for the usual.” The purple unicorn pulled the door open with her magic and motioned for us to follow her.

Lost Art grabbed the metal bits in the haze of her telekinesis and together we followed the local mare out.

“You trust her?” I whispered to Lost Art as we stepped out.

“No,” Lost whispered back anxiously. “It’s taking everything I’ve got not to just grab you and run, but you need a doctor... Just be on guard.”

* * *

“Now then, follow me and I’ll show you to our oldest resident. He’s been here since before the town started up,” Hydro explained as we walked from Broker’s general store to the mill at the rear of the town. “Watch your step,” she said as she hopped up onto the floor of the mill.

It was a lot larger up close. Several doors lined the wall that faced the saw, each with signs too faded to read. Wet mist and spray filled the air from the waterfall beyond the building, making the floor slick and matting down my coat as we walked through. Through the open section, I saw a massive lake behind the building, feeding into a river that disappeared into the woods behind Broker’s store.

“Just watch out for the waterwheel,” Hydro said, staring at the two of us like mom would when we’d touched something we shouldn’t have as fillies. “So far every pony that’s touched it other than...” She rolled her eyes. “Other than Waterwheel himself has gotten either a hoof broken or broke our electricity.”

“The pony who runs the waterwheel, is named Waterwheel?” Lost asked, one eyebrow raised.

“That’s what he said his name was when I met him, and I haven’t questioned it. It’s better than ‘Hey You!’ afterall,” Hydro answered, her tone softening. “Anyway. It’s this door right here.” She pointed to one of the doors. “I’ll be heading back to my office. Grinder’s a good doctor, but he doesn’t like onlookers for some reason.” She knocked at the doctor’s door, then trotted off.

As Lost and I exchanged looks, the door between us swung open and slammed into the wall with an echoing thud. Both of us let out loud squeaks of surprise. In the doorway stood a frazzled looking grey earth pony, staring at us.

“Who’s first,” he demanded, eyeing my sister, then me. His eyes trailed up and down the two of us, since we were both covered in blood. “Who’s blood is it?”

“Mine,” I said.

“Mostly not mine,” Lost said at the same time.

“You first then,” he announced, reaching out and hooking a forehoof around my neck. With surprising strength for such an old stallion, he dragged me off my hooves and into his office. In one smooth motion, he spun around and slammed the door shut with a rear hoof.

I dug myself against the floor and pushed, trying to fight against his grip so I could get out. “Stop!” I shouted, rasping at the pain in my leg. “Let my sister in! What are you doing to me?”

The door slammed behind me, jumping on its hinges but not opening. Lost yelled, “Hidden! Dammit...” The door shook a few times. “Fucking. Let me in!”

“One patient at a time, that’s the rules,” argued the doctor, rolling his eyes.

“Please let her in,” I begged. The last thing I wanted was to be locked in a room alone with a stallion I didn’t know. Ponies were bad, mom was right.

The doctor pony sighed. “I have standards and even if this is a Goddesses-forsaken wasteland, I was taught to do it this way and we’re doing it this way.” He lowered his brows and flicked his head to the side, motioning me further into the room. Yelling, he looked at the door. “You're both septic risks to each other and I'm not going to waste my time letting you contaminate each other any more than you already have!”

The door slammed on its hinges again and finally went still. “Fine! Hidden, if he’s a good doctor, it’ll be okay... Just, just,” she said, pausing. The door squeaked on its hinges. “I’m right here on the other side of the door, okay? I promise. If he does anything to you, he’ll answer to me.”

“Just relax,” Grinder said calmly. He rolled his eyes at Lost’s threat. “I’m not going to bite. Look around, get comfortable, and we’ll get to work.”

The room hadn’t been a doctor’s office originally. It looked more like the maintenance room in the Stable, with filing cabinets and a desk in the corner. A faded, curling graph hung from the wall, with scribblings all across it. In the corner, somepony had drawn an outline of a pony, much like the one on the PipBuck, and started coloring in the legs. In the far corner was something as tall as I was, covered by a massive tarp that hung almost to the floor.

Grinder pushed me toward a pair of wooden tables shoved together. “Lay here on the examination table, and stick your leg out,” he ordered. “And take off the gun and the bags, they’ll just get in the way.”

I did as he said, taking the battle saddle off and setting it with my saddlebags against the wall. Afterward, I hopped up onto the table like he asked, which wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I yelped in pain when my hoof caught the edge of the table, and the stallion had to help push me up all the way. Once comfortable, I held up my foreleg for him to look at.

“So, what happened to you two?” he asked, grabbing onto my foreleg with his fetlock and pulling it up to his eyes.

“Well.... Ghouls. Then gangers. Then I got shot dealing with some raiders outside the town,” I explained, closing one eye and grinding my teeth. I could deal with pain, but the way he kept poking and prodding with his hooves had me fighting off yelping again.

“Oh dear, oh no,” he said, making little ‘tsktsk’ sounds. “This is bad. The buckshot...” He shook his head, gray mane swaying as he did. He took a step toward the tarp in the corner. “We’re going to have to use thish,” He pulled it away on the far wall with his mouth, revealing a gigantic sawblade. “To amputate!” He smiled wide.

“What!” I squeaked, feeling what little blood I had left drain from my face. I swore my heart stopped. “But I need this leg!” I grabbed it with my other hoof and pulled it close, scooting away from that horrible thing.

The doctor blinked a few times, staring at me in disbelief. “I... It’s a joke, silly filly. I’m a doctor not a butcher,” he said, chuckling. “It’s an old doctor’s trick. Show the patient the worst possibility, then the rest isn’t so bad.” He leaned in close. “Don’t tell the other mare out there, okay?”

“I’m going to tell my sister,” I warned him, slowly releasing my death grip on my aching hoof. We’d had far too many close calls lately, and the last thing she needed was another pointless scare.

The stallion just rolled his eyes, muttering something about ponies not having a sense of humor. He dragged the tarp back up over the saw. “Regardless, let’s get those pellets out. We’ll go from there, and I’ll see what’s best to patch everything up. Hold your hoof back out.” After he explained, he grabbed a bag emblazoned with a set of crossed potion bottles that matched his cutie mark from atop the desk and trotted over to me.

Dropping the bag onto the table in front of me, he pulled out a set of tools I couldn’t identify, but quickly got to know as both cold and annoyingly not-quite-painful. He didn’t speak as he examined me, since his mouth was full the entire time, but checked over my ears, eyes, and even looked at the PipBuck’s screen to see what it could tell him. Once he’d finished examining my head and the machine, he pulled out a massive pair of tweezers and hooked them into the corner of his mouth.

“I’m sorry, but this part is going to hurt,” he warned me. “Unfortunately, I don’t have anything in stock to cut out the pain, but I trust you can get through it.” He hit me gently in my good shoulder. “Yer an earth pony, I know how tough we can be.” Chuckling to himself, he twisted the tweezers to the center of his mouth and pulled my foreleg toward him.

He dug straight into pulling the little lead pellets out of my leg. I knew from experience that earth ponies had a lot of skill at putting things where they needed to go the first time, but apparently that didn’t count when said earth pony was digging around under my skin. Especially since he had to go by feel.

“Can’t you- Ow! Knock me out for this?” I begged, biting my tongue so hard I could taste blood. My shoulder spasmed and twitched as he dug the tweezers into one of the holes with his teeth.

The doctor released the tweezers, leaving them balancing inside me and looked up at me. “I can’t, don’t have the supplies,” he answered. “But feel free to pass out whenever you get too uncomfortable.” He bit down on the tweezers again and twisted them, jamming the tips deeper.

“Good- Ahhh! Idea...” I muttered. I closed my eyes and focused, trying to will myself asleep, despite the pain. I groaned. Oh, right, I’d just take a little nap while he dug around- Something in my leg twisted in a bad way. Oh. That’ll do-

* * *

“Hidden, you need to wake up,” said a feminine voice.

“But I’m tired, mom,” I whined, rolling onto my side.

"Hidden," Lost insisted.

I clenched my eyes closed. "Nuh uh," I grumbled back at her as I rolled off the edge of whatever I was laying on and fell flat on my face.

“Ow...” I groaned, shaking my head. Wobbling, I stood up and blinked a few times to get adjusted to the light. In front of me was Lost, staring with a slightly annoyed look on her face. Behind her was the doctor, his jaw open and an eyelid twitching.

“I just fixed you,” he grumbled, facehoofing. Grumbling something about stupid fillies, he pointed to the door. “Out. Out of my office, now. Go wait by the saw for Hydro, or leave town. I don’t care.”

“Come on,” Lost said, motioning for me to follow her. She looked a lot better than when I’d last seen her. The blood that coated her was all gone, and the scar on her neck had nearly vanished. What used to be a nasty looking brown mark was replaced by a faded grey spot barely visible under her coat. Were it not for the small bald patch, I’d have thought she wasn’t ever shot.

I looked similarly better, actually. All the blood I’d lost was gone, washed or magicked away while I was sleeping. My coat still had a red tinge to it, but it looked none the worse for wear. My entire leg was covered in a thick, splotchy bandage. It wrapped from my fetlock up, around my shoulder and made walking difficult from how tight it was. I grabbed my things from against the wall, threw them over my back, and followed my sister.

She led me back out into the main section of the mill, and sat down across from the doctor’s door on a stack of cut logs wedged against the far support beam. “Here, we’ve got a minute,” she said, patting the logs next to her. “Let me see the PipBuck so I can figure out how to make a latch for it.”

“Sure,” I agreed, looking at the little device on my hoof. Stiffly walking over, I sat down next to her. Taking a moment to get comfy on my stomach, I offered the terminal-like device. “So... What happened while I was out?”

“Not much,” she answered, her horn lighting up. The little screwdriver I’d snagged from the Stable slid from her saddlebags. “You were only asleep for, I don’t know, thirty minutes maybe? He called me in once he finished with you, and ranted something about you might wake up and he didn’t like onlookers. Then he pulled out a giant sawblade.” She laughed. “The idiot said he wanted to ‘amputate my neck.’ How fucking absurd.” She rolled her eyes and grabbed my hoof in hers. Twisting it so the PipBuck’s screen was at the bottom, she hooked the screwdriver up under the casing.

“He pulled that trick on me, too,” I said, rolling to the side to follow my twisting forehoof. “I didn’t want to lose my leg...”

“If he tried something like that, I’d have fed him the leg. Then made him reattach it,” Lost said with a scowl. That was a gross suggestion. She twisted the screwdriver around, then pulled it out and started on the other side. “You know, mom always acted like these things were designed to never come off, but I don’t think that’s the case.” She squinted. “Probably just what they told everypony so they could abuse their customers...”

“So how do you know how to get it off then?” I asked, watching the screwdriver twist around. While she worked on the PipBuck, I rearranged my own things. Taking off my saddlebags, I put on my battle saddle. Once it was in place, I tossed my bags back where they belonged.

“Same reason I can work my magic on terminals,” she said, plucking the screwdriver away. “It’s all the same basic thing, really.” She nodded toward her cutie mark. “My special talent isn’t just knowing how I can make this type of thing work for me. I also know how it works on its own.” She cracked the casing open and pulled the PipBuck from my fetlock. “I just never get a chance to show off what I’m good at because, y’know, the whole world is an irradiated shithole.”

“Good point,” I muttered, rolling my hoof around. It’d only been a day, but I’d gotten so used to it I didn’t like not seeing it there. I’d promised to share though, but... losing the E.F.S. was scary. I’d already gotten so used to the little markers and things in the corner of my vision that not having them felt wrong.

“I don’t know how I know, really,” she added with a shrug. “I just see how it all works together. I could take this whole thing apart and put it back together better if there was a way to. And if we had the time.” True to her word, she popped the screwdriver back in and twisted something. When she pulled the screwdriver back out, the padding inside dropped out and onto the logs between us. As it fell, her horn pulsed brighter and all the little spare parts she’d gotten from the salespony floated up from her saddlebags and into the air next to her. “Okay, time to focus.”

I watched while she worked, as the pieces floated back and forth into the casing and up against the panels. With her cheater magic, she managed to pull apart the entire inside and lay it out on the logs in exactly the same spots it went back in. Dozens of little pieces came out, all while she worked diligently, nothing except her eyes moving to follow the movements of her tool the parts.

The soft clopping of hooves on the wet floor sounded to our side. Hydro walked up and stared down at the parts. “Well, that’s going to put a damper on things,” she said.

“What is?” I asked while Lost ignored her.

“I actually had a proposition for you both, because of the PipBuck,” she answered. Rubbing the back of her mane with a hoof, she sucked air past her teeth. “But if it's broken, then maybe not.”

“It’s not broken, it’s just apart,” Lost said as she worked one of the spare parts up under the casing. “I know where every piece goes and I’ll be able to fix whatever might be damaged.” She never once looked at the other mare. Another piece clicked into place and she smirked. “It’ll be better than ever once I finish.”

“Oh, in that case, I might have a job for the two of you?” she said, sounding hesitant. “We’ve having issues with the quality of the water coming from the lake atop the mountain.” She pointed over to the waterfall. “One of our stallions is going up to look for the problem and well... six eyes are better than two.”

“No,” Lost said. “We’re not staying around. We’re here for trading and healing, not jobs or initiations or whatever you ponies do.” She lifted another set of pieces and popped them up inside the casing. The PipBuck spun around in the air, and once righted, she stuck her muzzle in for a better look.

“Look, we’re offering you free medical services, and I’ll make sure you get a good deal with Broker,” Hydro shot back, no longer sounding so easygoing. “There shouldn’t be any issues, it’s just going to be a quick up and down. I’m not the kind of pony to send a mare fresh from the doctor’s into a firefight, after all.”

Lost sighed and lowered the PipBuck and its pieces to the logs. “Well... If its so easy then why send outside ponies like us?”

“Lost...” I groaned.

“The PipBuck comes with a radiation detector that I was hoping we could put to use,” Hydro answered matter-of-factly.

“Wait, how do you know that?” Lost asked, looking up from the device for the first time. “You don’t have one on...” She looked down at the PipBuck and snapped another piece into the inside of the casing with her magic. “And now it has a radiation detector.” She grinned. “I’d had it disconnected.”

“Well, there was a stallion a while back who came through with one,” she answered, her purple coat shifting slightly redder as she blushed. She stared away at the waterfall. “It looked a lot like that. He and I-”

“The short version is that he showed her how things work,” said a stallion’s voice. A large brown earth pony with a spiky green mane walked up and gave a snort. “Offering propositions out here in the damp?” He smirked.

“What was his name...” I asked hesitantly, already trying to put the pieces together. It was a bit of a leap, but if... And then... Oh Goddesses.

“He never said, I didn’t ask... It was only one night,” she answered. Her purple coat actually managed to turn the perfect shade of crimson to match the guilty look on her face.

I could barely hold back a facehoof. Okay, not mentioning to her what had happened, just in case. I shrunk back a bit. “You don’t think...” I whispered to Lost.

She just nodded curtly and snapped another chunk of the PipBuck back together. “I’m nearly done with this and then we can talk somewhere dryer,” she said. The remaining pieces of the PipBuck all lifted into the air, each wrapped in their own little blue glow. In quick succession, each piece slotted into its rightful spot. When she’d gotten everything back together, she floating the padding up inside, and twisted something in the casing. The padding pulled tight against the inside of the device. “Watch this, Hidden,” she said, holding the PipBuck out. With her telekinesis, she flipped the latch a few times. A little mechanism flicked out from one side of the casing and then disappeared again. “Easy, and only I know the trick to make to work.” Lowering the device onto her fetlock, she latched it tight and powered it on.

The back of the PipBuck glowed for a moment, and a little click echoed from inside. The second it did, the screen lit up brightly, and her eyes sparkled for a moment with green. She blinked once, and her eyes went wide. “That’s going to take some getting used to,” she muttered, before sliding off the logs and onto the slippery floor. “Alright, now we can talk business.”

I followed suit and dropped to standing, though I still felt a bit stiff where the bandages held my leg tightly. At the prompting of the two townsponies, we followed them into the last doorway at the edge of the mill’s main building.

Once inside, the stallion shut the door behind him and joined us in the center of the room. Hydro sat at one of the three large desks in the center of the room and smiled awkwardly. The place was a cluttered mess, with old rolls of paper pushed into a corner and more graphs and maps pinned to the walls. Several filing cabinets lined one side, as well as a strange looking clock with several slips of wilted paper hanging from the wall next to it. Near the back of the room, sitting atop the largest desk, was a wooden nameplate in perfect condition, reading “Mr. Split Log” with the same split tree cutie mark symbol right after it. This must have been his office when the sawmill actually worked as a sawmill. It might have been nice, if it weren’t so ancient.

“I don’t know if I’ve been introduced yet,” said the stallion. “You might have guessed from the cutie mark.” He lifted a hind leg and nodded toward the wooden-looking wheel on his haunch. “But I’m the one in charge of the waterwheel that powers this whole place.” He sighed. “And yes, it’s my name too.”

Lost bit her lip and looked away.

With a snort of annoyance, he continued and motioned for us to walk over. “I’m sorry for such short notice,” he said, “but this is massively important to us.” On his desk was a map, with a hastily scribbled marking for where the town was. He pointed a hoof at it as he kept talking. “The lake here is only half of a larger set. Up here, at the top of a hoof path, there’s another much larger lake that feeds the waterfall. It's fed by a natural spring that was never hit with any balefire, so it gives us much safer water than the rest of the Wasteland gets.”

“Uh... huh,” I said dumbly, trying to follow along. I was still trying to figure out what all the little circle-y lines were on the map. Lost was the thinky pony, she should be able to figure it all out.

“Okay, again,” Lost said. “If this is all just a walk up and look around thing, why not just go yourselves?”

“Several reasons,” countered Hydro. “First of which is that there’s only the three of us who know how to do any of the necessary functions to survive here. The water we get provides power for us.” She tapped one of the lights sitting on the desk. I hadn’t even noticed it was on and glowing brightly. “It’s fresh water for the entire region, from the mountains here all the way down to the old Academy. And if any of the three of us get hurt, or something worse, the whole Wasteland suffers.”

“Again,” Lost seethed, obviously getting frustrated. “If this is supposed to be so Goddesses-damned easy, what’s the risk in going yourself?”

“I’m scared of heights!” shouted the mare. She sighed and slammed her head onto the desk. “And he has a bad leg and can’t climb. We have reasons, we’re not just asking because we’re lazy!” She raised her head from the desk and glared at my sister. “I scratched your back, can you please scratch mine?”

Waterwheel looked at her and just shook his head. “Three ponies on the ground will help it all go faster. On top of that, your PipBuck allows you to search for anything out of place much easier than anything we have on our own. The map function and the radiation meter will make the search that much faster.” He held up a hoof to stop any questions. “Before you ask how I know all that, I’ll remind you that I’m far older than you and I’ve been around a lot.”

Hydro giggled. With a squeak, she blanched and covered her mouth with a hoof.

“Ponies might die without the water here, and you’ve got something none of the rest of us have,” he said, ignoring the laughter. “Rainfall will go up with you, and I’m sure Broker will be... convinced, to give you something to help in case of emergencies. Whatever you need from him, just ask.”

“And it’s not an initiation,” added Hydro. “We’re not a cult. The minute you come back down, you can walk out and let us handle whatever the problem is.”

“We need a minute,” Lost said. She grabbed me with a hoof and trotted me over to the corner of the room. “We should refuse and leave.”

“Why?” I asked. Looking down at my leg, and the blood-stained bandages covering, I couldn’t help feeling a bit obligated. “They helped us, for free. We can get ammo and a new gun for you and then just leave the minute we get back. All we’ve got right now is hooves and that pipe...”

“Yeah, I guess...” Lost agreed, hesitantly. “I just don’t think it’s smart to get caught up in these ponies’ lives. It’s their business. We need to get home.”

“Lost... I killed that mare’s... stallion? Lover? I don’t know,” I whispered, leaning in close. “The least we could do is make sure their water isn’t going bad. It would be nice to get some clean water for ourselves, too.” Sighing, I shifted my weight. “I think we should. I owe them.”

Lost turned around and faced the two townsponies. “Easy search, then straight back down. Right?” she asked firmly.

Hydro nodded.

“Yup,” said Waterwheel.

“Okay... we accept.”

* * *

We were told our guide would meet us back at Broker's store, but when we walked in, there was nopony aside from the shopkeeper. Lost rolled her eyes in annoyance, before walking to look at the wares hung from the walls.

“Back so soon?” asked Broker casually. “Have a look around for anything you want, and... you mentioned you had things to trade?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lost said dismissively, not bothering to turn to the stallion. She looked over everything on the shelves or hung from the wall. “What do you have in the way of guns?”

“Far side, but the selection is small. Most of what I get goes straight toward town defense,” he answered, grumbling something that sounded suspiciously like a complaint about losing profits.

Without a word, Lost and I walked over to that side of the store and started browsing. He was right, with little in the way of guns, but plenty of ammunition. I picked through each and every round, digging out what I knew fit my rifle. Aside from a few specialty bullets that didn’t go to any gun I recognized, all the 'common' bullets were mixed together in a box on the floor. I rummaged through the assortment, pulling out bullets we could use and passed them to Lost to hold in her telekinetic haze.

“I need a new gun,” she said, leaning down to look at the few pistols he had on display. With a sly smile, she pulled a little 9mm from the shelf. “Might as well get it now while it’s cheap.” The outside of the barrel was rusted, but otherwise the gun looked good.

“Mmphm,” I muffled, agreeing through a mouth full of bullets. Really, having cheater magic would have made it a lot easier to dig through a box of rounds. I couldn’t do much with my hooves. Offering the remaining bullets to my sister, I shoved the box back against the shelf.

Working the taste of metal from my mouth, I sat up and looked at Lost. “Okay, what ne-”

The door opened and the head of a tan coated mare poked in followed by her choppy pink mane.

“Welcome to-” started Broker. “Oh, hello Rainfall. Need something?”

“Nope, I’m looking for...” said the pony in a deep voice, looking around, “these two.” Okay, maybe not a mare after all, but it was a honest mistake with a face like that. The stallion walked all the way into the store and trotted over. Flashing a smile, he looked us each up and down. “Two mares, one bandaged and the other with a bandana. You must be the two Waterwheel told me to look for?” he asked, fluttering his wings to the side.

Oh, he was a pegasus?

I’d never seen one in the flesh before. Could he really fly with those? I wanted to reach out and touch his wings, to see if they were really real. A pony flying up above the clouds, maybe they could even see the sky and the sun? That was really amazing. Not something a pony like I could ever do... I didn’t even have cheater magic like my sister. I was just a boring ol-

“...is Hidden Fortune,” explained Lost, holding a hoof up to me.

“Huh?” I muttered. Ignoring my absolutely perfect first impression, I waved to the stallion. “I mean, hi.”

“Nice to meet you both,” he said. “Are you ready to go? We can start whenever you’re ready.”

“Hydro said it was just a quick up and down,” Lost replied, floating the bullets around in her magic in a little circle. She pointed to the bullets. “We’re just grabbing some things we’ll need for when we leave. While you’re here, is there anything we should grab for her request?”

At the mention of the mare’s name, the stallion grit his teeth and looked away, glaring sadly at the wall. “Yeah, it’ll be pretty easy. Up and down, then you can head off,” he said. Sighing, he shook his head. “What is it with mares and commitment around here?”

Lost and I stared at him in disbelief.

“What?” we both asked in unison.

The stallion stared for a moment, the color draining for his face. “Nothing,” he said, turning away. He cleared his throat and walked toward Broker at the counter. “Let me know when you finish.”

“That was weird,” I said, looking at my sister. When she shrugged in response, I shrugged back. “What else do we need?”

Lost shrugged. “Nothing,” she answered. “If this is just up and back... We could get food, but we can find plenty out in the Wasteland, and I don’t want to end up in debt to these ponies.” She floated the pistol between us. “Let’s just get these for emergencies, and head up. Then leave, as soon as we can.”

“Alright,” I nodded, watching the gun float around.

When we approached the counter and Lost set what we’d picked out on the counter, Broker looked up. “That all?” he asked. “It’ll be-”

“Broker,” Rainfall said, giving the merchant a look. “You’re not going to overcharge these nice mares, are you?” He smiled and leaned over toward Lost and I. “Don’t let him get the best of you, he’s a pushover,” he whispered.

Broker shot the pegasus a scowl. “Fine,” he said. Grabbing the gun in his magic, he held it up and spun it in the air once. “Thirty five, plus ten for the ammo.”

I looked at Lost, hoping she’d know if that was an acceptable price.

“Just pay him, Hidden,” she said after a pause.

I knew I didn’t have that many caps in my bags, but... Well, I did have the bits from the Stable. Groaning, I dug into my saddlebags and pulled out a single bit. I passed it to Lost.

“One more, Hidden,” she said, holding the little gold piece in the haze of her telekinesis.

Frowning, I pulled out one more and hesitantly gave it to her. I didn’t like the idea of giving up my bits. I needed them, for things and stuff. The fewer I had, the harder it would be to make a bed out of them. I clenched my eyes shut and turned away, not daring to see her give them up.

“Here,” Lost spat as the coins clinked against the counter.

“All finished then?” asked Rainfall. “Alright, c’mon, I’ll show you the way up. It won’t take long.” Turning on a hoof, he trotted away.

As the stallion turned I caught a glimpse of- Oh Goddesses. Definitely not a mare. Quickly looking away I noticed his cutie mark, a trio of little clouds. Why three? Did his special talent involve triples of things?

Lost passed me the few bullets for my rifle I’d found and the shotgun shells too. She collected the bullets for her new pistol in her magic. As we followed the pegasus out, she loaded them into the gun and slid it away.

“So, where are you two from?” asked Rainfall once we were outside.

“Around,” Lost said curtly, cutting off any chance at small talk. “Here, Hidden, lets get your guns reloaded before we have to start climbing.”

I trotted up beside her and kept pace, ignoring the fact that she could reload my gun for me with her magic, when I had trouble doing anything so delicate with my hooves.

Rainfall sighed. “Alright, don’t make small talk. It’s this way, won’t take long,” he said, speeding up and heading into the woods.

* * *

The walk through the woods was mostly uneventful. We’d gone a different way out of town and managed to avoid the shack where we’d spent the night entirely. Honestly, I was grateful for that, because I never wanted to see that mess of a pony again. We followed along the rocky edge of the mountainside, with Rainfall in the lead. He tried to make small talk several times, but whenever he’d ask a question or start to tell a story, Lost found a way to shut him up.

So far, I wasn’t entirely convinced these were bad ponies that wanted to sell us out or get us killed. I had a weird feeling in the back of my mind about following a stallion into the woods all alone, but if push came to shove, there were two of us and I had ammo for my big gun again. I just hoped we’d find where we were going soon, because all the walking was really starting to hurt my bandaged leg. I was pretty sure I shouldn’t be walking on it so soon after the doctor looked at it.

“Okay, I’m sure it’s around here somewhere,” Rainfall said, more to himself than to either of us. He stopped and looked up at the wall of rocks that made up the base of the mountain. “Normally I just fly up.” He smirked and rubbed the back of his choppy mane with a hoof. “Can’t really do that this time though, can I?”

I wouldn’t mind him flying, it’d be great just to see him in the air. The thought of a pony flying was fascinating, and to see it in action? I’d never expected to get the chance to see that. Pegasuses, pegasi? Pega.... Pegasus ponies were so rare in the Wasteland, not like how mom told us about before the world ended, when they were common. Thinking out loud I said, “Well, you could...”

“Hidden,” chided Lost, nudging me in the side roughly. “We need to split up to look for the path.” She sighed and leaned in close. “Can you please stop ogling the stallion?” she asked in a softer voice.

“I’m not,” I argued, before changing the subject. “Just tell me which way to go look,” I didn’t want to admit what I’d actually been thinking about. It wasn’t fair, unicorns and pegasi? It was probably pegasi. It wasn’t fair that they got all the interesting, useful, or fun things. Why couldn’t I have cheater magic or cheater wings?

“Well,” Lost answered, lifting her hoof and clicking one of the buttons on the PipBuck with her magic. “We have a map.” She offered her hoof toward the stallion. “Will that help you find it?”

I placed a hoof on her shoulder and leaned in close to look at the screen.

Rainfall walked over, laughing softly, and pushed his way in on the other side of my sister. When she shied away, he moved back. “Sorry...” Moving to stand across from us, we all stared at the map.

For several minutes, Lost and Rainfall poked at the screen, tapping on different parts of the map. They switched between a wide map and a zoomed in one, using functions I hadn’t even known about. Most of what we were looking at went over my head, as it melted into a swirl of odd-shaped lines and a grid that kept changing sizes.

“So... What are we looking for?” I asked. “I mean, it’s gotta be hard to miss a lake.”

“The path up,” explained Rainfall. “Trust me, it’s a big lake.” He smiled at me and winked. “It’s hard to miss.”

“Oh,” I said, shrinking away. Well, now I felt stupid.

“The lake should be this one here,” Lost said, pointing at one of the blob-shaped lines. “I think?” She didn’t sound very confident.

“You’re right,” said Rainfall. He tapped a hoof on the screen. “Which means the path is...” He turned around a few times and then pointed a hoof. “Right over there.”

“Finally,” sighed Lost.

With the path spotted, Rainfall led us from the edge of the dead forest to another one of the dozens of rocky outcroppings from the mountainside. Really, if we’d been able to just walk up a gentle hill it would make everything easier. He pointed toward a flat area that looked relatively safe. “So, this wasn’t really meant to be used to get up here, but its the only way to go on hoof,” he explained, before walking up and kicking rocks out of the way to make the path clear for us.

L.A. and I followed in silence, listening to the stallion hum as he walked. Every so often he’d flutter his wings and look around, before turning and heading up another dangerous-looking direction. The rock wall was steep, making us hug against it to keep from falling off. When we reached the turns he made, we’d follow suit.

The walk was slow, but going slow was better than falling off and landing on the rocks below. The unforgiving path wasn’t doing any good for my recently-fixed leg, either. While Doc Grinder did a good job patching it up, that didn’t mean it stayed patched up when I started mountain climbing. I grit my teeth and tried my best to ignore it.

Every other turn led to a longer path than the last one, working us slowly back toward the waterfall. The ground got more and more slick and slippery the closer we got, and once again I found myself with a wet, matted coat from the spray of water. By the time we’d gotten halfway up, we’d gotten so close I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over the roar of the water falling over the edge. Thankfully, before we went behind the water, we turned and headed up the other direction.

As we moved toward the waterfall again, near the top, Rainfall stopped. With a displeased ‘hmm,’ he hopped into the air and flapped his wings a few times and turned around to face us. Water sprayed toward us from the flapping of his wings, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Okay, problem,” he shouted over the noise of the waterfall. “It should cross here, but well... the waterfall seems to have other plans.” He pointed a hoof at the path, worn smooth and definitely not crossable by the water pounding on it. “Let me go look around...” Flapping his wings harder, he flew up and out of sight.

“Why’d we agree to this again?” Lost yelled.

“Cheap stuff?” I yelled back, shrugging. I looked away, pinning my ears back to keep the water out. Below were the woods.... I wondered just how close we were to the tree I’d buried the stallion’s head under. “And because I felt we needed-”

“Hey!” yelled Rainfall. He flew back into sight, smiling wide. “Guess what?”

“You found what’s wrong, and we can head back?” Lost asked hopefully.

He laughed. “If only! I’m not used to taking this way, but for you two,” he explained, pointing a hoof in the direction opposite the waterfall. “There’s a path just up-”

A bullet tore through Rainfall’s side. It ripped a massive hole open on his belly, and a spray of blood filled the air. His eyes went wide and he let out a quiet whine. He hung in the air for only a second, his wings going limp.

As he fell, a massive BANG cut through the air, and the rock next to Lost’s head exploded. Another BANG drowned out her shriek of fear. She grabbed onto me and pulled, dragging me against the wall and hopefully out of sight of whoever was attacking us.

Helplessly, I watched as Rainfall fell from the sky and down to the water below. I tried to scream something at him, but no words came out. Struggling against Lost, I fought to look over the edge, just... Just to see if he was okay.

Lost held me tight, her hooves digging into my wounded leg. “Hidden!” she screamed in my ear. Breathing heavily, she clung to me. “Don’t... He’s...”

“But...” I whispered, knowing it was too late. Forcing myself from her grip, I pushed myself against the wall next to her. Something pinched in my leg and I swore I heard a little ‘pop,’ followed by a slight stinging sensation. Ow. I grabbed onto the bit of my battle saddle.

We could be next.

“Where’d it come from?” Lost demanded, looking around in a panic. Her horn was already glowing, and she held the 9mm in the air next to her head.

“Ah donk knoe!” I yelled around the battle saddle’s bit. Swiveling my ears around, I strained to hear any sound of our attackers, just a hint as to where they were, but the din of the waterfall drowned everything else out. Maybe if I could see for just a second...

I tried to twist so I could aim up and peek over the edge of the rocks, just to see who was shooting at us, but my wounded leg wasn’t giving me an easy time doing it. I really wished there were some painkillers or healing potions to use, because whatever Grinder did wasn’t cutting it anymore.

Another BANG shattered the air when I looked up and I felt a sharp sting on my back. I yelped and collapsed onto the pathway. It surprised me far more than it hurt, and didn’t feel like anything like the other times I’d been shot.

“Hidden!” L.A. yelled.

Scooting back next to Lost, I looked back, trying to find out what just happened. All I could see was blood, lots of it. The moment I saw it, pain erupted through my back like fire spreading. There was a huge hole, pouring blood down my side, and I’m pretty sure I could see some bone. I felt pretty lucky that it hadn’t gone all the way through.

“Oh Celestia, oh Luna,” Lost cried. She pressed down on the hole to stop the bleeding, just like I’d done on her throat. “This is a lot of blood. What are we going to do?” She was breathing heavily, eyes wide and ears twitching furiously. Honestly, it hurt more than it helped. Just like I’d done...

“I think I got shot again,” I muttered, feeling woozy. “We’re easy targets, sis... They’re above us.” I gulped, feeling the world begin to spin. “I need something... before I pass out.” I shook my head, trying to stay focused and keep everything from spinning. I couldn’t be falling asleep at a time like this. “Is it healthy to bleed this much?”

“Hold on, hold on,” L.A. said, already digging through my saddlebags with her magic. “We might have something useful? Anything... Wait!” She pulled out a little bottle with ‘Buck’ written on the label.

I’d completely forgotten we had that. Hopefully, it would be enough. What was Buck again?

Lost looked at the bottle, but since all it said on it was ‘BUCK’ in big letters with no instructions for use, she gave up. Popping it open with her telekinesis, she tossed the thin lid out from the outcropping while she rummaged into the bottle.

A shot blew a hole clear through it, and it disappeared off the mountainside. Lost stared in wide-eyed horror, while I watched the lid flip away. How could somepony shoot that well... And how in Celestia and Luna’s name had they not taken my head off?

“Don’t think about it, don’t think about it,” Lost muttered as she pulled out a single pill from inside the bottle. Floating it over to me, she forced a smile. “Hopefully this’ll help...”

I popped it into my mouth and bit down. It tasted foul and chalky, but I forced it down anyway. At first, I didn’t feel anything. I stared at Lost Art, sharing her expectant look.

“Is it working?” She begged.

“I don’t-”

Something kicked in. My heart rate sped up, I could feel the throbbing in my wounds, and felt it almost behind my eyes. Suddenly, the pain in my shoulder and the blood running down my back didn’t matter. Yeah... It still hurt, but it was like it was hurting somepony else... “Which way again?” I asked.

“Back down,” Lost answered. “This isn’t a quick up and back anymore. You’re hurt, he’s dead... We’re done with it.” She looked the way we’d come up, then upward at where the shots were coming. “If we make a run for it, we can get out and just leave. Come on.” She galloped out from our little safe spot and back down the path.

The ground in front of her hooves erupted as a BANG cut through the air. Yelping, she reared up and flailed her forehooves. “Fuck!” she yelled, jumping back. Backpedaling next to me, she pressed herself against the wall and shook.

They weren’t going to let us get away. I charged up the path instead.

Whatever this was, I liked it. I felt tougher than I had before, like I didn’t even need the guns I was carrying. Whoever shot me, whoever was trying to hurt my sister? I was going to crush their skull. Getting shot didn’t scare me anymore, didn’t hurt anymore. It wasn’t my problem anymore, it was some other pony’s. The only problem I had was that I wasn’t already killing them. I had somepony to crush.

I barreled up the pathway until it snaked back on itself. As I ran, shots peppered the ground, sending chunks of the mountainside into the air all around me. I ignored the distractions, and jumped at a rocky outcropping at the turn. I pushed off it to spin around and head up the other direction.

At some point, whoever was shooting stopped.

I twisted around another turn and found myself on a flat ledge on the mountain. Without a path to follow, I looked around, trying to find whoever was trying to kill my sister and me. I snorted, needing somepony to break.

A line of pain shot across my cheek, but it wasn’t my problem to deal with. I twisted my ear, hearing the deafening BANG, but not where it came from. Stomping both forehooves, I shook my head to fling the blood away.

“Come out now,” I yelled, “so I can feed you your own gun!”

Nopony responded.

I looked side to side, searching for a skull to break open. Rocks, rocks, and more rocks. A few dead trees grew out of the rocks dotting the ledge. My eyelid twitched, and I could feel my legs trying to move on their own. I needed somepony to hurt. I was near the top now, where they should be. I couldn’t hear anypony over the blood roaring through my ears like- no, the roaring was outside my head; that was the waterfall. At least I was in the right place.

Whoever was up here was waiting for something...

I’d give them what they were waiting for. I charged forward again, mouth on the bit of my battle saddle, ready to kill anything that moved. The Goddesses answered my prayers. A rifle appeared behind one of the rocks. I turned mid-charge toward it and flicked the trigger on the bit in my mouth.

My rifle erupted with an ear-splitting BOOM!

A massive chunk of the rock exploded into the air. The kick from the rifle didn’t even slow me down.

Two shots left.

Behind the rock stood a wide-eyed pony like I’d never seen before. His mane spiked straight up, and his coat was two-toned. He looked almost alien, with white with black stripes criss-crossing his face. He fired a shot with the long barrelled rifle as I ran toward him. It tore through my mane, taking another chunk of it away, but I didn’t care. By the time he reloaded, I was already on him.

Somewhere in my brain, I realized it was a zebra, but at that moment it didn’t matter.

I leapt over what was left of the rock and landed next to my striped assailant. Another shot dug into me, but not from the zebra I was next to. It pierced bone, right below my cutie mark, but that was somepony else’s problem right now.

Goddesses, there was more than one shooter. That explained why some shots were better placed than others.

Before the zebra next to me could aim, I kicked at his rifle with a hoof and knocked it away. Following through with the kick, I spun on my good hoof and bucked both hind legs at his face. Rather than hit his head, he blocked with his forehooves and pushed me to the side. I wasn’t expecting- there went my balance.

I toppled down onto my bad leg and caught sight of another zebra, probably the one who had taken the potshot at my cutie mark. He looked just like the first, except his eyes were blue instead of green. I grinned around the bit of my battle saddle, glad I’d fallen facing him, and fired. There was a loud BOOM and one of the zebra’s rear legs was blown completely off. Close enough. Blood splattered against the rock ledge and the stallion screamed in pain before he collapsed and dropped his rifle.

One shot left.

“Hidden!” yelled Lost from the edge of the path. “Behind you!” As I turned to catch the zebra raising his forehooves to stomp me into the ground, two bullets from Lost’s pistol tore into his leg. She fired several more times, but the zebra ducked, grabbed his rifle, then turned and fled.

I wasn’t going to let that happen. Letting somepony else deal with the ache in my leg, I pushed up and chased after him. My battle saddle wasn’t great for this close range combat, and with only one shot left I wasn’t going to just waste it. I twisted my neck around and grabbed the shotgun from the top of my saddlebag. I charged after the zebra in front of me, my now-bleeding leg throbbing with each heartbeat. He was faster, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me from catching him. Clenching my eyes and gritting my teeth around the trigger of the shotgun, I let that other poor pony deal with the pain and pushed as hard as I could.

Panting around the gun, I dared open an eye. I’d caught up to him. I was close enough to shoot. Smiling, I bit down hard on the trigger. The shotgun’s barrel erupted and the buckshot made a mess of his head. A mass of red and grey gore flew through the air with the little pellets, and the headless zebra faltered, his legs going out from underneath.

I jumped, leaping over his tumbling body to keep from getting tangled up in it. Landing on aching hooves, I skidded to a stop and slid down onto my haunches. I dropped the gun and stared at what used to be a stallion. The pounding behind my eyes and in my ears was weakening, I could think again.

I put the shotgun away and weakly stood up. The little pony in pain in my head seemed to be pushing it all back, but I just ignored it. I’d taken out... whoever he was. Slowly, I walked back to the corpse. This was a zebra, huh? He wasn’t so tough, definitely not what I pictured destroying the whole of Equestria. Black and white, hooves just like mine. He even had a cutie mark, though it looked like no cutie mark I’d ever seen. It was all strange lines and weird symbols.

And I’d killed him. Snapping my head up, I looked at the other one, the one missing a leg.

Lost walked over to me, her pistol pointed at the remaining zebra. “Good job,” she said, sneering slightly. She levitated the gun up to look down the sights at the zebra with the missing hoof, as he reached for his rifle. Lost fired three times. The first shot tore a hole through his throat, stopping him dead. The other two hit directly between the eyes, splattering pink and red gore all over the ground and his back.

“How did you do that?” I asked in amazement. “You’ve never been a good shot before...” I knew my sister could hit a target, but three in a row like that? The smashy invincible feeling fell away and terror crept up the back of my mind as she put the gun away without so much as a blink. When had my sister become... This. I looked at the zebra I’d just murdered... It might have been self-defense but... When did I become like this?

We were acting like the raiders from this morning. Slumping down, I took a few deep breaths. My heartbeat was finally slowing, and I could feel something other than the need to crush somepony’s skull. I swallowed and tried not to think about what just happened. I just needed to stay focused on the moment, and, if...

“Are there any more?” I asked before Lost could answer my other question.

“There’s an amber one up here too,” she answered coldly, walking over and looking at my back. She grimaced, then looked down, where the marker would be in her vision. “You’re in no condition to walk down a mountainside... Hopefully, whoever that is, they’re not another zebra. And hopefully they can help get you back down to the doctor.” She started off toward whatever marker she was seeing. “And I used S.A.T.S. Come on.”

“What do you mean, amber? And what is S.A.T.S.?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. The PipBuck displayed in green not amber, well unless it was showing in red. But never amber. Before I could worry about it, the pain of getting shot hit me, hard. I groaned and collapsed, fighting the urge to scream and give away that we’d survived the fight.

“I’ll explain later,” she said as she marched toward the lake, pulling the gun out again to float beside her at the ready. “If whoever’s over there can’t help...” She had the same worry in her voice that she always did, but there was a harsh edge to it.

I forced myself up and fell in behind her, feeling terrible. I was suddenly exhausted and could barely stand. Every part of my body ached, even some parts I didn’t know I had. I prayed this was just the Buck wearing off. The hooves that had so easily chased down a zebra and run me up a mountain were now heavy and hard to move. I felt almost as if I were walking against a strong current. The hole in my back burned and I found myself forcing each breath.

She was right. If I was having this much trouble just walking after her slowly, there was no way I was going to make it down the mountainside along that winding path.

Without a word though, I followed Lost Art, limping and forcing each step by sheer stubbornness. Eventually we reached the lake above the falls. It was beautiful and pristine, a rarity in the Wasteland. Water poured over the edge of the cliff we’d just run up, draining into the same lake Rainfall had plunged into.

Sitting at the shore of the mountain lake was a female zebra. She was facing away from us, but even from behind, she looked different from the other two. Her coat was almost completely black, with a few small grey stripes crossing her back and wrapping around her legs. Her mane was stuck in the same mohawk as the other two, but lacked the stark contrasting stripes as we’d seen before, leaving it almost completely white. She turned and looked at the two of us with the same dark blue eyes as one of the zebras we’d killed before, and flashed a sorrowful smile.

Lost Art aimed the pistol with her magic again, but I raised a hoof to stop her. “Wait... You said yourself she’s not red,” I whispered, earning myself a sharp glare. Luckily, it worked and she relented.

The zebra watched for a moment, before turning back to stare over the lake. “Did my brothers cause you any trouble?” she asked in a soft voice, lacking any sorrow. “They are often a bit of a hoof-full. I presume by the gunfire that you killed them?” She slumped and looked down at the water. “That would be my luck.” Straightening up, she looked back at us again. “Why have you come?”

“The town below asked us to come with the pegasus to check the water,” L.A. answered her as matter of fact as she could. “They think there’s something wrong with it. We were just supposed to look around.” She threw the pistol back into her saddlebags with as much force as her she could. “Before your brothers shot our guide."

“Yes, my older brother is quite brash, he acts without thinking,” the zebra said, turning away from us again. “I do not know what you have come to seek, but we have done nothing but drink of the waters. This place is safe from the horrors below, we thought that since it was a difficult climb for the less nimble, that this would become a sanctuary for the three of us for a time.”

“Right now I have bigger worries,” Lost said to the zebra, looking toward me “Your brothers wounded my sister, do you have a healing potion or anything so we can safely get back down the mountain?”

“For her?” the zebra asked, standing. She turned toward the two of us and leaned over to look at my still-bleeding side. “I may?” She didn't sound confident at all.

As she turned, I saw a spiral on her haunch, one that wrapped around small triangular symbols. The mark was nearly hypnotic, seeming to spin with every step she took. She stopped before us, and bowed her head. “I apologize for your guide,” she said softly. “I will do what I can to help. I only ask... Please do not kill me as well. I understand your fight to survive, but I wish you no harm. I will leave, if it makes the ponies in this town below feel safer. They would send more for me after you leave, were I to stay, and I do not wish to perish as they did.” Her voice trembled whenever she muttered about death, and she visibly shivered when asking us to not kill her.

“Ah... About your... brothers?” I asked, my brain having stopped there. I stared at my sister, if she was feeling the same as me. We’d both come close to losing the only family we had left, and to force that pain on somepony else... We had just taken from her the only thing we ourselves had left.

A sudden ache took over my body, from my hooves to my head. I collapsed before I could say any more.

* * *

I opened my eyes to a dark blur. Blinking several times, I flailed a hoof and tried to figure out where I was, and how long I’d been out for. Realizing I could just rub my eyes, I brought my hooves up and cleared them. Groaning, I rolled to sit up and looked around. Apparently, I’d been moved to a dirty bed in a dark wooden room while I was asleep.

The dull light coming through the window barely lit up the room. “It’s evening already?” I muttered to myself, rubbing my head. Pulling my rear hooves under myself, I pushed up to stand. Wobbling a few times, I made it up and stepped off the bed. I could still feel the ache whenever I walked, and the burning in my chest. Hopefully the pain would go away soon.

“Sleep well?” Lost asked from the corner of the room. She sat behind a desk at a terminal, tapping away at it with her magic and her hooves, while the zebra looked on from beside her. Every few seconds Lost would look at the striped mare and lean away from her.

One important question shot through my mind. “Why am I not dead yet?” I blurted out. No wait, I had another thought. “Where are we?”

“My luck does not let those around me die when they wish to,” the zebra said.

“Basically, what she said,” Lost agreed, rolling her eyes and leaning away from the other mare again. “You really shouldn’t be asleep with the wounds, or the blood loss. Or well... anything that’s wrong with you right now.” She sighed and got up, then walked around the desk toward me. “At least you stopped bleeding. How do you feel?” She checked over me, holding a hoof to my back and looking at the gaping wound over my ribs.

“Better?” I muttered. Everything hurt, which surprisingly made the gunshot wound hurt a lot less by comparison.

“Good,” Lost said, dropping her hoof. “Then we’re heading right back down to get you to that crazy doctor pony. Right now.”

“So, I’m still alive because... zebra luck? Okay, good enough. Did we at least figure out what was going on with the water?” I asked, wincing as I tried to walk. Blinking and shaking my head, I slumped back down to sit on the dirty bed. “And...” I coughed. “What did I miss while I was out?” The pressure on my lungs really wasn’t helping.

“Little, your unicorn has been reading much of the time,” the zebra answered before L.A. could. “We spoke little, as she did not trust enough to speak with me and I am not one to munch words.” She talked like she was talking to a foal, or perhaps a wall, slowly and with large pauses between words. “If you have more trust for others, you may call me Xeno.” She raised a hoof and gave a short wave, but stared blankly at me. “We are in a shack my brothers and I found here, near the lake.”

That was my fault for asking such an open-ended question. “No, I mean. Okay...” I muttered, trying to piece together everything she said. “So?” I shook my head a little, trying to wake up and get the ache to go away.

Lost looked over the rim of her glasses at me and frowned. “According to the zebra here,” she said, motioning with a hoof at Xeno. “They’ve been here for several weeks, but this was the first time they saw Rainfall, or any ponies for that matter. Her brother panicked and shot him down, fearing that it was an attack.”

“Okay, and what about the water?” I asked, shaking my head again and finally waking up some.

“Well, according to the terminal over here, there’s been an ongoing problem, just like Waterwheel said,” Lost answered, walking back over to the desk. She sat behind it and tapped on the input a few times. “There’s plenty of logs on here, ranging from water and contamination notes to love letters from Rainfall to Hydro. Every so of-”

“Love letters?” I asked, cutting my sister off.

“Yeah, but that’s not the important part,” Lost answered. She waved me over to the terminal, but I shook my head. Nodding, she continued, “So every few months the water goes bad. Rainfall hadn’t been able to figure out exactly what was causing it, or where it was coming from, which... I guess that’s why they wanted us to come up and help.” She raised the PipBuck and tapped it with her other hoof a few times. “Anyway, every time he thought he had a lead, it disappeared and things went back to normal.”

Xeno leaned over against Lost and looked at the terminal screen. “Your pony language is written very strange,” she said blankly.

“Can you get to the point?” I demanded, rubbing my temples with my forehooves. All the talking was starting to hurt my brain.

“I don’t think there is one,” Lost said. She powered down the terminal. “He had no idea what was going on, and nothing he tried seemed to fix it. It just... came and went every now and then.” Walking around the desk again, she offered a hoof to help me up. “I’ve read enough of his love letters to Hydro, let’s get you back down the mountain. I don’t want that getting infected.”

“So... he died for nothing,” I whispered, sulking slightly. With a sigh, I grabbed my sister’s hoof and pulled myself back up.

“I am sorry, but I think that I must leave now,” Xeno interrupted, fidgeting as she spoke. “I fear what my brothers have done will not be well regarded by your kind. I have much I still inspire to do with my time here in the Wasteland. It would be... a waste... to die here. I cannot risk revengeance. ” Her gaze never broke as she stared off into the distance at nothing. “I do not blame you for my brothers, it would have happened eventually... They were impulsive. I cannot grudge you for surviving, but if the flying pony’s death brings others to attack me...” After a pause, she added, “I must go.”

It took me a moment to figure out exactly what she said. I really hoped she was more fluent in her language than in mine.

She stared me in the eyes, and my gaze faltered. I turned and began to limp away. She was right, if I understood her correctly. We weren’t here of our own volition, we were here trying to do a favor that had been asked of us. Why did that have to mean ponies... zebras, needed to die? Xeno turned and walked toward the door.

“Where will you go?” I asked. “I know some ponies don’t like zebras because of stupid shit two centuries ago, but if you want to stay... we could explain what happened.” Of course, that meant nothing if the leaders of the town wouldn’t listen to our side. She was a lone zebra atop a mountain, whose family had just killed one of the townsponies. If what mom had said was true, that was enough reason to demonize and kill her.

“Where the Wasteland takes me,” the zebra answered. “That is the only place I have to go.” She pushed open the door and walked through. We had just killed her family, and now she was just going to wander around the Wasteland alone...

I looked at my sister helplessly, then back at the open door. “I’m sorry,” I called out as she walked off.

“Why?” she asked, not turning back to face us. “It is the way of the Wasteland.” She waved a hoof, before disappearing out of sight.

“Are you feeling up to walking yet?” Lost Art asked. “We need to get back down there, get to a doctor and... deal with Rainfall.”

I stared at the door another moment before turning to hear. “Yeah, I think so,” I said, nodding slowly. “Can you carry my stuff though?” The last thing I needed was to put more pressure on the hole in my back. What was I thinking, running up wounded like this? Lost was right, we never should have come to this town.

After L.A. grabbed my things, we left the little shack. I couldn’t help but look at the lake, and when I did, it just pissed me off. We’d run up a mountain. I’d gotten shot, again. A pony and two zebras died. I walked over to the water’s edge and stared down at my reflection. “And for what?” I asked nopony but myself.

“Hidden, it’s this way,” Lost said. She trotted over to me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I shrugged. “Not rea-”

Click.

Both of us looked down at the PipBuck. It clicked again. “Uhh,” I uttered, looking up and finding my sister looking right back at me.

“Well, that might explain a lot,” she said with genuine surprise.

Distracted from the pain and unable to remember what I’d been thinking before, we tried to find whatever was causing the clicking. After a quick check to make sure it wasn’t the water itself that was off, we started searching. I let experience take over, and while Lost moved the PipBuck around to see if it would click faster or slower, I’d dig through rocks, rubble, and two hundred year old leftovers from whoever lived here before the world ended.

“Try over there,” Lost said, pointing her hoof toward a pile of rocks from the higher parts of the mountain near the shack. The PipBuck clicked repeatedly when she raised her hoof in that direction.

“Sure,” I said, walking over. Looking around, I found nothing in the pile. “Nothing.” I turned around and caught my hoof on something just under the surface of the water. “Or... Something?”

Lost walked over, her horn lighting up with a blue haze. A blue glow lit up under the water, matching her magic, and she lifted up a rusted, crumbling ammo case. Shaking it free of water, she set it on the shore. A hole in the corner drained a little stream from inside back to the lake. “What’s this doing up here?” she asked. The PipBuck clicked faster the closer she got to it, and when she pulled the lid open, we found ourselves staring at a little round green-thing.

The colors on it seemed to shift and spin. I couldn’t look away, the little green ball just pulled me in whenever I tried to lean back.

Lost slammed the lid shut and grabbed me around the leg with her magic. “We’re leaving, now,” she said. “I’ll tell them what’s up here and somepony else can come get it. And- Hidden!” She pulled me away from the case, stopping me from opening it to see the little swirling green ball. “Do. Not. Touch. That.”

I did as I was told. When she released her magical grip, we walked away as fast as my wounds would let me. I kept looking back, wanting to go back and look at the hypnotizing colors move again.

What was that thing?

* * *

I limped back into Pommel Falls and made straight for Doc Grinder’s room. The trip down the mountain wasn’t easy, and everything hurt. I forced myself on sheer stubbornness to get there and marched my way up to the sawmill.

I kicked open Grinder’s door with my good foreleg. “Doc?” I asked, trying to sound polite.

The grey pony was sleeping on the examination table I’d been on earlier in the day. He lazily opened one eye and looked at me. With a grunt, he looked me up and down, then sat straight up on the table. “What happened?” he demanded.

“We found out what happened with the water,” I muttered, collapsing in. “I’m pretty sure I should be dead.” Ugh, the floor was damp. Damn waterfall got everything wet.

“I’m going to go talk to the others,” Lost said from the doorway.

“Fine, go,” Grinder said dismissively as he scrambled off the table and over to me. Settling at my side, he started poking around at the hole in my back. “You do realize that I’m only an earth pony,” he said, noticeably annoyed. He prodded the hole with a hoof, hard enough to make my flinch. “I might be good at patching and digging, but you really need some proper unicorn magic to heal these wounds. On the table, now.”

I crawled up onto the examination table and shifted carefully to lay so my exposed rib was showing. Looking over at it, I felt the blood drain from my face. Had the shot gone a hair to either direction, it would have torn all the way through and... maybe she was right about zebra luck.

“Tell me what happened, or I’ll get the saw again,” the doctor said sternly. He backed away toward the cabinet where he kept his tools.

“Well, there was the getting shot part, and running up a mountain,” I said, waving my wounded leg. “I think I tore this up again. The Buck help-”

“What?” he said, staring at me wide eyed. “You abused Buck while you were up there?” He raised his hooves as if he wanted to hit me, glaring as if I were a foal who’d just broken something expensive. “I cannot even begin to express how unhealthy that is. Using that improperly could kill you. The broken rib pressing against your lung is bad enough without you adding to it!” He collected several terrifying looking tools in his mouth and stormed over.

Wait, I broke a rib? Is that-

The feeling of Grinder dragging bone against bone locked my brain. Pain lanced through my body, along my spine, through my jaw, and behind my eyes. It was the most excruciating thing I’d ever felt, far worse than getting shot. As he tugged at my ribs, I howled until my lungs burned. It hurt to breathe, and I had to force every shallow breath.

“We only had, ughh!” I groaned, grabbing the edges of the table with my hooves as he dug into my side and pulled at the rib. “I only had one.” Tears streamed down my face and my jaw ached from gritting my teeth. I had no idea what he was doing other than it felt like he was ripping out bits and pieces of my insides. “What are you doing in there?”

The doctor spit whatever tool he was using from his mouth and glared at me. “Good,” he said, “Buck’ll ruin you in ways I can’t fix. And I’m trying to reset the bone. I don’t have any healing potions after all the work I had to do on you and your sister earlier, so I have to do it the old fashion way. If this heals wrong, pressing against your lung like it is, you could have trouble breathing for the rest of your life.” He twisted his forelegs and a sharp crack echoed through the room.

The sound, and the pain that came with it, was too much. Everything tensed and I threw up over the edge of the table. Each retch causing my chest to explode in pain.

“Finally,” he muttered grimly.

When I finally finished coughing up the last of my stomach onto the floor, I actually found I could breathe easier. While I worked on regaining my composure, the doctor bandaged up my side and leg. He wasted no time digging out the bullet in my flank, but after what I’d just experienced, I barely felt that. I laid my head down on the table and closed my eyes while he worked.

He said something about healing properly and aftercare, but I wasn’t listening.

I couldn’t help but think about how today was a glaring example of how incapable we were of handling ourselves in the Wasteland. All we knew was avoidance, hiding with only the most basic skill in fighting to survive. All the past two days had been was one fuck-up after another. The only reason we’d managed to survive was luck and me being stubborn enough to not die when I got shot. I didn’t know how to handle myself in a firefight. I really wasn’t prepared, and I knew that Lost Art was even worse off than I was. Mom had taught her how to handle technology and the basics of patching up the rough cut or scratch, but that wasn’t enough to get us through anything like today. It almost felt like we were trying to get killed, running headlong in without supplies or a plan.

I just needed to learn from the mistakes. So far, what I’d had drilled into my head was that I needed to stop rushing so fast into everything... and maybe take a moment to reflect. And I definitely needed a gun I could find a reasonable amount of ammo for... Then we could get some armored barding and not just whatever we could find. Of course we would-- I noticed the doctor was staring at me.

“Have you been listening at all?” he demanded, sounding extremely cross. Muttering something under his breath, he grabbed his tools in his teeth and tossed them back to where they belonged. He walked over to the desk against the wall and hooked a book from a small pile in the corner in his fetlock. “This is the last thing I will do for free for you and the unicorn. And I am only doing it as a favor because you helped Hydro and the others.” He walked back over and slammed the book down on the table. “Hopefully she will learn from this, so I’ll never have to see you while I’m trying to sleep.” Once I’d grabbed the book, Doc Grinder shooed me out, saying, “Don’t come back unless the sun is up.”

Well, guess that meant we needed to find a new doctor.

I stood outside the office and spit the book into my fetlock. Swallowing a few times, I tried to get rid of the horrific taste of vomiting. Two hundred year old food tasted far worse the second time around. Sliding the book into my saddlebags, I started off toward the office where we’d met Hydro and Waterwheel earlier. Lost had been right, this whole thing was a terrible idea. I’d been shot in the leg, and the back, and had bones broken, and... I looked down at my legs and the bandages that were already falling off. Shaking them free and kicking them to a corner, I looked over the damage. The little pellet holes were starting to close up, but were scabbing over badly. Great.

My ear flicked. I heard voices through the doorway at the end of the sawmill, where we’d met with Hydro and Waterwheel before we left. I walked over slowly, wincing slightly at the lingering pains of the fight and the trip back. I couldn’t make out what was being said, but somepony sounded very very pissed off.

“...just can’t believe this. You just let him die? Just let him drop into the lake?” shouted Hydro as I opened the door. She glared at Lost from behind Split Log’s desk, lying over Rainfall’s body, her clothes damp and her mane plastered to her face. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she sat there, looking back and forth from his corpse to my sister. She pointed a hoof accusingly, then bared her teeth and turned to Waterwheel, who stood wide-eyed staring at her. “I told you this was a bad idea, but no. You had to say it was okay. And look what happened!” She burst into tears and collapsed over the dead stallion.

I walked in, looked back and forth between the crying mare and my sister. “Oh Goddesses this is bad,” I muttered under my breath.

“We sent you up to look around,” Hydro said quietly. “N-not to get my Rainfall killed!” Gently, the mare shifted her hoof to lift Rainfall’s head to face her. “It... wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she whispered.

“It wasn’t easy for us either,” I said defensively. “You weren’t up there. It happened so fast, and he was just gone. It would have been us too if-”

“Hidden...” Lost chided, shaking her head.

Hydro didn’t look up, she just stared at Rainfall’s hollow eyes. She ran a hoof through his mane, tears falling onto his coat. “You think I-”

“Hydro, I’m sorry,” said Waterwheel calmly as he walked over to the mourning mare. He sighed rested a forehoof on her shoulder. “What happened to Rainfall was terrible, and... I don’t think there’s words for it...” For a moment he was silent, but he cleared his throat and looked at my sister and me. “Let’s focus on what happened. There’s... There’s nothing we can do for him now.”

“You okay?” Lost asked, leaning in close and gently hugging me. “What’d the doctor say?”

I’d forgotten exactly. “I’ll be fine, just need to be more careful,” I said dismissively, hugging back weakly with my wounded leg. I left out the warnings about the Buck. With how it made me feel... If I needed it again, I’d use it even if it was dangerous.

Waterwheel looked at the two of us desperately. “What exactly happened up there?” he asked. “Please tell me you learned something...”

“Learned something?” snapped Hydro. “My... Rainfall is dead and you care about what they learned?” She looked at him as if he’d just put a bullet through her heart.

“Hydro...” the stallion whispered, his voice soft and apologetic. “I’m sorry, but if the water’s still bad, then we might all end up...”

Even though he didn’t finish, I knew where he was going...

“It’s complicated,” Lost said. “He was leading us up. We got attacked.” She shrugged and looked away. “Rainfall got shot out of the air, and... We just had to keep going up. They shot when we tried to run back for help.”

“Shot out of the air?” Hydro asked, her eyes wide. “We sent you all up there together for a reason! Why would you let him fly out alone where you couldn’t help him?” Her tears had dried, and she stared daggers at the two of us. She shook, sniffling, and held a hoof over the dead stallion’s eyes.

“He was guiding us!” I shot back. “How were we supposed to stop him? We tried to help, but you told us this was just an easy little search! They shot at us from the mountainside, we couldn’t even see them. If we hadn’t fought back, they’d have killed us.” I felt bad about what happened, but this was the Wasteland, and there wasn’t any way we could have gotten out of that without doing what we did. “If it makes you feel any better, we killed them,” I said in my softest voice, trying to comfort her. “So he’s been avenge-”

“Avenged? Avenged!” she screamed, pointing a hoof from me to L.A. “The Wasteland is not black and white, everything is just shades of gray. Killing doesn’t just magically make it better. You didn’t bring him back to life. You didn’t fix the hole they shot through him! Not to mention, now we have nopony who can go up there and fix the problem. Do you have any idea how bad this is? We are, were, the only source of water that was even close to drinkable on this side of the mountain range!”

Waterwheel walked over to her, standing between her and us. He started, “Calm down Hydro, they were only tr-”

The mare shot him a glare that could kill, and he quieted. She turned to me. “You two need to learn a lesson,” she said. “I know damn well that killing is necessary in the Wasteland. Before we founded this town, I spent a decade dealing with slavers and the decade before that running from raiders. I know what the Wasteland is like, far better than the two of you from the looks of it.” She stomped a hoof down, glaring furiously at me. I stared back, letting her vent. “There’s a difference between surviving a firefight, and murdering somepony because they looked at you wrong. But just because you did what you thought you had to doesn’t mean it’ll fix the shit you dug yourself into.”

Waterwheel stared in the other direction, refusing to make eye contact with anypony in the room. Hydro had begun pacing as she lectured, shooting accusing looks back and forth between Lost Art and me.

“What you did up there, that wasn’t for Rainfall or me. That was to survive,” the mare spat, finally ceasing her pacing. “Don’t you dare pretend you did anything for me.” She slumped slightly and looked back at Rainfall’s body. “All this means is that we’re still in trouble... and I got to have my heart broken twice.”

With that, she stormed out.

I blinked a few times in confusion, and looked from Waterwheel to Lost Art.

Lost stared back at me, but then shook her head and turned back to the stallion. “Anyway.... There’s ammo boxes buried in and around the water up there. We found at least one that sent the PipBuck’s radiation counter crazy. But if there’s one... there might be more...” she said, pausing to tap a hoof against her chin. “There’s two Stables nearby that are still working.” She stepped up beside me and held out the PipBuck to Waterwheel. “They were made to keep ponies living after the world ended, so they’ll have something for clean water. It’s not a perfect solution, but it might be able to help?” She clicked over to the map on the PipBuck and showed the stallion. “They’re not far from here.”

“What about the Ashen?” I asked.

L.A. shrugged. “Hopefully they’ll have found they can’t get inside and gone home,” she said. “I can’t think of any other options around here. If you go in, you need to be careful though, somepony collapsed a roof inside.” She glared at me for being needlessly destructive. “There were feral ghouls inside, too, but hopefully we took care of all of them. The place really isn’t safe for anypony anymore, especially if that psychopath with the flamer hasn’t left.”

“Dangerous or not, we need the water,” Waterwheel said. “And anything that can help will benefit the entirety of the Wasteland, not just the ponies that live here in the town.” Leaning in close, he looked at the PipBuck screen, then walked over to one of the desks in the room. “As for Hydro? Well, she and I can figure this out once she has time to mend her heart. She and Rainfall were very close, until that stallion showed. I had a feeling something bad would happen, but never did I think it would be this bad.” He grabbed a pencil in his mouth and made a few marks on one of the maps pinned to the wall.

Until that stallion showed up... Is that why he was in the Stable? Looking for the same thing we were suggesting? Maybe he was a good pony... “Well, I guess... Problem solved?” I asked awkwardly. I wasn’t sure this was a ‘win.’ I needed some time to think. “Sis, can I have the PipBuck, if you’re done with that? I have something I need to do.”

“If you need to leave, I’ll work out with your sister what we need to do, both for us and as compensation for your help,” Waterwheel said, holding the pencil in the corner of his mouth. That must be his way of saying ‘thank you.’

“Sure...” Lost said hesitantly. Her horn lit up and she used her magic to flip the latch on the back of the Pipbuck open. Floating it over to me, she hooked it onto my foreleg and latched it tight.“Are you going to be alright?”

Ignoring her question, I pulled the book Grinder had given me from my saddlebags. I passed it to her, then hugged her tightly. “Here, I was told to give that to you,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the Inn afterward.”

I walked out before she could say anything.

* * *

Amber.

She had turned the PipBuck amber. It took me a good ten minutes to figure out how to change it back. The amber was just... Too distracting. The green overlay on my vision was fine. It felt natural because that’s how I found the PipBuck, but amber? What was she thinking?

Once I’d figured out how to change the color back, I headed out toward my custom marker. I walked through the woods slowly, keeping far away from any place we’d already been and the memories with them. Luckily for me, the forest was dead, and I never saw or heard anything like Seethe or his ponies. I kept an eye out on the E.F.S. just in case, so nopony could sneak up on me.

Eventually I reached the grave, and took a seat against the tree next to it.

I stared at the loose soil. “Uh... So,” I muttered, not really sure what to say. “H-how was your day?” I finally asked. After a pause, I nodded. “Yeah, mine too. I got shot a few times.” It hurt, a lot. I wondered, when I shot him did... “Hey? It didn’t hurt did it? Was it over fast?”

The soil didn’t respond. Of course the soil didn’t respond, there was a severed head underneath. A severed head I was talking to. Something was seriously wrong with me.

“I hope it was,” I continued anyway. “I met a mare named Hydro today. She talked about a stallion she’d met. Was that you? How come you never told her your name?” I sighed, feeling quite awkward to be asking about his personal life. “I don’t know if I should tell her what happened in the Stable. She lost a pony that was very special to her today and I think if I told her, it’d crush her.” I wasn’t really sad, but I caught myself crying anyway.

“So, was this supposed to be your story?” I asked, holding up the PipBuck. “I’m sorry I took it, I didn’t mean to mess with your... whatever it was you were doing here, or your relationship with that mare. But hey, if you really were out there trying to help those ponies, you deserve a salute. It’s the least I could do after...”

I grabbed my rifle as I spoke, and pulled it off the battle saddle. The process took a while, so I continued our ‘conversation.’

“No don’t worry, I’m not that bad off right now,” I continued, trying to sound reassuring. To a severed head under the ground. Goddesses I was crazy. “Just a little hurt, and unsure if this is really the life for me. We’ve spent all our time hiding out. I’m just... ill-equipped for what you were doing, good or bad. I didn’t... don’t even have proper barding! I’m lucky to be alive.” I let out a nervous laugh at that one.

“... Though I guess armor doesn’t always help,” I muttered with a twinge of regret. Changing the subject... “But in seriousness. I want to make it up to you, y’know for killing you. We helped the town, I think. In a roundabout way, but I think we succeeded. Hydro will get better in time, and the Wasteland will be better off in the end, right?”

He didn’t respond.

“I’m not coming back after this. You won’t be lonely will you?” I asked with a sigh, leaning against the tree. “I have to stop rushing into things without thinking. That’s what got us into this mess with you, that’s what killed...” Looking back down at the still-unsettled dirt, I sighed again and raised the gun awkwardly to my shoulder. This was what ended his story, and started mine.

Aiming off into the distance, I hooked my fetlock at the trigger and pulled.

With a massive, echoing BOOM, the barrel exploded. It kicked back into my shoulder, knocking me to the side and against the tree. I shrieked in fear and surprise, dropping it and pushing away. “The fuck!” I shouted to the woods. At least nopony saw that. Panting, I looked down at the split barrel and frowned. Really, Wasteland, really? Can’t even let me do a proper send off? Zero bullets left though, at least I’d gotten to use them all...

Mane frazzled and my eyes burning, I figured it was time to go.

“Well... Goodbye, Wastelander,” I muttered. “I think I’ll keep trying to help ponies. Either I’ll follow in your hoofsteps or I’ll right whatever wrongs you did, but I’m a treasure hunter first and foremost.” That was probably the most awkward thing I’d ever said. To a severed head. “Here, you can keep the gun.” I set the ruined rifle against the tree and started back. It felt good to say goodbye, even if he couldn’t hear me. This whole thing was a fiasco, but... Who was I kidding? I had no idea what I was going to do.

I clicked the radio on as I walked. Hearing nothing, I remembered I needed that damn earbloom. I fished it out and hooked it around my ear.

Clicking up the volume, the voice of the DJ burst from the earbloom, “-very pony! DJ Pon3 here with some unfortunate late night news from the area around the unicorn mountains.”

“Hey, that’s where I am,” I muttered to nopony, stopping to listen.

“It seems one of the few ponies actually out there trying to do some good and help has been taken out. Seem a certain group of someponies didn’t take too kindly to his selflessness. It ain’t much of a mystery who those ‘someponies’ are either, given a gang known as ‘The Ashen’ were seen parading his headless body around.”

Oh no...

“Real classy fellas...” said the stallion, giving a ‘tsk tsk’ after. “I want to remind everypony again to stay safe. The most dangerous thing you could find out there might just be another pony. So, for everything you tried to do, here’s a song for ya, Gunbuck. May Celestia and Luna reward you...”

I practically felt my heart stop. I... I didn’t just kill a good pony, I killed a hero?!”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: – Gunsmart, Bulletshy: Being shot repeatedly seems to have knocked some sense into you, and you’ve decided to slow down, actually think, and consider your actions and the consequences they might have. You gain +2 skill points per level.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Combat Coordinator – Perception and quick thinking in combat give you the edge. You are more likely to get off the first shot before an enemy can, and can direct allies in combat for faster, more efficient firefights.
Quest Perk: Unicorn Healing – You’ve finally learned the art of healing with magic. You can now cast a basic healing spell in addition to your current spells.

“So is getting shot a new hobby of yours?”
“Of course not, it really hurts!”
“Whatever happened to an ‘emergency healing potion’?”
“Well I-----------------[CONTINUITY ERROR]”
“The fuck was that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did everything just taste purple for a second?”
“Hidden... What did you break?!”

Chapter 4: Monster

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There is a trigger warning for this chapter, please see the notes at the bottom of the page for more details.

Chapter Four: Monster
“According to the radio broadcasts, Gunbuck is supposed to be male. Any explanation on that one?”

“Lost?”

I pushed the door open as I called for her. “We need to talk, okay?”

The walk back to town had been uneventful, which was a blessing from the Goddesses, considering my gun had blown itself up. I had made it back to the inn and found out which room my sister was in after a somewhat awkward exchange with the innkeeper. After a slow walk up the stairs, I’d just stumbled inside. As worn out and dirty as it was, just four walls, a roof that mostly didn’t leak, a bed and a desk, it beat sleeping in the woods.

Lost Art paced back and forth as I stood in the doorway, stopping at the desk and then turning to walk back toward the bed. Her head hung low and she muttered to herself, breathing heaving and looking back and forth. She stopped halfway through the room for only a second, before shaking her head and starting to pace again.

“Uhh, Lost?” I asked, stepping inside and closing the door slowly. I dropped my saddlebags onto the floor next to the desk and walked over toward her.

She stopped short and stared at me. With a deep breath she finally said something I could actually understand. “What if it’d been worse?” she asked, her eyes wide. “What if... Oh Goddesses so many things.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, placing a hoof on her shoulder and pushing to get her to sit.

Her hind hooves went out from under her and she fell to the floor with a quiet thud. “Today! Yesterday. What if it'd been worse? We don't know what we're doing, so many ponies have died around us!” she announced after a moment. Slowly, she looked me up and down. Reaching her forehooves out, she grabbed onto my shoulders and pulled me close. “What if I’d lost you?”

“Lost, take a deep breath, please?” I begged, wrapping my good hoof around her and gently squeezing.

“I am!” she said, breathing in sharply. “Stables, strangers, and then those raiders. And then again this morning. Plus the radiation, and that poor pegasus, and those zebras,” she muttered, burying her face against my neck. “We’re not cut out for this, Hidden. We’re not. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. Every pony that's died, every time, it could have been you."

“You know better than me,” I said in my most reassuring voice. Pulling back, I tried to wrench myself free of her grip, but she wouldn’t let go. “We did fine, you’re worrying about stuff that didn’t happen.” I was not good at being the reasonable one. Lost was supposed to be the pony who had everything together, she was the smart one.

Releasing me finally, she pushed me back and stared straight into my eyes. “Do you think mom would be proud?” she asked.

“Proud of what?” I asked, blinking in confusion. I felt like I’d stumbled across two ponies talking and missed the first half of the conversation. “You mean coming into town and helping these townsponies?”

She nodded in response and gulped.

“I think,” I whispered, trying to come up with an answer. Knowing mom, she’d... Well. “She’d probably have yelled at you for letting me drag you along.” I smiled, laughing a little. “Then she’d have patted you on the head and said it was okay, because you were watching out for me and I didn’t know any better.”

My sister stared at me blankly. After a few seconds she laughed. “Probably,” she agreed. “Mom never did give you enough credit.”

Well, given she spent all her time bonding with Lost over cheater magic...

“Honestly, you handled yourself a lot better than I did,” I admitted. Then again, the Buck had made everything so much easier, I didn’t do all that badly. “I think she’d be proud of that, at least.”

“I wish she were still around,” Lost said, barely above a whisper. She turned and walked away, hopping up onto the bed. Curling against the wall, she stared at me. “She’d have handled this a lot better than we ever could.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking down at the floor.

“It’s... just how the Wasteland is,” she answered. “You don’t need to be sorry, it’s nopony’s fault.”

That wasn’t true, at all. If I’d just... I sighed. The memory was still fresh, after reliving it again. Mom should be here with us, and she could’ve handled anything the town or the raiders threw at her without breaking a sweat. Sure she might end up with a scar over it, but she’d have done it and protected both of us at the same time. “Can’t go back though,” I muttered to myself.

“They deserved it though...” Lost said, staring at the stained sheet on the mattress. “The raiders were, well, raiders. The zebras attacked us. We just did what we had to. It’s just too much for me. I’m scared I might lose you, too.”

“You won’t get me killed. We’ve got a heads up now,” I said, motioning to the PipBuck, “and we work together as a team. Always. We watch each other’s backs; that’s how we got this far... Right? We can keep it up, no problem. Even if we don’t have mom here.” There was still one other thing I needed to talk to her about. “Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“I think we should go back home,” Lost said, hesitating. “Anything more than what we did today would be biting off more than we can chew. The Wasteland’s a big place, and there’s a lot of ponies out there that shoot first and ask questions later.” She sat up, looking a lot better than she had been when I walked in. She wasn’t frantically looking around or breathing heavily anymore, which was a great sign.

“Well, I still want to find out more about Gunbuck after-”

“Who?” she interrupted.

“I heard a radio broadcast,” I explained. “Apparently the stallion I killed in the Stable was called Gunbuck, or the Gunbuck. I’m not sure if that was his name or a nickname, but it’s better than referring to him as a severed head all the time.” I stood up as I talked, and walked over toward my saddlebags. Once there, I grabbed the Sparkle~Cola I found in the Stable. It felt like I’d picked it up forever ago, but it was still cool. “Here, you deserve it after today.”

“You sneaky little...” she said with a laugh, and snatched the bottle from my hoof with her magic. She popped the cap off and added to our reserves for later, and then downed the entire bottle with a grin.

“We were supposed to share that!” I yelled, tackling her on the bed. The bottle went flying, and we wrestled around a bit as I tried to punish her for drinking the entirety of my soda, again. Eventually we both collapsed, breathing heavily, the reason for our fight forgotten. It almost felt like we were fillies again, and aside from the pain in my back, it was a nice break from the stress we’d both been under for the past couple of days.

As I lay on the bed, staring at the slightly sagging ceiling, I couldn’t help but think about everything we’d been through. Lost was right in feeling overwhelmed. We’d gone through more in the past two days than we had since before we lost mom. So many bad decisions, and... Then there was Rainfall. He’d died because he was acting as our guide. If we hadn’t been there, he probably wouldn’t be dead. I couldn’t forget that, but if I just sat and blamed myself... I took a deep breath. Wasteland ponies died, that’s just how it happened. Still, I’d have to make sure we didn’t get anypony else killed that didn’t deserve it.

I shifted around to lay on my side facing Lost. “Umm... What are we gonna do about sleeping?” I asked.

“We’ll sleep together. Nopony has to keep watch here, so...” She blushed a little, tapping her forehooves together. “Just like when we were little.”

I nodded. For once we’d have a good night where neither of us had to be on edge, and she could finally get the sleep she really needed. I looked up at her and smiled. She was always there for me, watching out to make sure I didn’t rush into something stupid. She did far too much, worrying about me all the time. It was justified, though, given all the times she’d kept me safe and saved my haunches...

“Is that why you never sleep, because you’re always watching after me?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t a touchy subject.

Lost sighed and looked at me. “I just worry something might happen while I’m asleep,” she answered, sliding her glasses off and floating them over to rest on the desk. “You’re all I have.” She wrapped her hooves around me and pulled me close, a tear sliding down her cheek. “I miss mom and I miss dad. I don’t want you to die too.”

“I’m not going to die, not without a fight. We’re going through this together, until the end. We both succeed or we both fail. No matter how much it,” I winced, a sharp pain lancing through my back. “It hurts.”

“Did the doctor not do a good job patching you up?” she asked, a concerned look flashing over her face. “I... I can try to fix it. That book you gave me was on how to use healing magic.” She smiled hopefully, her horn glowing blue.

“Of course. It’d be a big help,” I answered, smiling back. I moved over and sat up, turning so she could get at the gunshot wound on my back. I felt the bandage being pulled off, and then a pleasant warm, slightly tingly sensation where the skin was shredded. I didn’t want to think about what was going on though, so I changed the subject. “L.A.? What was dad like?” It was the hundredth time I’d asked that same question, but I could never hear enough of it. While she healed, I closed my eyes and tried to remember him. I couldn’t picture a stallion I never really knew, but I was going to try. I wished I could remember him...

“He was the best dad ever... He cared a lot about you, more than me,” she explained. “But you were just a foal then, so it was because you were so little. He was a farmer, in the Stable.” As she spoke she worked on my back, knitting the skin and muscle back together. “He could grow damn near anything, even in the steel underground. His cutie mark was a flower with steel petals, after all. It was a real gift, and his carrots always tasted the best!”

“I wish he had gotten out with us,” I said quietly. I wanted to be sad, but it was hard to cry over a stallion I never really knew. That hurt almost as bad as losing him.

“I do too, but I think Mom did the most. Give me your hoof,” she ordered, moving to my side. Grabbing my forehoof in her magic, she enveloped it in a blue haze. “She always said he’d have been better raising us out here. That he was so much stronger than her. I think she did a great job. After all, we’ve made it this far.” She let out a pleased sigh when she finished.

“Before we leave, I want to get some more supplies,” I said. The pain in my back and the scabs on my hoof were all but gone. What I felt now was just a shadow of what it had been before. Cheater magic or not, no matter how inexperienced or weak, it got the job done. “I think I need to be more like you, to stop and think instead of just running blindly into things. After all the trouble I’ve gotten us into the past two days..”

Lost smiled at me, saying, “That’s a big step in being more responsi-”

“I went and talked to Gunbuck,” I added.

Lost’s expression twisted from one of pride to one of confusion, disgust, and near-horror.

Gulping, I pointed over toward my saddlebags to change the subject... “Plus my gun exploded whil-”

“What!” L.A. yelled, scrambling to sit up and stare at me. The shocked look she had when I admitted to talking to a severed head completely replaced by worry. “Are you okay? Did it hurt you at all? Why did you need your gun out there? Did you get attacked? Whe-”

I shut her up with a hoof stuffed against her mouth. It worked, but she made a face and pulled back. “I’m fine,” I said. “The barrel split open when I fired it. I just wanted to give him a send-off, because I’m not going back to him again.” I lowered my hoof and stared back at the ceiling. “The DJ said he was a hero... So, you worried if we made it worse?” I sighed and closed my eyes. “We probably did. In the end, we might have found a solution, but we probably set them back a lot. Its really a wonder we didn’t get more ponies killed.”

“I doubt a hero would shoot first and ask questions later,” she snapped, raising her hoof to touch the spot on her neck where he’d shot her. She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “The townsponies here are nice, though. They gave us discounted weapons and a room here tonight to stay since we helped.” After a pause, she looked over at me and forced a smile. “I’ll just be glad to get back home.”

“I know,” I said, “me too.” Really, I wasn’t thinking about going back to a hide away or to home, I had gears turning about what to do. “We killed a hero Lost, don’t you think we should make up for that? So that we didn’t make everything worse? I took something good out of the Wasteland, and leaving nothing it its place, that’s not much better than being a raider or a ganger.”

Lost just yawned. “That’s a bunch of shit,” she said, holding her hoof over her mouth to cover another yawn. “We’re not raiders or gangers, we’re just... ponies trying...”

Looked like it was time for bed...

I frowned, but knew better than to argue with her. She was probably too far gone to talk about it anyway. Still, I might be able to get one more thing out of her. “Lost... Why did you make the PipBuck amber?” I asked.

The only response was light snoring.

“Night...”

* * *

I couldn’t sleep.

The flow of time didn’t really matter, since there wasn’t a clock or anything else to use to keep track of it. No, wait, the PipBuck had a clock on it. It... well, it’d only been half an hour. It still felt like forever since L.A. had fallen asleep, and it got too dark to see. For a while, I’d played with the PipBuck to keep busy, but that got boring shortly after I found a button to turn the screen on as a light. The eerie green glow cast some fun shadows, but they weren’t really a long-term solution for my restlessness.

I lay there thinking about how the past few days had been so odd. Everything suddenly shifted when we found the Stables. It was supposed to be routine, same as always. Go in, find something neat or useful, get out. No fuss, no muss. Why did it have to turn into a mystery? I was sure if there had just been some fun stuff to plunder and then get out, none of this would have happened.

I needed to grow up though. Something like this was bound to happen eventually. We just got lucky that neither of us had died. I knew I was repeating myself, but I had to make sure it stuck. I tossed and turned in the bed, trying to not wake Lost Art. The covers were too hot, then too cold. I couldn’t get comfortable, but eventually settled on distracting myself, thinking about Hydro and Rainfall.

What was it like to fall in love? Mom would have given up anything for dad to be alive again, aside from my sister and I... Was that really what love was about, the idea of sacrificing anything for one pony? Needs of the few?... I loved L.A. but if she... No, she wouldn’t ever not be there for me. We were sisters, and we weren’t going to abandon one another for anything. Though... if I’d known who that stallion was before I shot, would I have let Lost... Could I have lived with that?

What if it was better to go that way though? After what I’d done, if Lost and I were working together, we could probably do some good. That stupid stallion... Why’d he have to shoot Lost? We could just go home, sure, but maybe it was better to make up for taking that little bit of good from the Wasteland. After all, our life hadn’t changed much since mom died, and we weren’t doing anything more than just surviving. I could find out more about the hero, too.

“What would Mom have done?” I asked the ceiling. L.A. snored and rolled over in response. Honestly though, we never had time to focus on something bigger. There were dangers out there that we had to avoid so we could keep our own lives together. Countless times we’d had near misses with slavers and raiders and, ugh! That Manticore that one time... Memories flooded back of Manticores and zombie ponies in the dark when I really had to go...

Not thinking about that.

I dragged my mind out of those memories and focused on Mom, and what she would have done. Mom would have avoided the town and other groups of ponies like the plague, and probably wiped the PipBuck as soon as she found it. Well, that wouldn’t... “Wait,” I muttered to myself, looking at the little old world device. I pressed some buttons to see what was actually on it.

My eyes widened when I found a ‘notes’ section. “He’d kept notes!” I announced to myself. I clamped a hoof over my mouth and looked at Lost. She moaned and rolled over, mumbling my name, but didn’t wake. I skimmed over them.

Most were just short lists, things I guessed he’d done or planned to do. I opened the one named Pommel Falls and skimmed over it. A little list covered the screen with what looked like instructions: Go to Pommel Falls. Talk to whoever was in charge of the town. Find out what’s been poisoning their water. Head to Stable Twenty One.

Wait a minute, what? How old were these notes and how had he even known their water was in danger? Or was it the PipBuck that knew all by itself? I couldn’t see any way to type, PipBucks didn’t have any keyboard like a terminal did. I poked at the screen a few times, trying to make a change to the notes. One extra letter and I’d be happy. I tapped the screen, hard. “Come on, do words,” I ordered it. Finally giving up, I decided I’d just talk to Hydro about it later.

Actually, mysteries could wait until after we had some time with Broker to get some armor. I really didn’t want to get shot again. Mysteries got me shot and broke my bones and I wasn’t going into that unprepared.

I rolled over onto my side and looked back at the patched up wound. The healing magic had really done wonders. It was no healing potion, but the job done was amazing. The pain was only a dull ache, and I could ignore it so long as I wasn’t actively thinking about it.

My leg was almost completely healed as well, which meant no more limping. I still had little red spots all over my coat from where it had scabbed over, but at least the lead was out of me. With any luck there wouldn’t even be any scars now. With a sigh, I rolled back over and stared at the ceiling again. Thinking had only managed to keep me awake...

Couldn’t I just sleep? Plans, plans... I tapped my forehead with a hoof a few times, then looked back at the PipBuck. There was a list for something called Leathers too. I opened that file and checked what his notes for it had been. The only bullet point listed was to get to Leathers, there wasn’t anything else I could see to give any indication of exactly where Leathers was, or even what it was. I flicked over to the map and tried messing with it to get a better idea of whatever Leathers might be, but all I could do was zoom in the little green grid-like map. There were a few little squares dotting the map, but trying to get it to do anything I wanted wasn’t happening with only one tired hoof. Useless! I flailed mentally, glaring at the PipBuck. I’d need Lost to figure it out... I yawned.

Finally tired...

Okay, tomorrow: get gear, talk to Hydro...

~ ~ ~

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I woke up. All I could remember was vague planning for tomorrow and something about a place called Leathers. I looked around and tried to move a hoof to wipe my eyes. Wait, what...? Something was wrong. Why was I tied up? I blinked a few times and tried to move. I couldn’t move any of my legs, and could barely manage to crane my neck down. Each of my rear hooves was strapped to the floor with a thick rope, and spread a good distance apart. My legs were pulled completely taut to reach the floor. I looked over and found that my forelegs were tied similarly to the ceiling, pulled almost painfully tight.

I tried to call out, only to find a muzzle wrapped around my mouth keeping me from opening it at all. The only response to my muffled plea was a quiet giggle and moan from somewhere in the distance. I started to panic, and looked around to try and figure out where I was. Hadn’t I been in a nice little room with my sister.

Where was Lost Art? Was she okay?

I was in a blank room, similar to the one I had fallen asleep in. But instead of a bed and a desk and my saddlebags and my safe sister, there was just the ropes holding me in place and a door in front of me. I tried to turn my head, but couldn’t make out anything else to give away where I was.

Time crawled and my heart raced. I struggled against my bonds. No matter what I did, none of the ropes budged. All I did was tighten them around me. Finally I gave up, hung my head, and waited. The panic didn’t stop when I gave up struggling. I breathed in ragged bursts, and felt my heartbeat pound through my legs and hooves, the tight ropes making every throb burn. Every so often I looked up, trying to spot something in the barren room that I could use to escape. Anything would help at this point. Anything.

No matter how many times I looked, nothing changed. I was all alone, tied up in an empty room. If only L.A. were here, she could help. Magic would be the saving grace.

I stopped myself. How dare I even consider that. I never wanted Lost to experience something like this, even if her magic would help. I’d just find a way to deal with it myself. Hadn’t I just been thinking that I would I give up everything to save her? If this was a test, then I’d just have to endure. Lost always had the hardest time in the Wasteland, and I wouldn’t inflict anything more on her. I just-

The door clicked, interrupting my frazzled thoughts. I looked up, eyes wide, hopeful that somepony had come to rescue me.

A tall orange unicorn stepped in, both his forelegs wrapped in pink bands. A wide smile crossed his face.

“So good to see you,” Seethe teased, “my... little filly.” He casually crossed the room, looking almost as if he were floating.

I gulped and shrunk down as much as I could against the ropes, hoping this would end. I didn’t know what happened, or why I was here. How had Seethe gotten into the town? How had he found us? Were all the others with him, too? I practically felt the blood drain from me, as my heart sank. I shook my head and tried to tell him to fuck off. All that came through the muzzle was muffled nonsense. I couldn’t even beg him to let me go.

Seethe’s expression changed as he reached me. “What’s wrong... little filly?” he asked. Pausing for only a second, he grinned wickedly at me. “No... as you said... you’re not a filly. I guess that makes you a mare now.” He wrapped a leg around my neck, leaned in close, and whispered into my ear. “You know what mares can do, don’t you?”

I froze in sheer terror, and broke out in a cold sweat. My heart sunk down to the pit of my stomach. My breathing got heavier, gasping, terrified breaths. I knew something was off about Seethe but... I struggled harder against the ropes that bound me. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

“Mares,” he whispered into my ear, “can fuck.”

Oh yes he would. I pulled my tail down in the vain hope that it would keep him at bay. I shoved back against him, as if I could force him off me while I was stuck like this.

He released me from his strangling grasp and paced around me a few times. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be... gentle,” he said. “After all, I want you to savor every stroke.” Stopping behind me, he slapped my flank right across my cutie mark.

I cried out, shifting myself away from his hoof. If not for the muzzle I would have screamed. I couldn’t get away. I was stuck. Powerless. About to be violated and, and Goddesses knew what else...

How was I going to get out of this? I kept looking around frantically, trying to ignore what he was doing. I tried not to think of it, of what he would do. Of where he would put hi- Another moan sounded in the air, that wasn’t me was it?! Luna, Celestia please save me. I can’t! Not like this! I’d never... I twisted and pulled at my bindings. Where was Lost? She had to get me out of this! I watched as the stallion turned and walked toward the door.

“Oh, did you want to leave?” he asked in a whisper, toying with me. “Well, here.” He opened the door and stepped back. “You can leave whenever you like.” Another moan echoed through the open door, louder than the previous one. He trotted back to my side, and raised a hoof as if offering me the open door. He pressed himself against me, making me flinch away. Pulling his hoof back, he slid it down my back slowly. “You know, it would be such a waste if you were to leave...” he said, leaning forward. “But I do like a mare who struggles.” He placed a kiss on my cheek, followed by another, moving toward my mouth with each.

I turned my head away, closing my eyes as if it would hide me from him. Another stinging slap on my already sore flank broke my concentration. My eyes snapped open, I let out a muffled cry, and pulled against the ropes. They bit into my hooves. I could feel a bruises forming on my legs and on my flank...

I began to cry. The tears streamed down my face. I struggled, my legs pulling and twisting to try and break me free. All I did was make the ropes pull tighter and dig into unpleasant places. I shook my head, leaning away, desperate to put even a little space between us, but all he did was push closer. I felt him put a hoof over me, pulling my neck toward him as he worked over me with his mouth. It was the foulest thing I had ever experienced, and from the way his leg was shifting, and the sound of his hooves on the floor moving. It sounded like he was heading for...

No!

~ ~ ~

I screamed so loud it could have woken the dead.

There was a moan, cut short by a loud shriek, followed by Lost Art falling out of the bed. She stared up at me from the floor, her face flush. “What happened?” she asked breathlessly. “Are you alright?”

I lay there hyperventilating for a moment, staring past her with a hoof over my heart. “I just had a nightmare. It was...” I muttered, pausing to take a deep breath. “It was very vivid. I...” Shaking my head, I tried to explain, “Seethe was there, and he was calling me a filly and got close.” I rolled over to face away from her and curled up. It was almost real. Why was I having nightmares about that? I mean- just- I screamed in frustration and punched the wall as hard as I could with a forehoof. It made me feel a little better at least...

“Are you okay?” Lost asked, between heavy pants. The bed shifted and she pulled herself up to sit next to me. After a short pause, she placed one hoof on my shoulder. “We can talk... about it if you want...?”

“No, I’d rather just forget it. It was just a nightmare, it wasn’t real. It can’t hurt me.” I said, more trying to convince myself than her. I rolled back over and flashed the fakest smile I could at her. “Is it morning yet? Can we head out now? I want to get moving as soon as we can go.” I slid off the edge of the bed. Taking a step, my hoof slid out from under me. I caught myself at the last second and lifted my hoof up. Confused, I looked to my sister. “Why is there a slick spot on the floor?”

Her face had been a light pink since I woke, but now it looked positively scarlet. Clearing her throat, she just backed away. “Must... be a leaky ceiling?” she offered. Without another word, she disappeared through the door.

I looked up at the ceiling and then back at my hoof. “But there isn’t...” I started. “Wait.” Remembering the moans from my dream and Lost’s blushing, I brought my hoof up to my face. “Oh Goddesses!” I could smell it. She’d been play- “Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew.” Fighting against the shudder, I hastily dried my hoof off on the already filthy bed. Not thinking about it, ever. Every pony dealt with stress a little differently, but I never wanted to know that’s how my sister did...

Moving away, I grabbed my saddlebags and tossed them onto my back, then checked the PipBuck to make sure all was accounted for. With one wary look back, I made my way down to the lobby. I nodded to the mare at the counter, feeling a twinge of guilt that I’d never learned her name, and started out.

L.A. stood out front, her face still a light shade of pink. She coughed as I walked out and we stood together for a moment in silence. “So... Broker’s?” she finally suggested, weakly smiling. Without waiting for my answer, she trotted across the roadway toward the little merchant shop.

Stifling a laugh, I followed her into the store.

Broker sat behind the counter, his face buried in a large metal box. While he was distracted with it, Lost and I browsed the items lined up on the wall. Sadly, the stallion didn’t list prices, but he had a few small guns in serviceable condition and lots of water. We eyed some basic leather barding, too. It wasn’t fancy or anything, but leather was better at stopping bullets than our hides. Honestly, browsing was boring compared to treasure hunting, but since we had the time, we leisurely collected what we needed.

I stood in front of the bottles of water that lined one of the shelves. Given they’d explained this was one of the only places with clean water, they were probably our best place to get some. Over the past few days we’d used up the last of our food and water, and then somepony went and drank the only Sparkle~Cola we were supposed to share... I raked my hoof across the shelf and pushed several bottles into my saddlebags. The next shelf down held several dented tins of ancient food, so I grabbed those too. It felt almost like cheating to me. We were supposed to be treasure hunters, not shoppers. Having everything inside a safe building seemed too convenient.

Was that how ponies got things before the end of the world?

While Lost sorted through the rack of barding, I stepped back and sat down in front of his gun selection. There weren’t many, and while all looked capable of firing, I didn’t really see anything I wanted. However, after much picking through and examining, I found a rifle I could stand. The PipBuck called it a Varmint Rifle, and that was good enough for me. I looked over to Lost, who’d finished as well. We walked over to the counter and stacked what we’d collected in front of Broker.

Broker ignored us, still nose deep in his box of goodies. Ever so often his horn would light up magenta and a little odd or end would float out and find its way under the counter and into a display case. Despite looking up several times to place them, he didn’t seem to notice us.

I stomped a few times, trying politely to get his attention. When that didn’t work, I cleared my throat as loud as I possibly could. “Ahem!”

“Huh, what? Oh,” he said, collecting himself. Without raising his face from the box, he looked back and forth between the two of us, rolling his eyes. “Hello again, our ‘saviors...’ What can I do for you today? Waterwheel told me I’m to continue offering my discount, which I have no problem with what-so-ever. In fact, I would give it to you free, if it wouldn’t put me out of business.” He moved the box he had been digging into off the counter, and continued in a whiny tone. “But I do have a family to feed, so, of course, I won’t be able to do that. I will, however, offer my generous wares at a decent price.” The contempt he had for the word ‘decent’ in that sentence was obvious.

His rant finished, he looked down at the pile we’d collected. He dug through it with both his magic and his hooves. After a solid minute, he looked up at us and announced, “Five hundred caps.”

“Are you kidding me?” I snorted.

“That’s far too much!” L.A. said, her mouth hanging open. “We could find all of this same stuff in just a few hours of hunting!”

“It is not, and you could not,” he snapped. “I have a family, and I don’t need them going the way of Rainfall. Death by starvation is just as bad as being shot, maybe worse. It takes longer.” Being blamed for his death outright hurt, bad. “This is a good deal, considering what you have here.” He waved his hoof across the counter, pointing out just how much we’d grabbed. “It’s not like you brought anything to trade in an effort to lower the price, either. On top of that, I notice you haven’t picked up any ammunition for the gun.” He scowled and looked directly at me. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Any at all?”

I blushed a little and glared at him. Thinking a moment, I brought up the inventory system that the PipBuck used, and counted off what I had. “No I’ve got plenty of...” I said, before catching myself. I only had the few shotgun shells left. Motioning for Lost to follow, I took a few steps back and moved behind a shelf. “How much do you have?” I asked in a whisper when she got to the far side.

“I have a few spark cells left, a little bit of ammo for the pistol, and those bullets that you found last night,” L.A. answered as she dug into her bags. “Plus the pipe we snagged from the raiders is still in good condition for smashing things with. On the one hoof... The rifle you picked up? We don’t have anything for it. On the other hoof, if all of this is going to be too expensive for us, we might have to toss a few items.”

“All I have that might be worth anything is the big rifle... that’s broken... Dammit,” I said realizing it might be worthless. Pulling it from my saddlebags, I walked back to the counter with Lost in tow. Since the other one completely exploded, there wasn’t much point in keeping this one for spare parts. “What about this?” I passed it to Broker, to inspect and appraise.

He stared at it, looking at every angle before tossing it to the floor behind the counter. “10 caps is what it’s worth,” he finally announced.

Actually, considering it was broken, that wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t enough. I turned to my sister and whispered, “Any ideas?” We needed something to make a bigger dent in his price.

“He’s a stallion, we could sweet talk him,” Lost suggested, shrugging. “He said he has a family though so it’s not like either of us would be able to seduce him...” She blushed, and shuffled her hooves at the idea. “What about those bits you found at the Stable? They worked last time.”

I shuddered at the thought of seducing a stallion. After the nightmare I’d had last night, I wanted nothing to do with the idea of seduction. “I doubt that’d be enough, and I’m sure he’d rather have caps anyway,” I said. “Maybe we should go speak to Waterwheel or Hydro first? He seemed to change real fast when Hydro walked in last time...” Whatever trick they had to get his prices more reasonable, it only seemed to work when they were actually around. I didn’t think it was a bad idea, in fact it was very much what a thinky pony would do. They’d get backup if it would solve the problem.

“Okay, we’ll try that,” she agreed, then turned to the merchant stallion. “Broker would you do me a big favor? We left our caps back at the inn. Will you hold our purchases until we come back? It would mean a lot to me.” She flashed a hopeful smile.

“I’ll hold ‘em at the counter. But if somepony else comes in and needs them, I make no guarantee that I’ll hold onto anything for you. I’m trying to run a business here!” he snapped at her. With a glare, he moved the pile of armor, food, and weapons we’d gathered to a corner of the counter. Waving us away, he pulled out the metal box he’d been digging through. “Oh, and here’s the caps for the broken rifle. You’re not going to haggle any more out of me for a broken gun, so don’t even try.” He levitated several caps from behind the counter and dropped them atop it carelessly.

L.A. lifted them into my bags, and we left.

* * *

We walked up the slick stairs to the sawmill, passing by Doc Grinder’s office. A hastily written sign was stuck in the corner of the doorframe, with big letters reading ‘Do Not Disturb: I will Saw You.’ For a moment I wasn’t sure if it was a serious threat, but after last night and the sawblade he kept in the corner, I wasn’t so sure. He was a doctor though, so he wouldn’t really slice anypony up for interrupting his sleep.

I hoped...

Lost pushed open the door to the main office for me. She followed after I walked in, but Hydro wasn’t anywhere to be seen in the office. After what happened, it wasn’t surprising that she’d be out. Looking over some paperwork, Waterwheel sat at one of the desks.

“Oh, it’s you two,” Waterwheel said, looking up at the two of us. The stallion looked tired, and he didn’t have the same force behind his words that he’d had just a day ago. Judging from the way he slouched, he hadn’t slept. “I’m still extremely grateful for everything you’ve done. The water, and the Stable location. It all really helps, especially now that Rainfall’s gone...” He paused for a moment and gave a small salute to the air. “Need to move forward... that’s in the past. With him gone, we will need to spur up trade again, and that damn DJ on the radio let out earlier than our water has problems. I understand the need for news to travel the Wasteland to keep ponies up to date and safe, but I know for certain there wasn’t a need for bad news we’re sorting out already. What with stories of raider armies and all the monsters around, we don’t need more to stress about.”

“Will everything be okay?” L.A. asked. “Do you have ponies who know how to move things from the Stable and set it up to work here?” She walked over toward his desk as she talked, and took a look at the large diagram behind it. It was terribly worn, with the writing faded far beyond being readable. It looked technical, and if anything could help in repurposing this place, that was it. “What exactly does this sawmill do?”

The brown stallion grinned and pointed back at the diagram. “Well, originally it was a lumber mill. The saws were there to cut up timber and float it down the river. When the war hit, it was switched over to a power plant to assist with the Academy nearby. The wood wasn’t needed as much, what with rationing and change in necessity, but they needed the power and it was easier to use the mill than build a new facility. When Hydro, Rainfall, and I started the mill up again, it was in terrible condition. She’s a brilliant engineer and well... I’m good with my hooves.” He smiled contentedly. “Together, we managed it.”

“So, can you convert the waterwheel that are here now, and use them to purify the water?” I asked, extremely confused. All this talk of sciencey nonsense made my head hurt. I tried to figure out how that might work but just ended up confusing myself. I stood behind Lost, hiding a bit, and just waited for an answer like a good pony. They would know what they were doing.

“That really isn’t how a waterwheel works,” Waterwheel said with a laugh. “In theory we can make something that will transfer water to a place where it can be purified, but we’d need to make extensive modifications to do something like that. Like I said, Hydro knows what she’s doing when it comes to working with water and engineering. I trust her. I just don’t know how long it will take, she’s in a very bad way about Rainfall and everything that’s happened.” He paused a moment, adding under his breath, “I just don’t understand mares...” He sighed. “Look, you should really go talk to her instead. I’m pretty useless unless you need me making or maintaining something with directions already drawn up. Unless you need somepony set straight,” he said, smiling and puffing out his chest. “I can help with that.”

“Actually,” I started, shuffling a hoof against the floor. “We think Broker is overcharging us. I know you told him to give a discount for our help. And, I mean, we don’t really deserve it, but we’re in desperate need of some supplies...” I did my best to sound helpless. Given the circumstances it wasn’t difficult.

“He has a tendency to do that,” the stallion admitted. “You just gotta talk him down. Don’t let him scare ya, he’s harmless.” Waterwheel laughed a bit. “I’ll come with you if you really need. He knows better than to try and overcharge me, or Hydro. Or Rain...” The laugh faded, and he looked over and stared at the outside wall. “I just wish she’d waited. That stubborn mare...”

“Stubborn mare?” L.A. asked quietly. She looked over to me.

“Hydro,” answered the stallion. “We planned to wait until morning to put Rainfall in the ground, but she wouldn’t wait.” He looked back to us and sat at the desk. “There’s so much to do now, I had to prioritize. Live ponies need help as soon as possible, he’s... not going anywhere.” Slouching, he stared back at the paperwork in front of him.

I nudged Lost in the side.

She nodded. “We should go see her,” she said after a moment. “Sorry for interrupting your work. Good luck with the talismans.”

“I’ll talk to Broker as soon as I finish,” he replied. “Sorry for dragging you into our affairs.”

“Thank you. And...” I said, realizing I didn’t know how to respond. Really, it was all too much, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk to Hydro again. It had to be done, though.

Following Lost out the door, we walked away from the town and toward the far side of the lake.

The ground around the lake was so saturated with water from the falls it had turned to mud. We had to go the long way around, finding patches of ground that hadn’t turned into slippery mush. At the far end, past all the muck and mud, right before the treeline, Hydro stood looking back and forth between a covered body and a deep hole. A few homemade markers spotted the ground around her, the names of other ponies carved into them.

“What do you want?” she asked, glaring at us from the corner of her eye. Covered in mud and breathing heavily, she was a far cry from the same sobbing mare we’d seen last night. Now she looked pissed. “I’ve lost a lot lately, and I don’t have time to deal with forced or hollow apologies. Just leave me alone so I can bury him in peace.” Swinging the shovel back around, she stabbed it into the mud.

I started, “That’s no-”

“We’re leaving town today,” Lost Art interrupted. “We... nevermind. We just came to say goodbye.”

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Hydro, I wanted to ask you something,” I said, breaking the silence.

“Make it quick,” she snapped angrily, swinging the shovel up and throwing mud to the far side of the grave. Turning to face me, she stabbed it back into the ground beside her. With a hoof, she swiped her matted mane away from her face.

“Well, do you know why Gunbuck came to this town?” I asked, lifting my forehoof. I clicked a few things on the PipBuck, bringing up the notes I had been reading the night before.

“Who?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I- Oh, right,” I said, realizing she hadn’t learned his name. Time for a different approach. “He was the stallion who...” I bit my tongue, realizing how bad an idea it would be to mention her one night stand right as she buried the pony she’d cheated on. “Do you know why he was heading to Leathers?”

Hydro’s eye twitch. She raised a hoof to the covered boy next to her. “Does it look like I have time for something like that? I’m trying to bury a pony I loved. Fuck off and ask him yourself,” she snapped. She grabbed the shovel with her telekinesis and pulled it from the ground, grumbling under her breath, “Fucking Goddesses, the one time I fucked up. I should just go haul his ass back and... Wait...” She stopped and stared at me. “Just how do you know where he was going?”

Fuck.

The mare looked me over once, her eyes stopping on the little arcano-tech device strapped to my foreleg. “Where’d you say you got that PipBuck?” she demanded.

I took a few steps back, stammering, “Well, at the Stable there was-”

“The same Stables right near here? They were just lying around?” she pressed. “Why don’t you both have one then?”

I cleared my throat. If I told her that I killed him, and she had that damn shovel...

As I thought that, she swung it around in her magic. “Who had it before you?” she demanded.

“Well, a stallion,” I muttered, backing another step back. “I... heh... I didn’t get his name.”

Furrowing her brows, Hydro swung the shovel and pointed the bladed end at my face. “A stallion, in a Stable, who’s name you ‘didn’t get?’ Just how did you get the PipBuck off him, I hear those things don’t come off so easy. Especially if the owner doesn’t want them to come off.”

The deep blue haze of Hydro’s magic disappeared, replaced by the lighter blue of my sister’s. She twisted the shovel away and stepped between the two of us. For a moment the two stood with eyes locked, each holding a different end of the shovel, fighting to control it. “Don’t you fucking dare. That bastard put a bullet in my throat, but we got him one better,” she said, practically growling. “I understand you’ve been through a loss, but he was a one-night fuck you didn’t even get the name of. You have no right to threaten my sister.”

“A loss? A loss?” Hydro snapped, twisting the shovel free of my sister’s magic. “You bitches killed not one but two stallions I cared about. And you have the audacity to tell me you understand that I’ve lost something?” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and lowered the shovel back into the open grave.

Lost and I shared a look, then turned back to the purple mare.

“I want you two. To get out of my town. Right now,” Hydro ordered calmly. Opening her eyes, she bared her teeth at me. “And if I ever. Ever. Ever see either of you again. I will personally show you the difference between accidents and murder.”

“Yes ma’am. Of course ma’am,” I muttered, motioning to L.A.

Once we were out of earshot, back in the town, Lost glared at me. “This is why we avoid towns.”

* * *

It was a beautiful day in the Wasteland. The cloud cover was gray and oppressive, like it was purpose built to suck the life out of every pony who’d managed to hang on this long. The air tasted like warm sulfur, there was dust in and on my everything, and ponies whose lives we’d just saved wanted us dead. What a wonderful day indeed.

L.A. and I stared down at the ruins of an old town. We had a good vantage point, a small flat spot up in the hills. Below, the view wasn't anything special, just another chunk of the city that had been nearly obliterated by the war hundreds of years ago. The buildings all leaned slightly, covered in so much rust and mold that it was visible even from where we were. According to the PipBuck, Leathers was ahead of us, past a long trek through the hollowed out remains of the town. It wasn’t very far, in all honesty. But, after the fiasco with Hydro, the idea of resupplying in town just went sour. The trip would be a lot longer while we hunted for treasure, but Lost was right that it would get us more and better supplies. It would just take us a lot longer.

Together, we winded our way down, taking it slow and careful. Faint red markers popped up and disappeared in the E.F.S. in the corner of my vision, but none stayed long enough to worry about just yet. With so many buildings left as rusted frames, we made a beeline for the nearest that still had actual walls. As we walked, I used the trick I’d seen Lost use, checking to the sides to make sure that there wasn’t anything waiting to ambush us when our backs were turned.

I loved any chance I got to get away from the Wasteland and into the zone of treasure hunting, but that didn’t stop it from being boring most of the time. Lost and I checked several buildings, most of them the remains of houses left empty by decades of other scavengers. Every time was the same, checking the kitchen first for important things like food, then up to bedrooms where ponies once kept their valuables. I kept an eye out for a gun case or something similar. With only the shotgun from the dead raiders, we needed some firepower. The pistol L.A. carried only had a few bullets left, and we’d be in trouble if anypony attacked us.

To speed things up, I checked the upstairs bedrooms of each house while Lost dug through the kitchens. Whoever dug through these homes first left little, with only a few tattered remains of clothing under beds or inside drawers and wardrobes. I did find a few magazines, though most were missing several pages. I put everything I could carry into my saddlebags, prioritizing the magazines more so than the hole-filled clothing. The one real treasure I managed to find was a nice, if tattered, sundress. I tucked that away for later, just in case. It would go nicely in my little collection of pre-War outfits that I never found time to wear.

After several houses and countless hours digging, we regrouped in the foyer of the last house we’d found that still had a roof over it. L.A. looked at the kitchen she’d walked in from and shook her head. “Slim pickings here,” she muttered. “They’ve got food, but it’s too far gone to actually eat. Let’s check the basement and get out.” When I nodded in agreement, she pried the basement door off its single remaining hinge and let it fall to the floor.

Trotting down the stairs, we found a single room with a working light. At the far end sat a terminal, with a mass of cables sticking out the back of it. They criss-crossed over the floor, their ends disappearing into the walls.

“Somepony must have really liked their terminal,” I joked nervously. Hesitantly, I walked up to it. Halfway across the room, the PipBuck beeped loudly, and both the terminal screen and PipBuck screen flashed several times. “What in the...?”

“They’re both supposedly made by Stable-Tec, so they can talk to each other,” L.A. explained. “Mom showed me once.” She walked over to the terminal, pressed a few buttons with her magic, and pulled up the main terminal password screen.

BEEP.

My ears swiveled forward in an instant and I felt my heart jump into my throat. “Oh shit, not again...” I whispered, throwing myself to the floor. I covered my head with my hooves.

BEEP.

The terminal exploded with an ear-splitting BOOM. Bits of glass and metal flew through the room, raining down on both of us. L.A. hit the ground next to me, cursing. A loud snap cut through the air. The wires lining the floor came alive and twisted up into the air. They writhed for a second, before disappearing into the walls.

“What in the Goddesses’ name was that?!” L.A. shrieked.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Barely lifting one hoof, I stared at the shattered frame of the terminal. “I hate... those... things...” I whispered. I could feel my face burning, the memory of the last terminal that exploded in my face brought right to the surface. “Can we just leave? Please?” I begged, my heart still trying to force its way out of my chest.

“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” Lost said. She helped me up and led me back up the stairs. Once we reached the first floor, we ran out of the house. Even if we hadn’t cleared the rest of it out, whatever the fuck that was, I was ready to put the entire Wasteland between us just in case..

I hated rigged terminals. It took a special kind of twisted to do that to another pony. Terminals weren’t supposed to have big wires like that, and while they were prone to exploding in my face, that wasn’t normal. The terminal had been on and ready for us, or somepony, to log in, and that should have been a big red flag. It was almost... waiting for us. I shivered.

“You okay, Hidden?” Lost asked.

“I hate terminals, Lost...” I answered. “Let’s just go. Please?”

Lost nodded and we left. After skipping a few buildings to put some distance between us and whatever that was, we split up again.

We went slower to watch for any more weirdness with wires or exploding terminals, but spent the majority of the morning digging through the same houses and buildings. It was much of the same old routine: get in, check, leave. Most of what we collected was food, with a few rounds of ammunition here and there. The process took ages, but with enough persistence, I always managed to find one last thing before we left each building. Despite every place we checked looking like it should be completely barren, there was always just enough to get by. Either every other scavenger and raider just wasn’t trying, or I was really good at finding things.

I headed for a building covered in wartime posters, with one featuring a pink and grey haired pony plastered on the wall repeatedly. Over and over I read the phrase ‘Pinkie Pie is Watching You FOREVER,’ all while being stared down by the mare. Her eyes seemed to follow me no matter where I stood.

I trotted inside the building and looked around. At the far end of the room was a counter running the length of the wall, with a small table in front of it. Atop the counter were dozens of boxes, all sagging and rotting from age, lined up and blocking my view. If there was anything worth finding, it’d most likely be in the boxes. Ponies always seemed to keep things in them.

Pushing one of the boxes to the side to make room, I hopped onto the counter for a bett-

My rear hoof clipped the counter, and I fell flat on my face. Several boxes toppled down next to me. “Ow...” I grumbled, picking myself up. “Mental note: Be more careful when exploring ruins.”

A little clatter from behind caught my attention.

Turning around, I looked at the floor under the counter. A little rifle lay there, with several faded flecks of tape attached to its underside. “Well, what are you doing here?” I asked the gun. “Fall from the counter?”

The gun didn’t answer.

Picking up the gun, I pulled the tape pieces off and examined my prize. The PipBuck classified it as a varmint rifle. The caliber it fired was smaller than my previous guns, but it had a full clip and a little scope. I stuck it in my bags and went back to hunting. In one of the boxes I’d knocked over was a half-empty box of ammunition for the varmint rifle, but nothing else worth while.

I left and headed up to meet with Lost. She had gone into a building with a giant BANK sign hanging from the front. When I found her, she was bent over a terminal, trying to force her way into it. For a few minutes while she worked, I watched in silence absent-mindedly, before realizing I could attach the new rifle to my battle saddle. I didn’t have any tools and without a horn to do the detail work, it took a while, but I got it in working order soon enough.

Once I finished, I looked up at Lost. “Any luck?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Let me use this.” Without warning, she snatched the PipBuck in her magic and dragged me to the terminal.

“Hey, that’s attached!” I snapped. The grip made me twitch a little, but I forced myself not to recoil. The memory of being held against my will shot into the back of my mind, and for just a second I felt the pinch of a muzzle on my face. Its just Lost, I told myself, my sister wouldn’t hurt me. I pushed back against the memory of the nightmare. If I just didn’t think about it. Why was it even bothering me anyway? It was only a nightmare. I took a few deep breaths and forced myself to calm down.

“Uh huh,” she responded absent-mindedly, unaware of my little internal conflict. She went back and forth between the two screens for a few minutes, eliciting beeps here and there. A few minutes passed before she let go of my foreleg and went back to the terminal. “I don’t need luck.” She hit a button and series of clicks echoed down the hall from another room, followed by a rustling noise. “Let’s go see what our prizes are.”

We walked to the other room, and found row after row of lockboxes inside. Lost took the right and I took the left, where we went down each row, cleaning each out. The majority were empty, probably cleaned out right before the world’s end by ponies fearing the worst. Even more surprising was the fact that the backs of several lockers were gone... that didn’t seem very secure for a bank. There were a few treasures to be found though: a plasma pistol that L.A. squealed over, some old world bits and gems, and some cans of something called Cram locked in a box with some cigarettes. Somepony must have wanted to keep their vices a secret. The last treasure I found was a first aid kit. Finally. With how much I’d been getting shot recently, that was a gift from the Goddesses.

I chuckled. Here we were, two sisters robbing a bank two centuries after anypony would care about it. Shrugging, I went back to digging around in the lockboxes until Lost’s voice dragged me away.

“Hidden?” she said. “What do you suppose that is?”

I pulled my head out of a lockbox and looked where she was pointing. In the back far corner of the lockbox was a splotchy black pile of... something. Something weird. I could have sworn I saw it move. I rubbed my eyes. Nope. Stationary. “I don’t know,” I said. “Random spare electrical parts?”

Lost shook her head, answering, “I can’t tell what it is. It looks it’s coming through the wall from outside.” Her horn glowed and she magically lifted the black mass up out of the lock box for closer inspection. “Why would this be in a-”

The mass abruptly thrashed and struck out with wiry tendrils at Lost Art’s face.

Lost shrieked and dropped the bundle of wires.

The mass, still attached to the lockbox by a stalk of twisted wire, lashed out at Lost's legs. Backpedaling, she grabbed the lockbox door with her magic and slammed it against the blob of wires. Pushing with her magic, she forced the door halfway closed. The wires snapped at the air, reaching around the door toward her.

I slammed the lockbox shut with both hooves and held it closed with all my weight. Looking at her, I blurted out, “What the...!”

“Who cares! No treasure is worth that,” Lost said. “Run!” She bolted from the room and after making sure she was safely in the outside, I jumped away from the lockbox and ran after her. Behind me, the metal door slammed open again, echoing a shrill metallic clang through the building.

“Alright, heading straight for Leathers now?” I asked. After all that, I was ready to be done. It’d been half a day already and that was more than enough hunting. I wasn’t going to push my luck. Not waiting for a response, I turned toward where the PipBuck told me Leathers was an- Wait a minute. Something caught the corner of my eye. Was that a... I bit into L.A.’s mane and pulled her into an alley, where we ducked behind a shattered wall.

“Ow- Fuck! What was that for?” she snapped at me, rubbing her head with a hoof. “I just got this thing loaded! It’s a beaut isn’t it?” She held the pistol up, the gun encased in a blue glow. The wall next to her head exploded, filling the air with dust and grit. The bang of a rifle cut through the air. “Oh, we’re getting shot at again. Wonderful!”

“You’ve gotten really good at being jaded L.A...” I said, biting the battle saddle’s bit to ready my gun. I peeked out past the edge of our little hiding spot to get a look at our attacker. A bullet tore through my ear, shredding half of it off and sending a jolt of pain down the side of my head. “Ow!” Then the distant bang that could’ve warned me sounded off. Blood trickled down the side of my face, but it wasn’t bad enough to waste any of the one health potion we’d found in the first aid kit on. Before our attacker could fire again, I peeked over the edge and snuck a look at whoever it was. The new gun might not be as powerful as my last, but at least it had a scope. Looking through, I could see several raiders and- Something flashed. I pulled back behind the wall, barely missing getting shot again. A chunk of the wall exploded when the bullet hit. “There’s a bunch of raiders down there... I’m gonna get all shot up again aren’t I?” Why isn’t the Wasteland ever fair?

“Just use S.A.T.S.,” Lost suggested.

I stuck my head out past the wall, barely missing getting shot in the face. “What's S.A.T.S. anyway?” I asked, all while looking at the PipBuck's indicators in the corner of my vision.

“It's a targeting spell in the PipBuck,” Lost explained. “Just cast it like you would any oth- Oh, right.”

I shot a glare at her. Turning back to the ponies shooting at me, I concentrated as hard as I could on... something. Mom never taught me how anything about magic, even if it was PipBuck magic. Frustrated, I shifted and aimed my new rifle at the pony that kept shooting at me. I didn't need any help from the PipBuck, I could shoot perfectly fine with or without S.A.T.S.

The E.F.S. in front of my eyes flashed white, then back to green. In an instant my vision filled with several little blinking markers in different colors. The shooting mare froze mid-shot, her head covered in a red haze. The other ponies were all covered similarly, with green, red, and amber circles dotting their bodies. Confused, I look- I twisted.

I couldn't move.

Oh Goddesses. I didn't need this. Not in the middle of a fight. I just needed to let go. Fuck the S.A.T.S. I didn't need it. I could fight without it. I tried desperately to shake my foreleg, to get rid of the frozen feeling. I couldn't feel my heartbeat or my breathing, I couldn’t even hear the sounds of the Wasteland in the distance. Did I get shot? What in the Goddesses name was going on?

Focus, I shouted in my own head. Nopony else is moving. It's not just me. The PipBuck's spell. Okay, that made sense. Well, I thought it made sense. S.A.T.S., targeting was better if everything was still. Of course. That's why nopony was moving, not even me. This... this wasn't so bad.

Calming, I tried to figure out what the colors were. Did red mean it was a kill shot, or did that mean I wouldn't hit at all? Why hadn't anypony explained how this worked? I'm sure somepony would have if I'd gotten one before we had to leave the Stable. Dammit. Only one way to learn. I'd just fire at one green one and one red one. I just needed to figure out how to-

Real time kicked back in and I fired two shots from the rifle. One of the rounds struck exactly where I had aimed, tearing a hole in the pony's hind leg. She dropped from the balcony. The second bullet missed, but she was already down, hitting hard enough to throw up a cloud of dust. That spell was terrifying and absolutely wonderful at the same time. I tried again, thinking S.A.T.S. the same way I had before. When that didn’t work, I tapped the PipBuck and yelled at it, “S.A.T.S.! Work!” Stupid PipBuck didn’t listen.

Bullets peppered the wall we were hiding behind, shattering chunks of wood and stone off. If we stayed here too long, we wouldn’t have a hiding place anymore.

“Why won’t it come back?” I demanded.

“It has to recharge. Trade places with me,” she said, hoisting up the plasma pistol. We swapped places and she stuck her head out past the corner. She fired, her pistol letting out a B-KEW sound, then ducked back behind the wall. Somepony in the distance screamed, and my sister smiled. Another pony down.

Peeking out to fire again, her smile disappeared. Ducked back behind the wall, she stared at me, her eyes wide with terror. “Hidden,” she whispered. “Run!” Hesitating only a second, she pushed me up onto my hooves and ran past me. “Come on!”

“What happened?” I shouted, chasing after her at full gallop. “Why are you spooked?” I was at full speed, but she ran like she’d just seen a bomb go off behind us. “Slow down! I can’t keep up!” She didn’t even look back, so I just tried to follow and not lose sight of her.

Both of us galloped as quickly as we could through the ruined buildings and streets. In the distance behind us, I heard the spattering of sporadic gunfire, followed by somepony screaming unnaturally. It echoed through the dead, and suddenly silent city. Whatever had just happened, that scream sent a chill down my spine, and for just a moment, I felt sorry for those raiders.

* * *

By the time L.A. finally stopped running, my lungs were burning and my legs felt shaky. We had actually made it further away from Leathers than when we started at the edge of the forest. She collapsed in front of me and I followed suit. “Why,” I rasped, gasping for air, “did we,” huff, puff... “run like that?”

“More wires,” she said, sounding horror-struck. The plasma pistol still floated beside her, and she frantically looked back and forth. “Check the E.F.S. Do you see anything at all?”

I looked back and forth, but saw nothing ahead, behind, or to either side. “Nothing at all,” I said between pants. “We’re alone.” Whatever those wires were, they kept the raiders from following us. I already knew they were trouble, but I wasn’t sure I’d take them over the raider, even if she did try to turn my head into a bloody stump. It was a blessing from the Goddesses they turned their attention, but that scream... Why hadn’t they run? More importantly, why’d the air suddenly smell like death?

A heavy thud shook the ground behind us. I turned around slowly, and saw... well, I wasn’t quite sure. It looked like a pony, but it was much bulkier, and made of metal. It trudged closer, and finally I realized it was a massive armored pony. The armor looked very sturdy, totally encasing the pony within and made of unpainted, dull steel with a yellow visor over the eyes and twin tubes leading from the faceplate down to the chest. I had heard rumors from traders about ponies encased in metal armor, but couldn’t remember their name. Slowly he walked up to us, each step of his blood-smeared hooves unnatural and stiff. He didn’t walk like any pony I’d ever seen, but every one of his stomps shook the ground under me. Goddesses, he smelled foul.

“Did you kill those raiders for us? Thank you so much!” I said in my most cheerful voice. I reached back to get L.A.’s attention, looking up at the pony. I knew I was a tough pony, but standing next to this massive armored stallion, I suddenly felt very small and very fragile. The closer he got, the worse it smelled. I realized where the smell came from. He was covered in blood, all down the front of his armor, from muzzle to hooves. Even the visor was splattered with it. It was fresh. I took a few steps back, still waving a forehoof toward Lost. Why wasn’t she answering me?

Lost Art turned around, and screamed. “That’s it!” she yelled, pointing her gun at the armored pony. A deafening B-KEW sounded beside my head as she began firing wildly. Little green bursts of plasma sparked across the armor of the pony, with no apparent effect.

“What do you mean that’s it? That’s what?!” I screamed over the sound of her firing. I looked back and forth between the two. Sister firing frantically, and an armored pony not reacting. None of this sat right. I backed toward her, and following her lead, I fired a few shots with the varmint rifle.

Whoever the armored pony was, he didn’t seem to be slowed at all by the barrage of plasma and lead against him. His armor either absorbed every hit or was repairing itself somehow faster than I could see. He stopped his advance and a compartment on his back opened up. A gun far bigger than any rifle I’d ever seen emerged, and that right there was enough to send me running. L.A. seemed to have the same idea, because we both hauled flank as fast as we could in the opposite direction.

A split-second later, a series of muffled reports echoed behind us. The sound confused me, since it wasn’t like any weapons fire I’d heard before. Even silencers sounded sharper than the coughing thuds from his gun, but I wasn’t gonna spend any time trying to figure out what made it different. The answer came soon enough though, as a few hunks of metal that looked suspiciously like apples flew through the air past us. They slammed into the walls of the alley we were in and erupted into flames. Both of us shrieked and turned the nearest corner onto a street.

The thudding followed, louder and faster, shaking the ground and the walls around us. Dust flilled the air, making it harder to see where we were running. None of that mattered, because grenades that turned everything to fire weren’t worth sticking around for.

“This way, this way!” I yelled, turning down another alleyway. L.A. followed me as we sped off as fast as our hooves would take us. “Okay here, here.” I twisted down another alleyway, praying my sister was still behind me. I could hear her heaving for breath still so she couldn’t have been that far away. We barrelled through trash and rubble, jumping through broken windows and over chunks of wall to continue. Nothing was going to stop us from outrunning whatever it was behind us.

The armored pony didn’t stop though, it just smashed through everything in its way. Walls shattered and collapsed as he pushed through them, still chasing after us. Slowly, the shaking ground and thudding hooffalls grew quieter, distant, before falling completely silent. The worst part about the monster pony in the blood-covered armor? He hadn’t shown up on the E.F.S., at all. No matter what direction I looked, the only marker in the corner of my vision was Lost’s green one. Not knowing where he’d disappeared to shook me to the bone.

“Stop, I can’t breathe,” L.A. shrieked, taking in shallow gasps of air. She skidded to a stop and I followed suit. “The wires. In- in the basement, and the bank. I don’t- It just. It grabbed those raiders.” Her breathing was slowly going back to normal as she spoke.

“Grabbed? Then what?” I asked, staring at her. I almost didn’t want to hear the answer.

“I don’t know!” she shouted. “I just saw wires wrap around her and the one on the ground, and then they got pulled away.” She reared up on her hind legs and grabbed at the air with her forehooves, as if she were dragging an invisible pony away. “Do you think I wanted to wait and find out!”

“Okay, okay. I got it,” I muttered, wrapping my hooves around her and hugging her tight. “Let’s just keep heading toward Leathers. When we get there it’ll be ok. There has to be somepony there that can help or else Gunbuck wouldn’t have been heading there, right?” I tried to convince myself just as much as I was trying to convince her.

When she’d calmed, we ran toward the compass marker. I kept one eye on the E.F.S. Whatever that armored monster had been, we hadn’t killed it, and I couldn’t trust that it would give up. It hadn’t shown up before, but I was freaked out and not paying attention. I just had to keep an eye on it and- A green marker flickered above the compass. Green meant they were somepony friendly, right?

“I see somepony,” I said.

“Good for them. We need to go!” L.A. snapped back. “We watch out for us first.” She pointed a hoof at herself and then at me. “We can’t hang around with that thing near.”

“But what if it goes after them?” I asked, not wanting another pony to die if I could stop it. “Look, the E.F.S. didn’t show the armored pony. This is showing up, it has to be safe. We can’t abandon somepony. Would Gunbuck have done that?”

"Gunbuck shot me at first sight!” L.A. snapped. She stared at me a moment and her ears drooped. “Why do I listen to you? I'm older...” Pulling a spark cell from her saddlebags with her magic, she reloaded the plasma pistol. “Just lead the way and keep an eye out for wires.”

I led Lost toward the marker on my E.F.S., keeping an eye out for anything moving. Rubble from the collapsed buildings filled the roads and alleys, making it hard to watch for the armored pony. I navigated solely on the magic in the PipBuck, using it to weave around buildings and into open alleyways. The map feature was amazing, we didn’t even have to slow down.

With no indicator how far away the marker was, I just kept searching. Ducking around a corner, I ran right into a white swirled design on a dark flank. L.A. subsequently rammed into my rear and we all toppled over. Loud yelps of surprise sounded both in front of and behind me. I recognized not only Lost’s, but the other one as well.

Struggling, I pulled back to untangle my hooves with whoever I’d run into, and looked up at them. The familiar deep blue eyes of Xeno stared back at me.

“Oh, they sent you after me then?” Xeno asked as she picked herself up off the ground. “I would still prefer if you were to let me to live. I have left completely, as I promised I would. Was that not enough for the ponies in that town? Their water supply is now untainted by my zebra curses.” She nearly smiled, but stopped at the last second to collect her bag.

“No, I... why are you here?” L.A. sputtered.

“I told you,” the zebra said, tossing the single bag over her head and onto her neck, “I have much I inspire to do in the Wasteland, I did not wish to be murdered, so I left. Where was I to go? I have nothing left, so I am to start a new life. This begins with wandering, does it not?” She tilted her head, blinking slowly.

Her rambling did make some sense, but, okay it made no sense at all. “Okay well. How about...” I said, trailing off as I stared at the mark on her flanks. It twisted in a circle, the whole spiral seeming to spin around her haunch. “How about...”

“What is wrong with you? Why are you staring at me like that?” Xeno asked, shifting slightly.

“Spinny...” I muttered absently. That was all I could manage before she moved and the marking disappeared from sight. “What? Huh? Sorry.” I shook my head, snapping out of the swirl’s grasp. “Your cutie mark is hypnotic... What does it mean anyway?” Was this really the best time to be asking this? Internally I gave myself the worst facehoof ever.

“I do not have a cutie mark, that is a word made up by you ponies, it does not hold true for my kind. But I thank you for the compliment. I am proud of it,” she said nonchalantly, before she turned back to the pile of rubble she had been digging in. “I do have a life to rebuild though, there is much I am acquired to do.”

No longer distracted by her... whatever-it-was-called mark, I remembered why we’d run into her. “Okay, Xeno. It’s not safe here right now. There’s... a thing. I can’t really explain,” I tried to explain. I looked side to side, with the hopes that whatever the pony or wires were would give itself away before it attacked.

Lost Art had backed herself against the wall as tight as she could, looking back and forth repeatedly. Her gun moved erratically, following the frantic movements of her eyes. She finally joined the conversation, without so much as lowering her gun. “Can you just join up with us so we can get out of here?” she demanded, “That thing could be back at any moment!”

“What thing do you speak of?” Xeno asked, before pulling back from the rubble. In the corner of her mouth she held a steel rod with a chunk of stone on the end. She tossed it down and spat a few times before continuing, “There is nothing here. This place is empty of ponies and all else. I have been here since yesterday, and seen no one.”

“I beg to differ.” I argued. “Come on, please? I will tell you about our life and our goals in the Wasteland, you can tell us yours? We can be friends!” I noticed I was mimicking her speech patterns. “Look, it’s dangerous here.”

“Just come on already!” L.A. yelled, putting her gun away. She wrapped her magic around one of my ears, and around one of Xeno’s. She tugged and I yelped, following the feel of her telekinesis.

“Ow, don’t rip it off,” I cried. She’d grabbed the ear I’d gotten shot in. “Stop, please, I’ll follow.” It was no use though, and she dragged me off anyway.

“Sorry, I’ll fix it,” she said as she led us behind another building. Releasing the two of us, she switched her magic from levitation to healing. The blue glow around my ear slowly healed it, knitting the flesh back together like it’d never been shot. When Lost finished, she smiled. “There, let’s go.” Turning away, she cantered away.

I followed, but stopped when saw Xeno heading back to where we’d found her.

“I would rather not be a burden,” she said, looking back at me. “You ponies have already seen the trouble I cause to those close to me.”

I stared back at her, trying to find the words to convince her to come with us. The smell of rot filled the air, and the ground shook, crumbling a massive chunk of a nearby building. The blood-smeared muzzle of the armored pony emerged from an alleyway. The ground shook again as he stepped into view. With a stomp of his hoof, he turned to face the zebra mare.

Noticing the shadow around her, she spun around and stared almost straight up at the massive armor-encased pony.

My legs moved on their own, jumping me between Xeno and the blood-covered suit of armor. I pulled the shotgun from my saddlebags on instinct, not willing to let the zebra be hurt because we stupidly led whatever this thing was to her. Behind me, I heard. L.A. call something out, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I looked up into the face of the armor, staring at the glowing yellow visor. I bit down and fired the shotgun.

The buckshot ricocheted off the reinforced glass, managing only a miniscule crack. The visor glowed green, and the crack instantly sealed itself up before my eyes. I tried to reload the shotgun, but a massive hoof to my side threw me into one of the broken walls. For a second, everything faded to black, but the loud crack of my back brought me back to a world of pain. Dropping to the ground, it felt like every bone in my body had shattered, and I was fairly certain the gunshot wound was open again. I tried to get up, but my hooves wouldn’t move as fast as I needed them to.

Xeno stood still in front of it. She hadn’t moved when I jumped over her, yet managed to get out of the way when I was kicked back. She stared at the armored pony, her legs shaking. His armor cracked, a split forming at the muzzle. Slowly, where a mouth would have been on a normal pony, the armor itself opened, revealing rows of metallic teeth. The zebra mare shrieked as a chunk of bloody flesh spilled from the corner of its ‘mouth.’ One of the wires we’d seen in the bank slithered from between two teeth. It twitched and undulated, before wrapping around the fallen chunk of meat.

There was no way that thing was a living pony.

The now familiar B-KEW noise of Lost’s gun filled the air. Green bursts of magical energy erupted on the armor, a few going directly into its mouth. It squealed metallically and reeled, the back of its helmet smoking where the plasma melted through from the inside. Wires poured out from the openings in the armor, and twisted around in the air wildly. The armor itself began repairing, sealing up the holes around the flailing wires.

As Lost fired, Xeno turned and ran. Her hooves went out from under her, tripping her as one of the flailing wires passed where her head has just been. Mid-fall she caught herself, rolling and righting herself. She wove around the shots L.A. was firing. Crouching down, she shrunk away and hid behind my sister.

I managed to get myself right-side-up again and took aim. Before I could fire, a faint noise filled the air, the distant sound of music playing. Looking around, the only other thing I could see was a little hovering robot. Terror took over as it dawned on me that this wire... thing could have other not-pony friends that would help it in killing us. Then, after we were dead it could use those wires to... Goddesses.

On the E.F.S. though, I saw three little green markers, one of which was right under the hovering robot. Why did it show up, while the armored pony didn’t? A malfunction? The little robot floated closer, and the music coming from a large speaker behind its grill-like ‘mouth’ got louder. It stared forward blankly, two massive eyes reflecting the view of our fight back at us. Four large wings buzzed, holding it in the air. Friend or not, it looked disturbing.

I screamed into the grip of my shotgun and fired. The shot hurt me a lot more than it should have, and definitely more than the monster pony. The recoil shook me to my bones, making me ache to the core. Apparently getting thrown into a wall did a lot more damage than I thought. The floating robot joined the fight, shooting little pink beams of magic energy at the monster. I whimpered with relief around the gun, glad whatever it was was on our side.

I kept firing, but even with all three of us wasting our ammo, the armored pony seemed completely unfazed. He just stood there, wires undulating in the air. The armor repaired itself as fast as we were damaging it, but as long as we kept firing, the monster wasn’t moving.

I stopped firing, sidestepped toward Lost, and dropped the shotgun into my forehoof. “We need to get out of here,” I said. Stuffing the gun back into my mouth, I fired a few more shots. I aimed for the legs, hoping it would slow him down. Goddesses, I needed to put this gun on my battle saddle.

“I know, but if we stop shooting he’ll chase us again...” she said. Following my lead she fired at its other leg. “We can keep running, but he’s just going to keep following.

“If he has another target there will be no reason for him to follow us,” Xeno suggested.

I spat the gun down again. “But there’s nopony else here!” I said, looking, around with the E.F.S. “I just need a minute to stop and think.” A few seconds of free time, where I could just make a plan without my head full of the sound of gunfire and worry that if I stopped firing I’d be dead. Could I use S.A.T.S. again, to buy myself ti-

White flashed in my vision and everything went still. The little hazes of red, amber, and green appeared again, covering my vision. I focused on the armor, trying to ignore the nagging feeling, the claws digging at the back of my mind, reminding me that I couldn’t move anymore.

I looked at every detail, all the little chips and dents, and at the holes blown through the front of the armored pony’s legs where we’d focused our shots. A pool of blood surrounded the armors’ hooves. Inside the armor were more wires, intertwined with chewed hunks of meat and some poor pony’s jawbone. His mouth was still open, showing nothing past its ‘lips’ other than another black mass of wires that looked almost like they were supposed to be flesh, slick with whatever this monster used for blood. Its teeth glinted in the light, wicked sharp and terrifying. Definitely not a pony! What in the fuck was this thing? How could Celestia and Luna ever let it come to be?!

The worst part about it? S.A.T.S. couldn’t target it.

I looked back and forth between the armored pony and the floating bot, between the colored indicators and where they should have been. Okay, this was the part where I needed to be a thinky pony. With the extra time I had, I needed to come up with a plan.

The bot over in the distance attacked it, which meant that it could target it. There had to be some way, then. If we could get him to shift his attention over to that, we might be able to escape while he was distracted, just like Xeno said. I’d just... have to lure it over there and get Lost and Xeno to run in the other direction... It’d seemed more interested in me anyway because I attacked its face... Okay. It wasn’t a good plan, but it was the best I had. Now I just needed to figure out how to cancel the spell.

With everything frozen around me, I couldn’t tell how long it took me to get the spell to drop, or if it just ended on its own. Everything around me snapped back to life, and the air filled with the deafening sounds of battle. I screamed over the firefight, “You two need to run!”

“What about you?” Lost yelled back between shots.

“I have a plan,” I yelled. “You two need to run.” I could feel my voice getting hoarse from screaming.

“I’m not leaving you,” L.A. screamed back, her voice wavering.

“If she says that we need to, I think that we should trust her,” Xeno chipped in, her voice barely rising above the din of the gunfire. “She has survived much, despite the luck that I carry. I feel her suicidal attempt will not succeed.”

“Just go!” I said.

“I’ll be close by,” Lost said, finally relenting. She backed away, firing at the head of the armor.

While they retreated, I reloaded the shotgun. It wasn’t an easy feat for an earth pony without cheater magic. With the adrenaline pumping, I managed a few shells into the gun. Snapping it closed, I ran toward the wire-monster. The B-KEWs behind me went silent, leaving me the only living thing on the battlefield.

Wherever she was going, I hope she’d be okay. Xeno too. Without the constant gunfire, the armor repaired faster. In almost an instant, the holes and dents disappeared, leaving it looking as good as new. The wires slid back inside the armor, leaving what looked like an almost normal armored pony standing in the middle of an abandoned street. If only there wasn’t the blood or the giant gaping wire-filled mouth.

Two wires shot out and wrapped around my midsection. This was new. It lifted me into the air, and its face split clean in half. The visor separated, revealing more teeth and more rotting flesh. The wires around me tightened, digging into my coat and making it hard to breathe. Flailing did nothing, but I kept at it anyway. I had to get out of the grasp, being tied up, now. My heart pounded in my throat, and I fought against panicking. I needed to stay calm, even if it... even. Screaming, I kicked at the wires with my forehooves, desperate to break free. The nightmare played over in my head again, with little claws digging at the back of my mind, reminding me of all the terrible things that could happen. This wasn’t a real pony though, right? It couldn’t do that to me? Real ponies can fuck, this...

Stop! I screamed at myself internally. That was a nightmare, it wasn’t real. This wire pony wasn’t going to rape me. It didn’t even have a body inside the armor. There weren’t even parts for that. It’d probably just kill me. As sickly amusing as a thought as it was, I’d prefer being killed and eaten.

The rationalizing helped, and the claws of fear retracted ever so slowly. I tried to take a deep breath to calm down, but couldn’t draw breath. I gasped, adding ‘not being able to breathe’ to a little list of my favorite things to never do ever again. My lungs burned from the pressure. The edges of my vision started to go black. The wires tightening around my waist felt like they were ripping me in half. I fought to stay conscious. I looked around, desperately. I needed something, anything, I could use to get me free. Otherwise... I’d be crushed to death. Just like before, helpless... No, no, no! Do not think that, it’s not the same at all!

Behind the armor, the floating bot took potshots, all while blasting out upbeat music as loud as it could, as if it could cover the sound of the weapons blasts. The wire pony did a very good job of ignoring it. Its teeth began to move, not the jaw itself, but the teeth all slid back and forth along the jawline. The movement started with a high pitched whir, before the cacophony of grinding metal overtook it.

Oh Goddesses. I was going to get sliced into pieces and eaten! Where’s a ceiling when I need one? Quick and painless crushing was better than this torture.

Just wait, be patient. That’s all I had to do. I could breathe when I was done. Just another minute. As long as Lost got away... I aimed the shotgun down and fired a shot directly into the wire-filled gullet below. For a long moment, nothing happened, then the wires released me.

I slammed into the ground. A jolt of pain shot up my left hind leg, followed by a stomach-turning crack. I howled in agony as something wicked sharp and jagged dug into my leg from the inside. The E.F.S. flashed repeatedly, something about a crippled limb? I didn’t have time to worry about that, I needed to run.

It turned slowly, moving unnaturally. The ground shook with every step. Behind it, the floating bot fired its little magic zapper again and again, but it was barely a distraction at this point.

Forcing myself up, I ran as fast as I could. Every step hurt, the jagged edge inside me stabbing out. I limped, tears rolling down my cheeks. Ignore the pain. Just run. Just. Keep. Running. Get it away from your sister. Keep. Going! My brain screamed at me to keep going forward. My heart pounded begging me to stop. My lungs burned, barely able to keep up. Where was some Buck when I needed it? I could have taken this guy on easily if I had some of that.

It wasn’t chasing me. The ground didn’t shake. No thuds echoed in the air. I was going to get away.

A little fwump echoed in the alleway.

Fire erupted all around me, scorching my tail and searing my hide. I screamed, jumping away. Smashing into the ground, I rolled. Flames licked my back, my coat burning from just above my cutie mark to my shoulders. It hurt. I hurt. Inside and out, I burned. Weakly I rolled once, dust and grime coating me. It snuffed the fire, but... It was too late. I gave up, and cried. Going limp, I looked back at my killer.

The wire pony turned away from me. It’s split visor focused on the floating bot. What the...

Did it think I was dead? Thanking Celestia and Luna above for best luck I’d ever had, I watched. I couldn’t do anything else.

The bot dipped and ducked the wires lashing through the air. The wire pony didn’t fire another grenade. Was he out of ammo? No, my luck wasn’t that good. Too close? Maybe. Did it matter? No. He was distracted, and that was what mattered.

I crawled away, dragging myself with my forehooves. Moving slowly, I tried to look as still as possible. I didn’t dare grab the healing potion we’d found. I needed those precious seconds to move away. I didn’t trust it would stay busy. Watching the monster and the bot closely, I pulled myself around a corner. As soon as I was out of sight, I pulled myself to my good hooves and ran. I couldn’t look back. Struggling on my broken leg, I put as much distance between us as I could. The PipBuck kept flashing warnings, something about low health and other symbols I didn’t understand. Ignoring the warnings, I kept moving. Eventually they disappeared.

In the distance I heard a horrific crunch. The music went silent.

Goddesses, no.

Clenching my eyes shut, I forced myself to take another step. Just to get away from it, that was all I had to do. If I could run, I could get to Leathers. There’d be some kind of help there.

The wall next to me exploded. A mass of wires sped through the air and smashed right into me. They threw me into the air. Another wire wrapped around my throat before I could fall. A second wrapped around in the opposite direction. They both tightened, choking me. My lungs burned as I fought to draw in breath. Suffocating, everything started to go dark. The edges of my vision began closing in. I panicked, my heart racing. I felt my pulse in my head and ears. The throbbing slowly weakened. I tried to kick at the wires, in a feeble attempt to do... something, anything to get it to stop.

The whirring started again, sounding almost as if he were laughing. Laugh at me will you? You only got me, not my sister or my new friend. They’re away, I knew they were. Even if I had to live through being ripped piece by piece, she was safe. She’d better be safe. I’d come back and haunt her if she wasn’t safe. After all those times she saved me from near-certain death, I finally get to repay her. I’d better give it indigestion.

My little internal monologue didn’t help. I was terrified. This was going to hurt, and I wasn’t ever going to see my sister again. Please Celestia. Please Luna. Let Lost have gotten somewhere safe. That fear was back, clawing at the corners of my mind, the parts that were still going at least. Helpless... A stallion, what was once a stallion? It held me helpless, at its mercy... Goddesses, make it fast...

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear the encroaching blackness anymore. I resigned myself to my fate. Guess it was just my time. “Sorry, sis...” I rasped as best I could. My kicking hooves slowed. They felt heavy, cold, and numb...

A noise cut through the air, overpowering the grinding of the metal teeth. My eyes shot open again. Through the black haze a massive barrage of pink and green magical energy explosions erupted on the side of the monsterpony. The shots tore through the wires holding me in the air.

I fell to the ground with another sickening crunch. Jolts of pain shot up my legs and back. More health notices flashed against the blackness, but I ignored them. I still couldn’t breathe. The severed wires were still wrapped around my neck.

I dug at the wires. Why couldn’t I have been a unicorn? My heavy hooves wouldn’t work right. I couldn’t catch an edge to rip the wires free. I didn’t have enough... I felt light headed, and everything hurt. My lungs were on fire, burning through my chest and ready to implode. Finally I found purchase. Pulling as hard as I could, I ripped a wire away. Fighting with both hooves, I loosened the other. I collapsed back onto the ground, gasping. The wire still clung to my throat, but I could breathe again! I was saved.

With all the strength I had left, I turned to see who or what had opened fire on the wire monster. A small herd of similarly armored ponies off in the distance fired at the armored monster. Bursts of magical green plasma and pink lances of magical energy struck the wirepony’s side. One pony, standing in front of the others with a gigantic gatling laser on his back focused on the monster’s head.

They all looked the same, with the same armor as the blood-coated monster that tried to kill me. More of those things? Maybe I wasn’t saved... If those armored ponies were full of the same masses of wires and flesh, I would just roll over and let them eat me. One was tough enough; a group of them would be impossible. Maybe. If I could only get a few minutes to catch my breath, then we’d see.

I looked back at the wire monster. The concentrated fire steadily tore his armor into chunks, with pieces flying off into the ruins. The wires inside started to melt from the heat, but it didn’t seem fazed. It backed away from me and turned to them, the grenade launcher extending from its back.

I covered my face with my hooves and rolled over to shield myself from what was about to happen. A volley of fwumps sounded as it rained fire on my ‘saviors.’ Peeking one eye from behind my hooves, I stared at the carnage.

The grenades exploded all around the group of ponies, lighting the ground around them on fire. One armored pony wasn’t so lucky. The last two grenades slammed into him, exploding and coating him entirely in flame. He collapsed, the armor burning red hot and its seams bursting. Steam shot from inside, followed by a soul-haunting scream.

I’d been lit on fire too, I knew that pain. Whoever that pony was, they’d just been cooked alive.

The others didn’t miss a step. They ignored the fallen pony, instead continuing their advance. With a single motion from the pony in charge, they reformed their ranks in front of the collapsed armor.

The wire pony reared up on what was left of its hind legs. Hopelessly outmatched and outgunned, it finally turned to flee. Masses of rotten flesh and lengths of wire sloughed off as it moved. Its armor reformed as it fled, repairing with surprising speed under the onslaught. The thing galloped off, weaving through the road and out of sight down an alleyway. The others fired after it, reducing the ruins to little more than dust before they finally stopped.

Was it... really over? I relaxed, going limp. I tried to ignore the smell of rotten flesh and scorched electronics. But having survived, they smelled sweeter than I could have imagined.

“Hidden!” That was Lost’s voice... She’d made it.

“It looks as though luck did not fight against you this time. You are alive. This is good!” And that was Xeno’s voice... they’d both gotten free.

That made nearly dying worth it. My everything hurt, but at least it was worth it. I breathed deeply, glad to still be alive. I felt Lost’s magic wrap around my foreleg and pull at me. I didn’t want to stand, but I had to. It took a moment, but I forced myself onto my working hooves.

“Well, that was easy,” I said, forcing a smile and looking at the ponies surrounding me.

“You’re very boastful for somepony who should be dead,” the armored pony with the gatling laser said. Oh, she was a mare, a mare with a sweet, if stern, voice. “A ‘thank you’ is in order.”

“Sorry,” I said, looking down. “Thank you. You’re not another one of those... Whatever it was.” Lost and Xeno were alive with her, so she probably wasn’t. But if she was... Well, I was too fucked up right now to fight back anyway.

“You’re welcome. And no, we may share the armor but my soldiers and I are nothing like that thing,” she said, much to my relief. “On to business: your sister tells me you are here to assist us in the factory. I highly suggest you prove her right. Come with us, now. All three of you.” With that, she turned and motioned for her troops to pick up their fallen comrade.

“Umm... I can’t really... walk right now?” I protested. I was still having trouble breathing. I kept swallowing, fighting the urge to throw up from the pain.

“Hmm, yes,” the armored mare said. “I often forget that... others don’t automatically receive treatment when they sustain wounds in battle. Lost Art, you said your name was, correct? There is a compartment on my armor. Grab a Med-X from in there and assist her. We need to move before that monster comes back.” A small panel popped open on her flank, right where her cutie mark would be. Not much was visible, mostly more, ugh, wires. Inside was a vial and some tubes, maybe? She stood still for a moment, allowing L.A. to grab the medicine as suggested. “You two, collect the Knight’s armor.”

My sister floated a syringe back to me, then stabbed me in the flank with it. In an instant the shooting pains faded and I could think clearly again.

* * *

I spent the majority of the trip propped up between Lost and Xeno. While I didn’t feel the pain from the shattered bones, whenever I put any weight on the leg, I could feel the nagging little lancing sensation through the Med-X. Xeno didn’t have to help, but I was extremely happy that she did, because it made things a lot easier for me. Considering that the last time we’d seen each other, L.A. and I had each killed one of her brothers, she had a surprisingly relaxed attitude.

The mare with the gatling laser led the three of us to an enormous factory that seemed almost undamaged compared to the ruins of the city behind us. Through my stupor, I could make out a soldier posted at each corner of the roof, with extras watching here and there through windows on two sides of the building. We entered through what must have been the back before the War, as there wasn’t a sign or plaque or anything above the door denoting what the building was. I knew it was ‘Leathers’, but I didn’t know what Leathers was.

“Welcome back, Star Paladin,” said the armored pony guarding the door. He saluted as we walked by.

“Thank you,” she replied, before turning to her soldiers. “Take the Knight and his armor to decommissioning. As for the rest of you bucks, listen up! Get some rest, and be up for the change of watch in 5 hours. You all did well. It’s no piece of cake to drive that cannibalistic fucker off. You’ve earned your rest. Now get out of my sight.” The soldiers scattered before she could even finish her sentence. “Now, you three. As you may have gathered, I am the second in command at this forward outpost. My name is Jazz. You were in luck that we were on patrol. If we hadn’t been, you’d be dead at this point. I do suggest a ‘hello’ next time instead of shooting at me. I understand our organization has a history of not working well with... other ponies, but I do try to not be as...” She cleared her throat. “Corrupt as some of the chapters. I will fire back if I am shot at again. This is your only warning.” She grumbled something under her breath, but the only word I caught was ‘Sabre.’ It didn’t make sense, and probably wasn’t for our ears anyway.

“You have the same armor as that monster. How was I supposed to know? I thought you were with him!” Lost said, sounding one-third exasperated and two-thirds apologetic. She shuffled her hooves slightly, nearly dropping me to the floor. Luckily, she caught me in time.

“Understandable, I suppose,” the mare admitted. “Come with me. I’ll explain why we’re...” She paused. “...glad to have you here.” She turned and entered the building through the large door at the top of the ramp and motioned for us to follow. As we did, she took the helmet off, showing herself to be an off-white mare with a short cropped mane, two-toned in red and yellow.

“Can we stop and get my sister to a clinic or something first?” L.A. asked with a groan. “I’m really close with her normally, but holding her up like this isn’t what I had in mind.” While Lost asked for help, Xeno remained silent. Must have just been one of the differences between ponies and zebras.

“Mmm, yes, that would be a good place to start the, ugh, tour. Follow me,” she responded. She led us down a rusted steel hallway, with windows into a gigantic room full of machinery on one side and doors to offices on the other. Sounds of soldiers snoring came from the offices. “This building was originally a factory used to manufacture skywagons and train cars from the woods shipped here from the mountainside.” She marched in front of us, droning on as if we were wasting her time. “As you can see by the half finished armor on the assembly line, the factory was absorbed by the Ministry of Wartime Technology and used to produce armor for the Academy nearby...”

Uh huh. Why was she so snappy when she spoke? Was she pissed off or something? It hurt to think about it. Instead, I stared at the armor pieces on the various machines through the window, captivated by the glinting light coming off the metal. They were in really good condition for being so old. I tried to stop so I could stare longer, but couldn’t get a grip on the floor. Why couldn’t I stop? I wanted to stay and look at the armor.

Lost gingerly set me onto a gurney in one of the rooms with her telekinesis. The blue glow from her magic mixed with a silvery colored glow coming from a pony I couldn’t see. The two of them together shifted me so my broken leg was clear of anything it might catch on. It stuck into the air, twisted unnaturally halfway down. Something poked at my back and I tensed, a shiver of pain shooting up where I’d been burnt. It didn’t really hurt too much. Just a little ja- “Ow!” I yelped, before feeling another wave of numbness over my everything. “Med-X is amazing...”

“If you’re the help we’re supposed to be getting, color me surprised,” said the pony who had just injected me full of painkillers. “According to the radio broadcasts, Gunbuck is supposed to be male. Any explanation on that one?” She finished her prodding and trotted around in front of me. Apparently they hadn’t heard the radio broadcast... “Either way, I don’t appreciate being given extra work. I was supposed to be transcribing schematics all afternoon.” The doctor in front of me was a short mare, with her bright pink mane tied back severely with a white band. It even had a little red plus-thingy in the center. Her coat was the same color as the ferals’ I had crushed just a few days ago, making her look almost like a fresh ghoul herself. It was hard not to laugh. Laughter was definitely not the first thing I should be considering doing here.

“Sorry Doc, I hope it won’t be too hard to fix,” I said, laughing softly. I struggled to cope with all that had happened. I did see a horn though, which was a vast improvement over my last physician. To me this also meant no digging out shotgun pellets with her mouth, and that made her the Best. Doctor. Ever. “Also. Is my leg broken?” Absently I looked at the corner of my vision, where the little pony outline was blinking again. “Because my PipBuck keeps telling me that it’s broken and I would really like it to stop flashing warnings all over my vision.”

“Yes, in several places. We’re very lucky it didn’t break the skin...” she answered, twitching at the word ‘break.’ “I do have something that can fix that quickly, though.”

“Doc...” I started. I looked down at the twisted, bent part of my leg. While I stared, the ghoul-colored unicorn jabbed a need into my, “OW!”, leg... A new sensation took over. I felt... I couldn’t place it, but the bones started growing back and reconnecting. It was very odd, but didn’t hurt too much, it felt more like growing pains or a deep itch. I watched the show, as my leg twisted back around to a healthy direction and the bones adjusted into their proper places. The fragments even made audible clicks as they snapped back together.

“What was that stuff?” Lost asked, her horn glowing. She picked the needle the doctor used up with her telekinesis and hovered it in front of her eyes. Staring at it intently, she spin the little syringe around. “How’d it do that?”

“It is called Hydra. You do not want to know how it is made,” Xeno answered. “I would advice not using it again though. The problems it causes are worse than what it fixes. I would also advice not breaking bones in your legs.” She grabbed the syringe out of Lost’s magical grip and threw it into a sink nearby.

Wait, why was there a sink? I thought this was a factory. I rolled off of the bed, landing on all four hooves. Nothing broke when I landed, and that was good enough for me. The flashing warnings had disappeared, meaning the Hydra had done its job. I took a look around. I was actually laid on a table, and this was actually a break room. A busted fridge sat in the corner, with a counter next to it running to the wall. The sink Xeno put the syringe in was inset in the corner.

“Thanks, Doctor... uh...” I muttered, fumbling for a name.

“We call her Plagueheart,” Jazz said with a smirk, making the mare grimace. “It’s unimportant though, we need to meet the Elder and get you briefed on what we intend for you to do...” She looked me up and down once and shrugged. “Gunbuck?”

Lost started to explain, “No, she’s not Gun-”

“No matter,” interrupted the Star Paladin. “From your timing, I thought you or your sister was the one known as Gunbuck, but...” She paused for a moment, and looked over toward Doc ‘Plagueheart.’ The two shared look for a moment before Jazz continued, “I suspect that’s not the case.”

“If you would get back on the table, please? I need to make sure you’re alright,” ordered the doctor mare. Plagueheart tapped on the table and began to lift me back up with her magic.

“No no, that’s fine. I’m perfectly healthy now. A broken leg was my only wound, I promise. Just put me down,” I said as calmly as I could. Her holding me up wasn’t helping. I struggled, pulling my hooves back and forth to break the magic. I could only move an inch or so in any direction. “Put me down.” I whispered this time, trying to focus on something else. She was a doctor. Doctors helped. A trickle of sweat ran down my forehead. I needed to calm down. After the last time somepony messed with me on an operating table... Doctor or not. I wasn’t even going to think about the nightmare or the wires or the- okay, brain, Stop. Thinking!

“I’ve always been the one to make sure she’s safe,” Lost said. Thank the Goddesses. “There’s no need to go poking and prodding in her.” Lost’s magic wrapped around one of my legs and pulled, making me feel like a tug-of-war toy.

The sensation of being pulled back and forth made me sick to my stomach. My breathing sped up, coming faster than I thought myself possible. I could feel that familiar pounding coming from my chest, pulsing behind my eyes. I needed to be set down. If they were going to play tug-of-war with me, they could at least kill me first. Just eat me now. End it. My legs kicked on their own, pulling away from the telekinesis, I didn’t even realize until I found myself screaming, “Put me down N-”

Xeno cut me off at just the right moment. “I received a cut while I was digging in the ruins earlier,” the zebra mare offered calmly. “Do you believe it needs to be looked at?”

Hearing that, the doctor released her telekinetic grip on me and the color drained from her face. “You, you’re bleeding?” Thank you Xeno, for interrupting.

For a moment, the doctor pony stared. She swallowed, regaining her composure, then got to work. With a visible flurry, she grabbed poor Xeno and dropped her on the table. Shaking, she worked her over, searching for the wound. Lost and I watched in abject horror as the doctor went over every inch of her, muttering to herself. Jazz, meanwhile, bore a stoic, uninterested expression. The frantic searching gave me time to calm myself back down, until I could breathe normally again. Much of the doctor’s mumbling was lost to the din of her movement, until she found a miniscule cut. Gasping, she backed away, using her magic to patch it up from a distance.

Xeno was placed on the floor right after, with a look of confusion on her face that seemed far out of place on the normally calm zebra. She said something in her native tongue that I couldn’t quite understand, and then backed away from the doctor.

“Alright, alright. That’s been taken care of. Now I just need to clean the entire room...” She lifted a filthy rag from the sink and turned toward the wall.

“Mmm. Don’t mind her, she thinks any blood is going to contaminate her, make her sick, and turn her into one of the ghouls. Just keep blood away from her and she’s fine. Let’s continue,” Jazz said, and walked out the door. “Now.”

We followed her out, and into a large room on the next floor. The office was posh, especially by Wasteland standards. It was almost completely intact, with a beautiful carved desk in the center of it. All along the walls, between each of the blown-out windows, were pictures and schematics of the factory’s products. They didn’t make much sense to me, but it was something to focus on for the time being.

Behind the desk, an earth pony mare sat in a comfortable looking chair. If she were a century younger, she could have been the Star Paladin’s twin. Their manes shared colors, though the older pony’s was much longer and wasn’t matted down from wearing a helmet. She stared at a document in her hoof with the same intense green eyes as the armored mare beside me. Only their outfits were different, with the older mare wearing thick, embellished robes. She set the yellowed paper down onto the messy desk and looked up at us.

“I see you’ve brought me our new prisoners,” she said with a smile.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Tough Hide (Rank 1) – The brutal experiences of the Equestrian Wasteland have hardened you. You gain +3 to Damage Threshold for each level of this perk you take.

Lost Art:
New Perk: All Night Long – Given your history of insomnia, you have learned to cope with exhaustion and sleep deprivation very well. You gain a second wind almost at will and never get tired from either sleep loss or running from monsters!

“So, how come I didn’t get to be all cool and sacrifice myself?”
“It’s really hard for me to narrate how you feel to the readers, the pain the monsters and gunshots inflict.”
“Can’t I just tell you?”
“It’s not really the same.”
“I do not feel pain. It is weird. Is it because I am a secondary character?”
“.........”
“.........”

Author's Notes:

(A massive thank you to Kkat for creating, and everyone else who has helped to flesh out the universe of Fallout Equestria. And to everyone who has/will help with with editing and making this more palatable... Big hearts to Dimestream, Sabsy, Heartshine, Moth, and everypony else. An additional, special!, thanks to Wirepony for letting me turn him into one of the most amazing monsters I have ever come up with. Enjoy your backstory, Wire! And of course everything is copyright their respective owners. ~Hnetu)

{{Looks like Hnetu’s getting better at piecing this stuff together. I had to edit less than half of the fiddly bits I did in the last chapter, and aside from some things I’m going to keep poking at until she learns them, it seems like smooth sailing from here. Oh, and if she makes one more comment about me ‘making things less stupid,’ ignore her. I’m liking this story, even if sometimes the ideas are bigger than her experience in writing. She’s already improved by leaps and bounds, so thanks for sticking with us, dear readers, and I hope you enjoy the next batch of horrifying things she comes up with. Yeesh.}}

Disclaimer: A certain scene in this chapter draws direct inspiration from something that happened to me recently. I felt one of the best ways I could deal with it was to get those feelings out. So, this is a warning that there’s some unpleasantness here. It could have been worse, both in real life and here.
In short; Trigger Warning: Non Consensual bondage.
I’m putting a bookmark to skip it for those who might be reminded of their own trauma just in case. I do hope everypony is able to enjoy the chapter.

Chapter 5: The Buried Past

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Chapter Five: The Buried Past
“She used to be prosperous, helping to push society to new heights. Now she’s a testament to the new ways the Wasteland can find to kill ponies.”

Prisoners?

How in the Goddesses’ names did we become prisoners? We were just getting the grand tour! Jazz had said they were expecting Gunbuck to come help them, and even confused me for him. So why were we going to be prisoners?

“What do you mean, prisoners? We were just getting a nice tour of the place,” my sister said, interrupting my thought loop.

“Wait, do tell me what is this word, ‘prisoners,’” Xeno requested, looking back and forth between the robed mare and Lost, a confused look in her eyes. “I know much of your language, but this word is not one I am familiar with.” The tone in her voice was eerily similar to when she had made that speech about not wanting to die. From context she seemed scared, even if she didn’t truly understand the meaning of the word. We needed to teach this girl how to speak our language. Given her constant misuse of words and apparently ignorance of contractions, I already wanted to fix it so we’d understand her better.

The older mare behind the desk leaned forward, tenting her hooves in front of her and explained, “It means that you are here, against your will, possibly guilty of a crime. It also means that there will be punishment for said crime, and after you have paid off your debt to the wonderful society that we now live in, we will release you back to the savage Wasteland that you call home.” She brushed her mane to the side with a hoof, and hopped down from her seat.

“Now, I know that Jazz here has given you a tour,” she continued, “and has done her best to be friendly, but that’s not why you’re here. We need ponies to do work for us because we’re all on guard from that...” She paused for a moment, walking around the table toward us. “...that ‘Wirepony’ annoyance that roams the ruined streets below.” She scowled. “So, I guess, conscription is a better word. And for you my little zebra, it means that we’re forcing you to do work for us, as ‘civilian contractors’ for the Steel Rangers.” Despite her age, she seemed rather spry, moving about in the embellished robe with grace and making air quotes with her hooves on what seemed to be every other sentence she spoke.

Okay, at least there was a name for this faction of ponies. Lost seemed to be following what was going on, but I was as confused as poor Xeno. She had the courage to ask, “And if we refuse?”

“I take anything you have on you that I feel is sufficiently advanced a technology, give it to my ponies, who can actually make good use of it, then turn you into a pile of pink ash,” Jazz answered, matter-of-factly. “Afterward, we’ll sweep the ash up and toss it in the dirt outside.”

“What! I thought you said you weren’t corrupt,” I shouted at the now obviously evil mares.

“I said we try not to be as corrupt as some of the other chapters around the Wasteland,” Jazz countered, smirking. “I never said we tried very hard. For that matter, we’re not exactly corrupt, per se. We are performing the task passed down to us through the generations of Steel Rangers, and from the moment Elder Scifresh took over, we have done nothing more than try to be the best Steel Rangers we can be. Personally though, I look up to Elder Blueberry Sabre. She makes it into an art form. There’s really something special about the way that mare handles her soldiers.” She aimed her gatling laser directly at me. The gun whirred quietly, ready to fire.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Scifresh said. “Jazz is going to take you down to the first floor and out the back. You’re going to go down the elevator to the foundry level, and into the mines below.” She walked over to one of the pictures plastered on the wall and pointed to it. “This factory has a Stable underneath, and you need to find it. There are other ponies down there, savages we’ve managed to ‘acquire.’ I just can’t spare my soldiers into that deathtrap of a mine. They are far too valuable to me. So just follow the lead of the others. Once we find the Stable, you will be free to go.”

“Liberated of the PipBuck and that plasma pistol you shot me with,” Jazz finished for her, her words coming through gritted teeth at the end.

Outrageous! This Steel Ranger welcomed us with open hooves, and then this? How dare she! Pretending to be friendly, preying on the good intentions of others... If she’d asked nicely, we’d have helped no matter what. Because that’s what good ponies do. But this... I took a deep breath. Mom was right, as always. Ponies look out for their own, and fuck anypony else in the Wasteland, be they friendly or not. As soon as I got something powerful enough to punch through her power armor, this bitch was going down.

Jazz ushered us out of the office, away from the elderly mare, who was slowly returning to her desk. Just before we got out of earshot, she yelled out, “Do mind the radiation...”

That definitely didn’t sound good.

* * *

Star Paladin Jazz led us down twisting hallways and spiral staircases. Even with the automap the PipBuck had, I’d lost track of where exactly we were in the building early on, though that was probably her intention. During the long, disorienting trek down the hallways, Jazz rambled on about the various guns, armor, and equipment they were going to liberate from us. She made sure to give excruciatingly boring, detailed examples for every item that classified as ‘sufficiently advanced technology.’ The worst part about her lecture was that it had bored my rage from sheer blind fury at the lies down to mere simmering bloodlust. Several times I’d simply zoned out, both to get away from the sound of her voice, and to try and shake the worry I had about what was going to happen next. I dealt with anxiety far differently than my sister. She had... her ways, and I pretended the situation was a game. It worked for making scavenging fun, so why not on the sheer terror caused by how badly these armored assholes were going to kill us?

Finally, Jazz brought us to a doorway identical to the dozens we’d passed through the seemingly endless hallways.

The room she shoved us into had the same rotten walls and rusted steel as every other room we’d seen or been to; I’d stopped paying attention to the smaller details. But this room was subtly different: it appeared to be a small armory for the soldiers. Dozens of rifles lined the walls, and a desk in one corner practically bent under the weight of various pistols and grenades, stacked to a teetering point. A helmet identical to the one worn by every soldier in the base sat on the edge of a second desk, near rows of open lockers stuffed stuffed to the brim with plasma and laser weapons. Behind the desk was another of the Steel Rangers, bent over the desk and more paperwork.

“Okay, you three,” Jazz barked. “Stand up against that wall next to Scribe Trifle.” The new Steel Ranger was a pale red earth pony mare who wore a robe like Scifresh, though not as detailed. She actually looked surprisingly nice, compared to the other Steel Rangers we’d met. She didn’t acknowledge our entrance, being too distracted by the paperwork she was staring intently at.

We stood there in silence a moment as the mare continued studying whatever she was looking at. From her expression, she seemed to be having a hard time with it.

“Scribe Trifle!” Jazz announced in an annoyed tone, startling the earth pony, but finally catching her attention.

Trifle started to sputter out an apology but Jazz cut her off. “I need you to strip these savages of any useful technology.” She then added in a warning tone, “Make sure you take everything, Trifle. I don’t want the Elder thinking you’ve done a slipshod job. Again. Do not fuck up, Scribe!” The Star Paladin glared for a moment, then stepped outside the room. “I’ll return to collect them once you’ve finished.” She slammed the door shut behind her.

Scribe Trifle began cleaning up whatever it was she was studying. “Bags. Down,” she ordered absently, not even looking up at us.

In an instant, all three of us dropped the saddlebags we were carrying. Xeno’s bag fell over on its side, which finally got the the Steel Ranger’s attention enough to pick it as her first target. She made her way over to it, hefted it onto the emptier of the two desks, and began picking through it.

“What are we going to do? She’s going to take everything we’ve got!” I whispered to my sister through the corner of my mouth. My eyes didn’t move from the red Ranger with her back to me. Oh Goddesses, I thought, please don’t let her hear...

“Okay, look,” Lost whispered back. “I'll take PipBuck off you and... hide it or something. She wasn’t there when Jazz mentioned it and, well, it looks like she not the sharpest pony around here. I’ll... I don’t know, I’ll get her to check my bags first, then we move it there. My plasma pistol too; since she doesn’t know I have it.” She lifted her gun from her bag as she spoke, at the same time I felt the clasp release on the pipbuck. It wasn’t much, but it was a better plan than anything I was going to come up with on short notice.

“What do we do with them after? We’re gonna get escorted underground, how do we hide them?” I asked while quickly shuffling the valuable piece of arcano-tech between my hooves until it was hidden behind my tail, against the wall behind me. I prayed she’d thought this through...

“Shhh! I’ll figure it out,” she whispered back.

Trifle finished digging through the zebra’s bag, and slowly turned around. Lost’s magical haze disappeared in an instant. Her gun fell behind us, landing amongst the other weapons lined against the walls.

“I’ll go next,” Lost offered. She lifted her bags with her magic and presented them to the mare. Hopefully it would come off as compliant enough to not arouse suspicion.

“It’s good that you’ve accepted your fate,” Trifle said, a distant tone in her voice. “Once we find what we need, you’ll be free to go, of course.”

Yeah, not trusting that. Trifle tossed Xeno’s bag to the ground in front of her and grabbed the saddlebags Lost was levitating to her. Turning her back once more, she set them upon the desk and started to dig through.

Xeno yelled something in her native tongue. She sounded happy. Well, maybe? Either that, or pissed off? Happy about being pissed off? I couldn’t tell because of the language barrier.

“Shut up, you didn’t have anything worth taking,” Trifle snapped, not bothering to look back. “If I had more room, I’d keep it all, but the Elder has ordered us to prioritize. Consider yourself lucky.”

I felt the PipBuck begin to move from behind me as Lost's horn began to glow. Ok so far, so good. Now we just needed to get it into-

“Oh good, more spark cells,” Trifle said, pulling the cells out and lying them on the desk. “You don’t have a gun for them though...” The robed mare turned her head to look at us, her orange eyes squinted. “Why are you carrying them?”

Oh no.

Lost's magic cut out the instant the mare turned. I just barely managed to catch the PipBuck from falling with one of my rear hooves. I didn’t dare breathe. If I dropped it, the gig would be up, and Trifle would take everything we needed to survive.

“The gun broke, so I tossed it. I kept the ammo to sell,” L.A. explained, not missing a beat. “Just because I can’t use it doesn’t mean it’s worthless.” She wore a calm expression, keeping eerily level-headed during the interrogation. At least it kept the attention from me, because I was fairly sure I’d have given it away at first glance.

“Reasonable enough. I’ll be keeping them,” Trifle snapped, scowling. “Our soldiers can make better use of them than a savage could.” She turned back around and placed the pilfered goods into a drawer on the desk.

Both my sister and I let out a sigh of relief simultaneously, careful to keep the volume down. Xeno finished digging through her bag, and watched the two of us. Lost raised a hoof, motioning her to keep quiet. She merely nodded, her deep blue eyes showing surprising understanding of what we were planning.

A second later, I felt the PipBuck floated off my back hoof. Risking a look back I watched as Lost moved it behind her tail through careful manipulation of her magic. Just as it drifted out of sight, Trifle turned back around and tossed L.A.’s bags onto the floor in front of her. Without a word, she took mine and resumed her search for our ‘technology.’

I looked over at my sister, her bandana and mane were soaked with sweat. Her horn was still glowing, holding the PipBuck just out of sight. Thank the Goddesses’ that the unobservant Ranger hadn’t seen the glow. Lost crammed both her gun and the PipBuck into her bag before Trifle could finish digging through mine.

Just as the glow faded from Lost’s horn, the Scribe turned around, my shotgun in her mouth. She glared at me. With a flick of her neck, she tossed the shotgun against the wall with the rifles. The gun landed perfectly in line with the others, getting lost in the mix. Then she turned to me and ordered, “Battle saddle. Lose it. Now.”

“W-what why? I made this thing myself!” I stammered. That was technically true, as Lost and I had rebuilt it together from some other ones when they were too damaged to use. But, she was my baby. On the other hoof... the stare I was getting made me rethink just how valuable a hunk of metal was. In short order, I stripped down and let her take it from me.

Feeling naked in a whole new way, we gathered our bags. Once Trifle had divested us of all but our concealed possessions, she marched us out of their makeshift armory and back into the rusty halls.

* * *

We walked in silence down the rusted, warped hallways. There wasn’t anything to say. I felt shell shocked, like my brain was trying to be somewhere else for all of this. I wanted to call it a betrayal, but we didn’t know these ponies. I ran in half-cocked and unsure what to expect. It could have been a trap, or they could have welcomed us as saviors. Had Gunbuck known? Was that why he hadn’t already been here. Maybe he’d been gearing up, searching for something to bargain with, or for bigger guns to shoot them with? He was supposed to be a hero, I’d wanted to follow that example... and... this was the choice I’d made?

I promised to try and be a thinky pony, to be more like my sister. To stop pushing all those thoughts away... I looked over to L.A. Why couldn’t I be more like her? I wasn’t her, but she was... Just... Everything I wasn’t. Twice so far today I’d fucked up. She hadn’t made those mistakes, and once again she’d saved me. I couldn’t keep talking about changing, I needed to actually do it. How was I supposed to be a smart pony when every four-legged person in the Wasteland ruined my plans! But... the ‘nice pony’ side of my brain insisted, they couldn't be ‘evil,’ just stuck in a bad situation, a situation where they were trying to get help in the only way they knew how. Right? That’s why Gunbuck was heading here. He wanted to help, because that’s what he did. That’s what heroes do. So, we were here. We weren’t heroes, but we could help them. That was all there was to it. In the end it’d make the Wasteland a better place if we made others happy... right?

Just as before, Jazz led us through a labyrinth of stairways, up, down, through dozens of hallways and corridors. I thought I’d been lost before, but between the circular track my thoughts had been chasing themselves down, and our mazelike path, I found myself actually beginning to get dizzy. Jazz led the three of us, her head held high and with the armored helmet reattached. Somewhere along the line, I didn’t know when, another one of the armored ponies had joined us. The soldier brought up the rear to keep us from slinking away. None of us would have tried anyway, not with that gatling laser trained on us. If the power armor had anything like the E.F.S. and S.A.T.S. that the PipBuck had, we’d be dead before we took two steps.

After a few more identically decorated hallways and staircases, good Goddesses, but did they ever need an interior decorator, we exited through a large bay door to the back of the factory, opposite where we had entered. In front of us sat the elevator the Elder had mentioned. It was fairly simple, a rusty platform with crossed bars to make up the walls on three sides. The door must have rusted and fallen off long ago, and it lay off to the side. Even here, a level above the foundry, the heat was sweltering. We walked on the tips of our hooves, trying to avoid the blistering ground we were walking over. Jazz and her subordinate herded us into the elevator, then stepped in as well. With a lurch, it began screeching down to the floor below. I really hoped it could support the weight of their armor.

“Alright, since we’re running low on ponies to do work for us, try and survive,” Jazz said as the elevator began its descent. “Do remind me, if you survive, to make sure Doc Plagueheart always checks for radiation in the future. Can’t have our little workers dying too terribly fast.” She poked my nose teasingly. ‘Poked’ was too light a term; the ‘poke’ felt more like I’d been smashed in the nose with a flying tank. It felt like she’d broken my nose!

Her steel helmet hid whatever expression she might have had, and it was near impossible to hear her over the sound of the metal grinding against metal, even with the amplification from her helmet, but the tone was obviously sarcastic. Putting her hoof down, she took a more serious turn. “We’ve hired some Talon mercenaries to act as overseers. Don’t cross them. The contract we have is to watch our workforce, and keep them at the job. There is nothing keeping them from killing you if you get out of line.”

This was sounding more and more pleasant by the moment. The minute we broke past the elevator shaft, a suffocating blast of heat nearly knocked me over. Two hundred years later, and the furnaces were still going at full blast? How... There must have been some cheater magic keeping the place together. Dark smoke filled the air and floated ominously across the ceiling. Even underground, there was no escaping the cloud cover.

I looked from side to side, trying not to cough. I could see no ponies, or anything living at all, for that matter, inside the furnace room. The only thing here was molten metal and fires that raged behind red hot gratings.

As the elevator hit the bottom, Jazz and the other Ranger shoved us out into the inferno before us. Lost shied away, positively horrified by the furnaces they forced us past. Every time the fires flourished, they cast a flash of red across her face that clashed with her blue eyes. She hesitated before each one, then skittishly ran in front of it, only to once again hesitate whenever she came to a gap between two. Xeno seemed calm, almost zen-like. Whatever was going through her mind, I would never know.

“The maps show the Stable at the far end of the mines. Unfortunately, two hundred years and twice that number of explosions have caused significant numbers of cave-ins. Follow the orders of the pit boss, and try not to die. I recommend working together,” Jazz lectured. “So far the worst we’ve come up against is the radiation and the bloodwings. Steer clear of both of those, and you might be okay. If you try to escape, the Talons will kill you, the guards up top will kill you, and then I personally will kill you some more.” She led us through a doorway cut through the stone, and into another large room with several wheelless, rusted mine carts. Two griffons guarded the room, one right inside the door, and another staring down one of the caverns. Both had laser rifles, and neither so much as looked at us as we entered. On top of their firepower and unwavering attention, they were heavily armored, both wearing reinforced leather with a claw-like symbol on the left breast.

“Kyrie escort these three to the furthest site,” Jazz ordered the far griffon. “Elder Scifresh wants this Stable found yesterday. That monster is bleeding us dry out there and I don’t pay you to sit around and lolligag!” The Star Paladin was screaming by the end of the sentence, more than a little miffed. Wow, she had a rage problem. Here I always thought that a guard’s job was to sit around and stare at things.

“Right ma’am,” answered Kyrie with a salute salute. She lowered her rifle and motioned us ahead. “C’mon let’s go.” We trudged at gunpoint down the hallway, following the remains of the rails on the ground.

As soon as we were out of the Steel Rangers’ earshot, I pleaded with the griffon. “Why are you helping them? Don’t you know she hates anypony from the Wasteland?” Hopefully it would get us out of the mess we were in.

“Contract,” Kyrie said dismissively. “Don’t care anyway, I’m not interested in pony politics. Worst she’ll do is take a few potshots. She turns on us and we’ll take her and every Steel Ranger in here down. Already have...” She stopped mid-sentence, stared me in the eye and yelled, “March!”

I didn’t need convincing. She said no more, but I was going to have to have a chat with my sister later about that last little bit...

“Is it normal for you ponies to do this to your own kind?” Xeno asked quietly. It seemed she’d finally decided to speak in a language we could more or less understand. “I have heard stories of the evil of your species, those past the mountain treating others so. I thought it to be tall tales left over from the war, meant to keep little zebra foals bereaving for their mothers and avoiding strangers.” She tilted her head to the side slightly. Every now and then she’d trip over her own hooves, but somehow always managed to catch herself.

“Well, that really depends on who you look at,” I started to explain. “Mom taught us that ponies couldn’t be trusted in groups, because they would always try and look after their own, that they didn’t care at all about outsiders.”

“Stop talking. Turn here,” Kyrie ordered, pointing the rifle down one of the mine hallways. She stopped and dug into her armor with a claw. “Take these, you’ll need ‘em.” She tossed out a bottle, which L.A. caught in mid-air with her magic. There was a slight rattling inside. “Take one each every few hours, unless you want to die. Now go, if you come back this way I’ll shoot first and let the radiation take care of whatever might be left.” With no other choice, we started walking.

Up until that point I hadn’t noticed the faint clicking coming from Lost’s saddlebags. The further away from the griffon guard we walked, the faster it went. Even unattached, it still picking up the ambient radiation. As if she were finally hearing it too, she carefully lifted the ancient device from its hiding place, and latched it onto her forehoof. Lucky for us, we were out of sight and earshot of the griffon. With that, we trudged through the cavern to the next open area, accompanied by the constant clicking.

The mine was surprising well lit for how far underground we were. Around us were dozens, if not hundreds, of multicolored gemstones inset into the walls and ceiling. They shone dully, giving off muted light from all directions. Every other gem I had ever seen in all the Equestrian Wasteland had been clear and brilliant, though that might have been because all the ones I’d ever seen were in spark cells, manufactured and full of magical energy to use as ammunition for the magical energy weapons L.A. prefered. These ones though, were clouded and matte, lacking the same glean. The sight of it made me sick to my stomach, though I couldn’t tell why.

“Eat this,” L.A. said, floating one of the pills toward me. She had stopped for a moment, and was staring at the PipBuck on her foreleg.

“I really don’t think Buck is going to help while we’re down here...” I snickered a little, she’s gonna get me addicted to those things. It might be nice though...

“It is not Buck, and you should not take that medicine anyway, it will hurt you,” Xeno chided. “This is a pony drug, it is called RadSafe. Do you not feel the radiation coming from all around?” She bit down on one of the three pills held by my sister’s levitation, and took a moment to swallow before she continued. “It will kill us, we were warned many times by the soldier in the steel armor. You need to pay attention, little pony.”

“Oh...”

I bit down on the second one held in my sister’s grasp, and tried to swallow, while Lost took the remaining one. The medicine tasted like a combination of mint and old chalk. I coughed half a dozen times trying to finish it, having to swallow repeatedly to get the disgusting chem from sticking as it went down my throat. If I had to eat more of that, I really wasn’t sure if it was worth surviving. Did we have a pouch of RadAway left? Or was that taken by the bitch Steel Ranger too? If so, I could just drink some of that if it got too bad.

At the far end of this tunnel stood a group of ponies and another griffon guard. The griffon here had on a much different outfit, a yellow suit with a thick visor over his face. Probably extra measures to keep the radiation out. I could hear the PipBuck on Lost’s forehoof clicking faster the deeper we got. The ponies were working in groups, with several unicorns using telekinesis to pull large stones away from the wall opposite us. They then moved it down to where dozens of earth ponies could roll them against another wall, and out of the way.

The griffon waved us over with one of his wings, barking a muffled order from behind the visor on his suit. Sheepishly, the three of us trotted over, looking to one of the other ponies who seemed to know what was going on.

“So... What are we supposed to be doing?” I asked one of the earth ponies who wasn’t pushing rocks around.

“Start pushin,’” he snapped back, before coughing a few times. “‘Less ya want the griffon shootin’ ya.” He motioned to several piles of pink ash in the far corner, which were being covered with the rock the other ponies were moving.

“Understood!” I said with a salute. As fast as I could, I looked for a rock to start pushing.

* * *

For what seemed like hours, the three of us went back and forth. The guard put L.A. on lifting detail, which meant she spent the entire time using every bit of strength to lift any rocks that were pulled away from the far wall into the air. After that, Xeno, myself, and several of the other earth ponies would push or roll it over into the main pile. It was explained by one of the more talkative ponies that there had been a cave-in, and we were clearing out to another path. The big problem with this was finding a way to make a pathway big enough for ponies, and griffons, to get through, without setting off another cave-in and burying us all alive.

The Med-X had begun to wear off, and the rolling of the rocks and boulders was particularly painful due to the burn on my back. I tried to get some looks at it between sets, but all I could see was burnt flesh, and blood seeping down my side. It had started to blister while we were working. I prayed I could get it fixed before my entire back became one giant scar.

With the way we were moving the rocks, I had to stand on my rear legs and roll them with my forelegs, and every time I flexed my back to hop up or down it burned, my skin stretching and the drying scabs ripping free. At first it was barely noticeable, easy to ignore, but without the Med-X, it felt as if the fire were still licking at my skin. I either needed a healing potion or... well... a better way to deal with pain.

I wasn’t the only one that was hurting. Several times we had to stop for breaks. Somepony was either vomiting, voiding themselves, or passing out. And ‘radiation vomit’ tasted far, far worse than ‘just had a bone reset vomit,’ which was something I wished I’d never had to learn. This was nowhere near enough radiation to kill us, not without being down here for days, but it was enough to hurt bad. The sickness weakened everypony, and the progress slowed to a crawl the longer we were down there. In the beginning, we’d moved dozens of rocks and boulders in the course of an hour, but the past hour of work had all been focusing on a single rock that wasn’t even half the size of the largest we’d been able to tackle. I was honestly starting to fear being shot by the guard. There were no standards that had been set, just ‘push or die,’ and we were hitting the tipping point. How much longer could we hold out with everypony constantly sick and growing weaker by the minute?

The griffon mumbled something from behind the thick visor of his suit.

“Alright everpony. Break time!” yelled an olive mare. She seemed to be the only one capable of understanding him. Everypony dropped their rocks and let out a collective sigh of relief.

“More RadAway, then back to work? Some break, Spade,” snapped a balding unicorn behind me. He stepped past me, joining the growing line of ponies in front of the olive mare who must have been Spade.

“Rather die of the radiation? I want to get out of here. So we listen to the griffon and finish. Then back to our Queen,” Spade spat back, a warm smile growing across her lips.

What? I blinked. Whatever she was on about, it wasn’t ominous, not ominous at all...

Lost and I joined the line for RadAway, something that wasn’t coming quite soon enough. Now that I didn’t have to focus on moving and working I got a look at the other ponies. Most looked like they felt as bad as I did. Several were dry-heaving and looked obviously uncomfortable; they were practically emaciated from the loss of fluids. A few had dark bruises clearly visible through their coats, mostly the earth ponies around their hooves from pushing boulders. Every so often I could spot one that was bloodied, though none looked anywhere near as bad as the unicorn who had lost almost all of his mane. The poor stallion couldn’t have been much older than me, but looked ancient. His lips were cracked and bloody, his skin hung from his bones, and he seemed incapable of not trembling.

How long had these ponies been down here?

I felt a gurgle inside me, not coming from my stomach, it came from lower... If I was feeling as sick as I did after a few hours, and we were getting RadAway, hopefully regularly, just how long could it take to get that bad. Had...

Had the griffon been performing mercy killings...?

To tear myself away from that thought, I looked to my sister and my friend. Xeno was the only one who didn’t seem to be getting sick with radiation poisoning. As soon as we were on break, she went directly to where her bag had been stashed. I didn’t care why, she was a zebra, and had proven to be exceptionally strange in the short time that I’d known her. It was more important to handle the radiation that was making me sick, right now. Deal with her mysteries later. I looked over to Lost...

“Is it getting to you too?” L.A. asked, furrowing her brow in worry. She didn’t look any better. Her eyes looked tired and unfocused, and she was practically covered in sweat. She looked just as nauseous as I felt, if not worse, and all I could do was lean over and press my head against her. She must be feeling worse than I was, I could feel her shaking occasionally, broken up between periods where she was obviously stiffening to keep me from noticing. I had to be strong for her, and not give her any more to worry about.

I lifted my head from her neck, missing the brief moment where only my sister and I mattered. I could only nod, trying to stand easy. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice how much pain I was in...

She looked and me with concern. “I’m worried about your back...”

Dammit, Lost, stop reading me so well...

“I didn’t get burned nearly as bad when Seethe shot me with the flamer, but I know how it feels,” Lost continued, pointing a hoof to the remains of her purple mane, still tied under the bandana. “Do you want me to heal it for you?” Without waiting for an answer, she closed her eyes, and her horn began to glow. She could heal flesh wounds by now, but I had no idea if she was able to repair a massive burn that covered half my back and one of my legs.

“You! With the bandana. No magic during break,” Spade yelled from the front of the line. She sounded pissed.

In an instant L.A. cut her magic, and slumped. “I’ll fix it later. I promise,” she whispered, forcing a little smile. Honestly, that helped the most.

We were the last two in line for the RadAway, but were able to get a pouch each to sip during the break.

“...got any Med-X?” I asked sheepishly after the griffon gave me the RadAway. My back was a blazing inferno again, the medication from earlier having completely worn off.

“Why?” Spade snapped.

“That fucking wire monster hit me with a grenade. Can’t you see my back?” I demanded, baring my teeth at her. It hurt, but I turned to the side so she could see the extent of the damage. The skin had scabbed over, mostly, but it was still obviously charred. Little blisters covered my haunch, oozing slightly from being torn by the work. It looked back, and all the radiation around was only adding to the problem. “Why do you think I asked for a painkiller? We’re here to help, and I can’t really do that if I’m on the verge of collapsing from the pain.” Sure, we were working against our will, but I left that part out. The nerve of some ponies...

Spade looked over to the griffon guard, who gave a nod and muffled something to her. The fact nopony could understand him but Spade was really starting to grate my nerves. Or maybe it was the pain I was in...

“Yeah sure, take it,” she said, as the griffon produced a needle. She snatched it in her fetlock and jabbed it into my back. The pain vanished. What a relief. “And take this too,” she added, tossing a bottle at me. it held the bare minimum amount of liquid in it to classify as a healing potion. “You die on me, and I’ll make those two you came in with suffer for it. I want out of this place as soon as I can.”

Lost scowled at the olive mare, but said nothing. We weren’t in a position to argue.

Prizes in hoof, we returned to the spot Xeno had retreated to. The entire time we had been in line, she had dug out several miniature jars of... stuff. She sat on her haunches against the wall, moving the jars back and forth, pulling out the stopper from one to pour into another, back and forth a few times. Finally, she reached for one with her hooves only to stop dead.

“It... I... one is missing,” she practically whispered, sounding hollow. Her face darkened, the lighter stripes on her face coat turning completely white. The zebra looked up directly at me, those deep blue eyes trembling in fear. “I am missing the extract. Without it I cannot...” She trailed off.

The griffon guard mumbled something, pointing the rifle he had at a group of ponies collecting around the pink piles of ash.

“Five minutes ponies! Five minutes!” Spade hollered out after him.

“What’re you missing?” Lost asked, ignoring the time warning. She ripped into the RadAway pouch and took a sip. Almost instantly her lips puckered around the little straw part, and she visibly flinched. Was it that bad?

While she was asking, I downed what little of the healing potion I had, and tossed the bottle away. It helped, if only a little. That itch like when my leg bones were regrowing came back. It felt like somepony gently tapping hundreds of little needles against my back, which was a good sign, I hoped. At least the burn wasn’t going to get any worse now. Relaxing into the soothing knitting feeling, I ripped open my own pouch of RadAway and hesitantly took myself a sip.

Bleh! Whatever this shit was, it tasted like rotten oranges left in an oven for two hundred years. But it... was supposed to be good for me. And even after that first sip I was starting to feel better. Biting down on the end of the little straw part, I sat next to Xeno. Siiiip.... Bleh.

“I need an extract for my... concoction,” she answered, eyes darting away from my sister and me. Frantically, she scooped up her jars, closing them up and tucking them back into her bag. The final one sat in front of her, with no plug for the top.

“Is that something normal for zebras?” I asked between sips. The pouch was small enough I could hold it with my fetlock when I wasn’t drinking. Reluctantly, I placed the end back in my mouth and drank more.

“Yes and no,” she whispered, turning to look at me. “It was a very common thing for my family. My mother taught me years ago, and I was the one who taught it to my brothers.”

“For that matter, what is normal for zebras?” Lost asked. “You’re the first zebra we’ve ever spoken to. Other than that, our knowledge comes from stories mom told us, and a few books from the war.” She sat down on the other side of Xeno.

“That depends on who you ask. From what my mother told me, I am not a normal zebra. She was very religious, and believed as the tribe we came from did.” What are zebra beliefs anyway? “I did not inherit that from her, which led me to become an outcast.” She went back to staring at the jar in front of her, then reached out with a hoof and passed it over the opening. When her hoof was past, the jar was empty of whatever was in it before. How... How did she do that?

My mind balked, even as it absorbed an uncomfortably familiar story. I took another sip of the disgusting RadAway, and my brain sorted itself back out into ‘listening’ and ‘bleh.’

“My mother is why we left. I was told... I should take my brothers and search out ponies. That I might learn more, to experience more than we could in the tribe,” Xeno continued. “It has been several years, and there has been nothing to convince me of her beliefs having any value.” She paused for a moment. “I was able to pick up on your pony language in my time traveling. My brothers refused to learn...” She chuckled nervously. “As you can tell, I am not very good at speaking your language! Not often is there time for practice.”

“Oh I noticed, you don’t use contractions at all,” Lost pointed out.

“What is that word, contraction?” The poor zebra had her brow furrowed now, looking back and forth between my sister and I in confusion. Her breathing was slowly getting shallower. After the last new word she learned, I really wasn’t all that surprised by her reaction.

“It means you say ‘I’m’ instead of ‘I am,’ or ‘We’re’ instead of ‘we are.’ Combine two words together to make a new one,” I explained to her. I wasn’t really the thinky pony, but I definitely knew how to speak. In the long run, this would make things a lot easier for Lost and I, without having to guess or wait for Xeno to say things the long way.

“One minute, ponies!” Spade shouted again. The griffon she was standing next to looked down at her, and gave her a pat on the head with one of his yellow suited wings.

Xeno’s breathing returned to normal after I explained just what the new word meant. “Iam...” Xeno said, moving her mouth far more than was necessary. “This word feels wired to say.” She broke into zebra again, speaking too fast for me to make out what any of it might be. “Iam not sure, but I will try to use this type of word again.”

Lost nudged her shoulder with a hoof, smiling. “You’ll get it.” She took another sip of the RadAway, and levitated the pouch over to Xeno. “Now drink some of this, you’ll feel better.”

The zebra nodded, and hesitantly took the pouch in one of her hooves, gulped down the remainder, and gave it back to my sister. She stared at the little pouch and said, “Your pony medicines are not trustworthy, but this seems to work well enough. It will have to do for now...”

Another sip, and my RadAway was gone as well. The aftertaste seemed worse than the actual taste, but at least I felt a lot better. Another one of those, and I’d be ready to take down the griffon and his little pet mare. I did have one in my bags still. Maybe... if he didn’t have that rifle.

“Back to work ponies! Take your RadSafe if you got it, otherwise you’ll be dead by the next break.” The olive bitch yelled again. I grunted. I really didn’t like her brown-nosing.

“Iam not sure that it will work out. Am I that difficult to understand?” Xeno asked, slowly rising to her rear hooves and pushing her back back against the wall.

Lost, meanwhile, produced a few more of the disgusting pills. Each of us took one from the blue haze of her telekinesis and ate.

I grimaced, forcing a smile and shutting my eyes tight. “Only sometimes,” I said smiling, and we got back to work.

* * *

“Heave!” we shouted in unison.

“Ho!” the unicorns shouted back.

The stone we’d been working on was far larger than the rest, and we had no tools to break it up with. Several of the unicorns were all working together to try and lift it, while us earth ponies, and one zebra, rocked it back and forth from underneath trying to dislodge it.

With a thundering crash, the boulder toppled, and began to fall. I backpedaled away from it, trying not to get crushed as it landed. The boulder landed a few feet from me, almost exactly where I’d been standing.. The impact knocked the unicorns’ magical grasp on it loose, and it began to roll toward us earth ponies.

“Scatter!” somepony yelled.

I bolted to the far right, running out of the path of the rolling ball of death. Xeno dashed up next to me in a heartbeat. Another two ponies flanked us, with several others fleeing the opposite direction. One of the unicorns wasn’t quite quick enough. The tumbling boulder rolled over her. With a sickening crunch, blood and gore spattered the walls.

The remaining unicorns, Lost included, did their best to grab the rock before it could hurt anypony else. Several colors of levitation wrapped around it, slowing the boulder to a more manageable speed. The earth ponies dived back in, risking their lives to grab the rock and bring it skidding to a stop.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself move. I just stared at the smear of a pony left on the ground. The torso lay in an indistinct mass of blood and shattered bones, with a disgusting medley of fluids and crushed organs forced out to her sides by the fallen stone. Her head was the only thing not splattered onto the ground, and I could still see the look of surprise on her face.

That... that could have been me. That could have been Lost, or Xeno... Why hadn’t it been Spade? …no, no even she didn’t deserve an end like that. I tore myself away from the horror and found my eyes locked with Lost’s. She gave a troubled but knowing nod. I returned to helping the gang roll the rock away.

The muffled voice of the griffon supervisor stopped us, and as each pony turned to look, that bitchy olive mare from before hopped up next to him. After more muffled mumbling, Spade nodded a few times.

“There's an opening,” she said. “We need small ponies willing to go through. You can either volunteer or I'm going to start picking.”

Everypony stood still in an awkward silence.

I didn't blame them, since I didn't want to go in either, but... well, I was pretty small. A few other ponies shuffled around, moving behind others to try and blend into the background. Had this happened before, with other ponies going through holes in cave-ins and not returning? Maybe...

There was another muffled speechy-noise from the griffon.

“Alright,” Spade said. “Fine, nopony wants to choose? Sweet, you're up.” She pointed a hoof at a smallish earth pony with a ruddy coat and messy mane.

“No,” said a unicorn buck with fiery red eyes. “He can't go alone and you know it.”

From within the suit, the griffon muttered something that actually made Spade shiver. She looked at the unicorn. “Look I get it, and our Queen would understand. But... he's the weakest link here.”

“Bull,” the unicorn said, stomping, “shit! If he goes, I go with him.” He stepped in front of the other stallion, who looked rather hurt by what Spade had said.

The olive mare let out a sigh, but nodded. “Fine. We'll send a group. Anypony else going to choose or do I need to?” She asked, her eyes closed. She looked like she was fighting to stay calm.

“I'll go,” said a very familiar voice. I looked over at L.A., my eyes wide with terror. She wouldn’t- “As long as my sister and friend can go with me.”

Slowly, I opened and closed my mouth, searching for words. I trusted her though, and by the look on her face, she knew what she was doing. Xeno wasn't arguing, so why should I?

“Done,” said Spade.

My sister probably knew what she was doing, but still... I looked over at the cave-in. Where the boulder had been was now a decently-sized opening. Several smaller rocks jammed in the sides, forming an arch that was just barely large enough for us small ponies to fit through, let alone a normal-size pony or a Steel Ranger in their power armor. Lost and I weren’t as big as your average pony, more than likely because of the number of times my sister and I went hungry on a bad hunting day, but this looked like a tight squeeze even for me.

Spade tossed the unicorn a bottle, and he caught it in his telekinesis. “Don’t die in there, Night.”

“I'm more worried about him,” Night responded wearily, pointing his horn toward the earth pony stallion. He didn’t wait for a response, but stepped right into the new gap in the walls. He disappeared, his deep blue coat blending into the darkness of the tunnel.

While Spade passed the medicine bottle to the dour unicorn, I grabbed our bags. With everything we owned in tow, the grand total of one gun, one RadAway, and one PipBuck, I followed him in. I didn’t want to go through that passage, here there was at least a guard with a gun, not to mention the other ponies. Mom might have taught us that township groups were bad, with their cliques, but gathered together against their will? We could look out for each other against our captors... right? I sighed. I was probably deluding myself. I clenched my teeth, worrying about what might be on the other side, and stepped in.

Xeno entered behind me, with Lost right after her. Behind that I could hear the other earth pony, Sweet was his name, I supposed, but with the cramped space, I couldn’t look back to see what was going on behind me. About halfway through I almost fell to my knees, the rough ceiling threatened to gouge at my back and the jagged floor digging at my hooves. With ponies in front of and behind me in this narrow passage, I was completely in the dark. Up ahead, I saw a dull crystalline glow appear around the silhouette of the unicorn as he emerged out of the passage and into the cavern beyond.

“How much further?” Lost shouted.

“Not much, there’s light already,” I called back to her, barely ducking in time to miss a rock that jutted out from the ceiling. Past that bit, it got a little easier, with the passage walls widening just enough to stretch my legs. One last outcropping and one sidestep, and I finally reached the end. Once outside the passageway, I found myself in another cavern like the first. There were gems lining the walls, all glowing with the same dull light shone through clouded facets. “So what’s thi-”

I shut up as the unicorn stallion glared me into silence. He pointed a hoof toward the ceiling, which was even darker than the rest of the dim chamber. I stared for a moment, unmoving, before Xeno bumped into me. Down I toppled, face first into the ground below. Ow...

“I have reached the end, an-” She abruptly silenced herself as well, catching the same look from Night. She followed the direction his hoof was pointing, and her eyes went wide. She turned around, and stuck her head down the passageway through the cave-in. “There are bloodwings, you must be quiet, ponies,” she whispered.

Lost emerged afterward, moving on the tips of her hooves to stay silent. Behind her crawled the other earth pony, who seemed more distracted than cautious, given the circumstances. Just great. This meant we had a silent ‘weak link’ earth pony, and another bossy unicorn. But to my surprise, once he saw there were no guards or other ponies, Sweet embraced the unicorn stallion.

The scene left me feeling a bit awkward. To break the tension, I turned to my sister and Xeno. “What do they want us to do in here, anyway?” I asked in a whisper.

“I... I have no idea,” Lost answered under her breath. “It’s not as if I was given special instructions.”

Xeno merely shrugged.

How helpful. I looked back and forth between the two stallions.

The two broke their hug, with Night kissing Sweet's forehead. Once apart, the ruddy earth pony smiled, but shrugged. Night turned back to the cave-in and poked at the rocks with his hooves. “We either work here with the bloodwings, or we send somepony back to tell them,” the unicorn stallion answered. He looked at Sweet. “You good to go back through?” he asked.

Sweet nodded, closing his eyes slowly.

“Good,” answered Night. “You go first, then the-”

“Are you fucking kidding?” I demanded, fighting to keep my voice down. “You're just going to go right back into their hooves?”

Lost slid the plasma pistol we had snuck in out of her bag, and aimed it at the mutant bats. “What if they wake up now?” The gun bobbed up and down, moving back and forth slowly. Looked as if she was counting them.

Night stared at me for a moment, blinking as if he couldn't comprehend what I'd just said. He walked over to stand in front of me. “And go where?” he asked. “That way?” He pointed to the far end of the cavern, past where I could see in the dull light. “You know what’s that way? Because I'll take the sure thing of going back where there's RadSafe and RadAway and no bloodwings over the mystery cavern.”

He had a point. Our choices were to go back to a griffon who couldn't fit through the passage anyway, or into the darkness beyond. Either way we might drag the bloodwings with us, and going back without any progress might get us shot on sight.

Sweet and Xeno both watched silently, looking back and forth between Lost's counting and my argument.

“You're not even going to try rebelling against this?” I yelled, forgetting to keep my voice down. One of the bloodwings squeaked at my outburst, and something splattered on the cavern floor next to me. Slowly, I looked up. I clamped a hoof down over my mouth. Must remember to talk quietly. “We just had a break, and we have one RadAway we can share. It won't go far, but we'll have time to find another way out.”

“Would it not be fastest to tell the griffon?” asked Xeno. “We have found something of much important in here, a change to go forward to the goal.” She sounded optimistic, but her way of speaking didn't do her any favors.

The earth pony nodded in agreement.

“It's not like he'll give us a gun to clear out the bloodwings, and they can fit through the tunnel too,” Night continued. “We're wasting time, let's go back now. The sooner we can get back to our Queen.” Why did they keep talking about a queen? I decided it was nothing I wanted to know anything more about. The only royalty I knew or wanted to know was Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, my Goddesses. “Sweet, you go through first.”

Sweet did as he was told, crouching down and heading back into the cave-in path.

Lost stepped up next to me, leaning in close. “I only have one spark cell left, and it’s half empty,” she whispered. “The Steel Ranger took all the rest. There’s more bloodwings here than I can even count. They just start to blend in together. If something happens to wak-”

“No!” Night yelled, in spite of the bloodwings.

It happened almost in slow motion. Sweet hit one of the rocks holding up the passage. A boulder fell free and smashed onto Sweet’s leg, crushing it between it and the rocky floor. A sickening crack filled the cavern, a sound which sent a shiver up my spine from the memory. His leg snapped to the side, shattered white bone spiking out as it tore the skin open. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. But that meant it wouldn’t wake the blood-

After the rock rolled away, he weakly forced himself up on three hooves, but fell hard. With luck rivaling the kind Xeno always talked about, one rock collapsed from the passage wall. With that boulder missing, an avalanche of others followed.

Thud. Thud. THUD!

The entire passageway collapsed. Oh, no. Nonono. That one rock had been holding it up. Sweet must have bumped- I shook my head to clear that thought. Yes, ceiling crushing was better than slowly being eaten, but what if we’d still been in there? What if Lost had been crushed? The thought of being alone in the Wasteland shook me to my core. Dad was dead, mom was dead, if Lost had- But it didn’t happen. I took a deep breathe to calm myself. Focus on reality, not what could have been.

We were trapped now. I looked around at every wall, trying to find an opening. There had to be a passageway or a hall carved into the mine. There just had to be. Left had nothing. The claws in the back of my mind started to tear their way up through my subconscious again. Stuck in a room. With two stallions. One was wounded but that didn’t matter, stallions were bad when they were stuck in rooms with mares. I looked to the right. Nothing. I can’t be trapped again. There’s no chains this time, so it’s okay. Lost would protect me. She always did. She had to! Oh, and, and! If we couldn’t get out, that meant Seethe couldn’t get in! We may have been trapped, but at least we were safe... with all the bloodwings... I looked up.

Celestia save us...

Dozens of little red dots speckled the ceiling, with more appearing every second. I let out a loud ‘eep,’ and tore my eyes from the ceiling.

“No, no, no!” Night cried out, crouching down to the earth pony. “C’mon Sweet. No time for sleep, baby. Bloodwings are coming. And those aren’t the kind of dreams you want.” He was smiling again, his voice almost soothing. Night wrapped a hoof around Sweet’s good leg and helped him up. “Don’t leave me, please, we’re so close...”

The wounded pony didn’t respond at all. His head lolled to the side, eyes staring blankly straight ahead. There was no way he could have died from that, but given the amount of radiation within this cavern it was likely he was already past the point of saving. He was still breathing though, so there was hope. Shallow breathing was better than no breathing.

“We have to find another way out,” Lost said, trotting to the wall and starting to make a circle around the cavern room we were in. The light of the PipBuck came on, and coupled with the light from her horn, it was enough for her to see the walls.

The ceiling above us slowly came to life, the sound of dozens of wings flapping becoming almost overpowering. The red spots of eyes were everywhere now, accompanied by shrill squeaks as the bloodwings woke each other up. There wasn’t much time.

“Xeno help him,” Lost ordered. She stood near the corner of the cavern room, her face practically pressed against the walls.

The claws were still there, digging at my the dark parts of my mind. They reminded me I was trapped, even without the chains to hold me, or the muzzle to silence me. I was helpless. I had to keep calm, keep breathing, and not think about it. Lost was there with me, she would protect me. Like she always did, like she always would. Like she always would.

“Hidden, come help me over here,” she continued. When I didn’t run over, she yelled, “Hidden Fortune. Come here now.”

Yes, sister... I walked over to her, in a daze.

Xeno also did as she was ordered, though much quicker than I did. And with a precise and abrupt quick-fix, she did what she could. She pulled the torn flesh further apart and straightened his rubbery leg. Sweet’s eyes rolled up in his head. “Pony, you need to push his bone back where it belongs. Grab this pony’s hoof and slide it back inside.”

Night wordlessly took Sweet’s hoof in his and pulled down, guiding the sharp edge of bloody bone back down into the bleeding leg. A meaty squish from inside the leg set my teeth on edge. I’d had a broken leg only a few hours ago, but if it’d been that bad for me, well, I’d have asked for a bullet to the skull.

When Night was done, Xeno pulled a long cloth and wrapped Sweet’s leg tightly. It staunched some of the bleeding, but without a splint or cast, it was going to be far from effective. But at least the leg was pointing in the right direction now. She helped Night lift Sweet’s good leg and put it over the unicorn’s shoulder. He was just barely able to hobble Sweet to the corner where I had joined my sister.

“There’s a dark passageway here. Bigger than the one we came in. But there’s no light coming from the gems,” L.A. said, looking back at me. “It might be wide enough to get all three of them through, but I can’t tell.” She aimed her plasma pistol upward again, then levitated it over to me. “You take it so I can light the way, ok?”

I nodded and grabbed it with my fetlock. “You know I can’t fire these things right? I have no idea how it works.” I said, before stuffing what looked like the trigger part into my mouth. It didn’t feel right, not being a ‘real’ gun and all, but if it saved our lives, it saved our lives.

“It’s simple sis, you hold it like you’ve got it, and squeeze here.” She tapped a spot on the gun, giving me just enough instruction to position it properly. Point and shoot interface; simple. Lost turned and began walking. Following her lead, the four of us squeezed into the tunnel. My lungs struggled to draw breath again. Don’t think, I reminded myself. I wasn’t a thinky pony, so rather than think... Act.

“We have to get back and tell Spade what happened. The guard’ll kill us if he thinks we tried to escape,” Night whispered, trying his best to sound like he was yelling. “I need to get Sweet Dreams to Plagueheart. She’ll keep us alive... just to keep us digging.” His leg and hoof were covered in blood, and he’d left a trail from where Sweet Dreams was hit to where we were standing. The makeshift bandage was already stained red, and there was blood everywhere.

“We do not have time for that. The bloodwings will kill us in an instant if they finish waking. There will be another way back. Or a better way out. You need to stop letting them rule you. Be your own pony.” Xeno snapped at him, forcing her voice to an angry whisper. “Iam scared as well, but we cannot give up, that is the way to certain death.” She stared defiantly at him, her eyelid twitching slightly. It shut him up, and he nodded. Turning fear to resolve, that was a lesson we all needed to learn. The Wasteland might take and take, but a pony, or zebra, had to learn to overcome that.

The rational part of my mind agreed. Xeno was right. Why couldn’t I stop those claws of fear at the back of my skull, then? I looked back and forth between Lost ahead of me, and the two stallions to my side. Why wasn’t I up there with her? Why could I only follow... Even when I tried to lead, it was only when she agreed. I didn’t want to be left here, not with these ponies. They’d... Without her to save me...

A moment later, his own light spell activated, giving a fiery glow to the passageway Lost had found. We started through it right as the first bloodwing dropped to the ground. It opened its wings when it fell, gliding to the floor and making a beeline for the blood left there. Oh Luna, there was a trail leading right to us. The mutated bat let out a shrill screech, happy with its sanguine find, and began to drink it up.

Seconds later, the ceiling erupted into chaos. Bloodwings swooped down from every direction, all vying for the blood that had drained from Sweet’s leg. We picked up our pace, the blood leaving an imperfect trail for them to follow us. They were preoccupied for the moment by the free meal though, and hadn’t started giving chase.

The distraction didn’t last long, as the first of the bloodwings that had landed took off again, shrieking after us. The rest took flight too, searching for more. I took a potshot at the closest one in the air, but missed horribly. Not only did I barely know how to use this damn gun, but I didn’t have anything to help me with targeting! We kept moving forward, trying to stay ahead of that bloodthirsty horde.

Xeno’s luck struck, and Sweet tripped over something. Even hobbling mindlessly and being led by Night, he still toppled forward, dropping to the floor in a bloody heap. It had a domino effect. When Sweet fell, he pulled Night off-balance, and crashed to the side with him. Xeno rushed in, but was too late to catch either of them. The time it took the two to fall was just enough time for some of the bloodwings to catch up.

Two landed on the ruddy pony, going for the easier meal. Night jumped to his hooves, the fiery light of his horn glinting off the vicious fangs of the bloodwings. Ignoring the light, they attacked Sweet, digging their fangs into his flesh.

I aimed the plasma pistol, yelling in my mind for S.A.T.S. to buy me the time I needed to aim and fire. The targeting spell would give me enough time to save him. Nothing happened. Why wouldn’t S.A.T.S. coming up! Oh... My heart damn near stopped. L.A. had the PipBuck.

Night stomped down on one, splattering it into the ground before it could begin feeding. But it wasn’t enough. In what seemed like an instant, the blood that was dripping from the wounded pony’s leg dried up, and his flesh grew taut. All fluid was drained away just like that, leaving nothing but a dry shell remaining.

For a moment we all stood in shock. It had happened so fast. A split second could have been enough to save him, but even that much time was a blessing the Wasteland hadn’t been willing to give. No, that wasn’t the Wasteland’s fault, it was mine. My oversight killed this pony. A pony just... died, because I wasn’t fast enough to save him. I was too preoccupied with my stupid problems, my irrational problems, to do anything. Why couldn’t I just get over it? Nothing had happened. It was just a nightmare. I’d had hundreds of nightmares. My nights were full of nightmares, and every day in the Wasteland was a nightmare. So why did this get to me?!

Whatever had compelled those ponies, those zebras, all of them, to destroy their world so thoroughly, so heinously, that it left monsters like this hundreds of years later... Was it worth it?

Xeno moved first, attempting to kick the now-full bloodwing. She missed though. Finished with its meal, the bloodwing took to the air again, screeching to alert its brethren.

Fuck!

I fired a single shot. Xeno’s luck was with me this time. The B-KEW echoed off the walls of the passageway, and a burst of plasma smashed into the blood-sucking monster. It erupted in green energy, and turned into a sticky green goo that splattered over the dessicated pony corpse. If only that could bring the poor stallion back...

Lost hadn’t stopped moving, probably unaware of what had happened. She stared forward at the darkness, occasionally looking at the PipBuck. With the focus she needed to keep the light it was understandable, but... A pony had just died. The pony who died wasn’t me though...

If we stayed, we were just going to die. Either the radiation or the bloodwings were going to get us. I spit the gun out into my hoof. “We have to keep moving!” I whispered, trying not to yell.

Xeno got the hint and sped up after my sister, muttering something in zebra that sounded suspiciously like an apology.

“I can’t just leave him!” Night whispered hoarsely, his eyes beginning to tear up.

“I know how you feel, I’ve been there before. But we need. To. Get. Moving!” I ordered. With my free hoof, I grabbed his leg and pulled, practically dragging him from the corpses. We couldn’t stay. All light from the far end of the passage was now blotted out by the hundreds of bloodwings flying back and forth, looking for where their prey had escaped to.

“But...” he pleaded. The resistance lasted only a second, before he gave in completely, and turned his back on the fallen pony.

* * *

My back was on fire. The Med-X hadn’t lasted nearly as long the second time. Every move I made was agony, but I couldn’t stop. The bloodwings had begun searching for us, darting down every side tunnel and hallway. For the moment the four of us were safe, hidden in a hallway off to the side of the main passage, behind a rocky outcropping that kept them from seeing us with... whatever it was they used to see us in the dark. The best part about it, without the gems to light the walls and ceiling, the ambient noise of the PipBuck had diminished to a mildly obnoxious click once every minute or so. Apparently the gems themselves had been radioactive. The dark may have been inconvenient, but at least it wasn’t lethal.

The shrieks of the bloodwings sounded further and further away. Enough so that from beside me, Lost spoke up in a whisper. “How long have you been down here?” she asked the stallion. At least one of us was trying to be civil while we waited for the bloodwings to lose interest.

“Too long,” he answered.

Attempting to stay pleasant, my sister continued, “Well, I’m Lost Art, my sister is Hidden Fortune. Our zebra friend over there is called Xeno.”

“Rough Night,” he said through gritted teeth. Part of me was curious if that was some sort of innuendo. Or maybe he just had bad luck when the sun went down. Though, considering his attitude, it wouldn’t surprise me if he brought it upon hims- No that wasn’t fair, not now. He’d just lost somepony close to him.

“What do we do now?” I snapped. Even if my eyes hadn’t been clenched shut in pain, I wouldn’t have been able to see the ponies I was speaking to. I wished we could have kept the lights on, but while we hid we couldn’t chance the bloodwings seeing it. At least L.A.’s presence next to me brought a tiny bit of comfort.

“I don’t know. Why would I know?” she snapped back.

“Spade says,” the stallion said. He paused, sniffling hard. “She said there’s a few more openings and sinkholes where rocks collapsed from the ceiling. If we find one on this end, we can get back to digging and lead the way. With the guard’s rifle we could...”

“Why do you wish to go back to them? He is a slaver at best, not a guard. Do you truly believe that you will be allowed to go safely in the end?” Xeno said from somewhere behind me. Whatever it was that she ‘inspired’ to do in life, that kept her so afraid of death, it must have been bordered on being divinely inspired. Her resolve to continue forward was something I was quickly coming to respect.

Another wave of nausea hit, coupled with pain flaring on my back. I nearly collapsed, suddenly grateful for the darkness in the side hallway that kept the others from seeing me falter. I just had to ignore it, and it would go away. I fought against the feeling in the back of my throat. With a hoof over my mouth, I forced myself to swallow. If I threw up... or worse... it might alert those damn mutated bats, and just when we seemed to have lost them, too. Then we’d all be fucked.

Forcing my eyes open, I moved on shaky hooves toward the main hall. It was brighter there, more dull light coming from gemstones in the wall. Only two explanations for the sections that were dark came to mind. Either the gems were added in after the mining was done, or whatever they were mining for had dried up and they began expanding main tunnels for more and found the gems. Given their ready source of light, leaving them seemed a smarter choice. At least trying to figure out more old world mysteries kept my mind off the pain. What had they been mining down here anyway? Mom had always told us the war started because there was little coal in Equestria, but what else could be so valuable down here?

“Lost, I...” I stopped mid-sentence to swallow. More nausea welled up, and I had to keep from throwing up. “I’m starting to...” Okay, here it comes. I skittered to the darker side of the dark hallway and threw up, dry heaving once there was nothing left. The force tore open the scabs over my back and leg. Suddenly even breathing hurt, every little movement under my skin sending little sparks of pain all over. These caves were going to be the death of me...

The blue glow of her levitation lit up the worried smile on her face. “Drink this,” she said, floating over the pouch of RadAway that had been in my bag. It was even opened for me.

“Thank you,” I forced, taking the pouch in my mouth. Siiiip. Bleh. Even when it was the only thing keeping me alive, it tasted terrible.

“Aren’t you going to share?” the stallion demanded.

Of course I was, I just... I passed the remaining bits of the pouch to him. As long he made sure my sister got some we’d be-

“We must go, now,” Xeno announced, pointing a hoof out past the outcropping that was shielding us. The sound of the bloodwings was quieter now, but if our current luck kept punching us in the muzzles like it had been, my wonderful rediscovery of what had been in my stomach was going to draw them back here. “If we do not, our chance will be going.” She ran as she finished, darting back into the lit hallway and through it in the direction we had been heading initially.

The three of us followed, L.A. in front, Night in the rear, with me weakly running between the two of them, favoring my scorched leg. Since none of us knew which way was the right direction to head, following Xeno seemed to be a fine way to navigate. The worst that would happen would be losing ourselves deeper in the mine.

Every step sent flames searing through my flesh. The charred skin split, with blood pooling in the shredded and burnt flesh to seep and drip down my side. There wasn’t time to complain, any second more of the bloodwings could fly through. If I had my battle saddle, I could take care of them. But with this little plasma pistol there wasn’t much we could do. Especially considering there was only one spark cell for it. Conservation of ammo and hiding was a far better survival tactic than running in, guns blazing.

Xeno’s special brand of luck wasn’t on our side though, or perhaps it was. I really couldn’t tell with her. There was a loud screech, and the thumping of wings echoed through the cavern. I didn’t want to look back, not that I needed to, I could hear that they were getting closer and closer.

“Faster, they’re-” I started, but my breath left me. Night had passed me already, and the others were gaining ground. I just couldn’t keep up when it hurt to move so badly. Why did I always have to be limping? Fuck the Wasteland for going for my legs every, single, Goddesses-damned time. I opened my mouth again, to call out for them, but nothing came out. I gasped, trying to get air into my lungs again. They were almost here. I had to go faster. The other three rounded a corner, going out of my sight. No. Don’t leave me...

One of the bloodwings landed on me, digging its claws into my side. “NO!” I could breathe again! I veered sideways, smashing the mutated monster between myself and the wall. It worked, stunning it for a moment. That was all the time I needed. I ran. The pain in my side and leg was gone, blown away by the burst of adrenaline. Up ahead I heard a strange whirring noise, different from the teeth of the wire monster.

More bloodwings were upon me. None had landed, or attempted to latch on. I didn’t know why. I wasn’t going to argue. They swarmed around me, as I rounded the corner. Suddenly the whirring made sense.

Gunfire erupted from the two turrets at the end of the hallway, spattering the swarm of bloodwings with small caliber fire. It was enough to kill them, and that brought a smile to my face. The mutated bats exploded all around me, blood flying through the air and coating me. I kept running toward the turrets, they hadn’t been aiming at me, so they mu- A bullet tore into my shoulder, arcing pain through my entire side.

“Shit!”

Why were they shooting at me? More shots tore through the bloodwings, with several bodies falling right in my path. I tripped over one, and skidded to a stop just past the turrets. I closed my eyes. Just needed to lay down for a few minutes and then I could go back to finding a way out.

When I finally opened my eyes, I saw a white hoof. Lost stood in front of me, ready to help me up. “Turrets?” I whispered, taking the offered hoof.

“Still up after two hundred years. Earth pony engineering,” she said, pulling me up. “Looks like we found the end of the mine.”

* * *

We’d hit a Goddesses-damned dead end.

Luna. Celestia. Why had you forsake me?

I looked around, hoping I’d missed something. This section of the mine was full of nothing but two century old tools and machinery that hadn’t been used in centuries. More dull gems lined the ceiling and wall, some partially covered where they hadn’t been dug out yet. Well, that was one mystery down. “Isn’t the Stable they’re looking for here? Did anypony else see something I missed?” I asked. It had to be...

“No. This is a different part of the mine. The Steel Ranger said the original owners dug for iron,” Night explained. “Eventually they tapped the mineshaft, so they expanded in a giant fan pattern to try and find more. Apparently the Stable could’ve been built at the end of any of the mine shafts. I just want to find it so I can get back to my Queen and...” He trailed off after that, staring at the floor and looking deep in thought. A moment later, he muttered under his breath, “not that it matters anymore...”

“You mean we have to go back out there?” I asked, terrified. This was the worst idea I’d ever had. Why hadn’t I done any research before coming here... I hadn’t even considered... Stupid.

“Yes. We... hold on,” L.A. started, but cut herself off. She ran to the back edge of the chamber we were in, and threw up again. Had she gotten any of the RadAway?

“Lost are you...” I asked, ignoring my pain. I slowly walked over to her. Bullets, burns. None of it mattered if she was hurt. “What’s wrong?”

She turned to face me, blood dripping from the corners of her mouth. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“That is not fine. The radiation is doing serious damage to you, and to all of us. We have time now, with your pony guns to protect us,” Xeno said, getting up and tossing her bag down. “I will make something, I am missing things so it will not be the best, but it will help.” She dug a few things from her bag, more jars with mysterious contents.

The unicorn meanwhile, had started fiddling with the mining machinery that was piled up against the far wall. Much of it wasn’t particularly useful, not for anything we’d need it for. There were a few pickaxes and shovels that could be makeshift melee weapons, but the rest were drills or machines I didn’t recognize. “I found something,” he announced.

Oh.

He came back from the pile of tools with a large parchment, rolled into a tight spiral. The four of us opened it, then held it down with Xeno’s jars, and took the time to look over it. It was a map.

“Sis, you’re getting blood on it,” I said, wiping the blood from her mouth. “How’s... whatever you’re making going, Xeno?” I looked over to the zebra.

She didn’t answer, but continued with her brew.

“Ok, this is very out of date, there have probably been several cave-ins since the miners were here,” Rough Night said. “But it can get us to the central hub... probably. We went the wrong way.” He pointed at a few spots on the map with his hoof. “We go back the way we came, avoid the tunnels on the side, and we should be able to find the Forepony’s office.” He sounded different, but not better. He wasn’t talking about going back and giving into the Rangers unconditionally, or like a pony looking for escape or revenge. Now he just sounded hollow and empty. Was it because he had nopony to save now, the rest didn’t matter... Was all that was left to just go through the motions?

“What about the bloodwings?” Lost asked.

“We must go through them, if they have not left the mine already. There is less radiation here, but it will kill us in time. We cannot stay forever,” Xeno responded, with surprising clarity. She finally finished mixing up a batch of something or other. It was in one of the larger jars, a combination of unmentionables from every other little ‘extract’ she had. She took a drink of it herself, then passed the remainder to my sister. “This is better than the RadAway you ponies make. It will make you feel much better.”

A noticeably paler blue glow enveloped the jar, and L.A. floated it toward her. I had to help get it to her mouth, but she was able to down it all. Almost immediately she looked better, her eyes focusing again. Even the glow of her magic seemed brighter. Whatever it was Xeno had mixed up, it was doing wonders.

While we examined the map, deciding on the best path to take, I felt an odd sensation. There was a familiar knitting sensation on my leg, just above my cutie mark. With a smile, I turned to Lost. Her horn was glowing brightly, but she just smiled back. For several minutes, she healed me. It wasn’t complete, but much better. The burn on my right leg was healed now, which meant I wouldn’t have to limp.

With a makeshift plan, we were ready.

* * *

“Why did we go this way?!” I screamed over the flapping of hundreds of bloodwings.

“Because it’s what the map says!” Night yelled back.

We galloped down the main hall. We’d left the safety of the turrets less than a minute ago, and the bloodwings were already chasing us again. The rusty pickaxes and dented shovels weren’t the best way to keep safe, but we were out of ‘good’ options.

Light from ahead. The map said the Forepony’s office would be safe, at least safer than the blood tunnels of death, and it was on the way to the Stable itself. If that was the pony who was in charge when the world ended, he was bound to have a few tools we could use to survive. And guns. At least, I hoped so.

A bloodwing shrieked and landed on me. I skewered the monster with the pointy end of the pickaxe I’d grabbed, and kept running. The flapping, shrieking bloodwing flailed, then died, still stuck on the improvised weapon. I ran.

WHANG.

Lost clobbered another bloodwing aside with a glowing blue swat from her shovel. They were gaining on us, and fast. I wasn’t limping, so I could keep up... but keeping up wasn’t fast enough to outrun the flying leathery death.

Each dose of Med-X lasted less and less time. The burn on my back was smaller, but not fully healed. Lost’s limited healing ability could only do so much. If this Forepony had a first aid kid...

Four bloodwings dove onto my back. One second of adrenaline lasted forever as I felt their wings and the pricking of their claws. Attack already! Bite me, fucker! Just end it if you’re going to end it! I cried out as one did, its fangs perforating my hide.

WHANG.

Lost smashed three of the bats aside, throwing them away with the shovel like dirt out of a hole. The fangs ripped two jagged lines across my back as they ripped free and tumbled back into the mass of mutated bats behind us.

One left. That one bit down.

It wasted no time in drinking.

Everything felt cold. My hooffalls slowed and I stumbled. I couldn’t feel my hooves. No blood pumping to the muscles. My vision hazed and darkened. I tried to scream. A splash of something splattered my back, coating me from my mane to my flanks.

Lost pulled her horn from the bloodwing’s corpse. Its blood, and probably some of mine, trickled down her horn and into the remains of her mane. She tossed her head, nickering, and the bloodwing splattered to the floor. “Hidden! Are you alright?”

“Nnn... ngh,” I grunted. My hooves felt dry and wooden, they looked gaunt, just stretched skin over muscle and bone with no life in it. I could only nod. When I did, I felt woozy and almost blacked out. But somehow, despite all odds, I was alive. Once again my sister saved me. We kept going.

“Up ahead!” Xeno shouted. “The building we are searching for!” Up ahead, where the tunnel widened into a cavern, a little shack sat nestled against the rocky walls. It wasn’t much, but there was a sturdy door and no visible windows. Perfect.

We ran across the cavern, making a beeline for the shack. The cavern was huge, and I wished I’d gotten a better look at it. A massive cave-in on the far side let gray daylight in from near the ceiling. Opposite the collapse, a half-dozen tunnels spread out, like on the map. Just like Night said, a giant fan pattern in every direction. Great. But for now, shack!

Night grabbed the door in fiery red telekinesis and flung it open. The four of us skittered inside, and he slammed it shut. Our hooves hit wood floor, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I jumped a foot in the air as dozens of thuds from abruptly stopping bloodwings pummeled against it.

The door held.

Finally, we were somewhere safe. All around us, walls and a ceiling and a floor. No gems slowly leaking radiation they’d absorbed hundreds of years ago. No monsters trying to drink my blood. Just a room with a terminal and some lockers. Oh dear, one of the lockers had a bullet hole through it. Oh, and there was a first aid kit attached to the wall. Perfect. A skeleton lay sprawled out the floor, with a hole in its head and a stained splatter of blood and gore from centuries past surrounding it. A gun lay on the floor nearby.

“Okay everypony, we don’t have much time,” Lost said. “This room might be safe, but we need to find another exit, or find the Stable. Night, check the lockers. Xeno, brew up more of that awesome RadAway. Hidden, check the first aid kit.” More thuds echoed through the walls around us.

Each of us got to work immediately. The first aid kit was mercifully unlocked, and provided us with two healing potions, several bandages, a shot of Med-X and some much-needed RadAway. With permission from the others, I downed the entirety of the first potion. In an instant, my back healed, the cracks and burns in the flesh stitching together to their pristine condition. It wouldn’t grow my coat back, but that wasn’t a big deal. The main thing was the pain was gone. Even better, I didn't feel lightheaded anymore. Did healing potions regrow lost blood? I wasn't going to question it. Healing magic was just one of those cheater magics that didn’t always make sense. I gave a RadAway to each pony, and placed one in my bags for myself.

“The terminal says the Stable was being built at the end of Tunnel 5. But there’s no map and no markings to show which tunnel is 5,” L.A. explained from her place at the terminal screen. The PipBuck’s screen was bright, obviously linked to the terminal before her. “Guess we just start counting.”

I walked over to her, picking up the 10mm pistol as I went. I peeked over her shoulder at the screen.

Daily Report:

Construction on the Stable has finished, which means Tunnel 5 is finally fit for mining again, though with all the equipment they rammed through I doubt there’s anything usable in that mine anymore. I’m glad to finally have those Stable-Tec bastards gone. First they took over our factory, and now my mine. Of all the nerve. I understand the war is escalating, but the idea that they can storm in and take whatever they want just boggles my mind.

I have half a mind to put my hoof down and go directly to the head of the company. Knowing her though, she’s been paid off. Oh well, so long as my miners can do their job. I still need to get paid!

Onto the report.

-The 15 day record since the last accident will need to be reset. I had to send out two condolence letters due to a collapse in Tunnel 4. I still don’t understand why we needed to use that branch tunnel. It’s been nothing but trouble since we started it.
-Iron supplies are dwindling, so I’ve decided to mine the remainder of Tunnels 1 and 2 for the gems that they contain. They might be worth far less than the iron, but we can still sell them for a small profit.
-The exit at the end of Tunnel 3 has been taken over by a local bear. Apparently finding a cave out in the woods is a sign that any old wild animal should take it as their home. I’ve warned my crew to only enter through the main entrance in the foundry. There is a note posted to all personnel at both entrances.
-Five radiation suits have been supplied and are kept my locker, under lock and key. The head of the company personally delivered them, saying they were to be used in case of an emergency. Really worried about the war lately...
-On that note, emergency provisions and small arms have been placed in the tool shed. These are for Emergency Use Only. Anypony caught tampering with company property without clearance will be punished.

In closing, the mine is as productive as ever, despite setbacks. We believe that Tunnel 7 will be provide enough iron for the next year’s supply of power armor. Any questions can be directed to myself, or the shift manager.

~Forepony Strata Shear

Okay, so the unfinished tunnel was Tunnel seven, which meant Tunnel five was two from that. Excellent. But how many unfinished tunnels were there? The report didn’t specify if there were multiple tunnels being worked at at the same time. Another downside was that our only exit was probably still teeming with radioactive wildlife. Great. I checked the map we had, but there was nothing marking anything about the Stable, and most of the tunnels drawn on the map tapered off into nothing, with no explanation about which was which.

“Bad news everypony,” Night said, finally managing to get into the locker. He pulled out several yellow suits that looked almost identical to the ones the griffon guard had been wearing before. “There’s five...” He shook his head upon tossing them out on the floor. Every single one had a bullet through the chest and out the back. “They’re all useless though.” It looked like the mare had shot herself, and had pierced through each one, rendering them all but useless. Goddesses. Damnit.

“There may be a way to repair them. Is there anything we could use for that?” Xeno asked. She had finished mixing concoctions, and was slowly sipping the largest jar. “Even I am beginning to feel the affects of the radiation, and it would be very good for me to not die a horrible death in a mine made by ponies hundreds of years ago.” She took the jar in her hooves and stared into it, then downed the rest and threw it into her bag.

“I... don’t know,” he said, looking back and forth between each suit. He gave a heavy sigh, shuffling a hoof. “Maybe we should just try to get back...” His voice had the same somber defeated tone from before, listless and hollow. “I just want to get back to Spade and go home.”

“We all do, but we can’t give up,” I said. “We’re already here. Let’s find the Stable. The Stable ponies might be nicer than the Steel Rangers. They might even help,” I offered, trying to cheer him up. “Look, there’s five suits and only four of-” I caught myself, and bit my lip. “S-Sorry. But we can use the parts from the fifth to fix the rest. See?” I grabbed L.A.’s shovel in my mouth and slammed it into one of the suits. The shovel dug into the floor and severed the leg of the suit clean off. There was plenty of extra material that could be used to seal the holes in the other four. We just needed something to create a seal.

“If it were a machine, I could fix it...” Lost muttered. “A repair spell might work if they weren’t missing huge holes. A little tear is easy, but...” She lifted one of the suits with her telekinesis and stared through the hole.

“What magic can you cast, unicorn?” Xeno asked, passing the stallion one of the jars. She gave one to my sister and one to me as well. We both downed them without question. On the bright side, whatever it was she made tasted much better than the RadAway. Though, the room did start to twist and turn a little. Spiraly...

“Well, uhh... I can cast a fireball from my horn,” Night admitted.

“What!” I demanded, snapping back to reality. “You could shoot fire all this time? But why not use it against the bloodwings!”

He just stared at me, saying nothing. Okay, it was neither here nor there. If he could melt the material from one suit onto another, it might be able to make a seal. That’s what a thinky pony would do!

Lost sat next to him, spreading each suit out with her magic. She maneuvered each so the bullet holes were all visible and flat with no wrinkles. I spent the time using the shovel to cut smaller pieces from the severed suit leg. It took forever without cheater magic, but it worked. Rough Night used the weak fire spell he had to heat up the shovel once I’d cut the suit apart, and with it glowing red hot, we were melt patches over each of the holes in a relatively short amount of time.

Several minutes later, all four of us wore radiation suits, and were ready to go. With Xeno’s home brew RadAway, a dose each of RadSafe, and another gun, I felt pretty good. The thudding of bloodwings against the building’s wall had ceased long ago, so it was more than likely safe to go out again. I hoped.

First order of business: check the shed on the far end of the cavern room for the guns mentioned on the terminal, then go directly to the Stable. We were already here, so there was no sense in running without at least trying for more allies. It might have been naive, but I wanted to believe we could find help to deal with the Steel Rangers who had stolen our things.

Lost held the plasma pistol ready in her telekinesis, as she pushed open the door and we left the safety of the room. I had the 10mm strapped to my leg, but without an opening in the suit for my mouth, there was little I could do with it. We ran across the cavern to the far shed, and I smashed the door open with a fierce buck. We ducked in and found a wealth of small-caliber weapons, and even a few sets of armored barding. Finally, armor! If it weren’t for the suit keeping the radiation at bay, I would have slipped into the new barding that minute. We stuffed everything we could carry into each of our bags. Guns, ammo, armor, anything that wasn’t bolted down filled my saddlebags to the brim. These ponies had been ready for the end of the world, but luckily for us, they never needed the equipment.

With the knowledge from the terminal records, we looked at the tunnels before us. The unfinished one was Tunnel seven...There were only six tunnels! The Forepony’s records said one was an offshoot, but which one? Did we have to check every single branch, one at a time?

“The radiation’s still going up,” Lost said through the suit. “The PipBuck’s clicking is slower, but it’s still going up.” Surprisingly, I could make out everything she said, which raised questions about our griffon guard. Which reminded me...

“Sis, did you hear Kyrie saying that they’d attack the Steel Rangers if the ‘contract’ is broken?” I asked as we started down the tunnel immediately to the right of the one we’d come in through.

“Yeah, I just hope it won’t come to that,” she replied. “They could turn on us, too.”

Night snorted. “Those griffons have been here for months now. I don’t think the Steel Rangers are going to be reneging on the contract any time soon,” he said. He seemed to be in a slightly better mood, as if being integral to patching the suits had helped to him to put aside what had happened. I felt for him, but we could mourn later, once we were safe.

We hit another collapse in the second tunnel. Far above, I could see a giant gaping hole in the ceiling, which let in a significant amount of ambient light through the cloud cover. Was it really still day outside? I felt like we’d been in here for eons, like it should at least be the middle of the night. If it had really only been a few hours, well... That sent a shiver down my spine all the way to the tip of my tail.

Our collective ears drooped in defeat as Night made a mark on our map about the cave-in. We couldn’t even climb out, with how steep the rubble was. With nothing more to do at this dead end, we turned and headed back for the next tunnel.

This third tunnel was far larger than the other two, easily twice as tall and several times wider. I had a good feeling about it. This was the kind of tunnel they’d have needed to move massive amounts of machinery through to build a Stable. But... I knew better than to get too worked up. Even if this was a good sign, there was still a massive amount of radiation and possible wildlife if this was the wrong tunnel. The gems in the ceiling and walls were far bigger, as if the deeper they cut, the larger they became. The dull light they showed was a blessing from Celestia though, as it meant we could see any errant bloodwings long before they could see us.

We rounded one last corner, and found ourselves staring down by four more turrets.

Not good.

As quickly as we turned the corner, the turrets opened fire. I skidded to a stop, spun around, and dove back behind the corner, out of the line of fire. We crashed into a pile, safe from the hail of bullets. Miraculously not a single bullet had hit any of us. Another bit of luck that I blamed on Xeno. None the worse for wear, we gathered in a little circle.

“Do you think you can take those out, Sis?” I asked. “I can’t use any guns through this thing.”

“Of course,” she said, smiling. Her blue eyes twinkling behind the visor and her glasses. Oh, that’s right. She had the PipBuck, which meant she had S.A.T.S. A half second later, two shots popped off, echoing B-KEW off the walls. Two of the four turrets exploded in a shower of green energy and sparks.

“I’m pretty sure this is the right tunnel. Turrets would be guarding something, right?” Night asked, once again having pulled the map out to make notes.

“Probably,” Lost said, firing off two more shots. Both missed this time. “Shit. I’m out...”

Oh dear, and she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with anything other than the plasma pistol. I gritted my teeth. This was going to suck, but we needed to get to the end of this tunnel. “Take off my helmet,” I said. “I’ll get the last two.” A few seconds without the helmet wouldn’t kill me. I hoped.

Hesitantly, Lost unsealed the helmet and lifted it from my head. The feel of the radiation was overwhelming and oppressive. Instantly I felt sick, my insides twisting and a warm wetness dripping from my lips. With a shake of my mane, trying to throw the sick feeling off, I reached down and pulled the pistol from its holster on my leg. It was hard to grip, the blood soaking the handle, but if I just moved fast enough... I peeked around the corner, and wearily fired off a few shots. The first few missed, but one finally struck home, knocking the turret out in a shower of sparks. The remaining turret fired back at me, several shots cutting through my mane, and grazing my cheeks. I’d been shot like that before, and didn’t even flinch. Grazing shots didn’t have the same umph that a bullet going into my flesh had, and were easy enough to ignore.. I was feeling woozy though, that wet burning coming from the back of my throat. Another flick of the trigger and the last turret exploded.

“Ok helmet back on now!” I yelled, before swallowing to keep back the tide of vomit. I dropped the gun to the ground just as the helmet slammed down over my head. I sat down in relief as Lost sealed the helmet back on. I no longer felt like I was being cooked from the inside out. I just hoped she wouldn’t see the blood...

With the helmet back on and a few seconds to rest, the oppressive feeling faded, leaving me feeling well enough to continue. I rounded the corner again, motioning with a hoof for the others to follow me. Up ahead, far beyond the turrets, was the treasure we’d been searching for.

Stable 60.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Finesse – Your attacks are smooth, graceful and precise. You have a higher chance to score a critical hit on an opponent in combat when using conventional firearms.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Buck Rodgers (Rank 1) – Zap guns are even more dangerous in your hooves. Every ranged attack with a Magical Energy Weapon does extra damage.

“What’s a ‘Scifresh’ anyway?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“A Scifresh is a cultivar of apple closely related to the Braeburn apple. It is an interesting fact that Jazz is a brand name that that type of apple is sold as.”
“How... How do you even know that?”
“Iam a zebra, I took the Tribal Knowledge perk.”
“Well now that’s just not fair.”

Chapter 6: Dissimilar Metals

View Online

Chapter Six: Dissimilar Metals
“Oh, so ponies up top have survived!”

Locked.

Of course it was locked. Why hadn’t that thought ever crossed my mind? Really, how hard was it to be a thinky pony? All it required was taking a few seconds to think through what I was doing and not rushing in headlong without a plan. All I’d done so far was the opposite of being a thinky pony. From now on, it was L.A.’s job to make all the decisions...

“Can... can you get into it?” Rough Night asked, looking at me.

“I’m not the pony to ask,” I answered. “Sis?” The three of us looked to her, waiting for a response.

Lost said nothing, just held a forehoof up and tapped it thoughtfully against the visor of her suit. All she could do was shrug.

I let out a sigh and trotted up to the giant door in front of me. To the side, where the terminal had been on Stable Twelve, there was nothing. Just sheer rock face inset with the same dull gems that had been killing us. I kicked at the door a few times, but again there was nothing, just an unfeeling steel door sitting between us and the prize we’d been coerced into finding.

Worst. Treasure hunt. Ever.

I tried to think back to what we had found before. Despite all that had happened, it’d been only two days ago that we’d stumbled upon Stable Twelve and Twenty One and started this adventure. The Stables there were both surrounded by old skeletons of ponies from the war, something that was surprisingly absent here. There had been two doors, an obvious difference... And there was an outside input so we could get into it. Well, Lost could. But there was nothing here, everything was sealed tight. The door didn’t even have any visible hinges that we could break off. If we had some explosives, maybe a few gren- No, no grenades. Okay, maybe grenades as long as they’re not the ‘light me and everything else on fire’ kind. Lost was a thinky pony. I was sure she’d have a plan, probably one that didn’t involve me blowing myself up or setting myself on fire.

“I don’t know...” she finally said, her voice empty of emotion.

Dammit.

“There’s nothing to look into,” she explained, “nothing I could hack, nothing I could rewire, nothing at all. It’s just... a big giant door.” She followed my lead, placing a hoof on the ‘60’ painted on the door and giving a gentle push. “There may not even be anything inside. What if it wasn’t finished? Or the ponies in there used everything and died. Will Jazz kill us if we come back with empty hooves?”

“I wonder again, why is it that you ponies seem to imagine the worst,” Xeno said. “Is it not possible to have a day where you do not discuss killing one another? The Wasteland we are in has enough chances to die, is there something that complies you to think of it constantly?” The zebra stared blankly through her visor into the steel door before us. A few blinks later she tilted her head. “I wish to not think of death. It is too close at all times. We do not need to talk of it constantly as well.”

“You’re right Xeno, I’m sorry,” L.A. said, “but we need a way to get in. At least to see what’s inside.”

Suddenly the steel erupted into flame. A second bright fiery glow erupted behind us, as the stallion with us unleashed a fireball from the tip of his horn. It slammed into the door, just to the side of the first one, with an eruption that sent Lost and I backpedaling to avoid the flames.

“What’re you doing?!” I yelled, turning to shoot a glare at Rough. “What if you’d blown a hole in our suits!”

“Sorry,” Rough said. “I just... If we can’t open it, maybe I can melt a hole in it?” He flashed me a nervous smile from within the suit.

“These doors are far thicker than you’d be able to cut open with a flame. Celestia herself couldn’t cut through one of these doors without spending hours at it!” I snapped at him. How, how in the world could he think something like that? Had the radiation rotted his brain?

"It might not need to cut through it,” Lost suggested. “Maybe it got the attention to whoever is inside."

“What if it did?” I snapped. “We don’t know who’s inside there. What if they’re more of those bastard Steel Rangers and wanted to take our things and leave us for dead in some Goddesses forsaken death pit, like, I don’t know... an underground mine full of gems that leak out centuries old radiation?” I ended the sentence shouting at my sister. There was an awkward grinding sound in the background, but I paid no mind to it, given the surge of anger I felt.

“And what if they weren’t Steel Rangers, and wanted to help us fight them to get our stuff back?” She screamed at me, fogging up the visor of her suit.

Xeno tried to step in. “Sisters. There is a-”

“We can’t know that!” I continued. “They could be evil, almost all the ponies we’ve met so far have been evil. Do I need to list them off? Even the supposed Hero we found shot you in the throat the first time he saw you!” I was pissed now, yelling as loud as I could. Despite the guilt I had for shooting first and not asking any questions, he had shot my sister. I stepped closer, pushing my head against hers.

“Yes he did! Did you ever stop to think that his E.F.S. would have shown me as friendly? He was evil! Just because the radio says he's a hero doesn't mean he is. We know nothing about the voice on the radio, what if it's a fake or a recording? What if it's lies!” L.A. screamed, pushing back against me. Our visors squeaked against each other, the yelling we were doing echoing inside the suits.

“Umm,” Rough interrupted, “I think you two shoul-”

I put up a hoof, silencing him. “Then that’s just more reason to play it safe and not go dropping dynamite down a radscorpion hole!” I stomped the raised hoof to the ground for emphasis. “He could’ve been evil. Seethe is definitely evil! The zebras might as well have been evil!” I turned to Xeno, giving her a nod and a smile. “No offense.” I turned back to my sister, raising a hoof at her. “The raiders and bandits and every other monster we’ve ever met has been evil. And now the soldiers we thought would be well armed and armored and able to help us, also turn out to be evil. I’m trying to be a thinky pony, trying to be more like you! Do you really want to-”

A low, static-y rumble sounded off next to me. Both my sister and I turned and looked.

Between us, in the open stable door, stood a pony that loomed over me, looming like a monolith in the power armor. Whoever they were, they looked eerily similar to Jazz and the others. His visor and light glared blindingly, as if he were skipping the fake friendship and going straight to intimidation. Oh dear, another Steel Ranger, now I was proper fucked... When did he even get there? And for that matter, when had the door opened!

I shied away, moving closer to L.A. She backed off several steps, practically tripping over her hooves and blushing profusely. “Why’d you have to start a fight?” I whispered at her a bit too loud for comfort. For emphasis, I punched her in the side with a forehoof.

“I didn’t start it, you did,” she hissed back.

“No, you did!” I wasn’t even whispering anymore, just yelling again. If this kept up I was gonna hit her so hard!

“I didn’t sta-”

“Ponies. Iam thinking that this would be a good time to stop the fighting amongst sisters,” Xeno said, stepping between us and breaking up the fight.

The large armored pony before us turned and cocked his head to one side. In a guttural voice, accompanied by too much static, he uttered one word.

“Come.”

* * *

The stallion made us remove the radiation suits as soon as the door closed behind us. I wanted to take the suit with me, but apparently there were procedures to follow in an operational Stable. We were shielded from the radiation outside, so we didn't really need the suits. That wasn't a relief, though. I knew we’d have to exit the same way we came, and that meant trudging back through the death cavern.

On top of that, the armored stallion confiscated our newly-found weapons and armor. He assured us we’d get them all back, but it still felt like I was standing in line again, with Trifle going through our private possessions. With our irradiated belongings safely tucked away, we followed him down a long hallway, far into the depths of the Stable. It stretched on forever...

This Stable was much the same as the previous two we’d been in. It had the same dark oppressiveness to it, the sterile, unnatural feeling that no pony should ever have to live in it. Hard steel floors and humming lights just didn’t have the same feeling as the world above. The minute we stepped in, I missed the caves. They might have been slowly killing me, but they were a far sight better than the steel gray tomb of the Stable. All we needed was a dark room and some zombies and it would be just like last time. Then, a pony could jump out of the shadows and try to kill one of us. Just like then... At least this one wasn’t full of broken machines from a failed radiation experiment. In fact, it looked to be in pristine condition. Even the walls were washed.

Without anything to keep me distracted, I got lost in my thoughts...

I stared at the metal flanks of the stallion walking before me. He was in slightly different power armor than the kind worn by Jazz and her ilk. His bore ornate etchings in several places, and a rank insignia I didn’t recognize emblazoned on the shoulders. He did have the same emblem as the others, right where the cutie mark would be if he were unarmored. It was a half-apple overlaid with gears, sparks, and a sword, all of which rested over a set of outstretched wings. All that did was raise more questions, because if he had the same markings as the others... But why would Scifresh’s chapter be searching then?

Okay just, I needed to take a minute to slow down and think. To be a thinky pony.

Steel Rangers cared about... well, whatever qualified as ‘sufficiently advanced technology,’ like magical energy weapons and PipBucks, both of which were pre-war technology... I took a breath, and stared down the long hallway. Seriously, how far down did we have to go? I shook my head, forcing myself to pay attention so I could figure everything out.

Were the Steel Rangers really that old? Hadn’t mom said something about the technology needed to create their power armor being from the war? And Jazz had said something about different chapters...

This group could be totally separate. Which meant they could be friends.

I felt a lot better after coming to that little revelation. It wasn’t much, but if there was a chance we could finally get some allies to help, it would mean a lot. With the Wirepony and Jazz’s chapter up top, both probably on a warpath to find the four of us and end our ‘savage’ lives, it’d be a huge boon to get some major firepower to throw back at them.

Not... Not that I wanted to start a war or anything. I just needed to get out and survive. This whole quest had been a bust so far. There was only one place left in the PipBuck that could have any relevance to Gunbuck. Hopefully that place would give me the closure about him I needed, and we could go back to being reclusive. Or maybe visit zebra lands with Xeno and prove all ponies weren’t evil...

While I’d been lost in thought, we’d reached the end of the long hallway down to the depths of the underworld. To be honest, it was better being lost in thought, away from the near claustrophobic jail of the Stable. I looked over to my sister and friends. Lost looked like she was about to run off, with her eyes flicking back and forth like they were. Sorry sis, I’d been calm and ignoring you while you were terrified of being trapped down here... Xeno on the other hoof looked the same as always, slightly distant with a blank look. Rough was much the same as my sister, looking around without any subtlety with a distraught look on his face.

“Oh, so ponies up top have survived!” said a cheerful voice. Down another hallway to the side stood a pretty earth pony mare. She waved a hoof and galloped toward us. “Found somepony up there, eh Lamington?”

“Rank is required when addressing your superiors,” he responded, turning on the lamp on his head and shining it in her eyes. “And where is your power armor? You’re supposed to wear it at all times. I will tell mother.”

The mare stuck out her tongue, making an incredibly silly face. “I’m having Custard clean it,” she announced. “Wearing it all the time without ever showering? It’s a mess inside. Sometimes it just feels good to be... free!” She did a little spin, showing off her bare coat, before stopping to face the power armored pony. The silly face she was making quickly shifted to a smug grin, and she turned to our little group. “So, who’re you ponies?”

“Uh... well I-” Lost stammered.

“My name is Xeno,” the zebra interrupted, stomping her hoof, “and Iam not a pony.”

“Oh? Neat!” the Stable pony interrupted in turn. “I’ve never met a baby dragon before!”

The poor zebra looked utterly flabbergasted. She blinked several times, as if searching for words. “I am a zebra!” she finally squawked. “If you could remember that, I would greatly appreciate it.” Xeno’s normally peaceful eyes turned fierce, as if a chord had been struck by the silly pony. For a zebra who was so unorthodox by her own admission, she did seem to have a lot of cultural pride.

“Praline,” Lamington boomed, “stop this silliness. I am taking these people to the conference room to be debriefed. We need to find out what the world is like up there.” His gravelly voice was nearly inaudible over the static. Without waiting for a response, he turned to lead us down another long hallway.

The mare followed, her dark chocolate coat contrasting nicely with the cold steel walls all around. “So what’re your names?” she chirped, practically bouncing. “Like Lamington said, I'm Praline! I'm a Knight. Mother says I'm really good at it, and might make Crusader soon!”

“Ahem!” Apparently that touched a nerve with Lamington, who shot a look at the bouncing mare. Whatever the look was, he sounded very upset, and she settled down almost immediately.

“Well, my name is Hidden Fortune, and this is my sister Lost Art,” I said, trying my hardest to be pleasant. I pointed a hoof at my sister, who gave a weak smile and backed behind me sheepishly.

“Sister? Just like us! This is my big brother, he’s the Star Paladin,” Praline explained, pointing a hoof at the power armored pony. “We’re all family here, Lamington is my oldest brother and then there’s Chocolate Fondue and Chocolate Éclair and Custard and my sisters Crème Brûlée and Marshmallow Sundae and Raspberry and my mother is the Elder her name is Drop Scone and we’re all that’s left it’s actually kind of sad because after there’s no other ponies in the stable!” That was one big family...

“Knight Praline,” the stallion said, “by order of your Star Paladin, you are to cease your senseless prattle. We shall handle this in an organized fashion. The mines are perilously radioactive, they set off my sensors with numbers the scale of which I’ve never seen before. We have guests, and we’ve all the time in the world for you to talk to them, after they have been debriefed. You will settle down. You will return to Custard and retrieve your armor, and you will wear it as you are supposed to. Now go, before I tell the Elder.”

The Star Paladin kept a level tone as he delivered Praline’s orders, then the lamp on his helmet dimmed and he returned his attention to us. “Come,” he said. “You look hungry. We can hold the debriefing in the atrium instead.” He started down the hallway again.

I was a bit terrified. This... Lamington completely kept his cool, even when dealing with something that bouncy, perky, and obnoxious. And, he said he wanted to give us food, and talk to us. That was far better than being fixed up only to be...

Waitaminute. Groups of ponies cannot be trusted. Remember what mom taught us.

We followed him. We were stuck in the Stable at that point, and after the way we were treated by Jazz, there wasn’t a reason not to take a chance and try to escape. Even up top it would have been hard, but down here... the door was sealed tight.

Praline, meanwhile, saluted, making her curly mass of off-white hair bounce, and scrambled off down the opposite hallway, followed by the clatter of hooves on steel. How could a pony like that be a soldier...?

“Think he meant what he said?” I whispered to L.A.

“I don’t know what to think,” she whispered back, “but a free meal isn’t something I’m going to turn down.”

“You’re a wasteland pony and you pay for food... What’s wrong with you?” Rough chipped in, keeping his voice to a whisper like ours.

“It’s not that, it’s just we’ve been really unlucky with hunting lately,” I explained.

The hall led us past a number of sealed metal doors. Every now and then, we passed an open one, into which I peeked to sate my curiosity for what might be inside. The first room we passed was identical to the hallways, steel walls and floor. Inside, though, were terminals by the dozen, all stacked up on several desks and wired together. I shuddered, wired terminals... The next room we passed had a large desk with paper strewn all around it, looking extremely haphazard. The last door we passed led to a clinic, where I could only see half a desk and a screen hiding any details. Finally though, we were taken down a stairway and into the gigantic atrium.

Inside the atrium was a single massive table, that stretched from one wall nearly to the other, with five seats lining each side. In the far corner of the room was a cafeteria, with food that looked more delicious than anything I’d ever seen.

“Marshmallow, see to our guests, if you would,” yelled the Star Paladin to a short white pony dressed in a robe that would have been a perfect match for Elder Scifresh’s, though it looked far simpler in design, lacking some of the unnecessary frills. He then directed the four of us to sit at the table in the center of the room.

* * *

I stared at the empty plate before me. I’d never known food could taste so delicious. I’d never known food to have a taste. Whoever that ‘Marshmallow’ mare was, she was an excellent cook. There were leafy vegetables, crispy vegetables, and juicy vegetables. Not to mention half a dozen dishes I’d never heard of and couldn’t remember the names for. Even the soup was delicious. Now that I was full, I started paying attention to the conversation at hoof.

“...and then she took everything! Hidden’s battle saddle is still up there, probably gathering rust in whatever room they’ve stuffed it in,” Lost told the Star Paladin, flailing a forehoof in the general direction of ‘up’ to illustrate where my things were being held.

“The Scribe pony was not able to take everything. You two still have the weapon you brought with you, do you not?” Xeno asked, still picking at her food.

“Well yeah, but I mean the plasma pistol we managed to sneak in. Who knows what would have happened if we didn’t,” I said.

“Still didn’t save my Sweet...” Rough grumbled, “so what good was it?” He hadn’t touched anything yet, a full plate still sat on the table in front of him. Despite the RadAway we’d been offered, he hadn’t been able to stomach a thing. “Not that you care! You just... let him die, and ran away like it was nothing...” With that, he dropped his head to the table, and sobbed.

“It was either that or we all died,” I said. “What good would it do for you to be lying there lifeless next to him?” I offered a hoof to the blue stallion.

“At least we’d be together...” he whimpered, sniffling again. Raising a hoof, he wiped the tears away and sat back up. “Who are you three anyway? I’ve never seen you before in The Cinch, you don’t know about the Queen, and you probably don’t give two shits about a ganger like me...”

“Alright ponies, I believe that’s enough,” the armored stallion said, silencing us. Lamington hadn’t taken his armor off during the entire meal, which meant he was either already well fed, or the power armor somehow fed him from inside. It sent a slight shiver down my spine, making the claws dig at my mind. If he never took it off...

Stop. He wasn’t made of wires.

The static over Lamington’s voice had cut down quite a bit, at least. He continued, “It surprises me to learn that so many ponies are still alive outside. Tell me, aside from these Rangers that have taken over the... hrm, ‘Factory,’ you said?”

He paused in his question, and both L.A. and I nodded in response.

“Factory. Apart from the ponies at the factory, what is it like up there? My family, we were all born in this Stable, several generations removed from the ponies who first entered. You are the only outsiders to enter since the War. And, if I recall correctly, which I might not, I am the only one who’s ever opened the door.” He laughed, the power armor’s static giving it a mechanical sound. “Whatever you did to knock on the door, it echoed down the halls and alerted everypony.”

“That was me,” muttered Rough Night. He raised a hoof and tapped on his horn a few times. “Fire spells hit hard, I guess.”

The power-armored stallion looked at Rough for a moment, silently. Finally, he asked, “Are all of you so destructively powerful?”

I thought back to the day I’d had. If the Star Paladin thought that that was destructive, he and the other Stable Sixty ponies had a lot to learn. Not only were there many more Steel Rangers on the surface, they had an entire armory, and guards, and mercenaries. Not to mention that wired monstrosity might still be out there.

I shuddered. All we had... was nothing. Lost and I were the furthest thing from ‘destructive’ I could think of. We’d been hopefully outmatched, and if Jazz had turned her ponies on us we’d be piles of dust in the ruins above. I took a deep breath, raising a hoof to hold against my throat the same way my sister often did. “There’s far worse up there,” I said quietly. “There’s ponies who forced us at gunpoint down here. They threatened us with death if we didn’t find this Stable.”

“Oh dea-”

“That’s not all,” I interrupted. I slammed my hoof down on the table. “They’re fucked up, but that’s not even the worst of it.” I could feel my heart pounding in the back of my eyes, almost like I’d swallowed another tablet of Buck. “That was after they saved us. Faking being nice just make us drop our guard.” My eyelid twitched. “And there’s that fucking wire monster up there, armor and rotting flesh...” I trailed off, my lungs suddenly burning. The Wasteland was full of many bad bad things. I took a deep breath, making sure to remember that burning sensation. I wouldn’t let the Steel Rangers or that monster get the best of me.

“I’m going to destroy it.”

“That’s quite a vendetta,” a voice like pre-War silk said from behind me. I turned to see another mare, this one in a Scribe’s robe, with a coat the color of creamy honey and a caramel mane. She took a seat next to Lamington, and turned toward our little group. “What did this monster do to gain your hatred?”

“Let’s see. He tried to crush my ribs and choke me, and broke one of my legs,” I recounted. “Then there was that time he launched a grenade at me, and it burnt half of my back off. Oh, and did I mention the part where he tried to eat me?” I found myself trembling, still hearing the whirring of the chainsaw-teeth, smelling the stench of the rotten flesh. “And just when I finally had him where I wanted him, he wrapped those Luna damned wires around my throat and nearly strangled me to death.” I slammed my hoof into the table, making each of the plates bounce and clatter. Just the memory had me pissed, furious enough that I was grinding my teeth. “I’ll kill the fucker if I ever get the chance!”

“And without any weapons, what will you do?” the newcomer said with a smirk.

I felt my ears droop. I didn’t have a comeback for that, but the others gave a chuckle at my expense. Even Rough Night managed a small smile. I deserved it... I was still going to find that monster, find a big gun, and blow it to the moon. Lost didn’t laugh, she just looked at me sadly.

She continued, “Are you sure it was a good idea to bring outside ponies in brother? Elder Drop Scone will be cross with you.”

“Alright,” Lamington said, ignoring the mare, “I believe we’re almost done. One more question for the four of you, then the Elder and I shall see to finding a place for you all to sleep. It’s getting very late. I’m sure you’re weary after your adventure in the mines.”

“The cute purple-maned one can sleep with me, if she wants...” the mare said. She leaned against the table and winked at Lost. My sister’s only reaction was to blush bright red and shrink into her chair.

Ugh... I didn’t want to know what was going through her head, but given how she’d reacted to meeting Praline, I had a good idea. That definitely didn’t leave me feeling comfortable.

“Crème, that’s enough,” the Star Paladin ordered, keeping that calm voice he always had. “Did this Scifresh explain what kind of supplies?”

“We-ere told nothing by the Elder pony,” Xeno explained. “She said that we-ere prisoners, and would work until we found The Stable she was looking for. I was called a ‘savage’ many times.” She paused to take another bite. “There was no time when she said what we-ere to be looking in the Stable for.”

“The zebra talks cute too. Can I keep her, Lamington?” Crème begged, holding her hooves up together toward the Steel Ranger in a mock beg.

“We’re done here,” he said, ignoring her request. He stood up and walked away, calling over his shoulder in a static-y voice. “I’m going to go speak to the Elder. We’ll decide on sleeping arrangements. Crème Brûlée, bring them up to the office when you’re finished teasing those poor mares.”

The door slammed shut behind the armored pony, and I wearily looked toward his sister. She grinned wickedly, rolling her eyes. “He didn’t say to leave the stallion alone...” With that, she hopped up and sidled over to sit next to Rough. “Hey...”

“No,” Rough snapped. “I just lost my special somepony. Go harass somepony else. I don’t care who.” He turned away from her, shoved his plate away, and stepped back from the table. With nowhere to go, he just went and stood in the corner. Once he reached the wall, he pressed his head against it. What a weird stallion...

“Spoilsport...” Crème Brûlée said with a soft sigh, turning to the remaining three of us. “I’m just teasing. Look. You’ve stirred up a lot of excitement. Praline is bouncing off the walls more than ever, enough that I think she might break her armor. The twins are excited to meet you, and would already be crawling through your manes if it weren’t for their chores.” She tapped her hooves on the table as she spoke, looking back and forth from the door to the kitchen.

“Have you ever heard of...” I started, before realizing that the Star Paladin said they’d never seen the door open to their memory. How would they have heard of Gunbuck? “Oh nevermind...”

“No no, you've started now and you have to finish,” said the white mare from the kitchen. Whatever she'd been doing in there she'd finished and just joined us at the table. Almost as an afterthought, she said, “by the way, it's Marshmallow Sundae, not just Marshmallow.”

“Oh alright,” I said begrudgingly, “I was just wondering if you'd heard of somepony called Gunbuck. Which makes no sense, since you've been living down here the whole time.” They'd had no contact with the world, why was I even bringing this up?

“Gunbuck hmm? Is that your special somepony?” Crème Brûlée asked, fluttering her eyelashes at me.

“I. What? No. No!” I stammered, feeling myself blush.

“Better not be. He shot me in the throat, and she killed him,” Lost explained to the group. All around were gasps and weird looks. Oh dear.

Crème Brûlée stood from her seat and slowly walked around the table. She smoothly placed a hoof on my sister's chair and used the other to tip Lost's chin up.

“Are you alright, my dear?” she asked in a sultry voice, leaning close.

“Eheheheh... I-I'm fine,” L.A. responded, giggling nervously. She flailed her hooves around, trying to find a comfortable place to put them. “Really, I’m okay.” Despite the fact that the overt sexuality made me twitch a little, it was fun finally seeing Lost get flustered like that. She didn’t feel the same way though, as the blushing gave way to fear. She moved seats, hopping one further away from the mare and grabbing ahold of my foreleg.

“Ok so...” I started, trying to shift the subject back.

“Don't worry she's just like that,” Marshmallow said. “If it weren't for the fact that we're all family I think she'd have slept with everypony in the Stable.” She stifled another snicker with her hoof. “Please continue.”

Crème Brûlée shot her sister a glare.

I chuckled too, at Lost's apparent lack of brain function, but continued, “We were in another Stable, a broken one. While trying to find some good treasure to hunt, we ran into another Wasteland pony. I don't know why, but he shot L.A. in the throat. I panicked and jumped him... Shot a hole through his neck big enough that it took his head off...” Everypony watched in rapt attention, even Rough had stopped his sulking to listen.

“You. You are a dangerous pony. My brothers...” Xeno muttered, slipping back into her native tongue and rambling a bunch of jibberish at me. From the look on her face, she seemed upset. I guess there was a first time for everything.

Lost looked up at me, then turned to the other ponies at the table. She relented and let go, once Crème Brûlée backed off. Still blushing profusely, L.A. said, “Xeno, it's not like that. Everything happened in the heat of the moment... Well. I'm glad he's dead, killing Gunbuck is what drove us to meet you, and eventually brought us here.”

“You're all crazy!” Rough snapped, pointing a hoof accusingly at me. “I thought some of the gangers were bad, before our Queen showed up, but you?” He slammed a hoof against the wall. “You’re fucking nuts! Both of you!”

Okay, that hurt. I might act rash and not think things through, and I might jump to conclusions, but I wasn't crazy. “Look,” I explained, “I'm just trying to find out who he is so I can apologize and make it better. I even gave his head a burial. Can we just change subjects? It was survival. I didn't think it would turn out like this.” I didn't want it to turn out like this either. So far I'd been hurt more in the past few days than I had in my entire life, and taken too many lives.

“You... buried... his head...” Xeno asked, a shocked look on her face. “I will never understand ponies.”

“I-” Rough said, “I’ve seen some fucked up shit in the Wasteland, things that keep me up at night. I was given my name because of some of the things I’ve done to other ponies. Things that should have made somepony like Sweet run from me at first sight. But that... You’re a fucking psycho.” The unicorn backed against the corner, his voice was still wavering. If only there were more we could have done for the poor mute pony. “He should’ve run...” Rough whispered, then punched the wall with a hoof. He gave up after a few hits, and just leaned against the wall in defeat.

Crème Brûlée turned to Marshmallow Sundae. “Maybe it's a good thing we've been down here all these years?” she said, giggling quietly. Maybe she didn’t mean it?

It felt like a good time to leave, to get away and relax. I'd made an idiot of myself enough already for one evening. “Lost, can I have the PipBuck?” I asked, holding out my hoof for it.

“Huh? Oh, sure,” she said, using her telekinesis to unlatch it. She levitated it to me and latched it on my foreleg. “Are... are you okay?”

“I just need a minute or two alone. I'll be back,” I said, and wandered away from the judgemental ponies.

“Please hurry back...” Lost called after me.

* * *

Since nopony had stopped me, I assumed I had free rein to explore the Stable. It was awkward at first, but I quickly grew to enjoy it. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like I could take a few minutes to myself and bask in the quiet. We were deep underground, and the Stable was hidden away from anypony from the outside but the four of us. Even if somepony did manage to find it, the door was locked, bolted, and so thick that we’d have hours to prepare for whatever might come knocking.

Lost had stayed to continue talking with the Steel Ranger family, and I actually felt safe enough to leave her side and explore. So far, I’d found everything I’d expected. The clinic was meticulously clean, and had a full supply of medicine of every variety, even some kinds I’d never even heard of. If only the glass cabinet it was in wasn’t locked. The room I’d seen with all the papers was an office for somepony important, with records on the power consumption and other confusing things a thinky pony would need to know to run a Stable.

I entered the first room we’d passed, the one with the terminals all stacked up. Here none of them... None of them would be full of wires to kill me, or rigged with grenades to go off in my face. I stepped up to the closest one that was still turned on, and tapped at it a few times. The screen flickered on, shining in a sickly green. The screen had a password input showing, which meant hacking. I sighed heavily, since Lost wasn’t here to help. For that matter, was it right for me to break into the terminals that belonged to ponies who were being so nice? Mom said not to trust them, but never said that we should betray them.

I turned away from the terminal. It wasn’t right. I wouldn’t do it. But, if I only took a peek... I turned back around, and saw a book sitting on the desk. Curiosity got the better of me, and I went over. The Big Book of Arcane Sciences, eh? I propped it open with a hoof and flipped through the first few pages. Magic this, magic that, more magic, cheater magic, boring magic... Oooh. Terminals and their functions. I skimmed the index and saw a section for debugging. Flipping to it, I found a detailed set of commands to use to get past a password lock. Perfect. Now I just had to practice.

Several minutes later, I learned something new and managed to worm my way into the terminal system. Yes, it might have been wrong, but I was only going to look. There was only one file on the terminal, so I opened it. The entire file was one long roster, with pictures and names of every pony who had lived in this Stable, along with their rank or position keyed in above the picture. Several of them were blacked out and had censored names. There were uncensored notes every dozen or so entries with a note stating the door had been opened and closed again. Apparently they believed the radiation right outside the door was the same all over and it was still unsafe the leave the Stable. That explained why they were still here... It seemed like, aside from the current crop we’d met, everypony else had died and then been removed from the records. Wow, there were really only nine ponies left here. And Praline had said something about being brothers and sisters. Hopefully there wouldn’t ever be a problem with inbreeding, especially since they knew the outside isn’t inhabitable now. I closed the file and turned off the terminal. Checking the door, I did stash the book to later share with L.A.

My curiosity sated, I made a stop at the bathroom. I couldn't remember the last time I had been able to use a working Stable restroom, and we hadn’t been able to in Twelve or Twenty One. I assumed I had while I was growing up, before we left. But I couldn't remember ever having done so since then. Having running water and a flushing toilet was divine. Were it not for the fact that we didn’t belong here, I would never leave. Cold steel, unforgiving walls, and a mare that was a constant flirt were small prices for the luxury of not pissing on a patch of dead grass. I even took the time to sneak in a shower, then stalled long enough to dry off so the others wouldn’t notice. It felt so good to be clean. For the first time in half of forever, I didn’t have dirt or blood or any mess caked into my coat or mane. I may have spent too long in there, but I didn’t know if I’d ever get another hot shower in my life.

My business finished, I returned to the atrium. The others all sat at the table as Xeno shared a story of some sort. In addition to Crème Brûlée and Marshmallow, there were now two young ponies, barely older than foals, sitting with the group. I trotted over and joined them.

“... until Zaki could not stand it. He refused to learn your pony language, but would always get frustrated because he could not speak to anyone other than Zahi and I. He would get so upset and let it out in front of ponies, who could never understand. It was surprisingly arousing,” Xeno told them all.

There was some chuckling as the group laughed to the joke I’d missed. Or maybe they were laughing at Xeno’s poor word choice. I took a seat next to L.A. and leaned against her.

“Find anything interesting out there?” she asked with a smile, offering me a Sparkle~Cola.

“Not rea-” Sparkle~Cola! Finally, she was sharing one with me. I snatched it from her levitation before she could down it in front of me, like she always did. I chugged the entire bottle, not even taking the time to savor the delicious carroty taste. “Thank you,” I said, grateful she finally shared one with me.

“You’re welcome, I’ve already had three,” she said, flashing a grin. She grabbed the bottle in her telekinesis. “Now watch out.”

Immediately after, the two youngest ponies in the atrium tackled me over onto the floor. One was a pink-maned filly, and the other a colt with a blonde mane. Both had identical coats, a shade darker than Crème Brûlée’s. I landed on my side, and the two perched themselves on top of me.

“Hi!” the filly said.

“Who’re you?” the colt asked. From there the two spoke so fast I couldn’t keep up. With one of them talking it would have been hard, with both talking it was impossible to keep up. They poked and prodded my side and legs, examining my cutie mark and fiddling with my mane and tail, before I finally had enough.

“Okay, stop!” I yelled, my voice echoing through the atrium. Apparently that was funny, because Crème Brûlée and Marshmallow snickered, while Lost just reached down a hoof to help me up.

“Sorry, we just never get to meet new ponies. You four are the first,” the filly said apologetically, getting a sour look from our resident zebra. She shuffled a hoof, before nudging the colt in the side. “C’mon, apologize.”

“Sorry...” he mumbled. Having said their piece, the two hopped back onto the table, scrambled over, and took their seats next to Marshmallow, one on each side.

I took my sister’s hoof and pulled myself up.

“Those are the Berliners. Raspberry,” Lost said, pointing to the filly, “and Custard.” She pointed to the colt. “And this, foals, is my sister Hidden. She’s been hurt a lot lately, please don’t tackle her again.”

“So, umm. Did I miss some bonding?” I asked as I righted myself. Without waiting for an answer, I asked, “Has the Star Paladin said anything about the Elder yet?”

“Lamington said to head up to the office whenever you got back. So we can go now. C’mon everypony,” said the caramel-maned mare. She waved a hoof for us to follow.

The already small hallways became incredibly cramped as the group of us tried to all walk through at the same time. Crème Brûlée led us, while the Berliner twins pestered Xeno and Rough Night with question after question while balancing on the backs of their older sisters. I tried my best not to listen, their chatter hurt my brain. Lost smiled pleasantly, making small talk with Marshmallow about the food. It’d been a long time since I've seen her smile like that...

The trip didn’t last long, so many conversations went unfinished. We arrived at a door that looked suspiciously like the door to the Overmare’s office back in Stable Twelve, but with the Steel Ranger design stamped on instead of the flower.

Crème Brûlée opened the door, and led the four of us outsiders in, while the other three Stable ponies left to go back to whatever it was they did. Inside were Star Paladin Lamington and an old earth pony mare, the latter sitting behind a simple desk with her eyes closed. She had a wide smile upon her muzzle, which only grew when we walked in.

“Hi, mother,” Crème said, trotting over to give the older mare a hug.

“Hello, Head Scribe, thank you for bringing our new friends,” the Elder said in the sweetest voice I could imagine. “I hope the food and medicine has helped. We don’t get visitors and...” She opened her eyes wide, stopped, and stared at the four of us. “Why, you’re nothing but skin and bones! You did have Scribe Marshmallow Sundae feed them, didn’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am. We ate. I promise,” Lost said, patting her stomach with a hoof. “I couldn’t eat another bite if I tried.”

“I asked for a second plate for Sweet Dreams, but she wouldn’t give me one,” Rough said, staring at the floor. “One... one last meal-” He stopped mid-sentence, a hoof shooting up to cover his mouth. For only a second he stood there, shaking and trying so hard to keep his composure. The dam burst, he collapsed, and burst into tears.

“Oh deary dear, what happened out there?” Elder Drop Scone asked, hopping down from her seat and trotting over. She wrapped her forehooves around Rough and gave a squeeze. “Everything’ll be okay, just let it out...”

Rough didn’t argue, just wrapped his hooves around her and buried his face against her neck, letting his tears fall, unhindered by embarrassment. For several minutes we all stood in an awkward silence, letting the stallion get it out of his system.

Once Rough settled down, the Elder gave him another squeeze, and returned to her desk. She smiled wide again, and began. “Star Paladin Lamington has told me everything that you related to him, and I feel like it’s a good reason for us to begin expanding,” she said. “You won’t be familiar with the ways of the Steel Rangers, but we operate on traditions that have been around since our founding. Which means that Steel Breeds Steel, and well... The only remaining Rangers here are all children of mine. We’ve been underground far too long. Before I die, I’d like to see the sky once, no matter how it looks.”

“It’s pretty bad out there,” I said, looking to Lost. “There’s raiders, bandits, gangers... Not to mention things like poison joke, manticores, and zombies.” I frowned, looking around her office. It was really nice, with a little map of the Stable, and pictures of the previous Elders. “It’s much nicer, safer, down here. Even if you’re the last generation... I’d rather die in peace than be eaten alive or die a slow and nasty death by radiation poisoning.”

“Be that as it may, we could also help ponies,” she said with a smile. “But time isn't that pressing. I think we can allow you a night of peace before we leave. I’ll have the Initiates handle your weapons and clothing so that it will be ready in the morning. I want to have a talk with this Elder in the factory above. We might be able to work together. Is there anything else you think I should know?” the Elder asked.

Xeno pushed past me, her normally stoic face twisted in rage. “Ponies dwell on death far too much,” she said. “It rules their lives. Unlike my kind, they seem to believe in evoking the end of their lives regularly. There are many violent ponies who do not take time to ask questions, or look for allies. Some attack simply because they feel they can. Others because ponies need something. Few ponies attack out of self defense.” She lowered her head. “My brothers were killed because of this.” From the corner of her eye, she looked at my sister and I. “I do not blame the ponies who killed them.”

Lost and I stared at the floor in remorse.

“There are good ponies though,” Xeno finished. “It is a matter of finding them. You must be prepared, elder pony, to take lives. It will be necessary.”

Harsh...

“Yes, it seems ponies never change,” the Elder said. “I’m well aware of what happened in the War and how the relationship between zebra and pony changed. It’s very sad to hear that it’s gotten so much worse, but I appreciate the warning. Now.” She hopped out of her seat again, and stepped over to the map. It looked familiar. “I had Chocolate Fondue and Chocolate Éclair set up some rooms in the residential area here.” She tapped the map to show us where the residential block was. “You can use whatever sleeping arrangement you want. For tonight, the Stable is yours to explore. Just do not go into the Armory. Our power armor is ours. For others, it must be earned.”

“Thank you,” we all said almost in perfect harmony. Even Rough showed his appreciation at being given a place to rest. Afterwards, we were herded out and into the small hallway again by the Head Scribe and led off.

“Do sleep well, little ponies!” the Elder called from inside the office. What a nice mare. Too nice. I had to wonder, what was she planning...?

* * *

I lay in what had to be the comfiest bed ever. So far, everything I’d experienced in the Stable had been the best everything ever. I really couldn’t imagine a reason for mom to have ever made us leave the Stable I was born in. I wish I could’ve remembered why we left. I looked over to L.A.

“So... I think that Crème Brûlée mare likes you,” I said, teasing my sister.

Lost turned bright red. She looked away, refusing to make eye contact. Rarely was there a chance to tease her about something, so I decided to get just a little bit more in before going to sleep.

“Not interested?” I giggled just a little. “What about Lamington? Big strong stallion to save you from the Wastes?” That was, if he ever took his power armor off. I was distracted for a moment, wondering what he might look like under it.

Lost shivered visibly, a long one that started at her hooves and worked its way up. “No. No he’s... he’s not my type,” she said, fidgeting a little with the Big Book of Arcane Sciences I had set on the nightstand. “So, thanks for the book.”

Way to change the subject... but I wasn’t going to press it. “Well, you’re better with technology stuffs than I am,” I said. “It helped a little for me, so you might be able to get something out of it.” I rolled under the covers to lay on my side.

“Hidden, has something been on your mind?” Lost asked. “You don’t usually wander off like that. Doing it today makes twice, first to talk to that severed head, and then here... I was worried you know.” She lifted the book with her telekinesis and flipped a few pages.

She just had to bring that up. Couldn’t we just talk about terminals? Or go back to teasing her about relationships?

“I’m fine Lost,” I lied. “If there was something wrong you know I’d tell you.” I rolled back to keep her from seeing. I was fine, there wasn’t anything wrong. Nightmares and memories that haunted me weren’t going to affect anything. I was fine. “Are you gonna try to get some sleep?” I asked, changing the subject one more time.

“No. I’m not tired,” she replied. “Might go visit the Initiates and see about all those guns we found.” She gave me a concerned look, but thankfully didn’t press the subject. When the time was right I could talk about it, but it was off limits for now.

I was too tired for serious talks about my problems as it was. Today had already been too long, even without the added drama of emotional chitchats. “Okay... I know you don’t sleep as much as me, but try to get some, okay? And be careful around those two.” I yawned and pulled the covers up higher, snuggling into them. They were ever so soft...

“I’ll try. Are you feeling any better?” L.A. asked in a worried tone. She sat next to my bed, and placed a hoof on the edge of it.

“Yeah, the extra healing potion they had really did wonders. I actually feel better than I have since... Ever!” I said, smiling. “But that autodoc thing that they’ve got... Please don’t ever let that touch me. It looks horrifying, all those arms and claws and that saw.” I shuddered. Being strapped down in something like that would be worse than being strapped down by Seethe. At least he had tender bits I could hurt and get him to stop. Maybe.

“I won’t. I promise. But I need to get to work, those guns aren’t going to repair themselves, and it looks like we're gonna need them tomorrow. Good night sis,” she said. “I love ya.” She gave me a hug and then turned to leave.

“Love you too,” I said, smiling as she walked out. At least here she was safe to go wandering about without me. As long as that Crème Brûlée didn’t get to her...

After Lost left, I spent a good deal of time staring at the ceiling and counting the rivets and plates that formed it. I stared for a long time, counting over and over again in an effort to get to sleep. It was so weird to sleep in a bed that wasn’t covered in two centuries of filth.

I wondered how Xeno and Rough were doing. Xeno had probably never seen or been in a Stable, but she was so calm about, well, everything, that I doubted it phased her at all. Night, on the other hoof, he’d admitted to being a ganger, hadn’t he? And he’d mentioned a queen something-or-other. Was there really still royalty related to the Goddesses still alive? Mom never said anything about Princess Celestia or Princess Luna ever having foals. Their family was kept under wraps as well, she said nopony knew if they had foals, or who their parents were. But given they were supposed to have been over a thousand years old even during the War, did they even have parents?

They were Goddesses after all. I stared at the ceiling again, doing my best to stare through it.

“Celestia? Luna?” I said to the ceiling, “are you really up there? Whatever happened to let your beautiful world come to this...?” I didn’t expect an answer. “You did the best you could, I suppose, just like Lost does. Like I’m trying to do.” I smiled at the ceiling. “I believe that, at least. Good night, Goddesses.”

~ ~ ~

I stared at the grass, brown and rotten, between my hooves. What a pretty garden it must have been, before the War...

All around me were ruined buildings, blown to pieces by a bomb that had helped to destroy the world. Everything seemed so small, so pointless, but it meant something to somepony, long ago. I gazed lazily in front of me, away from the ruined carnage, and saw a house. It was a two story cottage, leaning sharply to the side, somehow having survived the same bomb that ruined everything around me. I felt like I’d seen this house before, but I couldn’t remember where...

Curiosity drove me to move toward it. Why did it feel so familiar? There was something... off about it, that I couldn’t put my hoof on it. But it felt wrong. Wrong on some fundamental level, something subtle, that clawed at the back of my mind, like an itch I’d never be able to reach. I placed a hoof on the door.

Locked.

“Hey, Lost,” I said, “do you...” I turned, but she wasn’t there. “Sis? Where... where are you?” I still couldn’t see her. I did a few turns, looked behind the house, behind the fence, and everywhere else I could think of. There wasn’t a back door, and the front was locked. Maybe she’d gotten inside somehow? “Lost!” I yelled as loud as I could, circling back around to the front of the slanted house. There wasn’t a response... Maybe... Maybe I’d just go inside, and she’d be there.

I got to work on the lock, and leaned down to get a good look at my progress. I twisted the pin, confident that I had it-

I heard the sound of a filly’s voice, though I knew I was alone. I jumped. SNAP! The bobby pin cracked in half. I glared at the half-pin lying in the dirt, annoyed at my own incompetence. I should have learned by now how to pick locks despite distractions. Calming myself, I pulled out another, and started on the lock again. It took me several minutes, but I finally managed to pop the door open. “Ok, we’re good. Let’s go inside,” I said to nopony in particular.

Once inside, I pushed the door shut behind me, and gave the interior a cursory look. A blue pony sat in a chair at the far side of the room. He wasn’t moving. Had he not heard the door open? I crouched down, biting the bit for-

Where was my gun? The unsettling wrongness crept up again, digging like an itch in the back of my mind. I never went anywhere without a gun unless I had to. First L.A. had gone missing, and now this? I crouched down and took a few quiet steps toward the seated stallion, setting my hooves down as silently as possible. If he was an enemy, he wouldn’t even hear me coming.

I rounded the chair he was in, staying close to the ground until I got a better look at him. He was a young earth pony, his eyes hollow and empty, sitting with his head cocked to the side. Either he was blind or deaf or...

His throat was crushed. Around his neck was a black bandanna, patches of it oddly dark under the gashes where his throat split open from collapsing in on itself. Terrified, I scrambled away, making far more noise than I could ever be comfortable with. This pony was dead, propped up in a fucking house like he lived there. He wasn’t a War pony either, not a skeleton but a whole flesh and blood corpse. Who the fuck was he?

I gave the chair a wide berth, not taking my eyes of the body that sat in it. I scooted backward, looking where I was going from the corner of my eye. Moving slowly, I backed my way to the doorway to the next room, then turned away.

He moved.

I looked back, staring straight at the corpse. It looked the same as always. Same as when I’d seen it first. Corpses didn’t move. I left the room. Wasn’t going back there.

Turning around again, I found myself in the kitchen. Kitchens meant supplies. Grab the two-hundred-year-old food, then get out. That was worth it, that would make coming in here worth it all. I trotted over to the counter, and dug through the drawers and cupboards. Nothing worthwhile, just old spoons and some dented cans. Somepony’d cleared the place out, but the fridge might have something. I pulled out of the cupboard, and looked over to-

Why were there three bucks sitting at that table? More corpses, more not-skeletons... Two earth ponies sat on either side, with a unicorn against the wall. All stared blankly at grimy plates piled with trash. Blood poured from wounds on each corpse. One had been trampled, another had a huge dent in his skull... The third had a mangled leg sticking out from under the table, with several bruises over his head.

“Lookie what we ‘ave ‘ere boys,” one whispered in a ghastly voice. None of their mouths moved.

Just ignore them. I was just hearing things. They’re dead, and not talking. Check the fridge. Then get out. That’s all.

I locked a hoof around the edge of the fridge door, and slowly pried it open. I slammed it shut again. Closing my eyes, I tried to think of anything but the chunks of shredded, chewed meat that sat inside. Tried to not think of the wires wrapped all through them. Tried to not think about each piece still pulsing with the beat of hearts that weren’t there. Or how there were dozens of chunks in different colors. Or each being covered in a mix of rot and drying blood. Not worth it. Definitely not worth it. I never wanted to see a severed mare’s head or breathe in that thick coppery stench again.

I backed out of the kitchen, taking special care to avoid the pony in the chair. But he wasn’t there anymore. The chair was empty. There wasn’t even a bloodstain left. There’s no way a body could disappear without a trace. The claws dug into my brain again, taunting me, asking me where the corpse might be hiding. Okay. Get to the door. Walk out. Find Lost Art. Never come back. I looked over to the door, ready to leave.

There was a pegasus, in the door. Wedged into the doorframe, caught in the door. Why was there a pegasus in the door?! I ran over and tried to force it open. If I could ignore the body. And just get out. I’d be fine. Why wouldn’t the door budge?! Panic set in as I struggled with the handle. Let me out! I looked up at the pegasus, his silver eyes still open and in sharp focus. He looked almost apologetic. If it weren’t for the hole in his chest, I might consider him a friend.

What was I thinking?

I turned and ran up the stairs. Why were there corpses everywhere? Why did it feel like I knew them? They were too familiar, too... that feeling was there again, claws scratching at the back of my brain, telling me this wasn’t right. Shut up brain. I was fine. I’d just go upstairs. And find another way out. There had to be a window or something. I headed up the stairs, the dry wood creaking uneasily beneath each hoofstep. A warm droplet of something hit me right on the nose. There was a drip. Why was there- I crossed my eyes to look at it. Something red. Don’t look up.

Please don’t look up.

I looked up.

Two zebra stallions hung limply from the ceiling. Both were headless. Blood dripped down from the gore that remained of their necks and pooled on the stairs before me. Those two. Definitely familiar. Where... Where had I seen them before? Had I done this to them? Why did everypony I saw here make me feel like I knew what had happened. I’d never seen them before!

I ran up the stairs as fast as I could, ignoring the bodies hanging above me. Something... someone stood at the top. A ruddy earth pony body teetered precariously on the edge of the top step. I knew him. That was Sweet. He never spoke... He... The corpse started rolling down the stairs. Each step he gained size. From a husk to a pony, and bigger. Rolling over the blood that lay on the steps made him larger. Why...

Because bloodwings, my brain screamed at me. Somehow the body of Sweet rolled past me. I didn’t move, or jump or anything. It just... went right through me. The feeling left me shaken, shivering. The idea of a corpse passing through me, touching me like that, made my skin crawl.

That was it, I needed out! I ran up the remainder of the stairs and into the first door I could find.

The bathroom. I slammed the door shut with a hoof, kicking it hard enough to put a crack in the door. Nothing could get me in here. I just needed a minute to breathe. A mirror. Look at the reflection. Take a deep breath. Calm down. I stepped in front of it.

And screamed.

My head floated completely separate from my body. Why was my head not attached?! I reached up, and saw a trembling brown hoof in the mirror. Another scream erupted from vocal chords I couldn’t see and shouldn’t have. “Why is this happening to me!” The only thing there was a stump. Muscle and bone stuck out at sickly angles, hanging over one side of the flesh. They were charred and stiff, stuck in the position the bullet left them in for eternity. Just... A severed head. that’s all that was left of me.

With strength I thought I couldn’t have, I shattered the mirror. It exploded into a thousand tiny shards. A buck later, the door splintered, and I ran again. Into the next room. Away from the horror. It didn’t feel strangely familiar now. I knew exactly where I was. Had... had I died? I couldn’t remember. Maybe this was where bad ponies went when they died.

Grabbing the nearest door frame with a hoof, I spun around it and into the room.

“M-Mom?” I squeaked.

There she was. Hanging from vines of poison joke. Blood and gore coated her entire lower body, staining her green coat black. Vines held her by her forehooves, trailing down her legs and wrapping intricately through the holes in her chest and stomach. Her eyes were closed, her rust colored hair hung over most of her face, bunched up around her horn. Mom...

“Hidden...” She opened her eyes, lifting her head, and stared at me. “My little treasure... you finally came back.” The vines twitched, and more erupted from her sides. They lanced through the air, and wrapped around me. The vines dragged me across the floor, closer and closer to my mother, her hooves outstretched.

“Come, give mommy a hug.”

~ ~ ~

“Hey wake up!” shouted a voice far too loud for whatever hour it was.

“Shh! If you wake everypony up, we’ll get in trouble!” yelled a second voice. There was some shuffling of hooves, and I heard the door open and close. Just go away, whoever you are...

Finally I opened my eyes and saw the two foals again. Raspberry stood on the bed, just past my hooves. Custard was there too, his ear against the door. I guessed he was supposed to be the watch pony?

“I’m trying to sleep, what do you two want?” I groaned at them, trying to roll away from the lights peeking in under the door. Did they ever turn those things off? At least it distracted me from the nagging feeling of something I couldn’t quite remember. I could taste it on the tip of my tongue, something that kept me from falling right back to sleep.

“Your sister told us to come bother you,” the filly said in a chipper tone. “She’s locked herself in the Armory.” Wait, weren’t we told... How was she awake this late at night? When I was a foal I always went to bed when the sun went down. With mom the-

Mom!

I shot up in the bed, suddenly feeling deathly cold. The filly atop me squeaked loudly and fell to the floor. Across the room, Custard let out a loud ‘shhh’ and returned to his guard duty.

The nightmare was too vivid. I remembered every single detail. Was... Was mom really waiting for me? Was she mad that we’d run and never gone back? My hoof shot to my neck. Still there. Good. But mom... I couldn’t go back, not after what happened. She was dead, how could she be mad? What if she survived? Had she died instantly like we thought? I tried to remember, but all I could think about was Lost’s scream. What if she’d died slowly, never able to say goodbye to her children...?

We’d just... abandoned her.

I lowered my head to my hooves, trying to hold back the tears. The filly climbed her way back on the bed and put a hoof on my shoulder. “You okay there?” she asked in a surprisingly understanding voice.

“What if we could’ve saved her?” I managed with a squeak. It was hard to talk. My throat clenched, making it hard to breathe.

“Look, whatever your on about. It’s done. No sense crying about it now,” said the colt. “So calm yourself and talk to us for a while or we’ll go get yer sister.” Despite his age, he sounded like the most adult pony I’d met in this Stable, aside from the Elder.

“But then we’ll get in trouble for being up late, Custard! I don’t wanna have to clean everypony’s armor again...” Raspberry scolded. She sulked down behind a stray pillow that I’d tossed onto the bed in my freakout.

I wiped away the tears from my cheeks and lowered my hooves, trying my best to look like nothing had happened. “So... what do you two want?” This wasn’t what I needed at all. I needed a good cry and a sister to cling to. The mere idea that mom had lay there slowly bleeding out while we ran away shook me to my core. I slammed myself back onto the bed with a ‘fwump.’ The springs squeaked in protest.

“That’s how dad died, isn’t it?” I said to myself. “That’s what she always said.” I stared at the riveted steel ceiling. It didn’t seem oppressive anymore, it felt like home. I never wanted to leave again.

“I’m assuming the foals are making you think about your little ones then?” The voice came from a stallion standing in the doorway. For a moment, I confused him with Crème Brûlée in the dark, but the voice was too deep to be hers. He spoke to me, but stared at the prone Custard. He must be really good at sneaking...

“What! No. I-I don’t think I’d be any good with my own foals,” I stammered, “And how does saying dad make you think I have little ones?” I brought my hooves up in front of me, tapping them together a bit. “I meant my dad...”

“Orphans eh? Sorry! I didn’t mean...” he said, trailing off awkwardly. Stepping from the door, he pointed a hoof into the lit hallway. “Okay you two! Back to bed, or I tell the Elder. If you make it to bed before I finish talking to this nice mare here, I might forget by morning.” He wore a smile as he ordered them out, but I doubted the foals saw with how frantically they ran from the room.

“Bye!” called one.

“G’night!” yelled the other. Both disappeared into the light, their hooffall echoes slowly disappearing.

“Sorry about that, they’re a bit too curious for their own good,” the stallion said, stepping inside and taking a seat on my sister’s bed. “I’m Chocolate. Everypony calls me Éclair though, so I’m not confused with my brother. You okay? What’s this about your dad?”

“Nothing,” I answered. I just kept staring at the ceiling. This wasn’t my home, as familiar as it was deep down, in ways I doubted I’d ever understand.

There was a strange stallion in the room. Alone with me. The clawing burrowed its way back into my mind. Stallion. Alone. Room... I looked over to him, trying my best to not move my head at all. If I stayed still, and only moved my eyes. Hopefully he wouldn’t catch on what I was thinking...

“Are you sure? We can talk if you want. I’m not so distant like Lamington or as silly as Praline. I can be a good listener,” he said, with a wide smile. I didn’t trust it one bit. For a moment he hesitated, then leaned over and put a hoof on my shoulder, almost identical to how the filly had a few moments ago.

I hit him.

I hit him hard. Hard enough that I heard a crack. Hard enough that he toppled over to his side, sprawled out on the floor. The claws in my mind slid away, their job done. I hadn’t even thought about it. It just... happened. One minute I was lying there, the next my hoof was out where his face had been.

Did I really let that nightmare get to me so much?...

I pulled my hoof back, sheepishly. I muttered something that was probably a ‘sorry.’ I didn’t remember what it was, exactly. All I could do was hide. I didn’t have anywhere to run. I really hope I hadn’t killed him. Without another word, I pulled the covers over my head and hid.

Several minutes passed, before I heard the scuffling of hooves on the steel floor. My breath came up short, as I waited to see what he would do.

“Okay, so,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “No touchy the mare. Got it.” He walked out, I guessed. Judging by the sound of hooves on steel, then no sound at all, that was the only thing it could’ve been. I was too scared to look.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

* * *

Whatever classified as ‘morning’ underground arrived. Alarms went off, and ponies rushed from place to place outside my room. Lost still hadn’t returned, but there weren’t any unending klaxons that sounded like radiation warnings going off. I rolled over in the bed, pulling the pillow over my ears in an attempt to ignore them. Tossing and turning in the bed wasn’t doing any good, though, even after the alarms died. Whatever it was, it woke me up and-

That smell was divine.

Could Celestia be back? Was she cooking? Did Luna decide to make an appearance and bring us a meal? I felt like I could practically float to the atrium on wisps of delicious smells. I didn’t, but I did rouse myself out of bed, and made for the big table in the atrium, following the scent for the promise of something delicious.

Inside the atrium sat my sister, Rough, and our zebra friend, and a pony or two I hadn’t seen yet. All looked just as clean as I did now, which showed how much of a stark contrast there was between here and the Wasteland we’d be heading back into.

Over in the kitchen, through a serving window in the far wall, a couple of ponies cooked up the food. One was Marshmallow, and the other was a stallion with a black eye. A wave of guilt washed over me, and all I could do was stare at the floor. First chance I got, Lost and I had to talk about that nightmare. I needed help... I slunk over to the table and crawled up onto a seat next to L.A. Without a word, I slumped down and leaned hard against her.

“You okay?” she asked, wrapping a hoof up around my neck. After a pause, she placed the hoof on my forehead. “You feel fine. What’s wrong?”

I grunted a response, and buried my face against her. “Talk... later,” I muttered into her coat.

“Alright... Are you sure? We can talk right now,” she said, sounding worried. With a shrug of her shoulder, she pushed me away and grabbed me with her hooves. “They won’t mind if we go talk. They'll understand.”

I shook my head. Not now. I’d slept in fits and starts since I’d woken from my nightmare. Everything was still too fresh. If we’d just... I pushed the claws away, shaking my head furiously. I opened my mouth to say something, but got interrupted.

“Breakfast is served!” called a new stallion, one I hadn’t met yet.

Saved by food, phew.

Lost gave me a worried frown, but turned to help set the table. Being one of the only two unicorns present, she used her magic to levitate full plates of delicious smelling food from place to place. Rough Night did his part as well, and despite the scowl he wore, he seemed to be doing better after a night’s rest. Seeing him in a better mood, no matter how minor, I couldn’t help but smile.

The majority of the mealtime consisted of quiet eating or mildly uninteresting conversation. The Elder made sure to eat with us, constantly prodding for us four Wasteland survivors to eat more. She was extremely sweet, but I didn’t trust her, not after our dealings with Elder Scifresh up top. Even if I tried to keep it from my mind after last night’s nightmares, I couldn’t help but think of mom’s rule about groups of ponies. For once, I was going to be the one using them. Get back up there, use them as a distraction, and get our stuff back. Then we’d run.

“So I took the guns we found, and salvaged what wasn’t destroyed by age and radiation. We’ve only got a few that are usable,” Lost explained after the meal. “Sadly, neither of us has much experience with any of them. Almost all of them were just pistols, like the one the Forepony had. I cannibalized parts from her gun too...”

I’d had my fill, and rested with my chin on the table, staring into space and idly listening. “What about the barding?” I asked, rolling my head to look at her.

“It’ll do. I’m not really good with that sort of thing, you know that. I’ve fixed enough guns, but we’ve never run across anything with armor that we could actually use before,” she said with a shrug. “I did what I could.”

“Is this something you will be sharing, pony?” Xeno asked, pushing her plate away. “Were there enough of the armored barding to be used for all of us?”

“Well, there were only enough for-” L.A. said, before being interrupted.

“You don’t need to worry about all of us, power armor is environmentally sealed,” Elder Drop Scone said to us. “There are enough sets for each member of the family. Even the Berliners will get some for this mission.” She pushed Xeno’s plate back to her. “Finish up dear, there’s some left.”

“None for us though... you’ll just let us go out without any real protection. Just like those bastards that had me in the mine,” Rough snapped, glaring at the Elder. He slammed his hooves on the table, and smashed his plate away to the floor. “Just like the ponies who killed my Sweet Dreams. You, you use and abuse with your little cliques and big guns. Same armor, same tactics. I’m actually surprised I woke up!”

Not good. I thought he’d gotten better, but I should’ve known that it wouldn’t be something he could get over after a single night. I tried to tune out some of his ranting by placing my hooves over my head.

“... and then take me from my Queen! We weren’t here to cause trouble! And Spade is stuck there still! All my friends and family, my gang members. They’re trapped. And what did I get for being patient and working?! I lost the only pony who ever loved me!” he screamed, pointing a hoof accusingly. I’d no idea who he pointed it at though.

“How were we to know what was going on up there? Nopony has left the stable in two centuries,” said the Star Paladin. That answered where Rough was pointing. He sounded only slightly miffed, the static over his voice masking if he was actually showing emotion.

“Son, he’s in pain. Let him yell,” Elder Drop Scone said, placing a hoof on her son’s armor. The rest of us sat in silence, not wanting to get involved in the argument.

“It doesn’t matter! They stuck me with these three... These, idiot mares. Who seem to think that there’s a way to win,” he said, waving his hoof to point at my sister and I. “They got Sweet killed and just ran off like it was nothing!”

Lost looked at the ground, staring in the opposite direction. She hadn’t even stopped when he fell, and I knew she felt guilty for it. But when she got like that, there was no stopping her. I just wish I could have explained it to the stallion in a way that he could understand. Plus he called her an idiot, I was the only idiot out of the two of us.

“Hey! I might be an idiot mare, but my sister isn’t,” I snapped, finally sitting back up. “And I’m sorry... but, look, if we’d stopped we’d have all died.”

“We could have taken him with us!” he screamed back. He surged to his hooves, his horn flickering to life. Oh dear.

I looked to the Steel Rangers, worried that guns might be coming out. Lamington and Drop Scone sat quietly. The look on the Elder’s face was serious, but it was obvious even to me that she expected this to end before force was necessary to end it.

“Are you serious, Rough? Look at us... We’re the smallest four adult ponies in...” I said, catching a glare from Xeno. Clearing my throat, I corrected myself, “smallest three adult ponies and smallest zebra. We’re the only ones that could fit, do you think we could carry a pony on our backs away from all those bloodwings and still get away?” I tapped my hoof on the table, for emphasis.

“What’s a bloodwing?” Custard asked, raising his hoof and waving it frantically. His twin sister whinnied a laugh.

“It’s a mutated bat,” Lost whispered to the colt, who appeared fascinated by the ranting unicorn.

“If you’d ever lost somepony like I have, you’d understand!” he screamed at me, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

Lost stared at him, opening her mouth to say something with rage in her eyes. Her horn began to glow as well, but I silenced her with a hoof.

“When I was a foal, before even getting my cutie mark. I watched my father die. Years later, my sister and I got our mother killed. It was our fault,” I said, staring back at him without so much as blinking. I didn’t want to look over to Lost, not now. This was the first time I’d ever admitted any guilt over what happened, for either of us. But after last night, it was time I took some Goddesses-damned responsibility for my actions. “I killed Xeno’s brothers too. I know what it’s like to lose somepony, from both sides.” I finally blinked, taking a deep breath and holding back the wave of emotions. “And in the past three days, I’ve nearly lost my sister, and nearly died at least twice. I know all too well what it’s like to lose somepony, and I know the fear of leaving somepony behind with that loss.”

I didn’t want to let him see that I could be weak. Not because I couldn’t let myself be, I’d cried for months on end about mom. The thought of it shut me down sometimes, but it wasn’t about me right now. It was about him, and it was his time to feel pain.

He seemed baffled by my response and took a several seconds to come up with something to say. I felt a flicker of grim amusement as he opened and closed his mouth wordlessly a few times before finally snapping at me, “That doesn’t make it hurt any less!” His horn flared bright red, the same way it had when he cast the fireballs last night.

This wasn’t good, he was pissed and taking it out on me. I was guilty of what he said, but I knew that I was justified. Did he really want to die so much to stay with his special somepony? There was a blue glow to my side, but I ignored it and closed my eyes, ready to take the punishment for my arrogance.

“If you do anything to her...!”

My eyes shot open to see Lost holding one of the knifes from the table in the air with her telekinesis.

“ENOUGH!” Lamington yelled through static. It was the first time he’d raised his voice so far. The Star Paladin stood up and leveled the gigantic missile launcher attached to his power armor at Lost and Rough, a little over-prepared for the confrontation. “I will not have guests fighting over my breakfast table! This is an-”

“Star Paladin Lamington, please sit down and let us finish breakfast. And put that thing away now,” said Elder Drop Scone, her motherly voice replaced with the iron tone of command. Instantly, Lamington's weapon was away and he was seated. Just like the rest of the siblings. He sat with his head down, facing his plate in silence. “And you two,” she said, and turned to Rough Night and Lost Art. “That. Is. Enough.”

Rough sat down without another word, the glow dying from his horn.

Lost sheepishly set the knife down and sunk into her seat next to me.

Whoever this Elder was, I was never ever getting on her bad side. With a hoof-full of words, she could command that much respect? I didn’t know whether to be jealous or terrified.

* * *

All nine of the Stable Sixty Steel Rangers trotted out before us in their power armor. It was a sight to behold. Unlike Jazz’s, each of theirs was in perfect condition, and detailed to the extreme. The group seemed a bit somber, standing in front of the closed Stable door. Even Praline was calm and hadn’t bounced off any walls recently. Lost, Xeno, Night, and I all wore radiation suits, having been refused the nice radiation-free, medicine-giving power armor because we weren’t Steel Rangers by blood. That didn’t stop them from loading us up with RadAway and RadSafe though. Since they didn’t need it, they’d offered it to us, and we graciously accepted. Having gone without anything to stave off the Wasteland’s deadly grip for so long, every little bit helped. If only they had healing potions or Buck to spare...

Personally, I thought that it was a load of shit that we couldn’t use the armor. It would help us survive. If it was about training, well, we’d already spent an entire night there. What was another hour being taught how to use armor that would make us nigh indestructible? But they’d treated us as guests and shown us exceptional hospitality, so I wasn’t going to complain. A RadSafe later, we headed through the tunnels again, this time with me in the lead with the PipBuck.

The long walk through the tunnels was uneventful, the mutated bats had all cleared out or were ignoring us. The power armored ponies walked in rank and file, one behind the other without a word. Lamington led, with the Elder behind him, followed by the rest per their ranks. I had a chance to look at the weapons they all carried attached to their armor, and I was far more than a little envious. If I had that kind of firepower, the Wirepony would’ve been dead in an instant. I just wanted my old battle saddle back.

I really hadn’t planned ahead, and that fact was starting to catch up with me. What if a fight started between these nice Rangers and Scifresh’s chapter? These ponies were a lot different than Scifresh’s chapter, almost the complete opposite. The fact that there might be a fight wasn’t something that I’d wanted to consider. If only there were a peaceful solution. I didn’t want to have another nightmare like last night’s. Dealing with another pony’s life resting on my shoulders wasn’t something I thought I could handle. Especially these ponies. So far they’d been so polite, so innocent. Especially the Berliners and Praline. A bubbly pony like her wouldn’t survive in the Wasteland, and the foals didn’t need to be raised like we did. Leaving them in that Stable to slowly die out and leave an empty tomb might have been for the better. At least they had food and stability there. In the choice between a long boring life and a short painful one?

I knew which I’d pick.

The clicking of the PipBuck’s radiation counter brought me from my thoughts. It had sped up something fierce, even worse than when we hadn’t had the radiation suits or the RadSafe. We were at another fork in the tunnels, having tried to find tunnel three where there was supposed to be an exit. One of these was three, one was four, but just as before there wasn’t a single marker to show which might be which. Whoever built this mine had been crazy. How could they not put up a sign or something to show which tunnel was which?

“Radiation’s getting bad here,” I said to the group, trying to give them a gentle push toward deciding on a direction.

“Go this way,” Rough said, turning to face down the left tunnel. “So far the map has been right, it should be this way.” He heaved a heavy sigh and he stepped forward. Everypony, and zebra, fell in line and followed him.

L.A. slowed down in the line and stepped up next to me. She gave me a look through the visor and asked, “Did you want to talk?” Just like my sister, always trying to look out for me.

“I had another nightmare,” I started, looking over at her. “About mom.”

There was a pregnant pause before she finally asked, “Did you still want to talk about it?”

It took me several minutes to decide how I should answer. We kept up with the others, if by a distance of several yards. I didn’t know if I wanted to talk about it, especially if anypony else was anywhere near being in hearing distance. I needed to, about other nightmares. I opened my mouth to answer, finally.

A horrifically loud boom cut me off before I could get a word out. Several more followed, all apparently from the side of the Star Paladin’s armor. A cloud of thick smoke filled the tunnel, as the explosive missiles hit whatever their target was and reduced it to a pile of bloody chunks.

“The fuck was that?!” I yelled over the ringing in my ears. A few gems were shook from their place in the ceiling by the blasts. If the roof caved in... I really wasn’t feeling safe down here...

“Yao Guai,” replied Xeno. Given my blank expression at her answer, she politely elaborated. “It is a bear, they are very deadly. Not something a pony such as you should be messing with. Today, we were in luck. There was an armored pony with a much bigger gun.” She was yelling through the visor of her suit, just barely audible over the ringing. But, she had a large smile plastered across her face. “Iam liking the luck we have today.” With that she turned, stepped forward, and promptly fell flat on her face.

I’d never understand zebras, particularly Xeno and her obsession with luck. If they were all like that, I never wanted to meet another.

When the smoke from the missiles cleared, I found that we were at the entrance to the cave. As the report had said last night, there was a sign affixed to the wall with information about using the other entrance instead. I checked the bloody giblets left over from Lamington’s overwhelming display of firepower, but there wasn’t even enough left to make a decent meal. Waste not, want not, I was taught, but these scattered scraps were useless.

“So, this is the outside!” Praline said, bouncing around in her armor. How did she even do that? For several minutes she examined everything, the rotten dead trees, rocks, the cloud cover. “Ooo! What’s this?” she squealed, pointing a hoof at a tree. Without waiting for an answer she moved to the next shiny object, “Hey! A rock, right? What’s it do? Rocks do things, right?” Even the dirt seemed fascinating to her. “Lookie!” she said, stomping up a dust cloud.

Crème seemed interested as well, but only so much as she could use it as an excuse to stay away from Lamington. The stallion was giving orders to his siblings, while the Elder looked on. I could only tell it was her because the power armor she wore looked like it hadn’t had regular maintenance in a while. While the other ponies’ armor looked new, hers still showed signs of use, with wear and tear around the joints. They were all circled about listening to the Star Paladin, who had given up very quickly on trying to get either Praline or Crème Brûlée to listen to anything.

Once we settled on a plan, I lead everyone in the group toward the factory. With the E.F.S. as a guide, I knew it wouldn’t take long to get back. The four of us without power armor changed into the armored barding we’d found, and hid our guns carefully, just in case. We had the Steel Rangers from Stable Sixty if things went bad, but I didn’t want to be in a position where we couldn’t throw everything we had at them. There was no way they were going to take us all again.

I just hoped it would be enough to deal with Scifresh’s crew if things got ugly...

* * *

The guards spotted us long before we could do any reconnaissance. They collected us, and brought our group to Star Paladin Jazz on the factory floor immediately. The off-white mare seemed pleased to see that we’d survived, though I had a feeling it was only because it meant less time spent finding gullible ponies to march down into her slave pit of a mine.

“Thank you, soldiers. I’ll handle this myself,” she ordered, waving a hoof to dismiss her subordinates. “I don’t understand why it took eleven of you to bring me four pint-sized Wasteland savages though.” The two escorting Steel Rangers left, leaving just the Stable Sixty ponies and the four of us.

The Star Paladin placed a hoof to her forehead, rubbing it between her eyes a few times. “I. Said. Go.”

“I don’t take orders from a different chapter. We are not your soldiers,” Lamington said through a burst of static, his voice calm and steady.

Jazz just raised an eyebrow, and looked from pony to pony. She trailed her eyes over the four of us from the mine, to the nine power armored ponies, her eyes moving rapidly to take in each detail of their armor. After several minutes of examination, she opened her mouth, “So you aren’t. Who are you.” Given the tone in her voice, it wasn’t a question. “And tell me where you got that PipBuck. I ordered Trifle to take everything you had.”

I moved my legs so the PipBuck was hidden from her view, but Lamington answering her took some of the heat from me.

“We are the remaining Steel Rangers of Stable Sixty. We were told you have been searching for our home. Elder Drop Scone and I wish to learn more about your chapter and their activities. If we are of the same goals, I propose we work together,” said the Star Paladin. Each of the ponies behind him expressed their agreement. All except Praline, whose helmet was turned elsewhere, too busy staring at the rusted walls and ruined equipment.

“Very well,” Jazz said hesitantly. “Let me take you to the mine. That’s the best place to start.” She placed her helmet back on and locked it into position, then led us through the same hallways as before.

As we walked, I took careful glances at the PipBuck, trying to orient myself well enough to find our gear. Jazz was explaining some things while we walked, pointing out bits of their operation in terms of the strategic benefits of having an ancient factory for use as their base. I didn’t care about that, I just wanted my gun back. By the time we made it to the elevator out back, she’d finished the basics and was getting into the nitty gritty about their conscription program.

“And here is the entrance to the mine,” Jazz said. “I’d take you down there, but I’m sure you already know what it’s like. I suggest we go to see Elder Scifresh to finish up. The savages down there aren’t worth your time anyway, that’s why we hired griffons to handle it. They’re no better.” She audibly hissed through her teeth.

“Why do you keep calling them savages?” asked Praline.

“That’s what they are,” snapped Jazz curtly. “They are the same type of ponies that created this Wasteland, raiders and gangers and degenerates. They are nothing more than filthy savages.” The Star Paladin stomped her hoof for emphasis, cracking the ground beneath. “Take these four for example. A zebra? Those are the enemy! Even now, she is conspiring against us, I can tell. Those two have proven to be nothing more than liars and cheats. I specifically ordered that confiscated, yet they still have it!”

“Iam not your enemy,” muttered ‘the enemy’ under her breath, refusing to make eye contact with the armored bitch.

“Let me get this straight. You care more about the centuries-old hunk of metal that’s wrapped around her leg, than you do about helping her?” asked Elder Drop Scone, looking down at the PipBuck. Even with the masking effect of her armor, the disbelief was thick in her voice. She turned to Star Paladin Jazz. “We need to speak to the Elder here.”

Several other Steel Rangers had gathered around, either watching from the factory doorway, or staying distant and surrounding the group from Stable Sixty. I tried counting, but I kept getting distracted by the tension between Lamington, his mother, and Jazz and her crew. I knew that Lamington and his Rangers would be able to hold their own if something happened, but the three of us and Rough would be woefully unprepared and unprotected if such a fight broke out. The armor they had would stop anything I could dish out with the few pistols we’d been able to completely salvage. Even with the armored barding we’d found, there was no way we’d last in a fight. Please Celestia, let this not turn into a firefight...

“I am under no obligation to take orders from an Elder of another chapter. We will get there in... due time. The fact that you so brazenly think that you can order me around, after the hospitality I’ve shown you, is unacceptable!” she said, before turning to one of the other soldiers. “You! Get down here.”

The Steel Ranger she’d ordered trotted down and stopped beside her. “Orders ma’am?” he asked with a salute.

“Take these four back down to the mine. Make them show the rest where the Stable is,” Jazz ordered.

“I’m sorry, those four are with us. Now, if you would. Please, take all of us to the Elder. Including them,” Lamington said through more static. He held his hoof out in between me and the other soldier.

The whirrs of battle saddle weaponry dropping into ready positions and the pops and snaps of cocked and readied firearms filled the room. The power armored ponies leveled weapons at each other. I shrunk down, fairly sure the other non-Rangers were doing the same. I glanced at Lost, motioning for her to get ready. This was escalating faster than I’d wanted, because Jazz seemed to be taking their request as a personal affront. Was she really so callous?

“No. I’m going to ship them down to the mine,” Jazz said. “They are going to show my team where the Stable you all are from is, and fuck whether or not you say it’s okay. We’re going to strip the place bare and restock whatever we need from it, without a fuck given to any pony, bloodwing, griffon, dragon, or whatever the fuck else might be down there.”

“The griffon mercenaries?” Lost asked. “Did you just say-”

“Fuck them, fuck the slaves, and fuck you,” Jazz spat. “You’re all expendable, and if you, or they, or anyone gets in my fucking way, they are going to get a bullet in the head.” She glared at the Stable Sixty rangers. “And you, you are all going to get the fuck out of my factory before I fill your faces so full of lasers that we could use you as Hearth’s Warming Eve decorations.” Her voice was raising, either being amplified by the speakers in the power armor, or maybe she was just pissed off. Finishing her rant, she turned to the Knights and others that were behind her. “Why aren’t you fucking doing what I told you to!?” she screamed at the soldier next to her.

“Cause the stallion’s got a missile launcher pointed at me...” said the soldier next to her.

I looked over at Lamington, who, to his credit, had his missile launcher pointed directly at the mare who was next to Jazz. I understood that he’d grown up in a Stable, and might not have any real world combat experience, but even I knew not to point an explosive weapon at somepony in point blank range.

“I told you. Those ponies are with us. You will not touch them,” he said, unwavering. I was really beginning to like this stallion.

Jazz’s response was to kick the release on her battle saddle. Her gatling laser popped out from her armor, and everything went sour. Either she had become far more unstable over night, or this was the true face of the Steel Rangers.

A loud clang rent the air. Seconds later, the bang of a massive gun expoded from the roof of the factory. A gunshot from somepony I hadn’t even seen. But... I was still okay. I looked over to L.A. She was fine, and neither Xeno nor Rough had a hole in them either. That meant...

Chocolate Éclair groaned, followed by a crash as he collapsed in a pile of steel armor. It happened faster than I could process. Was he...? A gigantic hole gaped in Éclair’s chest, with twisted steel and draining blood. The sniper had shot him through the back with something powerful, and torn straight through his spine. I could actually see out the other side.

We all stared in complete shock. Last night he’d tried to comfort me, and my only reaction was to hit him as hard as I could. I didn’t even get to apologize, never told him why I had freaked out. And now he was dead.

Then everything turned to shit.

* * *

I had no idea where Rough ran off to. The echoing of gunfire and the B-KEWs of magical energy weapons surrounded us. The minute they started firing, we ran. The Steel Rangers could hold their own against other Steel Rangers; we couldn’t. Xeno and Lost followed behind me, as I used the PipBuck to try and navigate to... something. Somewhere. Anywhere. I couldn’t read any of it. This factory was too big, too sprawling. Every time I thought I’d get us somewhere, there would be a dead end or a collapsed wall.

“Hidden, give me the PipBuck,” L.A. yelled behind me, trying to make her voice heard over the sounds of the firefight. We galloped down another hallway identical to the last five we’d tried.

“No, I can do this...” I called back. I wasn’t so sure of that.

“Sis, I remember the layout. Let me lead for a while,” she said, which was just enough to convince me.

I skidded to a stop and tried to pry the thing off. We seemed safe for the moment, as all the local Rangers were either on guard duty, or they were fighting down in the yard above the mines. I really hoped Lamington and the others were okay.

Fuck. I never got to apologize. I fumbled with the lock again, why’d Lost make the PipBuck’s latch impossible to open without cheater magic? Giving up, I smashed my hoof against the wall a few times, hoping that might knock the little bugger off. We needed to get a gun, and needed to get out there to help. I didn’t have time for guilt and I didn’t have time to fight with this Goddesses-damned thing!

A blue glow enveloped the latch, and it popped off in an instant. Normally I’d scream at her for using cheater magic, but there wasn’t any time. With the device off my leg, I started running again. Lost called out, but there wasn’t anything that could stop me.

Except a big pony in unmarked steel armor who stepped out in front of me.

The pony seemed as surprised as I did, letting out a girlishly surprised ‘eep’ when I slammed into her chest and forelegs.

“What in the-” She never finished the sentence. A bullet pierced the visor of her armor, smashing the glass and getting embedded inside of it. “Arg!” she screamed, faltering back a few steps.

Lost ran past, a pistol levitated before her and the PipBuck already on and shining that bright amber that I hated. Was she really that fast? Did it matter? The three of us ran around the stunned Ranger. Down another hall and into a room we scurried.

“Do you happen to know where we are going, pony?” Xeno asked calmly.

“We just watched a pony get shot right through... Nearly got thrown back into the slavery of the mine... And all you ask about is where we’re going?” I asked, flabbergasted. “We killed your brothers... Why haven’t you threatened to kill us or run away?” After all we’d done. We killed her family, we exiled her from her sanctuary, we led the Wirepony right to her, and then got her thrown into the mine with us. I didn’t understand how she could have such patience.

“I do not know,” she responded, matter-of-factly.

“Do you two have to argue?” Lost said, looking over the map on the PipBuck. “Okay I know where we are. We can go.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” I screamed, throwing my hooves up. “How can you be so utterly unfazed by everything?”

“It is probably all of the drugs that I make for myself,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “A cigarette would be nice though. I haven’t been able to find any of those in quite a while. It is just my luck.”

That broke my brain. Really. Okay, whatever. I swore I never wanted to meet another zebra, because if they were all as crazy as this mare, I would put a bullet in my head personally.

“Come on!” L.A. yelled, pushing the door open and bolting down the hallway. Without any reason to argue with her, we both followed.

We ran down hallways, through rooms, up and down stairs, in directions that made my head spin. There was smoke beginning to fill the air, which smelled of gunpowder and blood. I could only imagine what was going on near the mine, but it didn’t matter. I just had to keep up with my sister and not get lost. Keep going behind her, keep away from the distant gunfire. Pray to Celestia. Pray to Luna. Please let the Stable Sixty Rangers be safe.

We turned down another hallway, running past several possible turn offs and doorways before Lost skidded to a stop in front of one in particular. “Here!” she yelled, tapping the rotten wood. “Kick it down.”

I didn’t need any prompting. Without even stopping, I spun on my forehooves and bucked the door in half. There was a loud crunch as it splintered, and we ran in.

A smorgasbord of fun sat before me. Guns of every shape and size. Most were damaged beyond repair, but there were so many to choose from. If I had all the time in the Wasteland, I’d never run out. First things first though, I needed my baby. With some of Xeno’s mythical luck, she was sitting out front still. Either they hadn’t bothered to move her, or just didn’t care. I had Lost help put the battle saddle on, and got everything into position. She removed the varmint rifle, since there were plenty of bigger guns that would be better suited to getting out of this situation alive.

Xeno meanwhile began digging through the desk, looking for whatever might’ve been stolen from her. Trifle said they didn’t, but that was more than likely a lie. I didn’t care. I had a gun to search for.

Lost took a new plasma pistol and filled it up with a spark cell, which she then used to guard the door.

I dug through the rifles. It didn’t matter if I found ‘my’ guns, just that I found something good. There were dozens, probably hundreds, of weapons to choose from, and as long as I had the time I was going to get the best one. Several were completely ruined, not worth the parts to carry the extra weight, a few were usable, but in such pisspoor condition that others easily outshone them. I went through several, not finding the perfect gun. I didn’t have time, but if I was persistent.

There.

Carefully hidden behind several particularly terrible rifles was something special. The guns were the worst of the worst, with bent barrels and rotten wood. They hid something marvelous though. This was on purpose, Trifle or whoever else had been here must have wanted this one for themselves. To take such careful care to pile up every bad gun there... This was a special gun.

I pushed the broken wastes of material away, sending them clattering to the floor. The sound of gunfire outside didn’t matter. This beautiful gun could take every one of them and then some. She was in perfect condition, with shining wood, a gleamingly perfect barrel, and an Old Equestrian flag tied around the stock.

I grabbed it without a word. First things first, I checked if it was loaded. Sure as shootin’, it had a whole seven bullets in the magazine, far more than I’d ever seen in a hunting rifle before. Running my hoof over the barrel, I attached it to the battle saddle with the help of my sister. With a click, it slid in, fitting absolutely perfectly. Whoever had made this gun had taken special care of her, and it was only by the luck of the Goddesses, or a jinxed zebra, that I found her. Now I just needed ammo.

We ransacked the rest of the room. I scored myself a sniper rifle as well, but it wasn’t as nice as the hunting rifle. As an afterthought, I grabbed as many small caliber weapons I could fit, and replaced my old single-shot shotgun with a double barreled one. After I took watch, Lost took several laser pistols and even found something she told me was called a recharger rifle. None of it made sense to me, magical energy weapons always went over my head. She seemed happy though, so there wasn’t any reason for me to argue. She even found the pipe she’d used to kill those three ponies so long ago.

Surprisingly, Xeno didn’t want any weapons to use. Maybe her crazy luck would protect her? She had, however, secreted away whatever Trifle took back into her sack.

With all our new loot stashed in our saddlebags, and every last spark cell, bullet, magazine, and explosive taken from the desks and cabinets, we left. The grenades in particular had given my sister and I quite a grin.

“Where to now?” I asked as we ran down another identically rusted hallway.

“We go!” L.A. called back.

“Where are we going then, ponies?” asked Xeno from behind.

“Anywhere but here. Away from these sociopaths!” Lost yelled back, turning the corner. She still had the plasma pistol out, though it was now full of a brand new supercharged spark cell.

The sounds of gunfire still echoed throughout the building, though the smoke had been clearing. I wanted to know what was going on, but I couldn’t spare the time. We needed to get out. Whatever was going on could wait. They’d survive without us. Maybe Rough had run down to the mine and gotten the ponies out. With the things that Jazz had said, he might even even convince the griffons to lend a wing and a claw? Didn’t matter.

Finally, we made it back down to the main floor. Several corpses lay on the ground near the door out the back. None looked like the ponies from Stable Sixty though, thankfully. I really hoped they could make it out of this without any more casualties... Poor Chocolate Éclair... I pushed the thought away, I couldn’t get locked in that thought loop again.

Looking away from the corpses, we ran down the hallway. This one looked familiar, one side a series of glass windows, with offices opposite. I couldn’t help but look over to the factory floor as we ran past. Just yesterday, I’d thought these were good ponies. They’d saved me, and now? Now there was only the din of gunfire and the smell of death. Wasteland... Why?

Something moved on the factory floor.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t a Steel Ranger. I skidded to a stop to look at it. “Lost?...”

A piece of armor toppled over, falling behind the conveyer belt it was on. I watched in horror. It couldn’t be.

A wire shot up from behind it. Fuck! It was.

The mass of steely wires crawled itself up, the fallen piece of armor already merging with the pieces that were left from when Jazz and her Steel Rangers had shredded him. He ran, he couldn’t come back. They had guards everywhere.

The wires were vaguely pony-shaped, with only a few pieces of the original armor left encasing him around the back and sides. The jaw was still there though, teeth exposed and glinting at the edges. I’d come so close to those, even this far away I gave a shudder. Without the entire suit, there were visible masses of rotting flesh sloughing around inside the bundles of wire. They pulsated wildly, spasming like a pony gasping for breath. I didn’t want to watch, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

The pony-shaped mass stood on what must have been its legs, though only one leg still looked like one, thanks to the shattered armor that still clung to it. The ‘head’ section looked around, jaw whirring loudly even through the glass and above the sounds of battle. Several wires shot out from the back and neck, undulating through the air before latching onto different chunks of armor strewn about the factory floor.

“Please don’t,” I whispered under my breath. “Don’t do that, Wirepony.”

There was nothing to stop it. I couldn’t move, my legs were locked in horror. He’d nearly killed me just yesterday, and now... The claws came back, reminding me how it felt to have those wires wrapped around my throat... Please... Celestia? Luna? Just one favor...

Finding purchase on whatever it deemed suitable replacement parts, it snapped the armor pieces back, one at a time. Each piece slammed with a horrific clang to the previous piece, forming a makeshift shell around it. They seemed to snap into place, merging with what was already there, repairing from whatever old world magic kept it alive all this time. It felt like hours, but was probably only seconds. The different pieces merged together, all taking on the same matte steel sheen. Even the pieces that were rusted and falling apart looked like new once the repairs on them were complete.

In under a minute, he had snapped on a new chest and helmet, and moved on to the legs. My breathing went shallow, as one more wire reached out, searching slowly.

“Don’t find what I think you’re looking for.”

“Please. Don’t. Find. A. Gun.”

The wire didn’t stop searching though. I looked back at the armor. It was almost complete. The legs were finally repaired, even the emblem on his flanks was back to the same as before. A second wire shot out from an opening on its back, going in the same direction as the previous one.

If I could just... My legs wouldn’t move. I couldn’t bite my battle saddle’s bit. Why did this terrify me so? If I ended him now, he couldn’t get me again. So why couldn’t I move?

The two wires pulled back, slamming something onto its back. It was a new grenade launcher, but, oh Goddesses there was more. On the other side was a flamer, almost identical to the one Seethe had used before.

“No...” said Lost beside me. I looked over, and saw she had the same terrified look I must’ve. This was bad. Even Xeno watched with wide eyes and shaking legs.

Finished with his resurrection, the Wirepony moved its head, the new headlamp and visor both flickered with an eerie blue glow. Then it looked across the floor, and up the window.

It stared directly at us, opened its mouth, and let out a horrible static roar.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Adrenaline Rush – You have a fear of death that allows you to fight harder when you are wounded. When your HP drops below 75% of your maximum, you gain +2 Strength.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Precision Repair Pony – You can improve the general condition of weapons and armor, giving them +2 to damage or damage reduction by combining them with another of the same item.

“How am I carrying all this ammo, anyway? Seriously, we have enough for an army here.”
“Well, it doesn’t actually weigh anything. You can carry as much as you want.”
“But... It still falls when I drop it? The casings still hit the ground when I fire...”
“Okay well. A UNICORN DID IT!”
“....... CHEATER MAGIC!”

Chapter 7: Losing Something Special

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Chapter Seven: Losing Something Special
“Let this be a lesson to you, every time you sacrifice yourself... You’re gonna suffer the consequences the rest of your life.”

Run.

Thoughts of revenge? Gone. All that bravado about killing the Wirepony with my own hooves once I got some guns? Meaningless. The sight of that monstrosity with even bigger guns than when it had nearly killed me before was enough to send me running with my tail between my legs. Literally.

Of course, it gave chase.

Lost and Xeno ran beside me, down another one of the hallways. We checked the front door. Locked. There went our easy way out. Those precious seconds slowed us too much, now the monster was behind us. I could feel it more than hear it. There was just something about it that made me know it was there. I didn’t know why it hadn’t fired on is yet, or attacked with the wires. Maybe it was playing with me? Either way I didn’t like it. Just kill me now or fuck right off, don’t torment me.

The three of us rounded a corner. Behind me, I heard a noise I’d only heard once before, like the hiss of gas escaping followed by-

Oh Goddesses! It was firing the flamer! The hallway erupted into flames. What was left of the wall decorations blossomed into infernos. The fire missed us; we were incredibly lucky, but that didn’t mean our luck would last.

Lost shivered as she ran, her legs shaking with every step she took. The look in her eyes was the same one Xeno had moments ago: fear on a primal level. After Seethe had scorched her mane off, I could understand it. It was probably the same way I felt right now, with those claws in the back of my head telling me that I was going to die, cooked alive and eaten piece by piece by this monster.

A wire snapped through the air from above. It missed Lost’s horn by inches. She flinched, screaming as it caught her glasses. The frame snapped and the glass shattered, splintering to pieces into her face. Shit, this was bad. Either its aim was improving, or it was teasing us. Neither was a healthy option.

“You’re fine!” I yelled. “It just got your glasses!” I really hoped that would calm her down. We’d find a replacement, even if I had to turn the entire Equestrian Wasteland over. But we had to survive first. L.A. nodded, and kept on. She bled from the cuts on her face, but that was nothing compared to what it could’ve been. “Now where do we go?” I asked.

“I don’t know! I can’t read the map like this,” Lost yelled back, the panic audible in her voice.

A series of thumps sounded off, heralding a wave of grenades. I didn’t need a map for that, it wasn’t about escaping right now, it was about staying alive just long enough to breathe. So I rammed the first door I found in the hall, and burst into the room beyond. My sister and friend followed. We slammed the door shut. The room we’d entered was a small one, probably an office. Furnishings blended into the background, crushed by the mostly-collapsed ceiling. I slammed my back against the door to hold it shut, just in case.

“Ponies, what is it we should be doing now?” asked the zebra. She no longer had the look of fear in her eyes, but was back to her resolved, calm self. How in the Goddesses name did she do that?

“Run, run. Run some more. Try and think of a way to kill it,” I said frantically. These weren’t good plans. I wasn’t a thinky pony. I looked over to my sister. “Lost? Please anything?”

A thunk reverberated through the door, and it creaked heavily against my back. Wirepony must have hit it with a wire. Knowing that bastard, a full attack with the armor would’ve had it inside already. Another thunk bent the door in even more.

“Up!” she said, and scrambled up the collapsed ceiling to the floor above.

I didn’t need any prompting. I gave up on the door and ran up after her. It was a bit unwieldy, trying to maneuver with two rather large guns on my sides.

Wait. Wirepony was big and bulky and unwieldy... If we could trap it down there...

“Sis, give me one of the grenades,” I ordered as Xeno finished climbing up. Lost levitated a grenade to me, and I hooked it into my fetlock. Wasting no time, I pulled the stem out of the apple-shaped explosive with my teeth, and jammed it into a crack in the shattered panel that we had just climbed up. “Okay go!”

The door splintered below, and the Wirepony burst into the room. The now-familiar hissing started, and the room burst into flames. We didn’t stay to watch. Running through the door, we galloped down the second floor hallway. Several thuds echoed from the room behind us, as if the monster was trying to follow up the incline. Please let my plan-

A horrific BOOM exploded behind us, close enough to knock me off my balance and send me toppling into L.A. Xeno kept her on her hooves, by some crazy zebra luck. The thudding had stopped. It was stuck down there. That meant we had time. Time to come up with a plan.

The wall exploded as a series of incendiary grenades pelted it from the far side. The force of the explosions was enough to send the weakened wall down all around us.

Or... maybe not.

We ran to different sides, trying to keep from being crushed. Then came the wires. A half dozen burst up through the rubble, undulating wildly as they searched for their prey. I shot one on reflex. The new hunting rifle fired smoother than any gun I’d ever handled before. One of the wires’ tips exploded in a shower of sparks and shrapnel as two bullets tore through. What was left of it pulled back, but there were still plenty more remaining wires.

Across the rubble, Lost had the same idea, and was firing plasma shots into the wires on her end to keep them at bay. Down below, I saw dozens, maybe hundreds more of the wires burst from the back of the power armor and smash to the floor. It should have been impossible, but it was lifting itself up with the wires.

I refused to believe it!

Lost waved me over to her side, and I jumped past the rubble, hearing a hiss of released gas. Please let me make it in time. Flames erupted behind me, catching the end of my tail and lighting it up. Tails grew back, I reminded myself, trying to keep the mental claws away. I didn’t have time to get locked up by fear. If I did, Wirepony would eat me, but for now, it had to catch me first.

The monster reached our floor and pawed the ground with an armored hoof, ready to resume the chase. It let out another horrific mechanized roar, a sound that actually made the gunfire outside stop. The silence didn’t last long, as whoever remained out there resumed their battle. I could worry about them later. Right now, I had to survive.

We ran through another hallway, almost identical to the one downstairs. As before, the monster followed hot on our trail, launching grenades often enough that the three of us had to weave and dodge to avoid becoming a pony barbeque. My evasion wasn’t perfect. I already had scorched hooves.

Xeno cried out in pain as a grenade detonated next to her rear leg. She collapsed, legs sprawled behind her. Her leg’s stripes were gone, the entire coat charred black. Blood poured from the wound, her skin shredded by shrapnel.

“Grab her, I’ll heal as we run,” L.A. ordered, her horn already glowing.

I did as I was told, grabbing the zebra and throwing her over my battle saddle. She was surprisingly light, much lighter than a pony her size would be. Maybe it was the adrenaline? With her secured over my back and guns, we kept running. Another gout of flame roared behind me, setting the walls afire and singeing my skin. It felt like the grenade had exploded on my back all over again.

Running like this wasn’t going to work. So far, all we’d accomplished was tiring ourselves out. We needed to get Xeno healed, and fight back.

Wires exploded all around us, snapping through the walls with strength that could have sliced us to bits as soon as it started. It was toying with us. Celestia, Luna. Why?

“She’s good, get somewhere safe and set her down,” Lost said as we veered left around another corner. Wires burst through the walls ahead of us. I jumped, but Lost tumbled down. “Go!” she shouted. That cheating monster! It cut the corner on us!

Not fair, I was supposed to sacrifice myself to save her. I wavered for a moment, looking at her. The stare she gave me said it all. Even with one of her lenses cracked and missing pieces, even through the blood, the look she gave made it clear that she had something or other planned. I nodded and ran.

Wirepony slammed through the wall at the end of the hallway, completely missing us and the turn. Dust and mold burst into the air from the wall collapsing, but by the sound of things, it didn’t faze it. Wires flailed through the air in the hall behind us. A moment later, they retracted into the gaping hole in the wall the monster has created.

Time to run. Trust that L.A. knew what she was doing. I hauled flank as fast as my hooves could carry me, smashing open another door with my head, and ran into another identical office-

I tumbled through the floor, losing Xeno somewhere along the line. Why wasn’t there a floor? With a crunch, I landed on my side in the rubble. “Ahh!” I screamed, as the battle saddle bent under the pressure and pushed into my side. I’d had worse, seriously. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself up. We were on the factory floor now, back where it all started.

Above me, I heard the roar of the flamer. Please, please let it not get my sister. If it did, I’d just give up.

“Why did you think it was smart to fall through the floor?” Xeno asked, staring at me. She was totally unscathed now. L.A.’s ‘heal-on-the-run’ had done its work. She was getting much better at that healing magic. The zebra didn’t wait for my response though, only took to running. It was really starting to weird me out that she never reacted to anything.

I followed suit, looking over my shoulder for Lost. I could ignore the pressure from the battle saddle; it wasn’t that bad. Nowhere near as bad as a cracked rib pressing against my lung. Behind me though, the entire second floor was in flames. A huge chunk collapsed onto the factory floor, crushing one of the machines into a pile of rubble.

Walls were starting to disintegrate, the fires burning everything to ashes. I could still hear gunfire outside, so the Steel Rangers must not have caught on to what was happening. Let them fight, I didn’t care.

Shit! There it was!

Standing on the ledge left by a collapsed piece of building was the power-armor-encased monstrosity. The blue glow from his headlamp shined right on me. I jumped onto a conveyor belt and fired my new hunting rifle at it. The bullet ricocheted off with a satisfying ping, but it didn’t even leave a dent. Just how tough was his armor, anyway?

Several wires crawled into view, dragging something along the floor. It couldn’t be. No! I wouldn’t let it be! I fired the hunting rifle again, well aware of how useless it was. That didn’t matter, just firing made me feel like I was accomplishing something, anything. I reloaded and fired as fast as I could. The rifle was amazing, it held more than half a dozen rounds and fired them faster than any gun I’d ever touched. Were it not for the situation, I’d be in love right now. Despite my efforts, it didn’t stop what was coming.

The Wirepony stopped for a moment, taking the time to repair what little damage I was causing. The moment I ran out of ammo in my magazines, it started right back up. The mouth of the power armor opened, in what looked like a smile. The wires trailing along the floor beside it lifted into the air... wrapped around one of my sister’s legs! What had happened to her plan? It dangled her over the ledge.

She didn’t move.

“You motherfucker! Put her down this instant!” I screamed indignantly. My vision went red. This wasn’t about food, or even just murder for the sake of murder anymore. It was fucking with me, personally. How dare it use her as bait! I was going to take this gun, ram it so far down its throat that it would shit bullets!

The wires snapped around, slamming Lost into the remains of one of the flaming walls, and dropped her. She didn’t even flinch, just fell to the factory floor and smashed into another one of the conveyor belts. She didn’t hit the machine dead-on. She smashed into it halfway and tumbled off the side, landing with a thud on the floor among the debris.

“I swear to Celestia herself! I will end you, monster!” I yelled, barely keeping myself from running to help my sister. It hurt, more than getting myself shot, that the monster had targeted the one stabilizing influence in my life. Knowing she was hurt instead of me... I was so enraged that I barely noticed the gunfire dying down outside. What were they up to out there?

The monster leapt from the second story, and slammed down onto the far side of the conveyor I stood on. It shook violently, rattling all the way up the steel frames, and up my legs. The hunting rifle proved useless so far, so I fired the sniper rifle. Goddesses, please let the bigger gun have the power I needed. Nothing happened. Was it because...? I looked back at the battle saddle. Fucking bent. Not good.

Once again, I turned tail and ran. Xeno was nowhere to be seen, and Lost was out of the fight for the moment. That meant the monster was all on me. I just needed to kill it somehow...

It gave chase, and I ran my heart out. When I reached the end of the conveyor, I leapt off, making sure to look back and give it incentive to go after me. It didn’t need any. The steel hooves of the armor beat the raised belt platform so hard that many of the steel supports bent and snapped under the impact. I jumped through the window to the hallway where this all started.

My landing wasn’t very smooth. I caught many of the pieces of broken glass in my legs, but it wasn’t worse than anything I’d had before. So I kept on, circling around the opposite direction from where we’d headed the first time, leaving a trail of blood for it to find me by.

The thinky pony plan was to get outside, get the others into the fight. Win with superior numbers.

I burst through the doors to the back of the building, and skidded to a halt. “Hey, anypony st... ill...” Where was everypony? Past the bay door, I saw several corpses, power armor with holes riddled all through them. There wasn’t a single live pony. All that was left was twisted steel, bullet casings, and blood. A lone griffon flew overhead, but when the overhead door screeched, ripped from its hinge, it stopped mid-air, turned, and flew away as fast as its wings could carry it. The bay door flew past me, slamming into the ground and crushing one of the corpses.

So much for getting help...

The Wirepony paused for a moment. Several wires whipped out, and I braced for a slow death. Clenching my eyes shut, I waited. And waited. Finally opening them, I saw it had reached past me and was collecting the armor chunks. Overconfident, much? If it wasn’t already at full power, there was something seriously wrong with whatever spawned this abomination. Some kind of sick joke maybe?

I didn’t wait to answer. I had a new plan. Ducking a wire, I ran back inside.

I careened down the hallway and dove through one of the doors. My memory wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe I was becoming a thinky pony after all! Inside was the break room turned clinic that Doc Plagueheart had healed me up in before. There was a first aid kit sitting on a rack in the corner. Two kits, actually. Perfect!

The first was unlocked, and inside were a healing potion and- Thank the Goddesses. Buck! I shook the bottle. It sounded full. This might just work. I took everything I could and stuffed it into the saddlebags, taking what spare moments I could, before Wirepony came back to kill me, to open the bottle. I struggled, without magic, to twist the cap. My hooves slipped... Screaming in frustration, I bit down on it. I finally managed to unscrew the lid with a combination of hoofwork and my teeth. I downed a Buck tablet and just poured the rest in my bags. Easier to find that way. The second first aid kit was locked, but well... I had Buck!

The wonderful little pill kicked in, and I could feel the wonderful sensation of my heart pounding all over. Down my legs, behind my eyes, I could feel it everywhere. I felt alive. Sure, it made my pain flare, but that wasn’t my problem. It was somewhere far off in the distance, somepony else’s problem. My breath came in sharp gasps, something I had to force myself to control. This was good, I was strong. Strong enough to take on that monster.

I smashed the other first aid kit open with my hooves. It took several kicks, but eventually the prizes were mine. I realized afterward that a shard of the metal box jabbed itself into my leg. I hadn’t even felt it, and I didn’t care. Somepony else’s problem. I stashed two healing potions, and several syringes of stolen Med-X in my bags, and hauled flank out of the room.

With every step I took, I felt better. My heart pounded faster than ever, and I felt alive. Even the pulsing behind my eyes made me feel good. I could feel, I was alive. I was going to take that monster and rip it to pieces. But first...

I stopped in front of a steel support beam, one of the few bits of the structure that wasn’t covered in scorch marks or currently on fire. I smashed the battle saddle against it repeatedly, using it as a makeshift anvil to get the bend out. Slam. Slam. Slam! It didn’t work perfectly, but it smoothed out the dent enough that I could trigger the gun again. A kick of the reload lever later, and I was ready for a fight.

Now for the next- Wires wrapped around the pillar I stood next to, and ripped it from the floor. Okay! Not what I was expecting! The Wirepony stood behind it, wires out and searching. Not this time, fucker! I spun on a hoof and fired both rifles at the same time, aiming for the visor. It might not need it to see, but it might slow it down. I fired again and again, the off-balance kick from each shot digging the still-dented hunk of battle saddle into my side.

Didn’t care. Blood was pounding, I was alive! Behind the monster, I saw Xeno, her black coat and white stripes doing a terrible job of helping her to blend in against the off-white walls and rust. I called to her as best I could, yelling over the sounds of battle. I couldn’t even hear myself, and seriously doubted she could hear me either. She caught on, though, and looked to me.

For a split second I released my bit, and stopped firing. Time to reload, anyway. I kicked my reload lever and dug in my bag for one of the healing potions. By the time ammo was in each clip, I had it. I rolled the potion on the floor, along the wall, and out of the war path of the power armored monster.

“Take that to Lost!” I yelled, “Or else!” I spun on my hoof again and bolted down the hallway. As I passed the shattered window that overlooked the factory, I spared a glance inside. Inside it was bad, really bad. Much of the second story had collapsed, and the third story was already aflame. But I saw Xeno scurrying in, and heading to where I’d seen L.A. last. Good zebra, no murder.

The Wirepony wasn’t playing around anymore. Behind me, it let out a deafening mechanical roar, but being deaf wasn’t a problem that mattered right now. I swung my tail side to side, taunting the monster. Keep on target, bastard. Not my brightest idea, because said bastard let out a spray of fire and a volley of grenades in response.

Somewhere deep down, I knew the flamer hit me, but I didn’t feel it. My coat was scorched off, right after it had just started to regrow, and everything felt like fire. It was different from the grenade before, I still cried out in pain, swearing at the Goddesses that let this happen to me. There wasn’t the burst of pressure, the feeling like it was enveloping me. It was just fire this time, and it fucking hurt!

I jumped into a stairwell to get away, praying to Luna that the monster was too large to follow. I scrambled up the stairs, the flames on my back slowly going out. Go, Hidden, somepony else can deal with it. Just go! I skipped the second story; it was worthless now. Part of me, somewhere far away, was sad. All of those guns they had stolen, gone. Well, at least we’d raided the good ones first. Wait, we’d raided everything. Was there armor piercing ammo in there? Or maybe... I jumped up the last few steps, turned a corner, and listened.

I couldn’t hear the monster. Good. That meant it had to do its wire-floating trick to get up to me, which bought me a minute or two. I dug through my saddlebags, pushing things out of the way, trying to find the various shells that filled the bottoms of the bag. If I ever got that PipBuck back, I was bolting it on and never letting it off. Still digging, another Buck. Without a thought I popped it into my mouth. Back to digging. Just a minute or two to go. There! Thank the Goddesses for special talents. I found what I needed; armor piercing ammo for the hunting rifle. Three bullets. More than enough. I kicked the lever and loaded the ammo, which would have been a lot easier if I had some fucking cheater magic!

The roar sounded again, and the stairway collapsed behind me. That was my signal. I turned and aimed straight down the hollowed out stairwell. There Wirepony was, wires thrashing about as it lifted itself up. Too easy. I let loose a volley of six shots, three from each gun. The sniper rifle bullets didn’t do a damn thing, but the three from the hunting rifle put holes in his head and out the other side. The wires ceased, and it collapsed, falling a down the distance of a flight and a half.

“See ya at the bottom, fucker,” I yelled, and gave a victorious cheer. It felt good to be winning. It might be smart, it might be patient, but right now, I was faster and I was stronger than it was.

Dodging flames and collapsed sections of floor, I ran where I was sure the factory floor was. This was reckless, even for me. I didn’t care. Lost was down there. She’d have a plan on how to kill this thing, if she’d woken up yet. I hit a wall, somehow it was still standing. It didn’t stay that way. A few more shots to weaken it, and I bucked the entire wall out.

Several stories down, I saw them, a white pony and a striped zebra. My sister was up and moving, thank Celestia and Luna, and digging through her bags for something. She looked frantically up, then back at the bag. I had to get down there. I was breathing heavy, heart was pounding. I felt every vein in my body as the blood I had left was forced through. For half a moment I paused, I reloaded, I planned. I knew it would hurt if I did what I was planning. But with the floors collapsing, and the stairs demolished, did I have a choice?

No.

But I could at least protect that poor pony who was gonna be in a lot of pain when this amazing tablet wore off. I grabbed one of the syringes of Med-X, and- No. That mechanical roar again. I heard a thumping off in the distance, echoing the beating of my heart in my ears. The factory floor lit up with several grenades exploding.

None of them hit Lost or Xeno. My sister produced a grenade of her own, and ran from the monster with it held in her magical grasp. It emerged from below me, apparently having given up on reaching the third floor. It was going for weaker prey, expecting my sister to still be wounded and unconscious. Not today. It was not going to use her to hurt me.

I stabbed myself with the syringe, right in the chest. For a half second I considered walking down, somehow. Wouldn’t work. Too slow. Instead...

Fuck, that was a bad idea. “Hidden Fortune,” I muttered to myself, “This is the opposite of being a thinky pony.”

I jumped.

In the time it took me to fall from the third story, I really began to wonder if this had been a good idea. Too late now.

I slammed into the monster’s back full force. I heard, not felt, my legs snap, but without the PipBuck to tell me just how bad the damage was, I ignored it. I was really going to regret this later, but right then, I didn’t have the time. I stood, wobbling, on the back of my greatest enemy. It had nearly killed me last time, and there I was, ready for revenge.

“Hidden!” yelled L.A. She was on the far side of the factory floor, with an apple shaped grenade in her telekinesis. Was she going to do what I thought she was? Probably. She was the thinky pony, after all. So far all I’d learned was that this thing was big, powerful, and invulnerable... from the outside.

I slammed my hooves on the back of its head. It hurt. It hurt bad. I watched my legs bend awkwardly in places they shouldn’t. Too much stress and they’d break, but for the moment, I was okay. Keep it distracted. Let my sister do her job.

The monster thrashed from side to side, wires shooting through the air. With the crashing thunder of the Buck lifting me, I was faster. I could beat this thing. I dodged incoming wires, keeping it busy. That was my job now. It opened its mouth once more, revealing those horrible sharp teeth. I could hear them whirring over the heartbeat in my ears.

A wire hit me, and snaked around the leg. I was done. Lost was almost there. She just needed a few more seconds. The monster didn’t notice her, because all its attention was on me. Another wire wrapped around a second leg, then another. The claws dug into my mind, with more fury than ever before. Somewhere deep down, I was crying. The little pony in there couldn’t take it. She knew, just as I did, that we were probably going to die. To top that off, this was her worst fear. It was mine too, but I didn’t have time for those claws. I shook my head, felt my mane brush against my coat, and smiled. If I died, I was taking Wirepony out with me.

The Wirepony lifted me off its back, spinning me in the air so I faced it. A half-dozen wires snaked around my torso and neck, the ones around my legs moving to join the mass crushing my lungs and warping my battle saddle. The visor stared dead on at me, the blue light hurting my eyes. The mouth opened wide, a mass of squirming wires inside just like last time. But no, this wasn’t last time. I wasn’t alone, trying to play the hero.

We were a team.

“Well, damn. You finally got me,” I said, smirking. It was hard not to cough, from the pressure on my body, but I wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. “But we got you better.”

The grenade flew into its mouth, taking the monster by surprise. For half a second it paused. We’d won. Take that. “You’re fucked now.”

One of the wires wrapped around the grenade, and in a swift, fluid motion, it flicked the little apple-shaped explosive back out.

“That’s just not fair!” I screamed at it.

I threw out my right hoof, batting the grenade back toward his mouth. I swung my leg hard, sending both the grenade and my hoof through the gaping maw.

My hoof sunk into his mouth, scraping against the razor sharp teeth. Problem for another pony, I told myself. Problem. For. Another-

The monster bit down.

It was strange; I didn’t feel the teeth like I expected. Instead, I just felt the jaw when it snapped down. The feeling was a lot like when it had broken my leg. I heard several snaps as jaws crushed the bone inside.

For several seconds, I stared, looking at my fetlock pressed flush against the power armor. Blood began to seep down the metal jaw. Where was my hoof? Slowly, I pulled my leg back. There was nothing left but a stump. Realization hit me, and the pain came rushing up my leg, every nerve ablaze with agony.

I screamed. The pain I felt was like nothing before. Broken bones? Nothing compared to this. Being lit on fire? Not even close. This topped my list of favorite things to never do again.

The grenade exploded.

The blast seemed like it lasted for hours, though I knew it was only a fraction of a second. The explosion crippled the monster. Its power armor warped outward, the force of the explosion setting off a chain reaction of the other grenades inside. The wires holding me went limp, and the visor dimmed.

I fell to the floor on my back, screaming and panicking. I clutched the bloody leg with my left one, pulling it close and clinging to it like my life depended on it. Blood was everywhere, my hoof was fucking gone. I had no idea what to do, my limbs moved on their own to try and stem the pain and bleeding.

I started to scream, “You ate my-”

A massive explosion blew out Wirepony’s back. The flamer fuel tank had finally gone, and finished off what remained of the broken power armor. The monster threw its head back, mouth opening in another mechanical roar that sputtered, shrieked, and eventually silenced. The thing’s legs gave out, and it slammed into the floor and shattered. No more wires were inside, the explosions had taken whatever was left in there, and liquified it into molten metal and searing flame.

I pushed myself back with my rear legs, holding my right foreleg against my chest with my left. The pain was getting worse, I couldn’t focus. Where was Lost Art? She could fix this, right? Right?

“Hidden! Are you alright?!” my sister screamed somewhere in the distance. I didn’t know where.

In front of me, the molten mass of wire-innards poured from the armor’s mouth. I tried to get away, but I couldn’t. Lost was behind me, staring at my stump.

"Oh fuck oh fuck no please no-” She was panicked, screaming and using her magic to try and heal me. It wasn’t working, there was no pleasant feeling of flesh knitting back together. The wound must have been beyond her abilities. “Please be okay, please be okay!” She repeated herself over and over, the glow from her horn glared brightly, fighting futility.

I was dying, here in a mostly demolished building, from blood loss. Wonderful. So, did I earn a place up with you, Celestia? Luna? At least Lost and I were together.

“Hidden. Hidden, listen to me!” she screamed at my face. Tears streamed down hers. “Help! Xeno!” Lost yelled, turning her head away. “Xeno! I nee...”

I couldn’t hear anything after that, whatever she was saying... It sounded like she was miles away.

My legs felt cold, but I thought I felt her pull my right foreleg away. She stared at it, crying and rambling something, something about hurting? Yeah, I was hurting. She grabbed my hoof, no, where my hoof had been. But Lost was with me, so I’d get through it. We’d just-

Lost dragged me bodily back to the smoldering remains of Wirepony’s power armor. We stopped next to whatever the wires had melted into: a white hot patch of not quite solid metal. It looked nice, actually, and even warmed my frigid limbs up. Everything had melted together into one slowly cooling hunk of smooth steel. I felt something pull, then something solid as the stump was pressed against the still superheated metal. Why was she...

Med-X didn’t do a Goddesses-damned thing.

Everything went white with pain. I couldn’t even find the strength to scream.

* * *

I lazily flicked the stump of my leg. Wirepony had bitten it clean off. Why had I thought it was a good idea to stick my leg into the mouth of a cannibalistic monster with razor sharp teeth? It didn’t hurt too much, now that all the nerves were dead.

Flick...

“You weren’t being a thinky pony,” I reminded myself, under my breath.

I flicked the stump again, though it hurt. The seared ends of muscle kept trying to rip themselves free from the burned edge that was left. Of course, I could still feel that. The monster had bitten it off just below the joint, which meant I was only a hoof short. The cut was clean at least, severing off without any dangly bits that would need to be removed. There was still a tiny piece of the joint left that I could move up and down, but it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t walk on it either. The first time I’d tried to get up after... After Lost...

A shiver ran up my spine and down the leg. Had that really been the best way to stop the bleeding, stabbing the stump onto searing hot metal? With the pain from the fractured bones, and the fact that the Med-X was wearing off, a simple shiver put me in wracking pain. I couldn’t even walk, because every time I actually managed to get off the floor, I fell down again trying to figure out how to walk on three legs. I ended up either face planting the ground, or stepping on the charred wound and hurting myself. Why did it always have to be my legs!

For the time being, I lay on my side, watching Xeno dig through her bag as I nursed one of her makeshift potions. For something thrown together on the spot, the mixture did surprisingly well at healing up the burn on my back. The knit-flesh feeling of the potions and brews was becoming more euphoric each time it happened, because it reminded me I was about to be healthy again. I could almost capture that ‘alive’ feeling that Buck gave me, almost. Nothing compared to what those beautiful little pills could do. If I had another, then somepony else could be dealing with this pain right now. To check if I had more, I’d have to move, and I wasn’t capable of that at the moment. Instead, I lay there, feeling miserable and weak. I’d been asleep for hours, but I was exhausted and just wanted to close my eyes and drift back off. The escape from the pain was just a bonus.

If only the potions and brews could fix my hoof, then I’d be on the right track.

Lost disappeared somewhere the minute she knew I wasn’t going to die, probably to search for supplies. Maybe there was some Hydra secreted away somewhere that could regrow my hoof. I couldn’t blame her for wanting some space while she hunted...

All these years she’d looked out for me, and I’d looked out for her, and neither of us had ever gotten a serious injury. Shot recently? Eeyup. Cut, bruised, scraped, and every other infliction the Wasteland could throw at a pony? All of them at some point or another. This was different though. This wouldn’t heal with time. A cut will heal up, close itself. I discovered the same was true after being shot. If a doctor removes the bullet, it heals up with magic pretty damn good. Even the burn I had from the grenade, and the new one from the flamer, would heal. Hurt like being bucked by one of the Goddesses themselves, but I knew it would heal, eventually. But this...

The fires had mostly died down and whatever was going to collapse already had. I was lying in the corner of the factory floor, with one of the bigger machines pushed in such a way to block us from sight from any enemy that might decide to wander by searching for the remains of that firefight earlier. Even if somepony did find us, there wasn’t much to be done. Xeno wasn’t a fighter, and I was down one hoof to fight with. No bucking for me for a while, not without a firm set of hooves to balance on. I couldn’t even stand right now, with the pain I had shooting through every limb. I looked up at the hole that had been burnt into the ceiling. It was still early, the sun giving the tiniest of peeks through the cloud cover above us.

How long had Wirepony chased me? I didn’t want to answer myself, didn’t want to consider what had happened only a few hours ago. Getting away from the monster was lucky, even if it cost me... Ugh. I flicked the stump again. Up down, up down, the end hanging limp when I let it go. Beating him was a miracle unto itself.

My head still pounded, with a dull thready beat so unlike the surges of power from before. I just wanted to lay there, close my eyes, and give up. My heart hurt. Not because I was sad, or upset, but it lanced pain through my chest with every beat.

I couldn’t wallow like this, I needed my sister, and we needed to go. If Jazz or Scifresh, or any of their Rangers were still around, and I couldn’t move. We were sitting ducks. But L.A. was off somewhere, probably feeling guilty about what happened to me, and I could only wait, like a useless pony. Couldn’t even go comfort my sister...

The more restless I became, the more I wanted to pick at my wound. I looked at the stump, twisting my leg around to see all the little details. It really wasn’t pretty. All I could see was the charred remains from when Lost had pressed the wound into that searing hunk of metal. I counted my blessings though; Celestia had provided a white hot slab of molten steel wire and armor for her to use to keep me from bleeding out, and Luna had made sure I didn’t scream to alert anypony still around that would hurt us. Thanks a lot to both, but I’d have preferred to keep the hoof. The exposed flesh was mostly brown, muscle seared to the point where it was unrecognizable, with bits of charred black bone sticking out. It looked like burnt radhog steak...

Ugh. I might not eat meat for a while. Well, unless it was all we had...

At least I wasn’t wearing the PipBuck at the time. I had total confidence that that monster could have chewed through the old-world technology as easy as it did my flesh.

“Hey... Xeno...?” I called to her weakly. “Any idea...” I paused, trying to compose myself. It hurt to talk. The muscles I used to turn my head and talk burned with every subtle movement. “Any idea where Lost went? I could really use her right now.”

“Iam not sure,” the zebra answered. “She said that she was going to go search for some Hydra. I told her not to, but she went anyway. She is very upset.” Once again, she sounded completely unfazed by any of this. There I was, missing a hoof, and she didn’t bat an eye at it. I really didn’t want to meet any other zebras if they were anything like her. The fact she could remain calm and not freak out over a severed limb was a bit disturbing.

The only reason I wasn’t freaking out was because I couldn’t really believe it myself. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought I could open them up to a new hoof, whole and complete at the end of my leg. But no matter how many times I closed my eyes and prayed to the Goddesses, it never changed. I was crippled. And the Wasteland ate crippled ponies for breakfast.

Uneven hoofsteps echoed through the factory floor, followed by something clattering on the ground. L.A. rounded the corner of our hiding place, stumbling and limping with every step she took. Her eyes were closed and she looked terrible. Her fur was matted down and discolored from blood and grime, and it was very obvious she’d been crying. She staggered, wobbling to the side each time she put a hoof down. I gave up watching, and just lay my head on the floor until she finally got to where we waited.

Her horn was glowing, and behind her dragged three bottles, all wrapped in the blue haze of her levitation. Her magic looked flickery and frail. The three bottles dragged along the floor, occasionally bobbing up, only to fall back to the steel floor with a loud clink. She seemed to have far less control over what she was levitating than she usually did.

She stumbled over, crashing into and leaning against the... whatever-it-was machine, that shielded us from view. She still had her glasses on, though they leaned horribly to one side due to the one lens having shattered. For a while she just stood there and stared at me, blinking occasionally. “Hley...” she finally said.

My eyes widened in fear. Had something happened? Why was she stumbling like that? Had somepony shot her? I tilted my head to look past the machinery, ignoring the pain that shot through every muscle. If they followed her, we were screwed. My battle saddle was out of reach, taken off while I slept, and without it I couldn’t fight. Not that I’d be able to anyway, but if I had a gun I could at least...

Nopony followed her. I relaxed.

L.A. pushed herself from the machine and took a few final steps over to me. Her hooves slipped unceremoniously out from under her, and she slammed into the floor. With a whine, she pulled her hooves back and curled onto her side opposite me. With her telekinesis, she pulled one of the bottles closer. It was a full bottle, labeled ‘Highland Harvest: Apple Whiskey.’ She grabbed it in her mouth, and rolled onto her back, then took several chugs. A moment later, she turned away and spat the glass bottle under the machine, where it slowly drained onto the floor.

Oh Goddesses. She was drunk. There was no way she was that far gone off just that much. How many had she found and drank before she got back?

“Ahm ss-oh suhrey!” she blathered, her breath reeking of apple and alcohol. Not a word of it made any sense though, no matter how loud she screamed it or how much she tried not to gasp for air.

I started to ask what she said, but was interrupted when she grabbed my good leg and pulled herself closer. I stared at her, trying not to wince in pain. What could I do to make it better? The look she gave back was pitiful, a look I knew from a few times in our childhood, especially after mom died. I slowly wrapped my good leg around her neck and helped her scoot closer.

She buried her face against my chest, managing to find an opening under the armored barding and stuck her face right against my coat, matting it down with tears. She practically crushed her nose against me, and I could feel my heart clench, already weak and unable to handle anything exerting it. The whole time all she could do was repeat the same slurred and garbled phrase she said when she first fell down. I let her, just holding with my good leg to give her time to work through it.

“Sahl my fuhhlt,” she said, choking on her words. “Ahm ss-oh suhrey.”

Whatever she said, it hurt my heart. I was still hurting but I would be alright, and the lingering injuries were nothing I couldn’t handle. Not after what I’d been through in the past few days. But this was hurting her, her heart must have felt as bad as mine. Even over the physical pain, this cut straight through me. A thinky pony would know what to say to her to make it better. Too bad I’d proved just a short while ago how far from being a thinky pony I really was. As she cried, I idly stared at where my hoof had once been.

“Schood huave behn mie,” she sobbed. “Vuh guhenage wuhs...” She stopped talking, and wrapped her legs around me, forcing one under my neck and pulling herself closer. I gasped, tightening my jaw so she wouldn’t notice. The broken frame of her glasses and her horn both dug into me, but I ignored it. She sniffled, rubbing her nose against me. “Wuhs sztoopid,” she finished.

“Lost... I’m okay. I promise,” I lied. “And I can’t understand anything you’re saying.” I was trying to sound comforting, something that should’ve been the furthest goal from my mind. Part of me was pissed. How dare she go and get herself drunk, when I was in pain, when I was the one injured. I let out a long sigh, hugging her tight with my good leg. But I was weak... I couldn’t stay mad at her. Even drunk, she’d protect me better than I could ever protect myself, especially like this. She hurt just as much as I did, just... In her own little way. We all deal with things differently.

Something pushed against the side of my face, a cold roundish something that was just out of my field of vision. For a second, I froze, terrified a Steel Ranger had found us and was about to blow my head off. I looked over, and found not a gun barrel, but another one of the booze bottles pressing against my cheek. Ugh, something called ‘SkinnyFilly’ peach schnapps.

“No Lost I...” I stammered, trying to resist.

She pulled away, and looked up at me. Gah, those eyes. I couldn’t really say no...

“Fine...” I muttered, grabbing the bottle... no, not with that hoof. I rolled away from her and pulled my remaining hoof free to grab the bottle. With a sigh, I took a long swig. It burned, making me cough a few times. My heart beat weakly in protest, but I didn’t listen. Never liked alcohol? Too bad. I could deal with it this one time. I forced myself to take a second drink, and did my best to ignore the pain in the back of my throat. Really, it was the last thing I needed right now. It tasted like sweet peaches and fire. The drink helped a little, giving me a pleasant warmth in my stomach for a moment. Ok, maybe Lost knew what she was doing, she was the older sister, after all.

“Is schnapps the best thing for you to be taking, silly pony?” Xeno said. “We will be leaving soon. It is not safe. They will find us soon.” She was smiling though, something I hadn’t seen her do yet. I felt a twinge of guilt. Had she and her brothers been this close like?

“You don’t have to stay with us,” I said, trying to talk around the burn in my throat.

“Noh doandt guo. Ahm s-ohwry,” Lost slurred. “Ah...” Poor girl could barely talk. She pressed her face against me again, letting out a new torrent of tears and wails. Sigh. That shower was wasted, with all the blood, grime, and tears she was smearing onto me.

“Sis? How are you feeling...?” I asked, trying to take her mind off of me.

“Aie cantp meik eht beht-tehr! Huhwl kcunaih meiyk viss bhetter?” she muttered. Through her slurring, that was hard to make out. Especially with her face pressed against me like it was.

I tapped her head a few times to get her attention. “I meant, because, y’know. You got dropped from the next floor up...”

She didn’t answer, just shrugged and cried more. The sobs came as near silent wheezes now. She was close to finishing, if she followed her usual pattern.

This was getting me nowhere. I pushed away from my sobbing sister and forced myself up onto three hooves. I wobbled and felt faint, fighting to keep the vomit-y feeling at bay. I didn’t need to add ‘lost-a-limb vomit’ to my experiences.

Given how often I seemed to get a leg shot, or broken, or otherwise... damaged. I should be able to do this. Just limp like before.

Lost just curled up where she was, wrapping her hooves around one of the bottles. She took several pulls from it, before throwing the empty thing away. We weren’t going anywhere any time soon.

I started walking, hopping on my remaining foreleg to keep from falling over. Every step was agony, reminding me how weak I was, how easily my bones had fractured... No! I could do it. I just had to try, be persistent. First I had to get to my battle saddle. It was close, and was a good test on if I could do it at all.

“Hidd-den... Yuhl cann teyhk maiyn...” L.A. said from the floor, holding out her right foreleg. She was rasping out the words, trying to force them over the crying. The look on her face was devastating, something I couldn’t continue to look at.

Turning away, I hobbled over to the battle saddle and pulled it on. With all my hooves and mouth it wasn’t super hard, but missing a limb? Goddesses. Why? Why let me do that? Stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life. (And that was saying something!) How was I supposed to find the answers to any of the questions I had when I was all crippled? Learning Gunbuck’s identity was still my main goal, but there were other things I wanted to know too. Like, where had that fucking monster came from? How that green swirly-thing got into the water at Pommel Falls?

Don’t do this to me, Celestia! Luna either! It’s not fair!

Xeno said nothing. She just watched as I fumbled with my gear. I was mad at her too. Yeah, we had wronged her, but if she stuck around, she should at least be a part of the team. And Lost, she needed to just stop wallowing! I needed her to ignore her ego for a few minutes, and get sobered up. We had places to go, and I needed someone with fucking cheater magic to help get me something to walk on!

“Lost, stop it. You’re not going to fix anything by getting drunk and crying it all away!” I yelled at her. “You’re my sister, and I love you, but you need to be an adult right now!” Under the uncaring eye of our zebra friend, I forced myself onto my rear legs. My nerves roared in protest, sending pain through every inch of me. I ignored it. It took considerable effort to keep myself balanced, but I stomped over and pulled her to her hooves. “Lost,” I started.

She couldn't look me in the eye, her face contorted before me into that wheezing mask. Her throat caught on her breath and gave voice to her painful howl. She moved to embrace me but I stopped her. With the stump. Using it hurt more than any of the other pain shooting through my body, but it instantly stopped Lost’s crying, as she just stared in shock at my leg.

“You need to calm down,” I said, trying to stay strong for her. I really hoped she didn’t figure out that I was using her for balance. The response I got wasn’t the one I needed. New tears weren’t going to fix anything.

I hit her across the face with my good hoof.

“I don’t care if you’re the older sister. You need to sober up and focus. We can’t wallow right now,” I said, trying my best to give her a look that showed I meant business.

She didn’t respond with words. The only thing she did was stare back. For several minutes we didn’t say anything to each other. There was an eerie silence, and I thought things were back on track. She started to nod, but instead flinched a few times, her throat contracting. Oh Goddesses. She pulled back, turned to the side, and threw up where I had been lying just a few minutes ago.

In the Wasteland every day was terrible, but that? That took the cake, the party, and all the guests, too.

Today was officially the worst day ever.

“Ahm sohrry....” she whispered between watery hurls.

“I know,” I answered. “Let’s head out.”

* * *

Walking on three hooves wasn’t hard at all! It just required practice. Step, step, step, hop. Once I had the rhythm down, it was actually pretty easy.

I felt much better after a few hours of rest. Everything still hurt, a dull ache thudding through every part of my body. While the rhythm of walking might have been easy, forcing myself to take each step was a chore, as if somepony had draped weights over my back and legs.

It was afternoon now, and things seemed to have died down. We left the safety of our corner, and set about combing over the factory one last time before leaving. If one of the Rangers had survived, a friendly one at least, we could get some bearings.

We walked down the remains of the first floor hallway, the rotten walls and rusty metal now decorated with scorch marks and holes burnt through in various places. The building wasn’t going to last long.

“Do you think anypony’s still here?” I asked Lost. After half an hour of searching we hadn’t seen a single soul.

“Maybe, we just need to... do you hear that?” she responded, her ears twitching behind the bandana. “This way.” She trotted off, leaving me more than a little miffed.

Xeno and Lost darted around the corner and into one of the rooms we hadn’t been to before. I hobbled after them, doing my step-hop routine to try and keep up. It mostly worked.

I rounded the corner to an interesting sight. The doctor unicorn from before stood there, talking to one of the Stable Sixty Steel Rangers. Weren’t they enemies though? The idea of them working together hurt my brain, but considering the other pain I was in, I pushed it from my mind.

“... need to take the armor off if you want me to examine you,” said Doc Plagueheart, stomping her hoof. I was a little glad to see that she’d made it out okay.

“Doctor Plagueheart!” L.A. called, interrupting the conversation.

The sickly-yellow mare shuddered, closing her eyes and pulling her little medical band down over her face. “Please don’t call me that,” she moaned. “Jazz knew I hated that name, and refused to call me anything else. My name is Doctor Lemon Tart.”

Lost grimaced and flattened her ears against her head. “Well, hi then... Lemon Tart,” she started. “Hidden Fortune is hurt, do you have-”

“OH! It’s the surface ponies! Hi!” said Praline, bouncing up in her armor. The ground shook when she landed, and there was a quiet groan from inside the armor. “Sorry, ran outta medicine in the suit. I was shot a few times. Can you imagine? I never thought I’d be shot! It’s not like that time that Lamington got me on accident, those were ...”

I tuned out, not able to keep up with her prattling. The mare was adorably perky, I’d give her that, but if she was wounded, she should calm down and let the doctor- okay, yeah, I wasn’t one to talk.

“...And then he told me that if we get split up I should find a safe place and turn on my power armor’s tracking device,” she said, still bouncing up and down.

“Can you stop that?!” I screamed. The last thing I needed right now was... everything she was doing. “Doc, can you do anything about this?” I held up the stump.

Lemon Tart screamed, scrambling over her own hooves and backed herself into a corner, eyes wide. Even though the little doctor’s band mostly covered them, I could see the fear in her eyes. She stood there, pressing herself against a wall as the rest of us watched. I lowered my... stump, moving it behind my good left hoof, and she seemed to calm down.

“I cauterized it, there’s no blood,” Lost said, in an attempt to placate the terrified mare. She sat and covered her ears now with her forehooves. “I just... I’m not strong enough to heal it. I can’t. I tried. But you, you can, right?” She sounded scared as well, but given that none of Xeno’s medicines had done a thing, and that her magic had come up short, I could understand why.

“Does it hurt?” the Knight asked, poking at my stump. Normally it probably wouldn’t have hurt, since the nerves had been fried and it was charred over, but the power armor multiplied the strength of the poke so much that it was enough to make me scream.

I collapsed onto my side, grabbing the punctured wound with my other hoof and holding it close. The chaos and blood set the doctor into another terrified frenzy. There was no way she was a real doctor. She must have gotten thrown into the job due to lack of personnel. No doctor could be this terrified of blood and wounds.

“Yes!” I screamed at Praline, “don’t do that again!” For several minutes I lay there, holding myself. Lost stood right next to me, a hoof around my shoulder and her magic working to knit the charred flesh back up. I didn’t lose much blood this time, since the hole Praline made was small.

“Doctor pony, I think that it would be best if you were to help these ponies. If you do there will be no reason to fear whatever you are afraid of,” said Xeno, who was also backed against a corner. We were a dysfunctional group, but after the very personal going-over the doctor had given Xeno last time, it was justified.

Lemon Tart stared at Xeno a moment, then nodded. She took a deep breath, pushed her band back up over her mane, and came down from the corner. “Let me see if I have anything, for both of you,” said the doctor, and she left the room out the back.

Praline finally calmed down too, seeing the damage she’d done. She popped the helmet off the suit, letting her us see the apologetic look in her orangey-yellow eyes. It took her several minutes, but she managed to disconnect and power down all of her armor.

I sighed. Lost, meanwhile, flushed bright red the minute the chocolate-colored mare started stripping. Her tail slowly swept side to side behind her.

Subtle, sis... real smooth.

When Praline finished, a mishmash heap of metal armor lay in the corner. Praline didn’t look too much the worse for wear, which was surprising. Blood covered her legs, but I couldn’t see any actual wounds. I was intrigued as to what the power armor had in it that kept her from looking torn and tattered from the battle.

The doctor returned after a few minutes of awkward silence. She had a dour look on her face, with her eyes downcast. “I... I’m out of supplies.”

That hit hard. She was the only pony in the area that could heal me, that could possibly bring my hoof back, and... she was empty. I would have settled for a Hydra, even if Xeno would’ve yelled at me for it. “I can still do some healing magic, but I don’t have anything that can fix that.” She pointed at the empty space between the ground and my leg, shuddering.

“Oh, we can fix that later! What about me?” Praline asked, bouncing again. “You’re a good smart doctory pony! I’m sure you can fix me up.” She had a gigantic smile across her muzzle, with shimmering eyes. However this pony managed to stay happy, I’d never know. And just what did she mean, ‘we can fix that later?’

The doctor sighed, and got to work on Praline, her horn glowing silver. Praline couldn’t stay still through it, and hopped around endlessly. I could only watch, frustration building. I didn’t even know what I was mad about at this point. Praline got injured in the fight, the armor had probably repaired itself over her. The doctor had no supplies, more than likely because I took whatever treasure I found. And the whole thing was my fault anyway, for coming here and getting the poor Steel Rangers from Stable Sixty involved. Éclair was dead because of me too, and... I didn’t know if I could even ask for forgiveness.

“It looks like you took just as much damage as my brothers and sisters did,” said Lamington. My ears shot up in terror.

Xeno, Lost and I all turned around in unison, only to find the gigantic power armored pony filling the doorframe. Eep.

“How’re you doing, Knight Praline?” he asked in that passive voice, surrounded by crackling static. The Star Paladin strode into the room, pushing between my sister and I, until he got to the younger mare. I caught a glimpse of his visor, which was cracked in half and missing a chunk. Behind it lay a gaping hole where an eye had once been. Celestia, Luna... why?

“Oh, I’m perfectly fine, Llamington!” she said, hopping up to give his armor a hug.

“Good, I was worried. Crème Brûlée thought you were taking too long. We need to get back to her soon. Collect your armor and hurry,” he said, before turning his back to her. “We have a funeral to prepare for.” He took three thunderous steps toward my little group, and stared down at us with half a visor and that bloody hole in his head. “I’m glad you’re alive as well. We must speak with one another, however. Soon.” With that he stepped past us, and out of sight.

“You should probably go, he doesn’t like to wait,” Praline said, stifling a giggle. “I’ll be there soon!” She was bouncing again, and the doctor had taken to physically restraining her.

We didn’t wait to watch. Lost took the lead, Xeno and I followed, and we left to go after Lamington. He wasn’t too hard to find, essentially being a gigantic suit of power armor, and we caught up quickly.

“How come you don’t regenerate like the Wirepony?” I asked, hobbling in my step-hop maneuver. It wasn’t the best way to break the ice, but I didn’t want to start directly on the issue of Éclair.

“The armor does, but it requires base metals to do so. Either refined or scrap, doesn’t matter,” the Star Paladin explained, looking toward the factory with what remained of his visor. “When the funeral concludes, we shall raid the factory for repair materiel. Scifresh’s group has retreated, so we have an abundance of time. The arrival of the griffons was well-timed, and that stallion friend of yours was a lifesaver. We did, however, lose Éclair, which is...” his voice broke for a moment, but he was able to catch himself, “terrible. Mother is very broken up about it. I... will deal with it. In time...”

“I’m sorry,” Lost and I both said in unison.

“Don’t be. This became our battle the moment you entered our home. As I said, we were lucky. I merely lost an eye, Praline will be perfectly fine, provided the doctor removes all the shrapnel.” He sighed, causing a massive crackle of static. “She acts quite ridiculously, but there’s a good reason she’s a Knight and not a Scribe. Her health will make everything easier for the rest of us. The others. Marshmallow will pull through in the end, and I shall personally make sure to get her better armor for the next time something like this happens...”

We reached the back entrance, the same one we’d originally entered through. Lamington led us out and into the factory yard. There was a heavy atmosphere of sorrow outside, thick enough to cut through the pain in my heart. The Stable Sixty Rangers crowded around Éclair, his power armor lying in pieces on the ground beside him. I couldn’t look at him directly, not after what’d happened. I wanted to apologize for what I did, but now he was gone, I’d never have the chance. We walked up to him, acutely aware of the sobs of the Elder. She’d removed her armor and was lying over her son’s body, crying so hard she’d begun convulsing.

All of the others were still wore their armor. Most were pockmarked and blackened from bullets and explosions, but they all looked alright for the most part. Marshmallow’s armor in particular looked devastated, with large chunks missing. What I could see of her body looked undamaged though, so Lamington was probably right that she would pull through without any permanent harm. I shuddered to think what might be hidden away under the remaining power armor, or healed over through healing potions used in battle, locking the damage inside.

I couldn’t see past the armor to the rest of the family. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Having lost my mother in a similar way, and always remembering the trauma of it, I understood how they felt. The Stable Sixty Rangers might have been hurting, either physically or emotionally. But they weren’t showing the pain. It wasn’t the power armor that kept them bottled up, but the stoic, unwavering stance they all had.

* * *

Eleven of us stood on the banks of the river that flowed behind the factory, as the sun sank past the mountains. This was where the runoff from Pommel Falls ended up, having once carried the logs from the sawmill to the factory for production. No logs flowed down the river now, only water filled with radiation gathered over the journey down. The ground here was too hard, packed down from years of being used as a lumber yard, to dig a grave. The Steel Rangers decided instead to use the river to give their fallen soldier a burial at sea.

I looked over to Lost, who had a frown on her face and looked rather distant to the goings on. I still hadn’t told her what happened, but I would, tonight. My life... I didn’t like where it was headed. This was the third time in as many days that I’d met a stallion, and then watched him die. Within a few hours. This wasn’t a pattern I was comfortable with, at all.

And deep down, I knew I needed to stop relying on others. Lost and I were adults, and this was our... my life. I needed to start fighting my own battles, going on the offensive for myself. Sitting back and asking for help all the time, letting other ponies deal with the shit I created, then running in after they’d died wasn’t right. If I was going to fix my screw up, and make things better, then that damn well better be what I do. That damn well better be what I do.

Did it really have to be about Gunbuck? It started that way. I wanted to know who he was, so I could understand the mistake I’d made. Now that I knew though, could I handle it? He’d been a hero, and in one shot I’d taken that away. I’d made the Wasteland a little bit darker, and it needed no help in being dark. Now though, only a few days later, things had changed so much. I wanted to find out who he was, and why he did what he did. At the same time, I wanted to find out who we were, why we were here.

All this time we’d lived, in the years since mom died, on our own. We hid away, and only by bad luck did we get into this situation. For all my bravado about surviving the Wasteland, I sorta knew my way around a gun, had no experience dealing with townsponies, and dragged nice families like Drop Scone’s into the mud of the Wasteland. So, who was I? Who was Lost? Really, as sisters who were we? I wanted to find out who I was, too. Find out what life in the Wasteland was really about. If it was okay with Lost, to push forward on our own journey and not waste our lives finishing somepony else’s. So, was it about knowing him?

No, it was about his goal, and trying to reach that pedestal I’d put him on. Maybe it was just me trying to come up with an excuse to get out there in the world and try to make it a better place. Who cared? Maybe I’d even accomplished a little bit already? Wirepony was dead, which meant no more psychopathic unfeeling cannibalistic wire monster roaming about! Leathers was down, which hopefully crippled the Steel Rangers here, and their doctor had either left or defected, which meant they were down an important member of their team. On top of that, I’d brought the Rangers from Stable Sixty to the top, and they were good ponies.

So maybe, deep down, I was doing the right thing? I wasn’t a hero, I didn’t think I could change the Wasteland. But my little corner of the world? Making a safe place for me and my sister and my friends? Maybe. Maybe I could pull that off.

Lamington finished the eulogy he was giving, a speech I wasn’t listening to. I couldn’t. The less I knew about this pony, the less I could get attached to and guilt over, the better. Part of me wanted to know more, but I couldn’t handle that. He finished and stepped back into the line of us.

Chocolate Éclair had been returned to his power armored. He was sealed entirely in the heavy suit, and locked in a standing position, with a salute, at the very edge of the bank. Lamington gave him a salute in return, a motion which the other Steel Rangers all gave. None said a word, and aside from the ambient sounds of the wasteland, I could only hear the clang of steel hoof against steel helmet echoing out. There was talk of a gun salute, but we all disagreed to it since ammunition was priceless in the Wasteland.

“Goodbye, son...” said the Elder through her tears. She turned to my sister and the doctor, and asked, “Would you... do the honors?”

The two unicorns began to levitate the locked armor into the air, slowly and carefully turning him to face the water. Both must have been considerably stressed at the massive amount of effort required to move such a large object, but neither showed it. It took several minutes, but they managed to move him through the air and to the center of the slow-moving river. They reverently lowered him into the water, and released.

With a splash, the power armor began to sink. We all stood stoic, with a forehoof raised in salute to their fallen family member, the doctor, my companions, and I following suit. I could only give a half salute, since I was missing the hoof, but I did the best I could. My pain didn’t matter, and I could ignore the weakness and lethargy I felt. Those could be tended to later. For the moment, give the stallion his dues.

The helmet of the power armor finally sank below the surface, disappearing entirely from view. He was gone now, destined to spend the rest of his time on the riverbed, sunken into it by the weight of the steel that once should have protected him. There was a bitter irony to it.

“Goodbye, Chocolate Éclair.” I whispered. “I’m sorry...”

* * *

The only remaining Steel Rangers in the area were our friends from Stable Sixty, so we decided to stay the night. The Wirepony was gone, the conscripted mine ponies had all vanished, and the griffons had disappeared as well. It was the safest place for the moment. Given that Wirepony had... eugh, eaten damn near every living thing all around the factory, we didn’t have much to worry about.

The building was halfway intact still, with one side of offices still unburnt. The other half was still trashed beyond repair or recognition, but the walls hadn’t completely caved, which gave us the good four walls we needed to not be taken out by a wandering band of raiders. Sleeping inside was really nice, even if this place wasn’t really liveable anymore. While I liked being under the familiar cloud cover and being able to watch the world around me at night, this was comfier, and safer. It felt more like home. We had a hoofful of allies that could take watch while we got some shuteye, too.

I really couldn’t thank them enough. For a family who’d just had their entire world turned upside down, they were handling things far better than I thought possible. Surely they were handling it better than Lost and I had when mom died. That must have been a sorry sight, the two of us thinking we were big and tough in the Wasteland when we had mom to hide behind, then suddenly being all on our own? I didn’t even want to remember those days.

For now though, I lay on a mattress we’d pulled over from the collapsing side, and turned what remained unscathed into a makeshift bedroom. It wasn’t as comfy as the Stable Sixty bed, but considering the radiation down there, and my wound, I didn’t want to chance it.

“So... are we going to talk now?” Lost asked. She lay on her back next to me, staring at the ceiling.

“...Yeah.” I muttered, staring at the wall. I couldn’t look her in the eye, not yet. We were alone at least, Xeno having wandered off to do... whatever it was that she did. I wasn’t in the mood to try and figure out zebras. But with her gone, and the Stable Rangers all pulling guard shifts, this was going to be the only time we had to talk.

“When you’re ready, sis,” L.A. said, placing a hoof on my shoulder. “I’m here.”

I closed my eyes, fighting against the urge to lash out. She didn’t know, she couldn’t, which is why we were talking now. Just... I rolled over and looked at her. “I’ve been having nightmares again.”

“Really?” she asked. “I have nightmares every night.” She smiled, and I knew she was trying to help. Trying to tell me it was normal, that I wasn’t going insane. Because that’s what the Wasteland was like, a giant nightmare, day and night. A pony just couldn’t escape it.

“These are different...” I said. “They’re almost real. They’re very specific... It’s...” I trailed off, having trouble finding the words to describe it. I could remember each nightmare I’d had since we started this little journey with surprising clarity, something I’d never had before. Before they were just vague ideas, but after that one about mom...

“What’re they about?” Lost asked. She took her hoof off my shoulder, and rolled onto her side to face me. She even took off her glasses, which weren’t really doing any good at this point, since they were broken.

“I... The first one wasn’t a nightmare... Not really. It was almost...” I stopped. Could I really admit it? It had been hazy at first, hard to remember. Did that count? Once it clicked, I couldn’t forget it. It’d been on my mind off and on for a couple of days now. “A memory.”

“About?” she asked. She wasn’t forcing it, just gently leading and waiting for me to be able to continue.

For a while I lay there, staring into her eyes. How could she be so damn understanding? None of this was justified, I was just a ball of fucked-up pony right now, and the patience she showed wasn’t something I deserved. I needed to tell her, get it over with, and just move on with my life.

“I remember exactly how mom died,” I said, it was all I could say.

“Remembering and dreaming about it, then?” she asked. I could only nod in response. She didn’t say anything more, just stuck her hooves out for me. I wriggled closer and she pulled me into a hug. There weren’t any tears, from either of us. It wasn’t like it was a fresh cut. Mom had died long ago, and we’d both gotten over it, in time.

I curled against her, pulling my hooves- well, hoof, tight against my chest. I whispered, “Every little bit, from the moment we found that house to the moment she died. It always cuts off there, with blood and a scream and then... nothing. I wake up.”

Lost nodded. “My dreams always start with the blood,” she said sadly. “I stand there, looking across the room at that little blue flower. Then she’s just... gone. I don’t know how, it happened so fast.” She paused, nuzzling against me and squeezing tight. “The nightmare keeps on though, showing me every detail. Most nights I can’t remember it, not once I wake up, but sometimes... sometimes it’s so real. It’s like I’m still there.”

That explained why she avoided sleeping so much. “There’s other nightmares,” I continued. “That... the Ashen pony, Seethe. I had one about him...” This was it, the moment of truth. That one dream had set things off, had turned me into a filly again. Before that, I’d felt tough, I could take on the world. I felt like I was on Buck every day, and nothing could stop me. Afterward, the littlest things set me off.

“It feels like he’s still there, digging at my mind, calling to me,” I added with a shudder. “Everything was so real. That wire monster, it was like reliving it.” I beat around the bush, trying not to tell her what actually happened. She’d figure it out, but this bought me time to compose myself, at least.

“How does... How does Wirepony have anything to do with Seethe? I mean they’re both big and mean and tried to kill us, but how are they the same?” she asked.

Yeah, cut right to it. I hadn’t had enough time to come up with anything. I pushed away from her, slowly. She’d pull back if she knew, and I didn’t want to face her. I rolled over and curled my forehoof up as tight as I could. I curled the stump too, but it didn’t feel right, didn’t feel the same. For some reason, I couldn’t get comfortable without being able to cover myself.

“He had me tied up. I was in a room, all alone, tied up. And he came in...” I shivered slightly, not wanting to mention the moans I’d heard. That might cause problems if she figured out that I knew it was me hearing her in my sleep. This was awkward already, and adding to that was the last thing in my mind.

She wrapped her hooves around me again, and pulled me back against her. I didn’t fight it. I probably couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. I broke down then, unable to hold it back any longer. It all came out, every detail. Being tied down, the muzzle, the feel of his breath on my neck, my struggle, the terror, and what he said to me. I shivered, holding myself as Lost held me. For a brief moment, it was still happening. It was personalized torture, tailor-made to highlight every single one of my faults, to pick at them until tiny scabs became gaping wounds.

“Is there anything, anything at all, I can do to help you, Hidden?” she asked. It sounded like she’d been crying too. She probably had been. I shook my head, brushing my mane across her face. She’d waited to ask until I’d stopped crying, at least...

“No, but there... there was another one,” I whispered. This one wasn’t as fear-inducing as the one with Seethe, but it had hit me hard. It was a testament to my every failure so far. A part of me wondered morbidly; the next time I had a dream like that, would Chocolate Éclair be among the dead?

I told her about it, listing off each body I’d seen, sparing no detail. I remembered everything, from the eerie familiarity to the moment it all clicked. I told her about mom, everything after that was... I couldn’t even form words. Fine, I was fine. Until that, and then, that was it. I couldn’t handle it anymore. The floodgates opened.

We lay there together until my sobbing slowed. Lost cried too, but did her best to stay calm. For once, I needed to let it out, and she let me. I didn’t remember when, but I knew that we’d reversed places from when I’d comforted her a few nights ago. My face was pressed against her side as she did her best to calm me down. It didn’t work though. The whole mess was just one of those things that I needed time to get through, and once I was cried out, I’d be okay again.

“Y’know. When my dad died. I cried like that too,” said somepony. I recognized the voice, but I had no idea where it had come from. It only took a half-second to figure out it wasn’t somepony who was going to shoot us, though. Which, was really obvious. Why give themselves away?

“Praline, what are you-” Lost started. She was looking straight up.

From one of the vents in the ceiling protruded Praline’s unarmored head. She had, somehow, gotten into the vents and was staring down at us from two stories above. I wiped the tears away with my good hoof, looking up at her. How in...

“Hold on!” she said, scrambling about. There were several metallic clicks, before her rear legs appeared in the opening. “Watch out!” Hooves flailing a little, she let go of whatever was holding her up there and-

Abruptly fell atop us!

“Ahh!” I screamed, as the unarmored Ranger landed on us.

“Ehhh!!” Lost yelped.

“Owieeee,” the chocolate mare groaned, rubbing her flank with a forehoof. She sat atop the two of us. Apparently we’d made for quite the soft landing. “It’s okay to cry when you think of family you’ve lost.” She gave me a hug, one tight enough that I thought she might secretly be Wirepony in the flesh.

“Pra-- Praline,” I wheezed, “I can’t.” She let me go and scooted away. Lost didn’t say a thing. She was too busy blushing. Ugh.

“So, I saw you lost your hoof!” the Knight said, in a voice all too perky for the subject matter. She grinned, with her eyes closed and hooftips touching up in front of her.

For a moment, I stared at her blankly before saying, “Yeah.” I moved the hoofless leg, sliding it behind my left foreleg to keep the wound out of sight. “What about it?” The idea of this mare having any interest in the loss of my hoof was a bit terrifying. Whatever could she do, aside from poke it and reopen the wound, that would affect anything?

I doubted that she was here just to remind me that I was crippled, and rub it in. But she was interrupting the little bit of bonding time my sister and I were getting... Interrupting me getting some of my problems out in the open. Why?

Actually, deep down, I was kind of glad she’d changed the subject. We’d wasted enough time crying over the past.

“I can fix it!” she practically shouted. Her smile widened and she clapped her hooves together.

“What,” blurted a very surprised Lost Art.

I couldn’t respond, my brain was locked; I kept trying to think of what she might be able to do. She was a ditz, a happy-go-lucky pony who bounced around while a doctor was trying to examine her. She obviously wasn’t a healer, either. L.A. had tried already anyway, and it was too far gone. Nothing short of old-world technology could possibly fix this. What in all of the Equestrian Wasteland was wrong with this mare?

“I can give you a new one,” she explained. “It won’t be like the old one. But there’s a lot of spare parts in the Stable, and I spent a lot of my time as a foal studying about our power armor and how it works and how it can be used to fix problems with ponies who lose limbs or get too old to move on their own! I’m pretty sure I could build you one.” She pointed a forehoof to the other one. “It wouldn’t be too hard, we just have to use a replacement hoof for the power armor and build a base for it to attach on and then we can take a battery or something and put that in there so you can move it and then we just have to put in a motor or something that the battery would power and if I bolt it on right then it won’t fall off and it’ll work just like your old one.”

My eyes went wide as I tried to follow along. She talked so fast! Whatever it was, it sounded promising, like she might actually know what she was doing. If she could fix my hoof, then I wouldn’t really be a crip- No, everypony would still see that it was a fake. Power armor wouldn’t really blend in with my coat. But who cared! If it worked, then I could walk without having to hop, and I’d be able to buck again, so I was all for it!

“So, what do you say?” Praline asked, leaning against me and pushing our noses together.

“Well I-” I started. She said in the Stable, didn’t she? Would I survive a trip down there? With the radiation, and the bloodwings.. and what had happened with Sweet Dreams... I shook my head. Danger or not, I needed that hoof. “Yes.”

“Yay! I’ll finally have a chance to get some real practice in. All those books will be so worth it!” she squealed, hopping off of me and my sister and prancing out of the room. “Tomorrow morning we’ll do it!” She hollered back.

What!

“Lost... do you think this is a good idea?” I asked, looking at my sister.

Lost hesitated. “It’s up to you, sis. Do you think it’s a good idea to get yourself walking again? Everything down in the Stable is clean and new, if there's anywhere in the wasteland that can give you a new hoof, it would be there. We can always tell her to stop if you don’t want to let her do... whatever it is she’s going to do.” She hugged me. “But we should probably get some sleep for now. That mare, well, she’s not normal. That doesn’t mean she’s stupid. Tomorrow we’ll figure out what’s going through her head.”

“Alright. Will you stay tonight?” I asked, grabbing onto her.

“Yes, I’ll stay. I love you sis,” she said with a smile, snuggling close and wrapping a hoof around me.

“You too,” I said, and curled up to get some sleep.

* * *

The Stable Rangers had done a fantastic job making the mine system less deadly. They’d put up some crude shielding and apparently blasted out the collapsed area at the far end of the foundry room overnight. I was hop-stepping along the makeshift floor, following my sister. All along the walls were some sort of tarp or... I didn’t even know what it could be. It was some old world something or other I’d never seen before that was doing a good job of making a little walkway that was free from almost all the radiation. Whatever was getting to us was down to a manageable level that would probably take years of constant exposure to do any actual damage.

“It feels so different now, without running from the bloodwings,” I said.

“Are you sure that it is not the fact that you are without a hoof? Maybe you are missing the stallion?” Xeno said.

Did... Did she just tease me?

“Come on you two. Calm down,” Lost chided, leading the two of us back toward Stable Sixty. Praline had said to meet her there in the morning whenever we woke up. So there we were, walking up to the entrance of the Stable.

At the entrance to the Stable waited Elder Drop Scone. She faced away from us, staring down the long steel hallway that lead to the Stable itself. The moment the three of us passed by her, she began walking with us. “I don’t know what to think of you Wasteland ponies,” she started. “In less than a day you’ve turned my world upside down. For decades, my life was the same old, same old. Day in and day out. Now... You introduced me to so much-”

“Death,” Xeno finished. “Did I not warn you, about the ponies here?” She didn’t sound smug, just... defeated. “Ponies will shoot first, just because they can.”

“Yes, you’re right,” The Elder said, stomping once. “I had to try, though. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be locked in a Stable your entire life? Everypony I knew has died here. My children are the only ones left. If... If we could’ve worked with the other Rangers, we could have done some real good for the others out there.” The older mare let out a sigh and closed her eyes. “Because Steel breeds Steel.”

I didn’t understand why that was so important, but the fact that she wanted to help ponies was something I could get behind. I was glad we’d met these soldiers, especially after the way the other group of Rangers had treated us. I still had a bitter taste in my mouth over the fiasco, but things were okay now. Hopefully, Elder Scifresh’s chapter was weakened enough that they couldn’t do too much damage, and new saviors were loose in the Wasteland now.

“So, what’s this about Praline offering to fix my hoof?” I asked, holding up the stump. I didn’t really need it to walk, since I could hop along without it.

“When our ancestors were sealed in this Stable they were given supplies and training materials to sustain an operational paramilitary presence when we were to emerge. The Ministry of Peace supplied us with facilities and basic parts for cybersurgery. There were several schematics for prototypes and theoretical designs. It was supposed to be used for replacing limbs lost on the battlefield. They never got to use it, but the things Praline has thrown together with the books and parts... work,” said the Elder, nervously. Not a good sign, not a good sign at all. “Its been generations since anypony in this stable has needed such attention though. Praline’s the only pony who had any interest, or kept up with it all.”

The look on my face must have been one of sheer terror. Maybe it was because I’d stopped walking and started staring at my stump. The Elder laughed.

Lost put a hoof on my shoulder and gave me a smile. It helped. She leaned close and whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ll be there too.”

“O ye of little faith?” Drop Scone said with a snicker. “Don’t worry. Praline doesn’t act like it, but she’s very smart, and she’s more capable than she looks.” I felt a hoof on my shoulder and looked over. Drop Scone had a smile, one that actually went a good way in reassuring me.

“Oh! You’re here! Hi, Mom!” squealed Praline. She bounced over to us from the end of the hallway and grabbed my shoulders in her hooves. “Are you excited? I’m so excited!”

Lamington stood behind her in his fully-repaired power armor. “You’re very brave to trust her,” he said through a burst of static, “considering how she acts. I assure you though, you’ll be in good hooves.” Behind him stood the remaining Stable Rangers, all out of their armor, with hopeful looks on their faces.

It felt good to have friends. The fact that they were offering to help, and give up their resources for me, after what I’d done, how I’d gotten one of their own killed, warmed my heart.

“Okay, this way! We need to go to the Clinic!” Praline exclaimed, and bounced off. The rest of the Stable Rangers dispersed as their sister bounded past, offering quiet words of consolation and wishes of good luck.

“You’ll be fine, we made sure that Doctor Lemon Tart will be there with you,” whispered Elder Drop Scone. She patted my shoulder and pushed me forward gently. “Now off with ya. My daughter’ll do fine.”

“I’ll be there if anything happens, and I’ll stop it if you can’t,” Lost said. She slowed her walking to keep pace with me. After a moment, when things quieted down, she leaned over and whispered into my ear, “I convinced the zebra to help too. Whatever it is that she always cooks up will help, I think.”

I nuzzled her, then headed toward my fate. I knew it was going to hurt, but it’d be worth it to be able to walk right again.

* * *

Not worth it!

Praline, Lemon Tart, and Lost Art had me strapped and tied to the table in the middle of the clinic. The room was far far larger than the small clinic we’d run across in Stable Twenty One, but that didn’t distract me from the fact that they’d strapped me to a table! I lay on my right side, with a half dozen straps over my torso and hips, and more yet to be buckled, waiting to tie me down tighter. In addition to the straps, a few wires ran from machines at the far side of the room to a series of sticky pads, each of which stuck to a different place on me. Two stuck to my leg, one over my heart, and one clung to each side of my head. My heart raced. I wished they’d explained what they were doing...

“Okay, so, first we have to use some disinfectant!” Praline announced, sounding entirely too joyful. “I know you lived up there with all that dirt and grime, but if it gets inside you and in your blood, there might be some big big problems. Sterile surgery is safe surgery!”

I didn’t care what she had to say. I just wanted off of the table. Nopony had said anything about chaining me down. Nopony!

I flailed my free legs, trying to find any leverage I could to get out, screaming, “Let me go, let me go, let me go!”

Apparently that was the wrong response, because Praline ordered my rear hooves and other foreleg be strapped in place, out of the way of their work. Not funny, Praline! I squirmed about as best I could, trying to break free.

“Hidden Fortune! Stop squirming this instant!” L.A. ordered. She stomped a hoof, and leaned down to look me in the eyes. “Seethe isn't going to get you here, you killed the Wirepony yourself, and your sister is here to protect you. So stop this right now, or else you’re going to be hobbling until the day you die!”

Ouch. Okay I understood, but that didn’t mean my brain did.

I took a deep breath, and tried to calm myself. Strapping me down was for safety, because this was surgery. I looked at the stump, hanging off the edge of the table with three straps immobilizing the limb completely. I needed a hoof, and this was the price I had to pay for it. Several deep breaths later, I nodded to the mares. Now or never.

Praline produced a bottle from a shelf and had Lemon Tart apply whatever was in it. The brown fluid was slathered liberally, all over the exposed flesh and the sides of the limb. It smelled terrible, pungent like overripe fruit mixed with ink, and left my coat stained dark. Okay, that was fine, so far so good. The little claws in the back of my mind kept digging in, trying to get a rise out of me. Yes, I was still in pain, yes, I was strapped down, no, I wasn’t in any danger. I pushed the thoughts away, trying to ignore whatever my subconscious was trying to do to me.

“Alright, thank you, Doctor,” Praline said with a giggle. Was this a game to her?! While Lemon Tart slathered the disinfectant on, she’d put something or other one to cover her hooves and mouth, which I suspected was just for infection control. “I really wish we could put you completely under for this, but I need you awake so we can make sure the nerves correctly. So next is some Med-X. Because you, uh, don’t want to feel this.” She jabbed a needle into me and pumped the wonderful medicine into the limb. A second later, I couldn’t feel anything past my shoulder, and the pain everywhere else went away almost completely. Almost.

Wait. Feel what?

Suddenly, a cloud of tools floated through the air to hover next to the Doctor. One was a pointed rod of steel with a wisp of smoke coming from its tip, and the other a little knife that one of them referred to as a scalpel. What were they going to-

The doctor sliced into my leg, cutting just above where I’d been cauterized before. I pulled against the straps, and almost screamed, but caught myself once I realized she was right; I couldn’t feel a thing.

The cutting went on forever, with Lemon Tart moving the scalpel around, pulling away the ruined flesh. Each time I started to bleed, the doctor would visibly flinch, and my sister would press the tip of the little metal rod into me to burn it shut. Lemon Tart pulled away the burned chunks of my stump, and placed them in a steel dish by my side.

“No, not that one, the hemostat there. Praline, get me a needle,” Lemon Tart ordered the mare. Thank the Goddesses for Med-X.

Praline offered Tart several clamps and a needle, and the Doctor got to work, in a surprisingly professional manner. I couldn’t see it from where I was strapped down, but in almost an instant, she stitched shut whatever she’d been working on. She collected the scalpel again and finished in short order, only stopping one other time to stitch something shut.

Lost levitated the dish of crisped flesh in front of me so I could see what they’d just cut off. It looked like chunks of cooked meat, burnt to a crisp and ready to be eaten by a the Wirepony. Just how much were they cutting off, anyway?

“There's that part done, sis. You were great!” Lost offered, smiling. She floated the pieces away, leaving me with an image I’d never forget, and a healthy respect for the animals we’d eaten to survive.

“What... what next?” I dared to ask. I couldn’t do much but lay there along for the ride, but knowing what was coming might make it easier.

“Well, next we’re going to cut your leg open!” Praline said with a bounce.

What.

Praline got out another scalpel and passed it to my sister. “Okay you two, I need all the muscles separated. Don’t worry about cutting through the skin. We’ll sew it shut later.”

Again, what.

I yanked at the straps again, my mind reeling. They were going to split my leg open and separate all the pieces? Not part of the deal! Nopony told me they were going to do that! I squirmed more, trying to get out, but stopped when Lost shot me a look.

Lost crouched on one side of the stump, and Lemon on the other, each armed with a scalpel. They both wore peculiar glasses with little magnifying things over the lenses, which hopefully meant there wouldn’t be any mistakes. “Umm... What’re you two-” I started, but couldn’t find words after the blade entered my flesh. The second they cut into my leg, I could feel it again. I knew the Med-X was blocking the pain, but I was still acutely aware of the feeling of blades slicing through my skin. I started shaking. I couldn’t help myself; I could hear the blades slicing through me. My throat locked and I couldn’t breathe. I was going to die here, and my sister was helping kill me.

The machine tethered by wires to my head and chest let out a series of beeps, but Praline ordered the unicorns to continue. I watched in mute horror as they stripped my flesh from the bone, and separated each little piece from the others. It was cold. All those little pieces, they all felt cold. The chill crept up my leg, spreading to encompass every part of me. I shivered again. My heart was speeding up, but the beats were so faint I could barely feel them.

The claws came back with a vengeance, ripping into the back of my mind, informing me of my imminent death. That really didn’t help. I just wanted to pass out and not deal with this. Wake me up with a fancy new hoof, and let me sleep through this, I thought. I clenched my eyes shut, trying to focus on my breathing. I couldn’t cry out either, I had to be strong.

Just get through it, I yelled inside my head. Just get through it.

Lemon Tart peeled several specific parts of my leg back and taped them out of the way, against my coat. I didn’t know what they were, and I didn’t care. The less I knew and the faster the ordeal was over, the better. Praline was issuing orders through each step, but I couldn’t be bothered to listen to each one.

“She's going into shock, get a saline drip going,” Lemon Tart ordered.

“Okay, this is where it starts to get tricky. Lost, can you put this on the bone?” Praline asked, and pointed to something outside my field of vision. I didn’t want to look, so I clamped my eyes shut again. I heard a grinding sound and could feel her doing something to my stump. My leg shook as she worked. The sound was awful, like horribly creaking wood that I could hear inside my skull. In an unwelcome distraction, there was a prick in my other leg, then the odd sensation of water under my skin.

This wasn’t surgery, this was torture.

Finally I opened my eyes, and looked at what Lost was doing. She’d bolted a chunk of metal onto the bone. I had no idea what it was, but it looked like a steel replacement for the bone that’d been there before. It was made of a long segmented rod, with one end bolted around the bone. Lost gave it a little flick, and each segment slid under the one above it, causing the rod to bend. She stepped back with a satisfied nod.

“What’s next?” L.A. asked hesitantly.

“Umm, we wait for the Med-X to wear off. I’ll need to connect some things to the nerves, unless she doesn’t want it to move,” Praline said, placing a hoof on her chin. Med-X wear off? My eyes went wide, I could feel enough already. Why did she need the Med-X gone? “I suppose in the meantime we can use some of that zebra concoction,” Praline continued. “It’ll keep her conscious during this, and make her feel better, too!”

Lost produced a jar, lifting it in the blue glow of her levitation, and moved it over to me. She ordered me to drink, and I did just that. The liquid tasted like what Xeno had made down in the mine, and was strangely, a familiar comfort during this horrible experience. The claws still cut at the back of my mind, but as long as I ignored them, they couldn’t do much damage. The drink even helped clear my dry throat so I could breathe better.

“Squish out these bits here,” Praline said, pointing to something, “and here.” She moved a bit, pointing to several more places. “Oh and this one too. I need them flat so I can attach the nerve bits.” She held up several little ribbony-looking things in her fetlock, which hung loosely.

How could she be so casual about this, I wondered, and found myself wishing she’d use slightly more doctor-y words than “bits” to describe important pieces of my anatomy.

“This next part is really gonna hurt, and if we do it wrong it might kill you,” Praline admitted sheepishly. I heard Lost yell something behind me, but I didn’t catch what it was. “Don’t worry. This isn’t the healthiest solution, but I want you to take this pill. It’ll keep your heart rate up and make sure you don’t go into arrest and die on the operating table.” She held up a familiar tablet of Buck. “I don’t want my first surgery to be my last!” She popped the pill into my mouth and I bit down.

I felt it almost instantly. My heart started pounding strongly again. I could feel everything. The pain didn’t matter now, they could do whatever they wanted. It was somepony else’s problem.

Once again, the unicorns did as they were told, and grabbed what I assumed were nerves. Slowly feeling was coming back, and everything already ached. I tried not to think about the returning pain, not wanting to have any idea, ever, what it might feel like to have a split-open leg, with all the muscles flayed apart. It was just... I shivered again. Even through the Buck, I felt the pulling on the raw nerves. There wasn’t anypony else to pawn it off on. I tried to focus all my energy on not screaming or ripping through the straps that held me down. I’d been a good pony so far. If I got up now it would just cause more problems.

Focus, stay calm. Focus, stay calm.

“Probably best to do this all at once. Once she knows what it feels like, we’re not going to get her to hold still long enough to put another one on,” Lost said, picking up the ribbony things in her telekinesis and hovering them over. One by one they were placed next to the nerves that Praline had pointed out. “Ready sis?”

“No,” I said, matter-of-factly.

She clamped them down anyway. The pain destroyed my senses. It was so much worse than even having the hoof bitten off in the first place! I was fairly certain that I blacked out for a second when she did it. There was pressure on the nerves, like I was being pinched by an entire herd’s worth of hooves, only magnified thousands of times. The pain shot up my leg, sending a horrific tingly-painy-agony through every inch of me. It felt like my nerves were burning me from the inside, like white hot wires threaded through my flesh. I screamed until my throat locked. Apparently my body couldn’t handle the pain and started to shut itself down.

“Okay, almost done,” Praline said. “Doctor, the receptor pins!”

And with that, there was another pain, something I was more used to after getting shot. The ‘pins’ Praline mentioned were all stabbed into the nerve endings. It felt like being shot, stabbed, and hung up to die by raiders all in an instant. My eyes rolled back until I couldn’t see anything but the inside of my head, and I damn near bit my tongue off trying not to scream again.

“We probably should have given her something to bite down on, huh?” Praline said. “Oh well, too late now. We need to get her put all back together.” She giggled. I opened my eyes. That didn’t sound fun either. Without a word, they began to move all the little pieces of me back into place. Lemon was instructing Lost as they worked together, making sure that each bit of flesh went right back where it was supposed to be. After a few minutes I was looking back at my leg.

It looked far better than- no, okay, that was a lie. My leg looked terrible. Blood matted my coat, stained red and brown from the disinfectant. The pieces were all in the right spots, but didn’t fit perfectly anymore, so odd bumps and ridges marred the surface of my skin. Lost and Lemon spent ages going over it, again and again, until everything lay flat. I just tried not to move, keeping my teeth clenched so I wouldn’t start crying over the pain. Without the Med-X, the ordeal was excruciating, and the feeling of them moving my muscle and bone was violating on a level I’d never thought possible.

Take the straps off, I screamed inside my head. Let me get up. I can live with just a stump.

When they were finally, finally done, it actually looked pretty okay. The skin and coat were back where they needed to be, flat and flush, and the ribbony wire-things just hung limply out the very end of my leg. Just as planned, right Praline?

“Your fascia will regrow with healing magic but you'll need a compressive dressing for a few days,” Lemon Tart said, using a word I’d never heard before. Seeing the confused look in my face, she scrunched hers up and sighed. “Like... It holds you together! I don’t know. Just glue inside you to keep the parts from moving around.”

Ew...

Praline seemed happy with the completed work, and had Lemon Tart sew up my leg. The stitches actually looked really well done, and were mostly hidden by my coat. It was good to be in capable hooves. Now they just needed to let me go.

Praline had spent the time hooking up more little bits against the stump of flesh and the little steel-bone replacement for the old one.

I winced as a sharp pain stabbed into the stump. Praline pushed something in and waited until she heard a beep. With the... whatever it was she placed in there, in place, she grabbed all the ribbony wires, cut off the excess slack, and slowly plugged each one into it. I couldn’t really see what all she had done, but she seemed to know what she was doing, and I wasn’t going to question it. I did, however, struggle against the straps again, to try and get free. They’d hooked them so tight I couldn’t move an inch.

“Alright Hidden! Now, we need to run some tests,” the earth pony mare explained, “let me know when you’re ready,”

I grunted. I wanted to be done. Now.

Praline took that as a positive response. She sat on her haunches in front of my tethered leg, and clapped her hooves together. She began attaching things to the metal stem that Lost had bolted on earlier. “These are motors so you can move it okay?”

I only groaned in response.

“...Good enough! Can you move the hoof a little?”

I did as I was told, though I didn’t know how. I’d never thought consciously about how to walk. I always did it on instinct, it just happened whenever I needed it to. I heard a loud loud whirring, and froze. The whirring stopped. No... I’d killed him, we melted his insides into molten steel! He was-

“Well, it works moving that way, try the other way now,” Praline said, tinkering with the tiny little motor at the end of my leg. Wait, what? I did as I was told, cautiously, trying the same trick to get it moving. The whirring started again when I moved it. The claws dug at me, but realization hit that it was my leg making the noise. Okay, that wasn’t so bad. I pushed the claws away with a deep breath. So I’d have a constant reminder of how I got the new parts. It was familiar, in a twisted way.

Praline did more fiddling, moving bits around in her hooves and removing one of the motors. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered how she could hang onto such little parts with her hooves. Really, though it didn’t matter. Questioning it would only hurt my brain. I lay there, half-aware of what was going on, and just let her work. After several minutes she reattached the motor, and we repeated the process. Each time she made adjustments, and had me do something different; first slow to medium fast, somewhere in that rage? I couldn’t really focus, I just made little movements here and there like I was told. She wanted me to flex the hoof in every direction, testing its range of motion. It wasn’t easy, but I made sure to do every single test as best I could.

What point would be the point in getting a new hoof if it didn’t work properly? None! And going through this... I deserved a working hoof. No matter what the claws in my mind told me, no matter how deep they dug, I wasn’t going to give up.

“You're almost done!” Praline exclaimed. “I just finished calibrating the prosthetic processor, which listens to your nerves and talks to the motors, so you can move the hoof. I've pulled it out, as well as everything that's removable, to do a final sterilization of the area,” she said, brushing vigorously at my extremity. “First thing to go back are the motors. These turn energy into movement, mostly a linear compression system that ties into the tendon network.”

“Uh huh... Whatever, just finish please...” I whispered, feeling nothing as Praline inserted several small modules into my leg. Each one made a surprisingly loud click as it was secured. I blinked tiredly at Praline's serious face, as she held up another techno widget.

“This is a battery system out of a recharger rifle,” she explained, “your sister donated it! If this works right, it should keep your motors powered for, like, three times as long as you could possibly live, even in a Stable!" That piece of not-very-reassuring information was followed by another loud click, and Praline held up a flat black thingy with striped edges. “This is the control processor,” she continued, “which makes everything work. Most of the motors are disabled or turned way down, but they'll come back to full on their own! I set it up that way to let you get used to it slowly, so you don't have to learn it all at once!”

“Y-yeah,” I muttered. I just wanted her to get it over with. The pain was back in full force, and every part of me ached. Lying in this one position for so long had made it all so much worse, and being strapped down was doing me no favors.

Finished with attaching and tweaking all the inner workings, Praline produced the actual hoof replacement. It was beautiful. It was made just like a piece of Steel Ranger armor, with little flowy, curled designs etched into the bottom, right at the joint where the hoof began. It even had a simplified version of the Steel Ranger insignia on the front. Praline really was a master of her craft. Even though I was terrified of it at the beginning, and still scared of the fact that the hoof would stand out... It was beautiful.

The bouncy pony stepped over and began dismantling the beautiful hoof. A piece popped out from the center on the bottom, and then another larger piece slid off the top. “Lost, Lemon, when I put this on, I need you both to heal her leg, okay?” she said, holding up a disk-shaped plate with a mesh surface on one side of it and a hole in the middle.

She split the plate into two half circles and slid it into place, flush against flesh. The tugs as she put the ribbons through the center hole felt strange. Then she bolted the plate to the new steel-bone. The familiar glow of healing magic enveloped my leg, and I felt that old itchy knitting feeling as the flesh healed up. This time, the healing took an even weirder turn, as I could feel the skin and muscle actually forming into the mesh top of the plate. It itched something fierce, but I couldn't exactly scratch it. A few moments later, the itchy knitting feeling disappeared, and Praline announced, “Perfect! Now I just attach the leg to the mounting bracket.” She snapped the metal cylinder of the hoof into the new mounted plate and set to working on the processors and motors inside it.

The healing continued, and the cuts from the scalpels slowly disappeared, until only the stitches were left over healed skin. Whatever trick Praline used actually healed the plate directly to the skin, so that the Steel Ranger hoof was attached right against me. I gave my hoof a flick, trying to get it to move.

Nothing happened. The motor whirred, but nothing happened. Had Praline messed up?

“Hidden Fortune stop that. I’m not done,” the chocolate colored mare said, and bopped me on the nose. She had Lost grab the little steel-bone inside, and pull it out just a bit. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but there was a loud click, followed by a louder beep. Pushing the remaining lengths of wire up into the cylinder, she snapped the bottom piece on. “Now you can move it. It wasn’t powered up yet, silly.”

I did as I was told. Gloriously, I felt the familiar movement of my hoof. It might have been metal, but it was my hoof all the same.

Lost and Lemon unstrapped me from the table, and I took that as a sign I was allowed down. Off the table I hopped with a clank, onto four working hooves. I held my new hoof up and gave a few flicks, moving it here and there. Wow! It flexed a bit sluggishly, but it was there and working! If it weren’t for the fact that it was made of shiny steel, I’d have confused it with my own!

“Thank you!” I shouted, and wrapped both working forehooves around the Stable Ranger. I could have kissed her, if it wouldn’t have been weird and awkward, and besides, lost Lost had dib- Okay, not thinking about that. I made sure to give Lemon Tart and my sister each a hug as well. I even tried to give Xeno one, for her little contribution, but she refused.

Finally done being astounded and elated, I stomped the embellished metal hoof on the floor of the Stable with a resounding clang. It was a good sound. This felt right. This felt strong.

I was back.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Ministry Training – You gain a +10% to hit when using rifles of any description.
Quest Perk: Cyberpony (Design Level 1) – Steel Ranger technology has been used to make permanent cybernetic enhancements to your body. You gain +2 Damage Threshold, +10% Resistance to Poison and Radiation and a +10 to your Unarmed skill. Cyberpony perks unlocked. Zebra Alchemy Perks have been locked. Plus the new hoof looks really cool.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Advanced Spells – You are now able to learn more powerful spells and spell types of the schools you know. In addition to this, you are now capable of casting more powerful versions of the spells you already know. You are also able to learn a wider variety of spells, though the majority of new ones must remain in schools you already know.

“So, metal hoof... Trying to impersonate anypony in particular?”
“What! No, do you have any idea how much this hurt?! Do you think I wanted to go through with it?”
“It is the author’s fault, I believe that she has it in for you, silly pony.”
“You’re just saying that because you haven’t gotten seriously hurt yet.”
“It wouldnot affect me in any case.”
“Wouldnot? That’s a new one.”
“I have been studying instead of drinking and crying.”

Chapter 8: What Makes Ponies Tick

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Chapter Eight: What Makes Ponies Tick
“...because we’ll see each other again real soon...”

Collapse.

Of course, the first thing I did when I put my hoof down, and really started feeling good about my situation, was fall on my face. From my position on the floor, I decided it would be a good time to update that list of my ‘favorite things to never do again.’

So far, my most favorite thing to never do again was getting another hoof eaten, or any other body part for that matter. Getting strangled was next then being set on fire. Going places I knew nothing about was another important one. Oh, and letting brainless Steel Rangers perform surgery on me.

Okay, maybe not the last one. Praline had done a really good job, but regardless, I didn’t want to be put in that kind of situation again.

Lost scrambled onto the floor next to me and wrapped her hooves around my shoulders. “Hidden! Are you okay? You can't just get up from the operating table and run around... you have to be careful...” she lectured, hoisting me up to a standing position.

“Miss Fortune, you silly! If you put too much weight on it your leg might split open again!” Praline said with a laugh. As she spoke, she ushered Xeno and Lemon Tart out of the room and turned to my sister and me. “But seriously, if you put too much weight on it before you’re ready, you could split open all the muscle and fascia that we just healed back up. I don’t want to have to redo this entire surgery and make your whole leg steel.” She shuffled her hooves. “Fact is, replacing an entire leg would take a lot longer and require a much more extensive surgery. Like, I’d have to cut open your chest to get the nerves we’d need. On top of that, the risks of dying on the table would be a lot higher, and your recovery time would be weeks, not days. I don’t want to lose you like that, I’m sure Lost doesn’t either.” She sounded depressed, but given the situation I couldn’t really blame her. “Besides, we don’t have the resources for it anyway.

“Yesterday hurt us, and not just physically,” she continued, beginning to clean up the medical supplies. “The power armor we use kept most of us safe, but not everypony. We used a lot of the spare supplies we had to repair our armor. And I was up all night making a new eye for Lamington. I get to put that in later...” She paused in her cleaning and looked directly at my sister. “Will you be able to help me fix him up too?”

“Of, of course,” L.A. responded. She looked as though she’d seen a ghost, now that Praline had explained just how dire the situation was, for both myself and Lamington.

“What, no! We have to go, we have to-” I said, then trailed off into a long slow sigh. “Oh, who am I kidding...” I stared at the floor as Praline continued to talk, all the while trying to keep my weight off my new steel hoof.

“Hidden Fortune, you really need rest and rehabilitation. We can keep you here for a few days, it’s no problem,” Praline said. She packed up the final bits of used equipment and tossed them into a sink against the wall.

“She’s right sis, I want you to lay in bed and relax for at least the rest of the day,” L.A. ordered. That wasn’t going to happen, but I nodded anyway.

Praline finished cleaning and began to dig out new equipment. “Anyway, I appreciate the help, I need all I can get. A hoof is one thing, working on an eye... Whew!” She smiled and walked over to us after setting down a new scalpel, and wrapped hooves around the both of us. “I’m really glad I got to meet you. The Stable was so boring.” Releasing her grasp, she stepped back and looked at the two of us. “I’m going to talk to mom, and well... No, I don’t want to ruin it!”

“What...?” I asked, very confused. Lost just blushed and leaned against me.

“Not telling!” the mare giggled, shooing us out of the room and into the empty hallway. “Lost Art, please come back in an hour so we can work on my brother. Everything’ll go so much faster and we’ll get to work together and I really really really appreciate all the help you’ve given me so far. Everything you’ve done has just been amazing, I couldn’t do it without you.” She held up her hooves, and gave a wary nod to them, smiling.

Oh, how I knew that pain.

“Sure thing, let me just take Hidden here to the room and get her in bed,” Lost replied. With a nod from Praline, we headed off to the bedroom.

Walking was weird. I didn’t have to do my step-step-step-hop routine anymore, but the fact that the new hoof was tuned down made it fairly awkward to actually move. I couldn't even feel when the metal hoof touched the ground, so I had to purposefully slow down and make sure every step went as planned. Thinking about how to walk wasn’t a good way to do things. I just wanted to move at full speed and not worry about it. As long as I could do the same thing with the other three hooves, the fourth would follow suit, wouldn’t it?

“How long ‘til I can walk normally?” I asked Lost.

“Don’t know. She just said it would turn back up on its own. I can ask her later, when we work on Lamington,” L.A. offered. We kept moving as we talked, passing through stainless hallways that all looked the same.

We walked past the bathroom, and I couldn’t help but wonder... “What about showers?” I asked, holding the offending hoof up and resuming my hop-step. The little anchor part was flush with the skin, there wasn’t a seam. Maybe? What about the end? Would it break if I got water in it? Praline had sealed everything nice and tight. Even the little hinge seemed to be sealed completely. But still...

“When do we ever get showers outside?” she replied with a laugh.

“Well, there’s the rain, but good point,” I said, putting the hoof back down. We walked the rest of the way in silence, until we reached the doorway to the room that’d been offered to us for our stay. Lost stopped behind me, and let me walk in first.

The door slid open, and I was greeted by the sight of two foals sitting on my bed.

“You survived!” Raspberry yelled, bouncing on the springy bed.

Custard said nothing, but hopped from his place on the bed and trotted up to me. For several seconds he stared in silence, enough time for Lost to wordlessly attach the PipBuck to my now metal limb, pat my back, and disappear. Without saying a word, the colt wrapped his legs around me and hugged tight.

My lips curled into a weary smile, the fear of what he might say washing away. I hugged him back, wrapping my free hoof around his back and holding him tight. Whatever the reason for the hug, I wasn’t going to question it. I released him finally, and he took the hint and let go.

“Thank you,” the colt said, looking up at me with tears in his eyes.

For what? For killing his brother? For getting the entire family wrapped up in a war, after exposing them to a horrible Wasteland that chewed up and spit out ponies like rotten apples?

“W-Why?” I finally asked.

“For getting us promoted. Mom says we’re Knights now, both of us,” Raspberry said from her spot on the bed. She beckoned me over with a wave of her hoof, and as I walked over she explained. “You missed the fight, since you and the others left. I don’t blame you, big guns and no power armor? I wouldn’t’ve been caught dead there either if I were in the situation.”

“We did really good in the fight,” Custard interrupted. “Because we’re so small, our armor was harder to hit and we worked together to take out a lot of those bad Rangers. Some of the things that other Star Paladin said...” He paused for a moment, frowning and furrowing his brow. “...they were just horrible. So, we did what was right. Mom, I mean, Elder Drop Scone, she said we did such a good job that we weren’t initiatives anymore. We got our cutie marks in the fight, and she said that showed true Combat Proficiency!”

I sat on the bed and the two of them took a spot on either side of me. They the story, each telling me what happened during the firefight with alternating narration, and showing off their new cutie marks. Custard’s was three shell casings, resting over two interlocked gears. Raspberry had a single large cog, complete with two criss-crossed beams of magical energy passing atop it. While I listened and watched, I worked the hoof forward and back a few times. I still had to get used to it.

“I was supposed to be a Scribe, like my sisters. Praline is the only female Knight in...” Raspberry stopped and placed a hoof on her chin. She stared at the lit ceiling for several moments. Neither Custard nor I interrupted while she thought. “Seven. Seven generations.”

“The point is, usually fillies are made to do Scribe work and the colts get to be soldiers in armor,” Custard explained. “And... now we’re both part of that. We’re somepony important now!”

“You always were,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “Now, listen. I need to do some rehab or whatever it was called. Praline’s orders.” I frowned, not really wanting the two to go. It was hard to hate any of the ponies in this family. But they did as they were told, and left me to my rehabilitation.

I flicked the steel hoof, and it moved with grating slowness.

* * *

“I can’t take it anymore!” I yelled, and stormed out of the room. Staring at the same four walls for so long had me climbing up them. Three hours spent sitting on a bed trying to get the new hoof to move the way I wanted, and I’d gotten nowhere. I stomped past the golden-eyed stallion standing next to my door, and ran down the hall.

Every fourth step I took, I made an echoing clank when metal hit metal, but I didn’t care. I needed to move, I couldn’t stay cooped up like that. A lifetime of wandering the Wasteland, and I thought I could just sit, locked away in a tiny room? Yeah, right.

The stallion from my doorway followed several steps behind. From the look and sound of things, he was trying his damndest to be inconspicuous and not let me see him. But given that he wasn’t the skinniest pony, and made almost as much noise as I did on the metal floor, I figured it out with ease. Like a thinky pony would. I felt the claws in the back of my mind, but he’d have to catch me first, so I ignored the feeling.

I turned the corner at the T-intersection and stormed out of the Stable as fast as my tuned-down hoof would let me. The stallion kept on my tail, following me out of the Stable, through the now-shielded mines, and out into the Wasteland. The trip took only a few minutes, since I knew the way, and finally I entered mostly-familiar territory. Part of me wanted to stop and confront the Stable Ranger, let the little claws in my mind win. The rest of me didn’t fucking care. I had a hoof to get working, and he could just deal with the consequences when I stopped.

As I ran, I felt faster and faster, almost back to normal. Letting everything flow naturally worked wonders. Maybe it was just the adrenaline from running. Didn’t know, didn’t care. I ran through the shielded tunnels, turning away from factory and down Tunnel three to the outside. Finally I reached the little clearing outside and looked to the dead forest a few dozen yards away. Lost wouldn’t be done working with Praline for another hour or two. So I could practice, out here where the hoof would see real action. No more of the flexing over and over while staring at a blank ceiling. And I could listen to the radio again while I ‘rehabilitated.’

“Ya run,” the stallion said, between breaths, “really fast.” He stood at the entrance to the cave, head down near the ground, breathing raggedly. A pony like him must not run a lot, given that they- Okay, I really shouldn’t insult the stallion. He was obviously a part of the Steel Ranger family, having the same brown coloring, though it was a shade or two darker than Praline’s. His eyes were half-closed and golden, giving him a rather laid-back look, despite his gasping for breath, and his short, wavy mane was parted nicely to the side.

“Well, grow up like my sister and me, and you get a lot of practice running,” I said, deciding against asking why he was following me. “There’s manticores and zombies and hellhounds and a lot of other scary-as-fuck things out there. Sometimes, you just have to run!” I flailed my hooves in mock running.

“Is running better than punching?” he asked with a smirk.

My heart froze. “What... What do you mean?” I stammered.

“Éclair told me what happened. Are ya alright?” he asked in a quiet calm voice. The look he gave me wasn’t a judging, it was understanding. A look I couldn’t match. So Éclair had told somepony. That was to be expected; they were a tight knit family. After an awkward moment of silence, he sat against the rocks that made up the cave entrance and got comfortable. “Ya know what? I don’t need an answer now, take all the time ya need. I’m good at waitin’.” He motioned to the gear-faced clock on his flanks. “You’ll be here for a few more days anyway,” he said, and looked at me. More silence. “Éclair was always tryin’ to help us as soon as he figured out something was wrong. But you can’t help somepony who doesn’t want to be helped.” He sighed. “If you feel openin’ up, I’ll listen. But I’m not gonna pry.” He pointed at his eye and chuckled. “It’s a much better way to avoid gettin’ punched, too.”

“I’m fine!” I said with a metallic stomp. “Why are you following me?”

“Elder Drop Scone and Star Paladin Lamington asked me ta keep in an eye on ya, make sure you’re safe when ya eventually ran off,” he explained, smiling. “They had a feeling you’d get a bit homesick.”

I fumed, but said nothing. I didn’t need a foalsitter! To stop the conversation from going any further, I fished out the earbloom from the PipBuck, slammed it into my ear, and turned on the radio. I wasn’t very gentle with it, either. Cranking the volume, I turned away from the stallion. Some song or another from two hundred years ago was playing. I didn’t care what it was. It was noise to drown him out.

For another hour I practiced. Walking, running, trying to push the gears or whatever else powered my hoof as far and fast as I could. The music helped, keeping me distracted throughout my endeavors. The entire time, the stallion sat there and watched. He had no guns and made no move to get up from his spot. Though, given the size of him, and how comparatively tough I was, we could probably take anything that came after us. Well, he was just there to keep watch for emergencies, after all.

Progress was going well, at least I thought so. I could move faster than before, and the aches and pains from withdrawal weren’t as bad this time. How would the new hoof react to Buck? I had no idea. Even without the wonderful tablets, everything went smoothly.

The music stopped. I stared at the PipBuck for a moment in confusion. Why’d the music stop?

A voice blared through the earbloom at me, loud enough to scare, and knock me on my haunches. “Good evening wastelanders! How's every pony doing? Got some great news for you today! Remember that little Stable Gal who took on the slavers of Appleloosa and saved all those ponies? Well don't ask me how, but she survived takin’ a nosedive off a cliff in a speeding train. That's right, fillies and gentlecolts: she’s back!”

My ears twitched, hearing that. Nosedive off a cliff in a speeding train? Wow. Now, I knew I was reckless, and didn’t think things through a lot of the time. I’d jumped off a third story balcony onto a monster that’d been trying to kill me, but that? That took some serious guts. Taking on slavers on top of it? I had a new hero.

The DJ continued, “And what's she been up to now, I hear you ask? Well, sit down an’ put on your listening ears, cuz it's time for DJ Pon3 to tell you a story. Ready? Good. This is the story of a little filly named Silver Bell...”

My mind was elsewhere, and I missed the story of Silver Bell. A hero pony taking on slavers? That sounded a bit familiar. Maybe she was like Gunbuck? Maybe they were related somehow? No... I’d... Hmm. Well the DJ’d said evening, and it was nowhere near that late in the day yet. Maybe they were farther east? Manehatten and Fillydelphia were over that way, wasn’t that what mom had said?

I thought back to the funeral yesterday, to what I’d been thinking of during the eulogy. Making the Wasteland a little better. This pony was doing it, Gunbuck had done it. Were there others that were doing it elsewhere? I needed to listen to the radio more. Good music and news about other heroes doing the Wasteland some good?

I wanted to find out who Gunbuck was out of a sense of responsibility. Now, I wanted to find out who that Stable pony was out of admiration. I still needed to find out who I really was. Who Lost really was. Could I be a hero too? I laughed... Maybe I’d be on the radio someday?

I looked at the map and traced our path. The path of a hero? I rolled the wheel on the Pipbuck and the map zoomed out. Didn’t know it could do that. Wow, there was so much more land than I’d thought originally. I scanned over the larger map, taking in the markers for each landmark and city. So many places grayed out, places Gunbuck could’ve been before.

A realization hit me; all the places with names were in the opposite direction and back toward the mountains. Sighing and setting my hoof back down, I thought about exactly what my plan was.

I wasn’t sure I even had one anymore. Lost had been right, we should have just gone straight home and hid away. Leathers had been convenient, both because I wanted to get some more information, and because there was good treasure hunting to be had. Then the whole fiasco with the Steel Rangers and the Wirepony. So, where was I supposed to go from here?

I laughed at myself, pitying. Stupid mare. I was a Wasteland pony, a treasure hunter, nothing more. I’d just talk to Lost, and then we could decide on what to do.

The stallion stood and walked over to me, but I waved him away. “I’m fine. Just, lost in thought,” I explained.

He nodded and returned to his spot against the wall.

Lost was gonna be so mad at me. We should have just gone home when we started all this. What was I thinking? After all that happened, I couldn’t even remember why I’d started... Was it really so stupid a reason as obligation?

No.

I could do this. I could push forward. I could become something I wasn’t. Ends justify the means, help ponies. That’s life: growing, learning. The Steel Rangers were in shambles, Wirepony was dead. I could do good. As long as my sister agreed.

I could be a hero. If I tried.

“Let’s go back inside...” I muttered to... Blushing, I realized I never caught his name. This stallion was the one pony of the family I hadn’t met yet, and I couldn’t remember his name from Praline’s long rambling list. “Umm...”

“Chocolate Fondue,” he finished for me, “and yeah, let’s go inside and get something to eat.” He smiled at me, and I didn’t feel like punching him. Maybe it was the new hoof, maybe it was my newfound clarity. Together we walked back into the mines and toward the Stable.

* * *

“I didn’t need a foalsitter,” I said to the dark-coated stallion as we walked.

“Yeah, well. Orders,” he explained with a shrug.

We trotted down the halls toward the atrium. The surgery didn’t seem to be finished yet, which gave us some time to just wander and relax. My hoof felt pretty good, though whenever I wasn’t running around on an adrenaline high, it slowed back down. Another downside to being in the mines and the Stable was the fact that the radio turned to complete static. Every now and then a few words would get through, but the reception was so terrible I didn’t bother keeping the earbloom in. When the Stables were made, they were made to be completely unreachable.

In the atrium, Marshmallow Sundae cooked behind her little window in the kitchen, as per usual. I gave a metallic wave as we walked in, and she returned it in kind. She faltered when she did though, and grabbed her side. A sign of the wounds from the battle? We exchanged sad smiles, and she got back to work. I took a seat at the large table in the center of the room, and watched the stallion take the seat across from me.

“So...” I stared, already feeling awkward.

“Have you spoken to my mother yet today?” Fondue asked calmly, tapping the table with a forehoof.

“Well, before Praline attached this to me,” I answered, holding up my steel hoof, “she gave me some words of encouragement, but not much more. I haven’t spoken to her since. Why?”

He chuckled. “Forget I said anything.”

“What, no! Tell me!” I yelled. It was beginning to get on my nerves that everypony down here seemed to think it was a good idea to keep something from me. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” Being annoying usually gets answers.

“Can’t. Promised,” he said with a smirk, crossing his hooves on the table and leaning forward. “Do you know what happens when you break a promise you made to Praline?” I could only shake my head. “Keep it that way.”

I was beginning to think that I liked Éclair better, at least he was straight forward. This stallion was nice, and was looking after me... but at the same time he was kind of annoying. It wasn’t really fair to keep secrets. Well, I guessed if it was a secret from both Lost and I, it would be okay. At least that was fair. I glared and opened my mouth to protest, but before I could argue any more, Lost Art, Lemon Tart, and Praline walked in. Lamington followed behind, encased from hoof to...

Oh. My. Goddesses.

The helmet to the power armor was missing, and for the first time, I saw the gigantic stallion’s face. He was... I felt heat on my face, despite myself. The claws dug into my mind, but they were far weaker than before. They were still there, but they were starting to extend toward- Nope. Not thinking about that. With the power armor on, I’d feared he was like Wirepony inside, but seeing him like this? Wow.

He was stunning. I would never have expected such a gorgeous stallion from the staticy voice. His coat was a light brown, a shade between Praline’s and Fondue’s. His smoky cream-colored mane swept back past his ears and down his neck. The static had been hiding this from me? Suddenly, I hated static. His right eye was the same golden color that ran in the family, and it complemented his coat. His left eye... My warm blush turned a bit cold. His left eye was made of steel, given a chrome reflective surface, with a matching iris painted on. But then, he smiled, a smile so bright I couldn’t help but match it.

New rule: Stallions: terrifying. Lamington: gorgeous.

The four of them took seats at the table to my right, taking up the spots between Chocolate Fondue and myself. Lost latched herself onto me the minute she sat down, and I leaned into her. Praline just slammed her head into the table, breathing heavily. She said something but I couldn’t hear it.

“Exhausted,” complained Doctor Lemon Tart. “Please never get hurt in a fight that bad again. That many hours of surgery all in a row! I don’t think I could do it again.” The unicorn lowered her head, much slower than the perky mare had, and pressed her face against the cool steel table.

“Surgery is terrible... How’s your hoof?” L.A. asked, leaning her head against my shoulder. Her eyes were closed, and a small smile crept across her lips as she nuzzled against me.

“I’m doing much better. Thank you. All of you. For everything,” I said, resting my head against hers. “How did your surgery go?” I asked, pointing idly toward Lamington.

The stallion didn’t say a word, he just stared off into space. Every so often he would wobble to one side or another, but always seemed to catch himself with a start. Chocolate Fondue looked mortified, but never quite needed to catch the large stallion. What in the Goddesses’ name was wrong with him?

Finally he opened his mouth and said, “I’m... doing exep... exception... exceptionally well. I can s-see from both eyes p-perfectly.” The Star Paladin’s voice would’ve melted my heart if it wasn’t so jolted. Without the static from his armor, his voice threatened to turn my insides all buttery... but something was wrong. His words came out partially slurred and with odd timing.

“What’s wron-” I started.

“Anesthesia,” Lemon Tart said, cutting me off. She hadn’t lifted her face from the table.

Well, I was suddenly glad they hadn’t used any of that on me. Relearning to use my hoof was going slow enough, I didn’t need to be groggy from anesthesia too. Whatever anesthesia was. My thoughts were broken as Marshmallow Sundae came from the kitchen with several trays stacked on her back.

“Soup’s on, everypony,” she shouted as she walked over. The short mare balanced the trays with her tail and used it to move plates to the table. Despite her wobbling limp, she had the same control over her tail, the same skill that mom had had. After she set the table, we all ate quietly.

This meal was the most interesting I’d ever had. Lost ate with one hoof clung to my leg. I had to eat with my other, free leg. Lamington didn’t touch his food at all himself, though Fondue split time between feeding himself and his brother. On top of that, Praline and Lemon Tart didn’t lift their heads to eat a single bite. The only normal pony at the table was the pink-maned cook, who ate happily despite frequent wincing.

This was a new sensation. It was like eating with family. If mom and dad had been here, it would’ve been perfect. For now though, these ponies felt like something special, and even through our collective weirdness, we had a good meal. So a few days resting and relearning how to move... Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad?

* * *

Two days of rest had done me a world of good. My hoof was more responsive than ever, and it felt almost natural. I still had to exercise it every day for hours at a time, but the progress was worth it. As long as I wasn’t focusing on it, and just worked the hoof the same as I would the real three, everything went fine. Having a comfortable bed to sleep on, without fear of being attacked, was a bonus. The shower was icing on the cake, and I made sure to use it every chance I got.

The Stable Rangers were more interesting than I’d originally given them credit for. Drop Scone continued to mother us at every opportunity, and I knew I was gaining some weight. If Lost and I had found them while we’d been growing up, we might have gotten the nutrition to actually grow up and not wind up so damn short. Still, I had seen smaller ponies out there, so it could’ve been worse.

Praline was surprisingly smart for how incredibly silly she was all the time. In her spare time, she’d taken to teaching both Lost and I how to take care of my new hoof. A lot of the technical know-how went over my head, but she made sure Lost understood. Marshmallow Sundae continued to make delicious food. Sadly, Lamington went back to wearing his armor all the time. Chocolate Fondue hadn’t pressured me into saying anything else, almost as if he’d forgotten. Crème Brûlée had all but disappeared, which worried me a bit. But at least she wasn’t there teasing my sister or me.

I trotted down the hallway, clanking relatively quietly along the way. I needed to find Lemon Tart for another dose of her healing. The unicorn knew her way around a healing spell, and without her I was sure the recovery would have taken weeks instead of days. I peeked in every door I passed, looking for the sickly-yellow mare. Maybe I could find Xeno and get one of the crazy concoctions she’d been making the whole time.

None of the rooms held anything interesting, except the occasional unmade bed. I kept on looking, turning the hall and tried to open another one. Locked? Well, I hoped she wasn’t in that one. Somepony was inside though, so I turned to leave them al-

Wait, was that voice Lost Art’s?

Whatever she’d said, I missed it, and a second voice started talking. As quietly as I could, I pressed my ear to the door.

“...really glad you stumbled down here. Living with family, there wasn’t anypony to really get close to,” said the voice. It was a mare, one with a silky voice. I pressed my ear against the door harder, trying to hear better.

“I think so, too,” said my sister. “You’ve all been really nice and helped us with everything, even after we pulled you into our fight.” She sounded nervous. Were there other ponies in there? Was she cornered?

“No. I meant...” the voice said slowly. I heard a few hooffalls against the steel floor. The voice continued once the hooffalls fell silent. “Somepony special to get to know physically.”

The mare was Crème Brûlée! My mind raced. What should I do? She was hitting on Lost. Was Lost okay with it? Should... Should I go in and-

“Oh...” Lost squeaked through the door.

“What’s the problem?” Crème asked. “You like mares, right? I saw you stealing glances. It’s very cute.”

The confidence that mare had, I could hear it in her voice. She read my sister better than anypony I’d ever met. It had taken ages for even me to figure out that little preference of Lost’s.

“Y-yeah,” Lost stammered.

“Well, I do too,” Crème said. I leaned against the door with all my weight. If I could just hear bett-

The door shifted against the wall, making a grinding sound so loud I was sure it could’ve woken the dead. Terrified, I pulled back, careful to rest my hooves on the floor as silent as I possibly could. If either of them found out I was listening, I was screwed. With a few deep breaths, I leaned against the door again as light as I could.

“... do things together.” Dammit, I’d missed some. Crème said something and I missed it, but- ‘things together’ sounded bad. Or good? I shook my head. If Lost was comfortable with it...

“I-I can’t.”

That meant she wasn’t comfortable. Was I supposed to interrupt? If I just knocked on the door...

My hoof was halfway to the door when Crème asked, “So you don’t... like me?” My hoof went back to the floor. Ears twitching slightly, I leaned against the door again, careful not to make it shift again. Xeno’s legendary luck kept them from noticing last time, I knew I wouldn’t be so lucky again.

“No! I mean. Not like that, I do,” L.A. said, her voice hesitant.

A long pause followed, and I strained to hear what was going on. Finally Lost spoke again. “You’re pretty, and really nice too! I’d... I’d love to have somepony like you. I want to! I do... but, I can’t.”

Oh Goddesses. No... Lost, don’t...

More hooffalls fell behind the door, and my ears strained to hear them. Were they getting closer? I leaned back as best I could, pressing only my ear against the door. It wasn’t comfortable, but I could get away before they noticed me if the door happened to open.

“What’s wrong, love?” Crème asked. “Why can’t you?” Her voice was calmer than even Lamington’s.

“I’m...” my sister started, “afraid.” She sounded like she was about to burst into tears.

I needed to stop this. I shouldn’t be listening. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. I needed to. There were things I needed know about my sister. Why she held back was one of them, and this was going to shed some light on things. I’d told her about my problems the other night, and she’d helped me. If I knew what was hurting her, then I could help.

“What’re you afraid of? Please, tell me,” said Crème.

“I don’t want to lose Hidden,” Lost answered. “If... If I get close to somepony else, she’ll drift away.” She sounded like she’d starting crying. “I lost my dad... I lost my mom. I-If I lost her-” She broke at that point, and let the tears flow. I could hear it loud and clear, even through the door. “She’s all I have left.”

“I’d never leave you, Lost,” I whispered to the door, “no matter what.” Realization I’d said that out loud hit me, I and clamped a hoof over my mouth, using the steel one by accident. “Ow!” I yelped. Oh no! Had she heard me?

“What happens if,” she continued, sniffling. There was another pause, and she regained her composure. “I can’t have my heart broken, I’ve lost too much already. What happens if I fall for you, and you die, or leave, or-”

“Lost Art. I’m not going anywhere,” said the Stable pony reassuringly. I really wished the door had a window. She continued, “Hidden doesn’t have to know, this can be between you and me and nopony else.”

What! How dare she! Lost would never hide something like this from me! We shared everything with one ano- no. I took a deep breath, thought of the consequences of thinking that way. Like a thinky pony.

She’d tell me in her own time. It was okay. Sisters don’t have to share everything. I didn’t need to know about her sex life.

For several minutes I didn’t hear anything. What happened? I leaned back against the door and tried to listen harder, if that was even possible. Curiosity was getting the better of me. I had to know what was happening!

“I could lose you, like you lost Éclair,” my sister said, “It only takes one bullet to take a pony away forever.”

“Lost, do you... you know,” Crème’s voice dropped to a whisper, “when you’re alone and need to let off some steam?” Her voice sounded much different than the confident silky mare she’d been before, there was a huskiness to it that...

Oh Goddesses! I shuddered and clenched my eyes shut. Did she just ask her if- Ew. I needed to leave. My legs didn’t follow my orders though, and I kept listening.

“Yeah. I do,” my sister replied.

Dammit, Lost!

“Well, then what’s the difference if I do it for you instead?” Crème asked. Dozens of reasons popped into my mind, but the Steel Ranger kept talking before any could form into anything resembling coherent sentences. “As friends, just friends who make each other feel special, like that... Not somepony you’re committing your heart to.”

There was another long silence.

“Trust me, it’ll feel good for...” Crème continued. Her voice trailed off halfway through whatever she was saying. With the voices dropped below what I could hear, I thought it was over. Then I heard a kiss, then whimpering.

Was, was Crème Brûlée taking advantage of her? Should I break the door down and help? The breathless ‘yes’ from my sister was the ‘no’ I needed. Through the door I heard labored breathing and a few firm hoofstamps. The sound of kissing continued. Lost could do whatever she wanted. I didn’t need to hear this. I really didn’t need to hear this.

As quietly as I could, walking on three legs so as not to clank on the way out, I slunk away from the door. Down another hallway I went, back on the task of finding the doctor. I never heard that conversation.

Never. Heard it.

* * *

“Four days is enough!” I yelled. I didn't want to be stuck in this bedroom anymore, no matter how comfy it was. Another day was too long. Recovery was done, I was fine. Time to go.

“I know, I want to get back out there too. But we're safe here for the first time in...” Lost paused and looked to the ceiling. “Longer than I can remember. Don't you want to just stay and enjoy it a little more?” She was trying to be reasonable, but I didn't care. I wanted out, she just wanted to stay with that. That. That mare!

I took a deep breath. This was exactly what she’d been secretly afraid of, I wouldn't let the anger win. She deserved somepony special. Shifting on my bed, I looked at my sister and begged, “L.A., please, I want to keep moving. We've been down here too, too long. And...”

I didn't want to admit the next part. It made me feel stupid. The worst part was it wasn't my normal thinky pony stupid problem. Thinky pony just meant considering my actions before doing things like jumping from the third story of a burning building. This was just, me being careless.

She sat up on her bed, across the room and gave me a look. I knew that look. “Well,” she started, adjusting the broken glasses on her muzzle. “I was actually thinking about what we should do next, and-”

“I know what you’re going to say,” I interrupted. “And you were right. We should just go home. It was foalish to think we could go out this far, that we could do something to make up for what I did, all I’ve done so far is get hurt a lot, and get other ponies around me killed.” I held up the new steel hoof at the end of my stump. “I even lost a hoof and-”

Lost’s magic wrapped around my mouth, holding it shut. She stared at me over the remaining rim of her glasses. It wasn’t until I nodded weakly in defeat that she released me from her telekinetic grasp.

“That’s not what I was going to say, at all,” she said. “Do you remember, I asked you the other night if you thought mom would be proud of us?”

I nodded, fidgeting with the steel attached to me.

“She did everything in her power to keep us safe,” Lost continued, “She fought against other ponies, she fought against monsters. It was all to keep you and I from getting hurt. So, I think after what you did yesterday, and what you gave up for it, she’d be proud. She might not have trusted other ponies, but her entire life was dedicated to keeping those she cared about safe.”

I looked down at my new hoof and nodded again. “She did,” I muttered. “Until I got her killed.”

For a long moment we sat in silence, the thought of mom’s death weighing heavily in the air. Lost didn’t argue with who was at fault.

“You wanted to make the Wasteland a better place for ponies you cared about,” she finally said. “They might not be ponies you knew, but you cared about them anyway. And, I think that it was the right thing to do.”

“But, I don’t think we’re cut out for this,” I said, rolling over to face away from her. “I haven’t helped anypony, all I’ve done is get myself hurt and kill others. I did it because I felt bad for shooting first and asking questions later, not because I’m a good pony, L.A... I’m just brash.”

“Hidden Fortune,” she said. Oh colt, my full name. I was in trouble now. “We killed Wirepony. We helped cripple and scatter Scifresh, Jazz, and their Steel Rangers.” She stood and stomped a hoof against the metal floor. “We're doing good. I want to keep doing it, for us. Not for Gunbuck. For ponies who need it.” She pointed a hoof at the PipBuck on my fetlock. “I looked at the map last time I had the PipBuck, and I think the best place for us to start is a little town called Skirt, up in the hills near the mountains. It’s somewhere your hero Gunbuck hasn’t been. It’s somewhere we can do some good.”

All I could do was smile. My sister was right. Not just because she was the older sister, but because it was the right thing to do. We needed to find out who we really were, and if that meant playing saviors to the little chunk of the Wasteland we called home, so be it.

I looked at my sister in admiration. “Okay,” I said. “If you're confident about it. We can do it.”

“I am,” Lost said. “We can't go back. We have to go forward. Mom wanted us to hide forever, and...” Another sigh slipped from her lips. For a moment she was silent, biting at her lower lip and keeping her eyes closed. “I love mom. Even with her gone, I love her, with all my heart. But hiding forever would just get us killed one day, where nopony could help us. You paid your debt, I think.” She stepped over and hugged me tight. I wrapped a hoof around her neck. “Burying Gunbuck was enough, but you've also lost a hoof to the Wasteland. In the process, we killed a monster that darkened what's left of Equestria. You've more than made up for this.” She tapped the little scar left on her throat. “From here on, we do things for-”

A knock at the door interrupted us. A half-second later, it opened, and Praline walked in. I smiled at the mare and waved my steel hoof. She smiled back and bounced up onto the bed we were sitting on. Thinking back to the Berliners’ new cutie marks, I took a peek at Praline’s as she hopped up with us. Upon her flank were several gears arranged like a heart, with wires connecting them. I guess I’d been right to trust her with the surgery.

“So! Guess what?” she asked, bringing me back to reality. Before we could open our mouths, she continued, “We’re leaving the Stable! Not forever; this will still be home. But we’re going to take a few days and go exploring to find out what’s out there.”

“Pommel Falls,” I said, placing my hoof on Praline’s shoulder. “A town nearby. They’re at the waterfall at the start of the river. We,” I paused to groan, “we were exiled. But they’re salvaging another Stable for purification talismans. You’re smart about that kind of thing. You could help!”

“Oooo, another Stable? Fun!” she said, bouncing again.

“So, will you-” Lost started to ask, but Praline cut her off by grabbing us both in a gigantic hug and squeezed tight.

“Come with me!” Praline ordered, and literally dragged us to the atrium.

Inside the atrium was the family, mostly sitting around the table enjoying a meal. Elder Drop Scone paced behind them. Her eyes lit up when she saw us, and we all trotted over. Praline practically beamed.

“It’s time,” Drop Scone said, smiling in a way I wished I could remember my mom smiling. “One more meal, then we have some important things to talk about.”

Were they finally going to tell us the secret they’d been keeping for days? Finally! I grinned and looked at Lost, who had a big grin on her face as well. She winked at me.

Did she know something I didn’t? Not. Fair.

I sat with my sister across from the family and our resident exception, Xeno. Lemon Tart sat with the Steel Ranger family, chatting happily as if she’d been in the Stable from the moment she was born. Before us, Marshmallow Sundae cooked up a smorgasbord of treats. I’d learned the names of some of the foods from last time, and some new ones as well. This time, I dug straight into the mane course, skipping the soups. They could wait. Carrot and celery broth wasn’t even a close second to a delicious grilled eggplant. The rest ate from other parts of the feast, but for me, there was only my favorite dish. Small talk peppered the meal, but this was the last real meal I’d ever get before we left, and I wanted to get everything I could out of it. After my fill of grilled eggplant, I finally made my way to the soup, the rolls, and finally, delicious apricot strudel for dessert. I finished before everypony else, and took my time with the dessert, savoring every bite.

If only we’d had some bacon, it would have been perfect. I suckled on a sugarcube Marshmallow Sundae gave me, and finally started listening to the conversation.

“Hidden suggested we head to a place called Pommel Falls,” Praline explained to her family. I smiled as she continued, “She says they’re going to need help with another Stable. I think it’s a good place to start.”

I looked over to my sister and gave her a quick nuzzle. Okay, so, the last four days had been the best I’d had in years. I was actually sad that we’d be going our separate ways. I looked over the entire family, even the empty spot where Éclair would’ve sat. They talked happily amongst themselves, still mostly innocent. The Berliners were the first ponies in the family who would actually grow up in the Wasteland, which would be a real shell-shock-

“Don’t go near any blue vines!” I blurted out. The conversation stopped and they all looked at me in confusion. Feeling my face flush I gave a weak, forced smile. “Err... Mom called it poison joke. It can kill you.”

“It is killing joke you speak of. Which is not funny, it is not a joke. Ponies do not have a good sense of humor,” explained Xeno. She placed her hoof on the table, and pulled it back to reveal a tiny scrap of the vine, a few inches in length with several leaves attached.

Lost and I recoiled in horror, practically falling out of our seats.

Xeno shook her head. “You continue to be very silly ponies,” she said. “It is not alive. The magic of the plant is gone.”

Elder Drop Scone and her family watched in rapt attention, unfamiliar with the deadly plant. Even I had trouble wrapping my head around the new name. All these years, and we hadn’t even known the name of what had killed mom...

“If you ponies are to be leaving the safety of this steel lair, you will need to know that more than other ponies can cause death,” Xeno continued. With another wave of her hoof, the vine was gone. “So easy it is to forget what dangers await foalish ponies. Surviving often means forgetting that you are being hunted, as it becomes normal to be afraid. To be virulent is to survive.”

I resisted a facehoof at Xeno’s maladjusted vocabulary.

“She’s right,” Lost said, looking down at her hooves. “There’s a lot more out there than we’ve remembered to tell you.” She looked as guilty as I felt. We were bringing them to the outside world, showing them the Wasteland. Without even a crash course on everything out there.

“Hellhounds, manticores, zombies. Other ponies, creatures like Wirepony,” I said, holding up my hoof. “You know just how dangerous it can be.” I clanked the steel against the table.

“There is no reason for your distress. Unlike the three of you, we have proper armaments, and repairing armor. We’re equipped to deal with situations like that. Experience will come hastily, my family can handle themselves,” said Lamington, his voice bursting with static. The fact that he put his helmet back on, even for the meal had me a bit miffed. I wanted to see how he looked with his eye healed. I bet he looked even more dashing now...

Lost leaned against me and looked up. I looked back at her. “They’ll be fine,” she told me.

I nodded, and turned toward the family. “So what’s this big secret everypony’s been hiding?” I asked.

“Patience, just wait and see,” said the Elder. The family all smiled, all except Lamington. He was probably smiling under the helmet.

I wanted to know so bad. We were leaving so soon, and they still hadn’t said a word. Unfinished business was the absolute last thing we needed when we went our separate ways. I was going to miss them all so much... I found myself crying. It hurt. Like losing mom all over again. We hadn’t even left yet, and I couldn’t stand it. I felt Lost lean against me, and her tears fell against my coat.

“You two, don’t cry, please,” Drop Scone said to my sister and me. The Elder reached across the table and wiped away a tear with her hoof, just like Mom used to do. “I have some good news. That secret we’ve been hiding? I think, you won’t have a reason to cry once you find out.”

Was it really that big? I wiped away the tear with my new hoof, and watched it roll down the metal, trailing along the etched markings. These were the best ponies I’d ever met, if she’d kept a secret this long, there was a good reason for it. I trusted her.

“Okay, so tell us already!” Lost yelled.

* * *

We trotted to the armory deep in the bowels of the Stable. Drop Scone led the way, with Praline bouncing along next to Lost and me. Lamington brought up the rear.

The armory was nestled deep in the back end of the Stable, behind much of the machinery that kept everything running smoothly. Surrounded by the droning hum of talismans and purifiers, recyclers and generators, we stood at one end of a fantastically long shooting range. The armory portion of the room held dozens of stripped suits of armor, rendered practically unusable by cannibalism for other projects. Lockers lined one wall, their doors hanging open and showing the remains of accessories and weapons mountings. A sturdy work table stood before my sister and I, covered in a white sheet that was held down by tools at each corner.

“How much has it been eating you up?” Praline asked with a giggle. She leaned against me with all her weight, smiling so wide I thought the top of her head might come off. With friends like these...

“Hidden can’t stand not knowing a secret. She’s been climbing up the walls,” Lost answered for me, holding a forehoof up to stifle her laughter. If it weren’t for the fact that she was right, I’d have hit her. Truth be told though, it made me smile awkwardly.

“Is climbing up walls good for my recovery?” I asked the bubbly mare leaning on me.

“Alright, alright,” Drop Scone interrupted. “Settle down. Praline’s right. I’ve been wanting to show and tell the two of you something since the night we met and you showed us the world up top. I’d love to show Xeno as well, but when I asked her, she refused.”

That wasn’t fair. Why did Xeno get to know the secret? Any argument I might’ve had disappeared when Drop Scone pulled the weights and put the tools away. She pulled the cover away and showed us a smorgasbord of a different kind.

The beautiful, deadly kind.

Lying all across the table were our guns. Each and every one was polished, and in perfect condition. Several of the firearms we’d taken from the armory had been combined to make the remainder. They’d reduced our stock down to three pistols of various calibers, but it was worth it to see them so beautifully put together and polished. Lost’s magical energy weapons received the same treatment, though the recharger rifle was very obviously missing. Thank you, little rifle, for letting me walk again. The still-working pieces looked tuned-up, with my rifles and shotgun across the far edge of the table in all their polished glory.

“You fixed everything up for us?” I asked, bewildered. They didn’t have to do that. Lost and I were used to working with terrible weapons and materials. That was just how the Wasteland was. We just hunted for a new bit of treasure to replace the old ones, or found a merchant that looked approachable. This was...

“I helped!” Lost said, beaming. “They let me use the armory to fix everything up, Lamington and Chocolate Fondue did a lot of the work. I couldn’t have done it without them.” She gave Lamington a smile. “Too bad they didn’t have parts for my glasses...” Her hoof nudged the shattered rims and her smile vanished.

“Okay, ready for the big surprise?” Drop Scone asked, turning to the shooting range wall and moving something out from behind one of the partitions. With the help of Praline and Lamington, she managed to pull out two more covered... somethings. “These are presents.” She pulled the cover away, revealing two stripped down, pieced-together suits of Steel Armor.

The Elder said something else, but I missed it. I was too busy staring at the beautiful armor in front of me. They weren’t fully sealed suits like the Star Paladin always wore, but were still better than anything we’d seen. I stared wide-eyed, tracing over the beautiful designs etched into the steel, especially the Stable Sixty insignia on the chest. Each suit was a chest piece with steel plates overlapped to cover chest, back and sides. On the left side of one was a complete sleeve for the leg hanging to the floor, it was made of smaller metal pieces attached to mesh and held together with straps. On the right side of one was a half sleeve, stopping right about where a PipBuck would rest. Convenient, that. The other suit was almost identical, but with an attachment base for a battle saddle, set at just the right spot! Puzzlingly this second suit was missing its right-hoof sleeve, its wearer's right foreleg would be left exposed. Or maybe leaving room a higher PipBuck due to a steel hoof...

“Wait, are those... for us?” I asked, having to pause halfway through to catch my breath. I stared at the leader of the Stable Sixty Steel Rangers in shock, my jaw hanging almost to the floor. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. We’d been told when we got here that things like this were off-limits, and that power armor was symbolic and special to them.

“Silly pony,” the older mare said with a laugh, “they’re for my family.”

Family? Praline, Lamington, all of them already had their own armor. The power armor they had was far superior in quality to these, too. These two didn’t even have the fancy repair systems, or the drug injection systems, because there wasn’t any covering for the flanks. But then, why was she showing Lost and I in the first place? She wasn’t the type to tease, knowing full well metal plates would be better protection, a lot better than the useless armor we’d found in the mines.

I looked over at Lost, who had a gigantic grin on her face, almost big enough to rival Praline’s smile. She knew something I didn’t, I just knew it. She matched my gaze and gave a nuzzle.

“You know they’re for us, right?” she asked, her voice playful.

“Welcome to the family.”

“What?”

“Well, at least Lost Art figured it out,” Praline said, snickering. She latched onto my sister and me, pulling us into a gigantic hug. She started talking a faster than I could keep up. “Do you know how hard it was to not tell you this? Mom’s been planning it since we met! She said that you opened the world up to us. It’s very important. Every other time our family and ancestors tried to leave, there was all that radiation. We thought everypony was dead. And then you showed up! And now we know about ponies up top! And we can help others! We can be good ponies and keep others like Jazz from doing terrible things. Don’t you like helping other ponies?”

I stopped her at that point with a hoof over her mouth, trying to put the information into my head in a way I could actually understand. I said, “Yes. We like helping ponies.” I looked to Drop Scone, who nodded.

“She’s right,” the Elder said. “You turned our world upside down. But you grew on me the moment I met you. The zebra, did too. But she’s refused on the grounds of cultural difference.” She stopped to laugh. “She’s a strange one!” She could say that again. “You two, though, you’ve been like family to my foals. When I was told the top was all death, I was scared.” She trotted in a small circle, a nervous look on her face. “Scared that I would lose all of my foals. They’re still just colts and fillies to me, you know. But the outside isn’t all bad. Obviously you two were more than I could ever hope for, given the warnings Xeno gave.”

She walked up to us, and pried Praline off my sister and me. “Praline has grown on you, you’ve helped her hone the skill she wanted to work on for ages,” she continued. “You helped give the Berliners a chance to prove themselves, and gain their cutie marks. You let all of us do some good for ponies everywhere.” She gave her daughter a hug, and looked to Lamington.

“We suffered, Marshmallow Sundae will never fight again. Not with the internal damage... Lamington lost his eye. Praline has shrapnel dug into her side that’ll be there forever. I lost...” She stopped to compose herself. “I lost a son.”

“But you’re gaining two more daughters?” L.A. asked. A confused look crossed her face and she looked side to side. “What about Lemon Tart?”

“Yes,” the Elder answered, “and Lemon Tart has always been a member of the Steel Rangers. Changing chapters isn’t going to take away who she was and make it into something different. She’s welcome with open hooves for everything she has done to keep my family from the brink of disaster.”

“We’d be honored if you were to accept the gracious offer. As my mother has said, Steel breeds Steel,” Lamington said, through surprisingly little static. He reached a leg out and tapped his power armor against my steel hoof. “Steel.”

I lifted the hoof and looked at it for a few seconds. The etchings matched the armor in front of me perfectly. Was this really what they wanted? I asked, “Are you... are you sure?”

“I’m well aware of the monster you defeated. Having you as allies would only help the world around us,” he said, tapping my steel hoof again. “You want it too, don’t you?”

“Yes,” my sister and I both admitted. I wanted to know how Lost felt, and wished I could read her mind. She looked like she was holding her breath, and probably had similar thoughts going through her head. The thought of having a family again was... I couldn’t describe it. It felt both wonderful and terrible at once. The fear of losing them like mom and dad was the first thing I thought of. The joy of having a place to call our own though, it quickly washed away the fear. Maybe, maybe we wouldn’t be together all the time, but they’d always be there for us.

“It would be nice to have a family again,” Lost admitted, her voice shaky.

“You’re already family!” Praline squealed, hugging her tight. “You just can’t say no!” She shifted and stared at us, her eyes welling up with tears.

“Do you think we deserve it?” I asked the Elder, shifting uncomfortably. I wanted to move toward that armor, to take it and hold it forever.

“It’s not about deserving. It’s about bonds,” she answered. “To me, Elder Drop Scone, my foals Star Paladin Lamington, Knight Praline, to all of us...” Her words trailed off. She stepped behind the armor and placed both armor sets on the table over our guns.

“You are family.”

* * *

The Wasteland spread out before me, as far as I could see. The cloud cover hung over the sky oppressively. In a few hours it would be nightfall, and as much as I hated to admit it, that meant it was time to leave. The Stable Sixty Steel Rangers stood scattered before me, doing the last of their preparations. I wasn’t ready for this, but it was happening now or later, and better now when both our groups could still do good in the Wasteland.

“I truly wish you would accompany us,” said Lamington through the static of his helmet. I really wished he’d just keep it off... He spent most of the time standing there overlooking his siblings and making sure they had all that they needed. “There is safety in numbers, and the larger the group we travel with, the more insignificant the chances that we run into any of these Wasteland dangers your xenophobic friend has told us about.”

“We’ve got our own path right now,” I told him, looking over to my sister. I frowned. This was tougher than I’d thought it would be.

Lost was busy saying her goodbyes to Crème. Both mares were holding back tears, as if trying to hide the secret that hopefully only I knew. Being privy to the information though, had me reconsidering the offer to travel with them. I bit my lip and turned back to the power-armored stallion.

“I’d love to, really. Not just for me, for my sister,” I said, pointing discreetly to the embraced mares. A burst of static came from the Star Paladin in response, and he nodded. “We’ve got to finish what we started, do some hunting out there and help some ponies. Split up, we can help more.”

“Mmm, yes, I can understand the logic behind it. I still wish you would travel with the family. We are armed and armored to the proverbial teeth, you know,” he said, lowering his head down to my level. I could see my reflection in his visor. “I’d like you to travel with me...”

Oh Goddesses.

I looked away, at anything to distract myself. The claws were back at full force, digging in to whisper little secrets about what stallions do to mares. I looked to Xeno, sitting atop the cave and staring off into the distance. I looked to Lost, who was helping Crème Brûlée into her power armor. I looked over toward Praline, who was sitting right next to-

I yelped, “Ahh! Praline!” I fell over, tumbling under weight heavier than I was used to. New armor, check, it’s heavy. Pulling myself back to my hooves, I gave the mare a quick hug with my steel hoof. It gave a satisfying clank against her armor. “Don’t sneak up on me like that. You’re weird enough as it is without popping up right behind me.” I couldn’t help but smile at her. Her bounciness had made recovery so much easier.

“I just wanted to give you one last tiny little going away for now because we’ll see each other again real soon present,” she announced, beaming. From the neckline of her power armor she produced several little bits and baubles and passed them to me. I looked down at a small device that looked very similar to the PipBuck, and a slip of paper folded up. “I notice you didn’t have a broadcaster, and I figured that since you’re traveling with Lost and Xeno you might want to share the radio. So you just put this part in here, and the PipBuck should do the rest. Then anything you hear from the PipBuck will come through the broadcaster where everypony can hear it!” As she explained, she was pointing an armored hooftip to different parts. “I don’t know if it’ll work with this model, because all the PipBuck-type stuff built into our power armor was based off internal Ministry of Technology workings.” She clanked a hoof on the design over her flank for emphasis. “It’s not all exactly the same since Stable-Tec and the Ministry of Technology didn’t always see eye to eye. Should be close enough though!”

“Uh huh, what about the paper?” I asked. Another situation where cheater magic would have been perfect, because I couldn’t unfold it with a hoof, and if I used my mouth it might smear whatever was written there. Stupid unicorn cheater magic.

“Instructions!” she practically yelled. With a deep breath, she started again, “I figured that you might need help now and then and that sometimes we might need help.” Lamington scoffed through the static at that. “Anyway, the paper tells you how to use it as a outbound broadcaster. Like the radio, but for us! We can stay up and talk overnight through it.” She giggled. “Ok, maybe not...”

“Okay...” I said, struggling. “Please talk slower on the radio, please.”

“Okay!” she said, grabbing me in a powerful power-armored hug. Then she let go and bounced away.

“I suppose we should take that as the sign it’s time to depart,” said the Star Paladin, clanking his power armor against my hoof again. “Use the provisions we have provided well. They will help more than you realize. Good luck in the Wasteland. I’ll see you again soon.” With that, he turned and walked away, heading to the rest of his family and their adopted doctor. I couldn’t help but blush again.

I already missed all of them. Saying each goodbye had been traumatizing, but by the time I was able to talk to Lamington, I managed to get it under control. With a heavy sigh I turned and trotted to Lost and Xeno. Both were standing ready. Xeno looked almost out of place now, with only her stripes and saddle bag for protection. Her eyes were glazed over and she had a lopsided smile across her muzzle. Lost was nervous, glasses balanced across her nose and armor fastened tightly to her white coat. I thought better than to mention the tear stains down her muzzle.

What we had wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot better. We looked back to the family who started off. A wave from the Berliners, as they tried desperately to double-time it and keep up with the taller ponies, was the last we saw of them. I clicked the broadcaster onto the PipBuck’s radio and turned it on, checked my E.F.S., and looked to the two mares next to me.

“Ready?” I asked.

Lost shifted uncomfortably, stamping her hooves and looked at me. She pulled a laser pistol from her bags, and slid it into the strap holster across one leg. She trailed a forehoof across the other foreleg along the shaped steel. “As I’ll ever be,” she said with a sigh.

“Iam ready to leave as well. Underground, my luck held out well, but soon I must head to my family’s grounds. I would like to inform them of my brothers’ passing,” Xeno said, staring off toward where the sun would be setting.

“We’ll do that soon then, I promise,” said L.A. She looked away from both of us, the direction the Stable Sixty Steel Rangers had left. “Family’s important, after all.” Her voice had a quiet wistfulness to it, digging the point deep into my heart.

“They’re not like the zebra from the War, are they?” I asked, warily trying to change the subject. The last time I met a zebra that wasn’t Xeno, I’d nearly lost some of my organs. The thought of her family or tribe or whatever it was they called themselves all being like that was like walking into a trap. “Mom told us about those kinds of zebras...” Groups of ponies couldn’t be trusted, zebras couldn’t be trusted, could anything be trusted, Mom?

“They have never shot at me before,” she answered with a peculiar stare. “You are my friends now, perhaps mother will tell them to stay their hooves if they wish to attack. I can not ever tell with other zebra. There is a...” Her words broke into her native tongue, spouting gibberish at my sister and me. “I donot know the pony way of saying what I wish to say. I am not like my family.” Her face contorted, showing considerable frustration, but it passed. “My father though, he would be interested to meet ponies I have traveled with.”

“Alright, let’s go. No more silliness,” Lost said, nodding for us to follow. She turned and trotted off quickly, staying ahead of Xeno and me. Her tail and ears drooped down, and her gait was off. I didn’t need to read her mind. I knew what she was thinking. I missed them too.

I lifted the PipBuck and switched it over to the map. Just like the grave where I’d buried Gunbuck, this wasn’t a place I wanted to forget. With a flick of the wheel, I zoomed the map in- A little marker for Stable Sixty was already there, right where the entrance to the cave was. I’d never understand how this little device knew where everything was, but once again I was glad for what it did. Instead, I switched back to the radio, and cranked the volume up. Accompanied by the music of Sapphire Shores, Sweetie Belle, and other long-vanished ponies, the three of us made way toward the town known as Skirt.

* * *

There had to be something good in here. I dug around the trash can again, steel hoof clanging loudly. Realizing the target I was making of myself, I switched to my left forehoof and dug deeper, leaning in until my shoulder was at the rim. I found purchase. There was something down there! I pulled whatever it was into my fetlock and yanked it out.

“Got it!” I announced. Lost just shook her head at me, a small smile spread across her lips. I was a treasure hunter, what did she want from me? I looked down at the prize I’d pulled from the old, dead Equestria. “Cigarettes?” What in th-

The package disappeared from my hoof. What? I looked around frantically. I didn’t smoke, but that was my treasure! Next to my sister stood Xeno, one of the the little white sticks pressed between her lips. It was already lit, and had a half inch of ash.

How did she even do that?

With a wry smirk across her lips, Xeno shifted the cigarette to the corner of her mouth and started off again. Lost followed, and I trailed along after them. My E.F.S. was still empty, just another boring afternoon of boredom. The only thing that had broken the monotony of the day was minor treasure hunting opportunities.

Spying another trash can, I raced over to it and began digging. Treasure! Still a bit sheepish from the lecture Broker gave me, the chance to loot everything that wasn’t nailed down and might have anything of value in it was just what I needed. The PipBuck even labeled, sorted, and priced everything. Nifty little tool from the past. I didn’t know how it instantly knew what everything I found was, but having the information at my disposal would make trading easier later.

I looked to the rifle on my left side, the pristine hunting rifle from the corner of Trifle’s armory. The PipBuck labeled it as ‘Persistence.’ I liked the name; it felt like the name a gun like that should have. I really wished that we’d each gotten a PipBuck from the Stable before mom and dad fled. Having to change the color back every time Lost used it, and being without it at critical moments like the fight with Wirepony were really making me- Paydirt!

An empty Sparkle~Cola bottle and some trash. Well, some treasure was worthless. I popped the bottle into my bags, turned my radio back on, and soldiered on. Anything to pass the time, right now. Still no sign of hostiles. Only the marker for town showed the way. We followed an old road with lots of little spots to dig through for loot, but... It just felt unfulfilling. I looked up at the shattered buildings and sighed.

“We need something we can really hunt through,” I whined above the radio. My ears drooped down and my tail hung low. This was boring. Even a raider attack would at least liven things up a little bit. Conversation. Conversation would keep my mind busy. I looked to Xeno. “So... Do you know how to fight?”

“That is a strange question, Hidden pony,” she said, canting her head to the side and blinking a few times. “I was raised in the Wasteland, much as you ponies constantly remind me. Zahi and Zaki were both trained to deal death from afar. I was not schooled in that, though. In the years that we traveled together, my elder brother did teach me. Iam...” Her speech dove into her native tongue and I just rolled my eyes. “What is the pony word for good enough?”

“Passable? Acceptable? Good enough works too,” Lost answered dismissively, joining our conversation. “Does that mean you can help us fight from now on?” She stopped and turned toward the zebra mare, looking over the rim of her glasses. “We made a mistake. I’m sorry about your brothers. We’re better off if you help though, and we put all the shit that happened behind us. You obviously want to travel with us, or you’d have left. Neither of us are holding you down here.” She pointed to me, then back at herself. Her voice bitter, she continued, “The least you could do is watch our backs in a fight instead of sitting and watching.”

Oh dear, this wasn’t gonna go well. Lost normally wasn’t so snappy. I should’ve noticed something was off when she wasn’t helping me dig through old trash cans. Normally we worked as a team, but I was so wrapped up in my own head that I hadn’t thought of her. Something was eating at her, I had an inkling but... Maybe I should just ask?

“Iam aware. I donot begrudge you ponies. I would have done the same. You have not asked for assistance in fighting,” Xeno explained, tilting her head to the other side. She raised an eyebrow and continued. “The way you ponies have acted, in the face of death. It is peculiar. You throw yourselves at it with, with...” She pursed her lips and frowned, looking away from my sister for a moment. She spit the cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. “I donot like your language. It is, a word that means...” She shuffled her hoof across the dirt and tapped a few times, frustrated.

“I sacrifice myself to try and save my sister,” I answered for her. “I run to death in an effort to save another. C’mon, we’re losing daylight.” I started walking again, wanting to at least walk and talk.

“Yes, this isnot only a pony thing. You wish to help alone, to bear the burden. My tribe does the same, we try to save many, losing as few as possible. Iam not strong, my brothers tried to save me. They failed,” she said, solemnly. With a sigh she followed.

“Well, you’re still alive. And we’ll go visit your parents one day as soon as we get finished with this adventure we’re on. So, you’re alive and traveling, learning... did they really fail?” Lost asked, smiling at the zebra. The bitterness in her voice had passed, which was a welcome relief.

Xeno nodded. She looked back and forth between Lost and I, before finally giving in to a small smile.

As we talked, we rounded a street corner and kept on toward the marker on the E.F.S. Ahead loomed a large building mostly untouched by the destruction around us. I grinned, distracted from the conversation. This was where we’d hunt, get our spirits up, and then go help ponies.

“We’re friends Xeno, we’re going to help you as long as you stay with us. Your... Whatever it is you make has helped us a lot, and we’ve tried to keep you safe. We work together,” I said, offering my flesh hoof.

Xeno pressed hers against mine, and I smiled.

“Friends, yes,” she replied. “Iwill also fight, but... Iam not good at the fighting you do, ponies. Iwill do as my elder brother taught me, and fight from a distance.” She pointed to the sniper rifle on my side. “That would be the preferred way for me to asset you.”

Without argument, I unhitched it from the battle saddle and passed it to her. Not wanting to be unprepared in a fight, I reattached the shotgun opposite my hunting rifle.

Xeno stood on her hind legs effortlessly and took the weapon. Placing her hooves on the trigger and barrel, she looked almost like the zebra I’d gunned down only a week ago. From her bag she pulled a small knife striped in a similar design to her coat. She slid it into the loop of her saddlebag within easy reach and walked off. Wherever she’d hid that, it must have been good.

“Iwill be watching, ponies,” Xeno said, placing another lit cigarette into her mouth. “Iwill subject that you stay near a window. And hope that luck other than mine is with you.” She walked off, a little trail of smoke following her.

Seriously, how had she lit that? I hadn’t taken my eyes off of her, but there it was, lit and in her hoof somehow.

Zebras freaked me the fuck out.

* * *

Going back to our roots, even if only for a quick stop on the mane journey, was a breath of foul, dusty, irradiated air. We made our way to the only building that still had an actual roof on it. The door was open, and the two of us wordlessly slipped into the darkness of the building. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the ancient lighting that somehow still functioned, I went on the lookout for anything that might be valuable to somepony. I promised myself that if we were ever allowed back into Pommel Falls, I was gonna load so much treasure onto Broker’s counter he’d owe me caps for the rest of his life.

I saw no immediate signs of life inside, but remembering I had the PipBuck this time, I checked the E.F.S. Red everywhere. Now, why hadn’t it showed any of that on the walk up? It would’ve been nice to know what we were getting into.

I nudged my sister, “Lots of red in here,” I told her. “Let’s keep quiet and hope for the best.” I checked the guns on my side, Persistence on the left and the shotgun I had now attached to the right. Everything was loaded. I really hoped it was just a few Radroaches.

The ruined lobby of the building didn’t hold much. The room was trashed, with rubble from the ceiling littering the floor, and trash everywhere. Ancient graffiti, smeared in faded red paint covered the walls. It was horribly obscene but worth a chuckle. Even though the building had survived the megaspells and balefire that erased Equestria, time had ruined the place. A shame, too, it looked like they’d been having a party, what with the red streamers hanging from the ceiling. I flicked away some plaster and found a few caps on the counter. After some hunting, I filled my bags with various knick knacks. Silently, Lost and I went through the door on the right side of the lobby, into a little office room full of cubicles. There we did the same, looting every desk we could reach while avoiding the ruin and rubble. I kept an eye on the E.F.S. the whole time, watching the little red markers move back and forth. They must have been very active Radroaches...

“...getting sick of this shit,” said a voice from the next room, “Fuckin’ kill somethin’ the next chance I...”

Shit! Lost shot me a terrified look, then crouched down behind one of the desks. I followed her example. We watched over the edge as a tattered-looking, definitely not-Radroach mare walked past the doorway and out of sight again.

“PipBuck says red,” I muttered under my breath.

“Too good to be true, wasn’t it?” L.A. whispered to me. She pulled the laser pistol from the strap it was held in and leveled it off at the door. “Do you think we should leave, or kill her?”

“Let’s just keep sneaking around for now,” I answered. “She didn’t notice us. There’s other rooms we can check, and then get out. I’ll keep my hoof quiet.” I beckoned her toward the door we’d come in through. She agreed, and we walked back into the lobby. I walked on three hooves to keep quiet, which was easier said than done, but I managed. We made it through the lobby and across to the far room. I checked the E.F.S. again, but didn’t see anything. It was probably safe.

With her laser pistol at the ready, Lost pushed open the lobby’s far door and looked in. Her eyes went wide and she pulled the door shut with her magic as fast as she could. She looked back at me and said, “Hidden, these are very bad raiders.”

Now I had to know. Pushing past her, I looked in the room. Blood smeared the walls and pooled on the floor. The rest of the building didn’t scream ‘this place is full of murderous psychopaths,’ but this room certainly did. Pony heads sat on a table in the corner, each wide eyed and mouths pinned into smiling positions. There was a pile of... meat, that looked like somepony slept in it.

The sight of ponies strung up against the wall sent me over the edge. They were pulled apart with chains and hooks holding their legs spread wide. Slowly, I turned and looked at the ceiling behind me. Those... weren’t... Oh, Goddesses. I recoiled, the claws coming back in full force.

Dammit, I was past that! That didn’t matter, the digging in my mind told me that it could’ve been me there, ripped open by Wirepony and spread apart for all to see and fuc-

“Don’t think about it,” I whispered to myself as I closed the door, my hoof shaking. Leaning against the wall, I looked at my sister. “Okay! Raiders, raiders... They sure know how to hide it,” I said, pushing myself up and moving for the front door. I wanted out, I didn’t want that to be me. I had enough problems now, and I didn’t need inspiration.

Across the floor in front of the door were criss-crossed wires, leading to shotguns against the wall. How in the Goddesses’ names had we missed those? We might have missed them on the way in, but only by sheer luck. Thank you, Xeno. Even knowing about them, we’d probably trip them trying to escape. I checked the E.F.S. The red bars moved more, and in a more organized fashion, too. Definitely not Radroaches. “C’mon,” I whispered. “Treasure’s not worth it.”

One of the red markers moved closer to the center of my vision. No time to get out; if we left, they would hear the door. “We need to hide!” I whispered frantically. We moved behind the counter and laid low, as the E.F.S. marker moved off to the side.

Whistling came from the room we’d just been in, followed by a scraggly looking pink mare. She wore horrible ‘armor,’ that looked like she’d cobbled it together from leather strips, old dishes, and too much rust. She trotted through the lobby with a pistol held in telekinesis above her. She walked right past us, apparently not noticing us hidden behind the lobby’s counter

Breathing a sigh of relief, both Lost and I peeked over the counter to see where she was going. Without breaking her step, she pushed through the door into the body-filled room, and disappeared from sight.

I pulled up the map program on the PipBuck, suddenly worried. Somehow, it had a layout, albeit incomplete, of the building. Just the three rooms I’d looked in, actually. The room the Raider had gone into had no other exits.

“She’s going to come back out, there’s no other way for her to leave,” I said, gently biting on the bit to my battle saddle. I wished my guns were silenced.

A flash lit up the entire room.

What was that flash? I looked around, confused. It flashed again. Looking down, I pleaded with the Goddesses. Please no. The PipBuck screen flashed bright green again. I started jabbing buttons, trying to get the flashing to stop. She could come back through at any-

The door swung open again and the pink mare trotted into the room, her legs and side smeared with blood. Stable-Tec, why don’t these come with instructions? I kept hitting buttons, trying desperately to turn the light off. I even moved the PipBuck so the screen was blocked by the counter, trying to make the flash less obvious. The screen flashed again and the mare stopped. Not good enough apparently! She looked at us, and I hit another button.

“Hidden! Lost!” yelled a familiar voice.

Fuck! Praline, you have the worst timing!

“I never got a chance to test the...” I didn’t hear the rest, as the lobby counter exploded from semi-automatic pistol fire. I slammed the PipBuck and the radio cut out again.

The mare fired blindly, looking toward the room we’d just looted. Grinning wickedly, she yelled, “Fresh meat, fucker-” A half-dozen beams of pink magical energy lanced through her from Lost’s gun, loud PLZ-OWs filling the room. She dropped to the ground, flinching.

My E.F.S. jumped to life, the red markers suddenly jerking about. Screams and taunts echoed through the building. I looked over at Lost. We were dangerously outnumbered and, and- She looked like she’d just seen the ghost of our mother. The laser pistol clattered to the floor and she turned to face me, her eyes welling up with tears.

“There’s a difference between murder and self-defense! Remember,” I said, practically pleading. “Keep it together! We’re outnumbered. I need you.”

“When I find you, I’ll kill you!” yelled a stallion, far too happily, from somewhere. Yup, definitely raiders.

I picked up Lost’s gun and passed it to her. She grabbed it in her telekinesis, still looking shocked. Together we stood, preparing for what was about to happen. Two raiders burst into the room and I chomped down on the battle saddle’s bit. Persistence fired twice at my side, echoing loud BANGs off the walls of the lobby. One of the raiders dropped from two bullets in his chest.

Damnit, Persistence fired too fast. I looked at Lost, who stood there. The other raider shot with the rusted revolver in her mouth. She got off two shots before I could take her down, peppering her chest and leg with three more bullets from Persistence.

The first bullet from the second raider’s pistol clipped Lost’s neck, just above her new armor. The other dug past her face, leaving a gouge along the right side of her muzzle. She shouted. With blood pouring down her face and neck, she leapt over the counter and bolted through the door into the room we’d searched first.

“Wait, sis!” I yelled, giving chase. By the time I got through the door into the room, she was already halfway through the next room. She was levitating a second pistol and completely ignored my yelling. This was bad, the E.F.S. showed more raiders than we could handle with just the two of us.

“Find you, I’ll ki-” yelled somepony, his voice silenced mid-sentence by a loud echoing PLZ-OW from Lost’s laser pistol. The sound of hooves on the cracked floor followed, as L.A. bolted away. I tried to catch up, but she was already too far ahead of me, around another corner in the ruined building. Without any idea where she’d gone, there was no way for me to catch up.

I swiveled my ears around, listening for her telltale PLZ-OW to help locate her. The E.F.S. wasn’t showing her marker anymore, it was lost in a sea of red. I turned a corner in another room, hoping it was the right direction. Collapsed sections forced me to weave through cubicles and around desks. I ignored bloody mattresses, filth, and the potential for treasure as I searched for my sister. Not good, not good... Which way did she go? I spied a pile of pink dust. That way! I ran through the doorway.

Somepony screamed above the clatter of hooves and the din of gunfire. It wasn’t Lost’s voice, though. I heard a soft bang, as if it was far far away. Maybe Xeno had gotten one of them? It was too far away to have come from inside the building.

A scraggly mare ran into the room where I stood. She didn’t see me, as I was standing still and listening for some key as to which way to go, and I didn’t wait for her to. She’d contributed to the gore I’d seen, she’d been a part of the group that sent L.A. off on a laser rampage. I took my frustrations out on her. I slid into S.A.T.S., ready this time for the spell’s effects. Maybe I felt a bit sadistic, but... I needed a release, so I targeted her leg first, then her head. Executing the spell, I blew the leg off, turning it into a fine red mist, then ended the evil pony’s life. It felt better, making the Wasteland safer. Hero work.

I ran after Lost again, heading the opposite direction. If that pony had made it past L.A., it was a miracle, but more than likely it just meant Lost hadn’t been there yet. So I tried a different direction, and hauled flank down another corridor. I stomped hard with the steel hoof, cracking the weathered tiles, trying to get raiders to notice me and not my wounded sister.

I skidded to a stop in front of another collapsed section of the ceiling. Prancing on worried hooves, I looked around. Which way did she go from here? The red markers were disappearing one by one, with repeated echoes of PLZ-OW announcing each raider’s death. Just how many of these bastards were there? Making a split-second choice, I ran up the chunk of ceiling. If there were other collapsed sections, I could head her off or get a better vantage.

I felt two thuds on my chest, as bullets ricocheted off the steel armor, hit by shots fired by a sickly-looking raider. Thank you, Steel Rangers. The stallion lay on the ground, with a hole through his spine. His back and flanks were covered in blood, with his rear legs were splayed behind him, unmoving. Shattered window too... Xeno’s work? Headshot, next time, zebra! Headshot!

I sidestepped as he fired again and bit down on my battle saddle’s bit. I fired the shotgun again, and the raider’s head and neck blossomed open with a flourish of blood. I fired a second volley to be sure. Less red on the E.F.S. was good, but this maze was killing me.

I ran through rooms, ducking and weaving. Raider. Fire. Blood. I didn’t have time to pay attention to each pony I killed; I had to find Lost. I saw a flash of purple through a huge crack in the floor, followed by several more PLZ-OWs and a scream. That time it was hers! No! I had to get down there. I spun and ran back the way I came, back to the collapsed section.

Three raiders, looking slightly less starved, met me as I ran, blocking my path back down. I shot one on reflex. She collapsed down the broken floor. Bullets dug into my leg, hitting right between the PipBuck and the end of the armor. Well, it wasn’t perfect. I turned tail and ran. I needed to reload before I could keep fighting. One raider tagged me in the side. I ran through the pain.

Buck would really help right now! I tried my best to ignore the pain. It wasn’t as bad as losing the hoof, but pain lanced up my side and dug at my mind. I could fight through this, I was stronger than it! I kicked my lever to reload. Running, I tried to find a good spot. Maneuvering in the new armor wasn’t easy.

I burst through another doorway to the open air. This part of the building had collapsed and made a balcony of the old rooms. I couldn’t tell if I was above the entrance or where I was, but it was as good a place-

The wall next to me exploded, showering me with drywall and rotten wood.

What the fuck was that?! It came from... I heard another distant bang. Xeno. I was not one of the raiders! Trigger-happy luck-obsessed zebra!

An earth pony mare stormed onto the balcony opposite me. What little of the exterior wall remained suddenly gave way. It collapsed and smashed onto the raider, knocking her pistol onto the floor and nearly crushing her. I shot her in time with the distant bang. One less raider to rape and pillage others.

Then the two raiders I’d left behind caught up with me. The first one got another shot on me, but it ricocheted harmlessly off the steel armor. The second pony to come out the door didn’t last as long. His head exploded as another sniper bullet tore through him. Better luck that time, Xeno! The muted bang from the distance distracted the other raider just long enough. I finally remembered that S.A.T.S. was recharged, and queued it up.

I targeted both the raider’s forelegs and let loose. Persistence blasted her knees from dingy coat and ramshackle armor to open wounds and shattered bone. She collapsed right as another bullet dug into the wall behind her. Sniping really wasn’t Xeno’s strong suit. That shot was so far off it would’ve missed even if the raider hadn’t collapsed. I finished off the raider with two shots to the head.

In the relative safety of Xeno’s scope, I took a sip of one of the something-or-other brews she’d cooked up and waited for the familiar flesh knitting sensation. I left the three corpses on the Wasteland-made balcony, and dove back into the building, following the PLZ-OW sound. It was difficult, as Lost’s pistol was probably the quietest thing in the building. More raiders screamed colorful phrases and shattered the air with gunfire. I skewed my ears around, listening. Why wasn’t Lost’s green marker on my E.F.S.? With a heavy sigh, I bolted for the next room. Stairs, perfect. I ran down and rounded the corner.

My sister was through the doorway, covered in blood and bullet holes. Her armor was dented all to pieces too. She looked ragged. Did we have any healing potions, anything from Xeno left? I ran inside, calling to her. She turned and leveled both of her guns at me, then stopped. Thank the Goddesses she wasn’t too far gone. I heard a noise beside me.

Splayed on the floor was a wounded unicorn raider mare. She lifted a gun in her magic and aimed it at my sister. Nope! I slammed my steel hoof into her head, aiming directly for her horn. There was a satisfying crack and she went limp. The giant dent I left in her head meant she wouldn’t get back up any time soon.

There was one last red marker on my E.F.S. I looked over at Lost, and to the pony body lying between us. Last one. She just stared back, breathing heavily and still holding her guns in her telekinesis, despite the strained look on her face. Why in the Goddesses name wasn’t her green marker in the corner of my vision? I stomped the last raider with the steel hoof, particularly glad now that I’d gotten it from Praline. The raider crunched underhoof. Wait. Already dead? Why was the red- Oh, no, there was the little green marker floating in the corner of my vision like always. Weird.

“They’re all gone, Lost,” I said, taking a cautious step forward. I’d never seen my sister like that before, and she still had both guns pointed right at me. “Are you okay?...”

Mouthing something incoherent, Lost relaxed and slumped to the floor. Her pistols clattered onto the floor the second she released her telekinetic grip on them. In a puddle of her own blood, she sobbed like a foal.

I took one last look around for danger, then joined her. She just leaned her head against me, and let the tears flow. I didn’t say anything. I just hugged her head and let her get it all out. I pulled out the remainder of Xeno’s little healing potion-thing and made Lost drink it before she bled out. With that many bullets buried in her, I was worried about letting her do any healing herself.

She resisted, instead standing and pushing me back. Her horn glowed bright, and her wounds began to widen and bleed. Staring wide eyed, I whispered, “What are you doing?” I needed to heal her, not let her hurt herself worse!

A gob of red dropped from Lost’s neck and hit the floor with a tunk. A bullet. Several more bullets followed, all worming their way from inside her and out to falling to the ground. Her horn glowed even brighter, a second haze of light covering the first. Without the bullets in her, she healed the holes in an instant.

I could only stare in rapt wonder at what she’d done. “Where’d you learn that trick!” I demanded. Sure, she was still covered in fresh blood, and her armor would need to be pounded back into shape, but she was bullet-free.

Why didn’t she know that trick when Doctor Grinder was pulling lead out of me with his teeth? I frowned, but was happy deep down. She was okay.

“Doctor,” she said, her voice cracking, “Plagueheart taught me.” With another sigh, she collapsed back into the puddle of blood and bullets. She looked up at me, new tears falling from her eyes. What happened to set her off like that? Was it getting shot in the throat again, or something...

“Want to talk about it?” I asked, sitting across from her. When she didn’t answer, I continued. “We’re a team, sis. That’s how we do things, that’s how we’ve always done things. That’s how we killed Wirepony, that’s how we survive. You need to tell me what’s going on up there.” I tapped her forehead gently.

“They shot me,” she said, staring past me. “They fucking shot me!” she screamed, bringing her hooves up to hold her throat, “I don’t like being shot!” Her face twisted in rage for only a second, before she broke down again. We moved closer and I held her, ignoring the blood and gore around us. She cried again, whimpering every so often about the pain.

Part of me wanted to punch her again. Just like when she’d gotten shitface drunk, it was about her. I didn’t want to be bitter; she’d done so much for me in the past week, and she deserved just as much focus as I did. But, still, I raised my steel hoof in front of her face. “Trust me, there’s worse things that can happen than getting yourself shot,” I told her.

She blushed, and forced herself to stop crying with a loud sniffle. Progress. At the very least, it was a step forward. I packed up her guns, one of them burnt out from overuse, and helped her clean up. As we recovered, we turned to looting the bodies and our surroundings. I had more to say to her, but I could multitask. She didn’t say anything, just put her weapons back where they belonged, and helped with other corpses. She looked blank as she worked, barely even blinking.

“Why’d you lock up?” I finally asked. “We could have ambushed them, we had the perfect spot for it.” I pulled off one of the body’s armor. An inhaler fell to the floor. Eugh, this one had a Dash addiction. Despite my dislike for the drug, I put all of them I could find into my bag. “You just... froze. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, putting something into her bags from another raider’s body. She turned away from me to dig at another corpse.

“We need to talk about it,” I said, staring at her. “One of us could have died. This is the Wasteland we’re talking about! Not old Equestria Mom used to tell us about. It’s not safe.” Yes, I was a hypocrite. But that was different; I’d told her I had a plan! And it had totally worked out in the end, too.

“Every pony we’d killed before today was a stallion,” she explained. Why did that matter? Bad ponies were bad ponies. This was self-defense in the end, it wasn’t like we went looking for random ponies to kill. “All I could see was Mom,” said said, turning to face me, “and you. And Crème Brûlée...” That explained it. “And Praline! A-and Drop Scone,” she added after the briefest of pauses. She didn’t look me in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not wanting to admit how much I knew.

“I just! All I could see was all of you, every mare that’s ever been important to me lying there in a heap. Remember when I almost died? You felt the same way, didn’t you? That’s why you shot without thinking. We handle things differently, sis. Sometimes I just... I need time to process things!” She said, panting a little. She went back to looting bodies, and we moved to another room.

“I couldn’t think,” Lost continued. “I just moved. Something took over and I just ran. Shot, killed, didn’t think. Just had to take them out. They hurt me, Hidden, they...” She sighed, tossing some trash from another raider away. “They hurt.” She put a hooftip to her throat, and stared off past me. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” I asked, turning to look in the same direction she was.

She didn’t answer, just trotted forward to one of the desks in the room we’d wandered into. Nestled behind the broken terminal atop it, lay a little crystal sphere. “What’s this, then?” she asked, pulling it into view and holding it up.

“Stop changing the subject, and I don’t know,” I chided. I took the little orb from her and put it into my bag. Let the auto-sorter deal with it. We could sell it later. “That’s not like you, that’s... that’s like me! You’re the smart sister, the one who deals with terminals and other thinky pony things! I’m the one who runs off without thinking about it.” I checked the PipBuck inventory, “And it’s a memory orb. Wait haven’t we seen those before?” At least now I knew what they were called.

“Hidden, I don’t want to talk about it right now, maybe later,” she said, trotting out of the room. “We found one a few years back, remember?” she yelled back. “We didn’t know what it was, so we left it.”

We only had one more room left to loot, and then we’d regroup with Xeno. A quick scroll through the PipBuck revealed quite a haul. The raiders actually had a rather healthy supply of old world food, and a few less-than-deadly scavenged foodstuffs from the Wasteland. The guns that weren’t trashed were stashed in the bottom of my bags, and every last bullet we could find was packed in with them. Raider armor was left, because the last thing we wanted was to look like raiders while traveling. That was a good way to scare off a merchant... Knives were packed in with the ammo, but larger melee weapons I left. It was a good thing I could carry pretty much anything. At least we earth ponies were good for something, even if it was just heavy lifting. Most of what we’d found was worthless to us, but we could trade all that away. Apparently the raiders had been into some pretty hardcore drugs, which just meant more Buck for me...

I was tempted to swallow a pill right then and there, but we weren’t in a fight, and I didn’t want to deal with the withdrawal later. I should have taken one at the beginning of this whole mess. I trotted after her, asking, “Do you promise? I told you all the stuff I had going on.”

“Yeah, but not when it happened. It took a near death experience for you to tell me,” she said, giving me a little glare. She smiled though, and tossed me a Sparkle~Cola. “Here, my bags are full. You get this one. Now what’s a memory orb?”

“I don’t know? Ahh!” I caught the drink in my mouth. Part of me was tempted to drink it right away, so she couldn’t snag it from me later, but instead I put it in my bag next to the orb. “We’ll figure it out tonight. Can you at least promise that we’ll talk later about what’s getting to you?”

“I promise. I’ll tell you as soon as I’m ready,” she answered. “Let’s get out of here before it starts to smell.” She flashed a grin at me, her horn starting to glow. “Look what I found!” She hoisted a pair of glasses, almost identical to her broken pair, into the air from the desk she’d been digging through. She slid them onto the bridge of her muzzle, looked around the edges of the rims, then directly through. “I can see perfectly through them too. Lucky!”

We shared a shrug and left the building, skipping the raider’s little bloodsoaked break room. Lost used her magic to rip up the traps guarding the door, though she made the guns unusable in the process. Still, they had ammo we could take, and that was just as good of treasure as anything else. Getting back to basics felt good, even if it had ended in a bloodbath. I looked down at the PipBuck as we left, wondering just what was going on with my E.F.S.

* * *

Together my sister and I walked towards the rubble of the city, away from the nightmare raider den. I passed the PipBuck to Lost as we moved. I’d had it for days, so it was her turn to wear it, and my leg was getting chafed anyway. We just needed to regroup with our zebra friend and-

And just where was she?

“Xeno!” I yelled to the Wasteland.

“Xeno, come on. We know you were over here!” L.A. yelled, holding a hoof to her mouth.

She had to be over here, this was where all the shots had come from. I looked back at the building we’d come from to double check. The collapsed section of wall she’d shot out was right there, as well as the fresh blood splatter from her shots. We were in the right place, but where was she?

“Hidden, come here,” Lost said, waving me over. She stared up at the second floor of another blown-out building, looking a bit pale. “Isn’t that blood?” She pointed a hoof to a blood splatter on the wall, barely visible. The inside wall of the building, just past the broken window frame, had a deep red tinge to it.

We ran around, looking for a way up. Finding a crumbling staircase to the second floor, we scrambled up it as quick as possible. Lying in a pool of blood was the slumped corpse of a raider mare. We looked side to side, but saw no sign of the zebra. The sniper rifle wasn’t there either. In the corpse’s stomach was Xeno’s striped knife, covered in blood.

“Where is she then?” I asked, looking back and forth again.

“Hold on, there's an amber blip over in that direction, lets go see if its her,” L.A. said, grabbing the knife in her magic. Pulling it free, she flicked it through the air to clean it of blood. She turned and walked back down the stairs. “Guess she really meant fighting from a distance. Let’s just hope she’s okay...” She tucked the knife into her bag for safekeeping.

We both hauled flank toward the marker on the E.F.S., fearing the worst. If any of the raiders from inside were out here, patrolling around... I didn’t want to think about it. I feared the worst. Raiders were rapists and murderers. I rounded the corner of a trashed building and-

“Hello ponies,” said the zebra. She sat right around the corner, close enough that I couldn’t stop and ran into her.

We toppled over in a pile of stripes, hooves, steel, and guns. Lost snickered a little at my expense. It took a moment, but the two of us untangled from one another and stood.

“What was that all about?” I asked, my panic slowly fading. Whatever had the zebra so far away and hidden...

“I moved,” she said matter of factly. She pointed to the sniper rifle that was lying in pieces before her. “My brothers taught me to move often. Weapons that fire great distances are not suited for close fighting. I did not want to be found.”

“What about the knife?” Lost asked, pulling it out. She floated it over to the zebra, who took it in her mouth and put it away.

“One of the raider ponies wandered closer to my location then I felt comfortable. It tookyou long enough to find. I left it as a marker,” the zebra answered. “We must make time, I wish to finish your adventure. You have promised we will visit my home, and Iam excited for a home coming.”

“Whoa whoa, wait... ‘tookyou?’” L.A. asked her, raising an eyebrow. “‘Tookyou’ isn’t a word.”

“You ponies explained a contraction to me. That was the word, correct?” Xeno asked, raising her eyebrow at my sister. “This is a contraction.”

“No, you can’t just combine any words you want,” I explained, shaking my head. “There are very specific words that you can combine. ‘I am’ becomes ‘I’m,’ ‘You are’ becomes ‘you’re,’ ‘we are’ becomes ‘we’re.’ Pronouns and … Oh I don’t know how to explain this.” I hit myself in the face with a hoof in my frustration. The steel hoof.

By the time my headache cleared up, Lost had finished explaining things to Xeno, so everything was sorted. I nodded, head throbbing, and we collected our things and left. I was a better grammar teacher while doubled over in pain, it seemed.

* * *

Another boring trip. We walked in a brisk pace toward the marker for Skirt. It wasn’t terribly long, and we were able to arrive well before dark. Still, going into a new town with no information was something I’d told myself I wasn’t going to do anymore. And going in right before it was time to sleep, where we wouldn’t be able to see a thing in the dark, was even less smart. This was just getting more and more dangerous.

“What dangers do you think this town will hold?” Lost asked me, as if she were reading my mind. She looked over the frames of her glasses. “And what’s that?”

No sooner did the words slip her lips, then whatever ‘that’ was landed right in front of us. It took a moment for the dust to clear, but when it did, I saw something I’d thought would never grace the Wasteland again. I’d seen pictures, heard the stories from mom, but they could never do justice to the pony that stood before me.

Standing in front of us was a gorgeous, blue-coated pony. She dwarfed the three of us completely, with long, beautiful legs, a slim figure, and giant wings. With intense, dark blue eyes, she stared down at the three of us. The weirdest thing though, was the giant rod of steel stuck diagonally through her head just under her long, slender horn.

“We- Welcome you,” she said in a booming voice.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: “Party” Pony – With this perk, you are much less likely to be addicted to delicious, delicious chems (50% less likely, actually), and suffer ½ the withdrawal time as a normal pony.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Sharpshooter (Rank 1) – Scopes are just as good as glasses right? This perk gives you an increase of +2 Perception for determining how far you can shoot. Or it increases your damage on closer targets... One of the two.

“So, we’re skipping lessons on pony language now?”
“Do you think that is something the reader would prefer to read about?”
“Well, probably not. It’s boring, and not very interesting.”
“I’m sure, instead of boring lessons, bathroom breaks, and uninteresting meals, readers prefer to read about action!”
“Or.. Our sex lives... Right, Lost?”
“Shut up, Hidden!”

Chapter 9: Sanctuary

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Chapter Nine: Sanctuary
“The Wasteland runs on ponies, exploring, trading, living. Without ponies, the Wasteland is just land. Ponies are what make it special.”

Goddess.

Never in my life did I ever think I would see a real-life, honest-to-goodness Goddess. She welcomed us with open hooves, leading us to the city. I smiled, looking up at her. It wasn’t fair that she had wings and a horn, but she was divine. I didn’t question her strange eyes, either. Slit pupils were a bit weird to me, but who was I to complain about the appearance of a supreme being? Maybe she was related to the Goddess Luna, she was supposed to look similar. And with the blue coat, and blue and purple mane, she could...

“We-” she said, “are always looking to welcome new ponies to Our- town. We- believe that any pony who has travelled here past so many dangers is worthy of joining the Unity that We- have created. We- would be honored if you were to stay the night.” She smiled, and waved a hoof toward the city before us.

I wondered about the steel rod through her skull. She didn’t seem to notice it as we walked. Her blue and purple mane fell around it, obscuring a large portion of the actual metal. None of us mentioned it, we just kept silent and listened as we walked to the city. It was just how Lost and I were raised, I guessed, and it fit Xeno rather well, to say nothing; she was just staying true to herself. Every so often the Goddess would shake her mane, looking like she had a bad itch to get rid of, then continue walking.

Seeing so much intact was breathtaking. Unlike the ruins around Leathers, and everything we’d seen on the way here, this town looked normal. In the mountains there wasn’t as much direct damage from the megaspells, thanks to the natural protections they offered. I could see dozens of ponies milling around, going about their daily lives, almost as if Equestria had never been nuked into a Wasteland.

We trotted through the street, flanked on one side by an apartment building that still had windows. On the other side was something that had probably once been a park. Where we were now was bustling with life, and walking in the company of a Goddess, we were probably as safe as we could ever be.

Through the windows, I saw lights. Nice ones, not like the barely function lights in the raider hideout. A shop door opened to let a stallion enter, and through it, the voice of the DJ on the radio called out “up at Shattered Hoof from being ens-” before the door slammed shut again. I made a mental note to flick on the radio sometime to hear more from that DJ.

I could smell somepony, somewhere cooking something, which actually made me laugh. We had to fight our way here, and these ponies were so relaxed that they could afford to spend the time to cook a decent meal. It was almost like somepony had taken the homeliness of Stable Sixty and put it in this little town. Were it not for the obvious wear of two centuries, I would have sworn I was back in Equestria before the war destroyed it.

“Wow,” L.A. said, her mouth hanging open, “everything here is so intact and preserved!” She admired the buildings and sights with a huge smile across her face. Looked back and forth a few times, she furrowed her brow. Finally she whispered quiet enough I had to strain to hear her, “Not much to look at, though...”

Raising an eyebrow, I gave the town a once-over as well. Ponies in the street, trotting from place to place. None particularly attractive, I guessed? Some wore saddlebags, looking like they had places to go. Others seemed to walk happily, giant smiles plastered on their muzzles. It seemed like a nice little town.

After a long pause, the Goddess looked down at my sister, and blinked. “We- have spent much time working to make the city habitable. We- wish it to be a safe haven for the future. There are many dangers in the Wasteland, Our- Unity shall be protected,” she explained, her voice straining, hitching every so often. “Through talks with outsiders, We- are aware of what other cities and towns are like, ones that have sprung without Our- influence. We- will bring Unity to all ponies so that there may be peace and survival. Perhaps you will meet Our- ally, travel with her, and learn for yourself.”

She led us down the main street and toward a large building with a sign hanging from its front which read ‘Town Hall’ in faded paint. It sat atop a hill at the edge of town, overlooking a dried lake and the ‘park.’ Several smaller houses surrounded it on either side, dotted alongside the cracked streets.

“Willnot that make this city a target? You have many stallions, and you are secluded. This is good, but it is not enough?” Xeno asked, with no special respect given to the Goddess before us. She was right, there were a lot of stallions. Xeno wasn’t looking at the townsponies though, instead she stared at the taller winged unicorn, eyeing her up and down several times. If I was flanked by another lesbian...

“There is nothing for you to fear, We- have everything under control,” the Goddess responded flatly, turning down a side street. She began walking toward the abandoned street across the way.

We silently followed her. It struck me that we didn’t know what to call her, or where to even begin finding out why Gunbuck had this place listed on the PipBuck. I trotted ahead, intend to ask her about the town and if ponies might need help. Before I could get a word out, I heard the Pipbuck start to click. My skin crawled, my ears twitched, and I looked all around, searching for a sign of the deadly radiation. A few steps more and the slow nagging click went haywire, barraging us with a constant CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK!

Even with Lost wearing the PipBuck, the clicking was so loud it sounded like it was pressed to my head. The clicking came so rapidly that it was less a click and more of a perilous growl. The warning came too late for me to stop. A wave of sickness washed over me before I could even brace myself. If the radiation in the mines had been bad, this was catastrophic. I doubled over in pain, clutching my stomach. I tasted something coppery, and backpedaled as quickly as I could. It was powerful radiation, and without serious protection, I’d be dead in minutes.

The Goddess continued walking as if nothing affected her. Xeno walked on as well, ignoring the sickness that struck me. I held back the vomit and watched as the zebra finally realized we’d stopped, and trotted back toward us.

Lurching forward, I grabbed at my barrel with my steel hoof. It hurt, slamming the metal into my side, but it was nothing compared to what the radiation was doing inside. I dry heaved, fighting the urge to vomit.

“Hidden!” Lost yelped, grabbing me. She pulled me back past whatever invisible threshold I’d crossed, and dug out a spare RadAway. “Are you okay?”

“Mmhmm... perfectly fine, thank you,” I muttered, nodding to her. I took the RadAway, and downed the entirety of it in a single gulp. The aftertaste wasn’t anywhere near as bad this time. Worth it, to save my life. Just what was in that side of town? Probably lots, since nopony without a death wish would go over there. Part of me wanted to put on the radiation suit and go treasure hunting, just to find out what was left, but the smarter part reminded me that even with RadSafe, the suit, and a constant stream of RadAway I doubted I’d find anything.

It begged the question though, of why the town was in such a position. Ponies living normal lives, so close to danger that an accidental misstep could send them to their death. Looking side to side, I checked for a marker, a sign, anything to warn that this was dangerous ground. The Goddess might claim that it was safe and unified. I didn’t quite believe her, because any town that didn’t warn about local radiation was asking for trouble.

We all backed away as a group.

“Um, miss Goddess, we can't follow you, there's too much radiation here,” L.A. said, yelling just loud enough to get the Goddess’ attention. She draped a hoof over me and pulled me close, a worried frown spreading across her lips.

Turning slowly, the Goddess ahead of us canted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “Yes. We- are still working to make it so everypony can live within the entirety of the city,” she explained. “It’s a chore that takes time. Unity is not something that can be reached overnight. In the interim, the radiation is useful for keeping out those We- prefer to keep away. We- recommend seeing Tally for the night. He, or Tab, will be able to set you with a place to sleep.” She pointed toward one of the larger buildings with a wing as an afterthought, then walked off. “We- have business to attend to. We- must talk...” she trailed off, fairly obviously not speaking to the three of us anymore. I’d always been taught that the Goddesses were the embodiment of kindness and consideration, but she just struck me as a bit strange. Maybe it was the steel rod through her head?

“Okay,” I said, looking at the sky. I frowned. Sure, the sun was behind the edge of the mountaintops and giving off the haze of twilight, but it wasn’t quite late enough that we’d need to be sleeping just yet. “What else is there to do?” I looked to Lost and Xeno for help.

“Sell off our treasure?” my sister offered, shaking the bags she was carrying. “I'd like to fix the armor too.” That seemed like as good an idea as any.

We turned toward the building the Goddess pointed to, and headed up to ask about the nearest shop. I stopped and gave one last look around the city, both to the barren irradiated side and the bustling city street we stood on. Something dug at the back of my mind. We were here to help these ponies, but none of the stallions looked like they needed any help. I gave one last look at my surroundings, searching for any problems that stood out. The city was too good to be true.

I laughed to myself. No... something just made me uneasy. The claws picked little pieces out of the back of my mind, nagging me. I didn’t feel like I was in danger, like I had been with Wirepony or with my nightmare. I was safe with my sister and Xeno to back me up. Sure there were stallions about, but that was normal for a town this size, so why were they still digging...

Lost and Xeno had walked off, talking quietly to one another.

“Hey wait up!” I yelled, and trotted after my sister and friend.

* * *

“You are not a talented pony in selling. The price you list for many of your wares is far more than they are worth. I do not understand you, pony. What good is it to hurt those you wish to make your customers?” Xeno demanded, talking down to the shopkeeper stallion in a way I’d never seen before. “You have set poor prices on wares are selling. Is there a reason we should trust your prices when you are buying from us? Do you not wish us to sell you what we have?”

The stallion looked ready to crack, and was actively hiding his face in his tan mane. “I ju- I just price by what I see!” he tried to explain. “Supply and demand!” Looking back and forth between the three of us, he faltered, and backed from the counter. “Show- Just show me what you have. I’ll make sure the price is good. I’ll trade what’s fair!”

“This is good, shop pony,” Xeno said, tapping the counter with her forehoof. “Your leader told us that this was a safe place, with ponies who work together. Prove then that your deals are not as foul as raider’s. Sisters, what have we to trade?” She looked back, winking to us where the stallion couldn’t see. She might not be completely fluent, but Goddesses-damned! She knew how to cut a deal with a merchant.

Lost and I dumped all the treasure we’d ‘acquired’ out onto the counter. Bottles and scraps, weapons we didn’t want, and other assorted semi-useful items clattered onto the counter and tumbled past onto the floor. I could carry a lot more than I’d thought, apparently. Still, I sorted out the things I wanted to keep and placed them back in my bag. Along with my pistols, I made sure the bottle of Buck was nestled right at the top. Just in case.

“So, she takes care of talking to merchants from now on,” Lost whispered to me. “Less times we’ll have to deal with somepony like Broker.”

I nodded in agreement, watching as Xeno worked her magic with the shopkeep. Whether through intimidation or just fast-talking zebra skills, she’d already sold half of our things for far more than the PipBuck had indicated they were worth. It almost looked like she was enjoying herself, given how she was slamming her hooves into the counter. She had a smile across her muzzle though, so there wasn’t much to worry about.

I decided to look around and see what was worth buying. Poorly-maintained guns and general junk lined the shelves along the walls. On one of the shelves lay a copy of Guns and Bullets, just lying out for the buying. I snatched it up before anypony else could, wait, we were the only ones in the store. This would be great to read along with my copy of Equestian... Army... Today... Hey! I’d never gotten to read my magazine. All that time we just sat and did absolutely nothing while I was recovering, and I’d never taken the time to read? I fumed at myself and kept browsing.

“Are there any items you are interjected in purchasing, ponies?” asked Xeno, finally having sold off the last of our junk. “We have sold more items than he has caps for. Buying his wares would be good to make your caps equal. Would you prefer to keep the items he cannot afford?”

“This!” I said, tossing her the magazine. She caught it on the tip of her hoof and set it on the counter. “Let me look around for anything else.” I joined Lost on the far side of the shelf. “What’re you looking at?”

Lost pointed a hoof to the centuries-old food that filled one of the shelves. With a sigh, she lifted the best looking pieces in her telekinesis and moved them to the table. “Better than nothing. Won’t be the same as Marshmallow Sundae’s cooking though.”

“She spoiled us,” I replied. One more look over the shelves, and I found something interesting. On the bottom shelf, hidden in a back corner I spotted several different drugs. There was a tin of something I wasn’t familiar with called Mint-als. I did recognize several syringes of Med-X, and a bottle of Buck. A tentative tap indicated the bottle was full. There was even a bigger syringe labeled- Wait, a syringe of Buck? I’d never seen that before. I pulled it out and looked at it. The label was on sideways, but it looked good. Buck injected straight into the bloodstream? That would probably work so much better. I snatched up the various drugs in my hooves, and happily placed them on the counter with the food and book.

“Do you really need all that?” Lost asked, staring over her glasses at me. “You’re not in any fights right now, or in a difficult surgery. You don’t need it.”

“But, what if somepony else buys it? Or what if we do need it for a fight?” I said, trying not to sound like I was pleading. This was for emergencies. Given how I felt, I might need them soon.

“You have plenty already. Put it all back,” she said, and pointed me toward the shelf.

I begrudgingly put everything back, but made sure to stuff them deep in a corner with lots of other things in front to keep other shoppers from seeing. I knew I had plenty, but it never hurt to be prepared. If there was anything I’d learned in the past few days, it was the importance of preparation. That and that I really liked how Buck made me feel. The withdrawal though... That was beside the point. The idle clawing in my head just made me want backup.

“Okay okay! Look, you’re bleeding me dry here,” whined the earth pony behind the counter. How nice of him to wait for us to finish talking. “You can take all the food you’ve got, the magazine, and the rest of my caps. But I’m out after that. You need to leave. We don’t have a lot of trade here in the city, so I need as many caps as I can get.” He threw several caps down on the counter.

“Thank you, merchant pony. It is good luck, for a change, that we have met. This is good business we have had,” said Xeno with a smile. She collected the caps and tossed them into my bag with accuracy I’d thought her incapable of.

“My name isn’t ‘merchant pony’ you know, it’s Sale Price,” Sale griped. He frowned and started putting his newly acquired goods behind the counter. I heard him mutter, “Not that I’ll have any sales anymore...” No more sales? Oh well, we had plenty of caps now...

We left the shop and headed toward the apartment-turned-inn. The minute the shop door was closed, Xeno turned around and beamed at us, “I got a good deal for your goods, sisters! He was easy to convince. I told him of the prices of wandering merchants, he did not think he could compete.” She was so happy she was practically prancing in place.

I smiled, happy to see her happy. For such a dour zebra constantly focused on death and her drugs, she seemed genuinely glad about robbing the shop owner blind. “But we haven’t met any traveling merchants, Xeno,” I said.

“I did not think that was information he needed to know!” she said, grinning.

* * *

“Tally!” yelled the stallion calling himself Tab. He stood inside the apartment building the Goddess suggested we stay at. Tab tapped his hoof impatiently, turning and yelling again, “I am not the innkeeper! You are. Get down here so I can get back to my damn bar!” Well, he was one angry stallion. Given the soft look in his sky blue eyes, I’d expected far different.

“Well, there’s really no rush,” I said. Whether this was a sanctuary town secreted in the mountains or not, they were still a close knit clique, and we were outsiders. It might just be best to go find somewhere a little more out-of-the-way to sleep for the night.

Tab’s expression changed in an instant, reverting to the soft-looking stallion we’d first seen. “I’m really sorry about this,” he said. “Tally’s usually really good about tending the inn. He might be a while, so would you like a drink while you wait?” The blue-maned stallion pointed to a giant hole in the wall. It looked as though there’d been makeshift renovations, and there was even a little rusted-out bar built up inside the room.

My ears lowered. Booze was not my friend. At all. Lost, however, jumped at the chance, and got herself a drink of something-or-other that I didn’t care to know the name of, to sip on while we waited. The two of them made small talk, the stallion all smiles and offering to help. I stood with Xeno against the back wall, watching.

“Little too friendly, isn’t he?” I asked my zebra friend.

“Ponies have yet to cease confusing me. You treat each other so differently,” she said, frowning. “My kind treat all zebra as their own, weare a community. Weare...” She paused and muttered something in her native tongue and then looked at me. “I am unsure how to say these things. We welcome all without question.”

“You sure I can't get you two anything while you wait?” yelled Tab, looking past his conversation with Lost to Xeno and me. A bit too friendly... A dismissive wave of my hoof and he turned back to my sister.

“That’s what the Goddess said too. I just don’t feel like we’re really welcome,” I explained, looking around the makeshift bar. At least Lost looked happy. “Mom really drilled it into our heads before she died. She always said ‘stay away from cities. Ponies look out for their own and don’t care for newcomers. You’re not one of them, ever’ until she was blue in the face.” I shrugged. “Old habits die hard.”

“Better old habits die hard than you, pony,” said the zebra. Wait, what? She looked at me for several seconds before spouting off something in her zebra tongue. “That did not translate as well as I had thought it would. Your mother was a smart one; she has given you many good lessons.” She clopped a hoof over my back, pulled a cigarette from somewhere, and walked toward the bar.

I watched from my spot, shifting restlessly. This town didn’t seem like it needed saving. I needed to check the radio soon, see if there were any broadcasts that might help. Worst case, I’d hear about the heroine again...

The door to the building slammed open and a positively tiny unicorn stormed in. He looked exhausted, having the same bags under his eyes that constantly framed my sister’s.

“Tally! Finally,” yelled the barkeeper stallion, “we’ve got guests.” He nodded his head a few times toward my little group. “I thought you were here, I guess you were,” he stopped, looked up and whistled, “out!”

“Yeah, I umm, I had some things to do. So, my good mares, you need a room?” he said, flashing a wide smile. Without waiting for an answer he went around behind the makeshift counter and hopped up onto a stool so he could see over it. With the extra height I got a good look at him. He really was tiny; much smaller than my sister and me.

I walked over from the bar and stood before the purple-coated unicorn. “Yes, the Goddess suggested we talk to you and get a place to stay,” I explained.

“Well, I’ve got plenty of rooms, this apartment building used to house quite a few,” he said, waving a hoof behind him. “The rooms are all in great condition! Just right for a group of mares looking to get out of the Wasteland for a night. A pretty mare like you,” he said, winking at me and sending a shudder down my spine. “...probably wants to have a nice, soft bed. Which floor would you like?” He dove under the counter and began rummaging for something.

“The... second floor?” Lost said from the bar. It was a suggestion, and better than the one I had. Both Xeno and I nodded in agreement, though I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

“Sounds wonderful!” Tally said, pulling himself back up onto the stool. In the faintly brown haze of his magic he held a set of keys. “Here ya go, this room has anything you could ever need.” Once again he flashed the wide smile and eyed the three of us. He pointed a hoof to the door at the side of the room. “Just up the stairs that way and down the hall, you can’t miss it. Room number’s on the key. Don’t worry if you lose it; I have plenty of spares.”

Creepy. We thanked him, paid up, and went to the room. Just as promised, it had everything. Much of it was obviously converted from family apartment. But there were beds, a workbench, a working bathroom, and a table to eat at. More than we could ever expect. It was really wonderful what a little bit of mountain could do to keep Balefire from totally destroying everything. Aside from the constant murmur of quiet voices through the walls, this place was wonderful. Now if only the claws in my mind weren’t picking away at something I couldn’t place.

Why’d Mom have to make me so paranoid?

* * *

I looked over to Xeno. L.A. really didn’t need to throw us out while she fixed her armor and the pistol she’d burnt out. It didn’t matter, big sister said out, so out we went. I thought it probably had more to do with her wanting to avoid finishing our conversation, or fessing up to the fact that she freaked out for no reason. It was for the best, I didn’t want to let her know that I’d overheard her and Crème.

The zebra trotted quietly to my side, deep blue eyes looking casually to the line of buildings across the way. She’d walked right into that radiation without so much as flinching. “Xeno, why does nothing seem to affect you?” I asked.

“I have answered this. There are many drugs that I take. They are useful for surviving in the Wasteland,” she explained, pointing to her bag. As if remembering she had them, she pulled one of the looted cigarettes from her bag and placed it in her lips. “When my brothers and I were old enough to assist with hunting and scavenging, wewere given gifts for survival. They have helped much.”

“Do you think you learned what he sent you off to learn?” I asked, trying to keep my mind busy. The streets weren’t nearly as full anymore, and the walk through town was comforting and calm. We took the time to window shop at the broken-out buildings. By the time I looked back, the cigarette was lit. Seriously, how did she do that?

“I donot think so. My learning has been most spent staying alive. Meeting you sister ponies and losing my brothers was the major change. I have gone from traveling and surviving, to interacting with ponies,” she said, flipping a hoof casually. “Zahi and Zaki did not like ponies. There were incidence at the start of our journey.”

I just nodded. The little snippets of her past were honestly fascinating. To think that we could’ve been mortal enemies and trying to kill one another if we were living two centuries ago. It wasn’t that hard to get along and share. I looked at the sniper rifle across her back. Sharing, the one thing that could’ve prevented the Wasteland from ever happening. We weren’t so different.

“It is funny, I think. Your raiders will shoot anything!” she said, chuckling. “I have watched a pony shoot himself in his frustration!” She giggled a bit, something I never thought I’d see her do. When her guard was down, she acted almost normal.

“I’ve never seen you laugh like that,” I said, trying to bring up how guarded she acted all the time. “It’s like the time you squealed. I never thought you...” The stare she gave me shut me up in a second.

“I do not squeal,” she said.

“But you did,” I corrected her, “when Wirepony first showed up, he got up behind you and- Ok you don’t squeal.” Looking away I took a step back.

Note to self; Do not piss off the zebra who makes the concoctions that keep you alive...

“I do not,” she said again, spitting out the cigarette. A stomp punctuated her mood. “As I was saying. I think it is strange, the way you ponies fight. When meeting new ponies, my brothers were often attacked, yet I was ignored. Do you view mares as less dangerous? I have met many dangerous mares. Youare a dangerous mare...” She looked me up and down once, furrowing her brow. Pointing a hoof at me, she said again, “Youare very dangerous.”

“Have to be. Like you said, ponies here focus on death constantly,” I said, snarkily. “You have to take out the most dangerous threat first, that’s how you survive. Did your brothers shoot first?” The two of them shooting me wasn’t really a sore point anymore. I felt more guilty about killing them than anything. No matter what my reasoning. I should’ve gone for a leg shot or something. Given how many times I’d taken damage to my legs, I knew just how much a pony, or zebra, could survive... I tapped my steel hoof against the crumbling street idly. Not really wanting to know the answer, I changed the subject, “So, those parting gifts?”

“My mother gave me two extremely powerful elixirs. She then taught me to make my own potions, concoctions, and libations,” the zebra explained. “She follows the old ways, she believes in the stars and their curses. I learned better.” She raised a rear leg and nodded toward the hypnotic mark on her flanks. “They do not care, they merely expand away from us. There is no greater power at work.”

“So why do you think you’re surrounded by bad luck?” I asked. We reached the end of the street and turned around. There was a town hall over on the hill a short ways away, down another road, but there wasn’t any reason to go explore it. The building was fairly nondescript, and rotting from centuries of weather and radiation. The ‘Town Hall’ sign hung limply by a single chain, and the windows were all blacked out. If it wasn’t completely looted... No, these weren’t ruins to hunt for treasure through. This place belonged to other ponies.

Still, it couldn’t hurt to just look.

“Ihave never said bad luck. I merely feel that a special luck follows me,” she side, turning with me. “It is not something I expect ponies to understand. Very few ponies have understood.” She dug around in her bag and pulled out one of the larger jars. Holding it her hoof she continued, “Iam not as skilled as my mother. She made potions that dulled the damage of the Wastes and the radiation, strengthened bones to keep them from breaking when fighting to survive.” She looked at the jar longingly. “One day, I will create something to rival her. I will be a good zebra, no matter what the stars or luck say.”

Just like us, she just wanted to be a part of her family again. I’d taken that away from her, partially at least. Didn’t she realize we saw her as family now? Having been welcomed into the Steel Rangers, even if just as family and not members of the order, we were part of something better. They wanted to let her in too. Why did she have to be so difficult. Ponies and zebras weren’t so different...

“I think you’re a good zebra,” I said, placing my steel hoof on her shoulder. “Let’s head back. Lost’s had enough alone time. On the way, I’ll tell you about the time I got surrounded by zombies just because I had to go pee...”

* * *

“Ta da!” L.A. said, presenting the newly-repaired armor to us. While Xeno and I walked on the streets below, she’d managed to get the armor into nearly new condition. All the dents and dings were gone, and even the etched designs looked perfect. Practice down in the Stable, where she could relax, must have done wonders for her skills with fine manipulation.

Cheater.

At least I had Xeno on my side, with hooves like mine that couldn’t work tiny objects or anything else fancy. Then again, she had that fancy ‘appear and disappear’ trick she could do with a simple wave. Probably just a different kind of cheater magic. I sighed, “It looks good, sis. Next time, let’s not get to this point, okay?” Being the voice of reason felt weird.

I trotted over to the window and looked out the blackened glass. I could at least see the city street below, past the spiderwebbed cracks in the window. What had this place been like before, when Equestria truly existed? Was there a family who lived here hundreds of years ago? Did they have foals, jobs, vacations, or... whatever it was that Equestrian ponies did?

A stallion galloped across the street and out of sight. Where was he going this late in the evening? The clawing at the back of my mind started nagging again.

“What do you think of the Goddess?” Lost asked. I turned back to join the conversation, and found her staring at Xeno over the rims of her glasses.

“You ponies believe that she is a Goddess?” Xeno asked, pulling a jar from her bag. She swirled it idly, continuing, “She is different than both of you, different is not better. For ponies like you who have told me many times that they do not trust others... I think it is odd that you do trust her, without question.” She took a drink the the jar, practically glaring over the rim at my sister.

I didn’t feel like getting into it with either of them, so instead I pulled some food from my bags. The food we’d brought from Stable Sixty would go bad soon, and as Lamington had said, I needed to use it well. Fresh food would fill all of us better than preserved snacks and sodas. I passed some out to the others and snacked on a delicious, radiation-free carrot.

“She speaks strangely. Do you think it is because of the metal in her head?” Xeno asked, between idle nibbles of her own carrot.

“I think so. She stutters. That’s not very Goddess-like, is it?” my sister mused from behind a bottle of Sparkle~Cola.

“It’s not, but there’s something going on here either way, right?” I asked with a shrug. “The town seems unremarkable so far, other than the condition it's in. So, why would Gunbuck have a marker for it even before coming here? There isn’t anypony that needs saving.” I looked at the PipBuck on my sister’s foreleg. Why couldn’t he have at least left a note?

“Maybe it’s not that they need saving? There could be something we’re not seeing here,” Lost said. She looked at the screen and began pressing buttons with her cheater magic. “I mean, the PipBuck itself doesn’t even say why we’re supposed to be here, just that we are.” She pressed her hoof to her forehead, between her glasses and horn. I felt about the same. “Maybe they all just need a good lay?” Suddenly she snorted soda from her nose. “Maybe Gunbuck was coming here for a good fuck?” Unable to stop, she snickered into her hoof. “Trying to get the taste of that psycho mare out of his mouth?”

We shared a laugh. Sure it was ridiculous, but it helped. A pang of sadness shot through my chest, and I thought about the past few hours... The past few days. Should I really be laughing, now that we were back in the dangers of the Wasteland? It’d only been few hours since we left the first place we could’ve called home. An awkward laugh at a half-assed joke about stallions and sex? Was this all that was out here for us?

Closing my eyes, I remembered all that’d happened. Nightmares about gangers, then that monster, but... then family. The memory was more than just Seethe staring me down while I couldn’t move. Now it was Lamington without his helmet, and not just that, all of the others with him. It was victory over a monster.

“I miss the Steel Rangers,” I said, staring down at the floor. I could feel the little picks and pokes of the claws, but they weren’t worth the trouble.

“I do too,” my sister said, using her magic to tilt my head back up. She smiled at me. “We’ll see them again soon.” Even smiling, her face held the same sadness I felt. The air felt heavy in the room all of a sudden, as if a great weight was being pressed down and crushing the air we tried to breathe.

“We are the only mares in this town, aside from the pony you call a Goddess,” Xeno announced, cutting through the haze without missing a beat. “You may be correct, that these ponies need a good ‘lay’ to make things better.” She hid half her face with her jar, making it impossible to tell just what she meant by that observation.

Stallion, stallion, stallion. She was right... Sale Price, Tab, Tally, every pony I’d seen on the street. Every pony aside from the Goddess had been a stallion. Realization set my brain into overdrive. Only stallions? No no, I screamed at my brain as the digging in the back of my mind started with full fervor. A town of only stallions and a Goddess with rebar stuck through her head? No! I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. I didn’t want Lost or Xeno to catch on. It was okay, the stallions hadn’t tried anything so far...

Spare keys.

My brain hit a wall. I looked around the room. There weren’t any chains, there weren’t muzzles hidden anywhere. I just needed to think about something else. Think about anything else. Lamington, he’d make it better. Why didn’t we go with him? He and the others would have protected me. But I had Lost! She was good in a fight, proven by what she did to those raiders. Xeno was here too, she’d help. She hadn’t run off yet, so of course she’d help.

I wrenched my brain back from the claws. Only stallions? Well, maybe every one of them was into other stallions! That would perfectly explain why they didn’t need other mares. And, and, then they wouldn’t need to go after me. Because they were all gay.

Reining my thoughts in, I let out a sigh and skewed my ears back. We just hadn’t seen them, that’s all. Just because we didn’t see a pony didn’t mean she wasn’t there. The world outside of our vision still went about life as normal. I laughed inwardly, and looked back to my sister. She hadn’t caught my near-freakout...

“That was the first thing I noticed,” L.A. said, pulling her lips into a wry smirk. That’s right, I didn’t miss a thing... I could just casually slide back into the conversation... The thinky pony realized right off the bat what was missing. She didn’t bother to say anything, because she thought we’d all noticed at the same time. Obviously I hadn’t. “They’re probably all working inside, we don’t have to see mares to know they’re here.”

I glared at her, but said nothing. What a great job at being a thinky pony I was doing, not noticing something so obvious. I remembered saying to myself that every pony I’d seen was a stallion, yet didn’t put two and two together. I sighed; I had a long way to go. At least I’d drawn the same conclusion she had.

But what was the significance? Both of them noticed, so it must be something big. Every stallion here was super nice to us, more so than they honestly needed to be. I didn’t want to think about it. Instead, I got up and walked to the nearest bed I could find. “Wake me if you figure out what the problem is,” I yelled back to the main room.

I faceplanted onto the bed between the pillows and laid there, listening.

* * *

The bed was terribly uncomfortable.

The voices through the walls were annoying. They needed to either talk loud enough that I could listen in, or be quiet.

I could hear Xeno talking with my sister over the murmurs through the walls. They droned on and on about language, and how zebra and pony tongues were different. Let the thinky ponies talk...

Time passed slowly, though I wasn’t actually counting this time. I didn’t have the PipBuck as a distraction, so all I could do was lay. Eventually I heard their talking fade and disappear, followed by the light from behind the door clicking away.

At least they sounded happy while they spoke. I smiled, happy with my family at least. Lost was always there for me, and Xeno had proven herself to be exceptionally useful. I yawned, finally getting tired. If sleep would just come soon it would be perfect.

I closed my eyes, trying to will myself to sleep. If I just laid still and focused on my breathing, sleep would come. I got an itch, and tried to ignore it. My legs were already asleep, if I just stayed like this I’d- I scratched the itch. Every part of me was awake again. Why was it so hard to just fall asleep?

Was it because we didn’t have the nice comfy Stable beds this time? I’d really been spoiled too much by them. Lost wasn’t in the room with me, had she decided to sleep with Xeno in the other room? What if they were both into mares? Xeno was eyeing the Goddess, and I knew about Lost’s preference. That’s not fair. Lost was mine. I wouldn’t lose her to anypony else, not Xeno and not Crème Brûlée.

I grabbed a spare pillow and pulled it close, squeezing it with all four legs. I didn’t want to lose her. She said I was all she had left, but she was all I had left too. Wasn’t my love good enough? Did she need somepony else to do those things for her? I... I could be what she wanted! No... no I couldn’t. Burying my face in the pillow, I cried. She wouldn’t leave me alone in the Wasteland, would she?

No, Lost was always there for me. Xeno too, she was useful and a good friend... Hey, I was thinking in circles! Maybe that meant... I yawned again, I couldn’t see anything. Maybe I was asleep...

~ ~ ~

I sat in a flowerpot. A very big one, with warm, soft dirt packed all around me like a loamy blanket. Sunlight tickled my mane, and I let out a sigh. I hadn’t been this comfortable since my last shower in Stable Sixty. Granted, that was more warm water and not warm dirt, but I really couldn’t complain about-

Rough paws clamped around my mane and pulled me out of my flowerpot. I squeaked in surprise as I hung face to face with a manticore. The leonine beast had a single scar running from underneath his (her, its? Did having a mane mean they were male, or did they all look like that?) left eye, down to its lips, where a chipped fang showed from beneath a fuzzy lip.

“Did she really kill him?” the manticore asked, turning me around as if to inspect me. The creature’s voice was surprisingly feminine for such a hulking beast.

I could only hoarsely squeak again in response. I couldn’t talk, for some reason, and started to panic. Of course manticores could talk, I just couldn’t remember having heard one do so before. I didn’t like this, not at all. I wanted my flowerpot.

“That’s what she said,” the same feminine voice said. Though this time, it came from behind me. I kicked at the manticore in front of me, turning to look at the other voice. Surprise! It was another manticore! This one had to have been the first one’s twin... or, wait, mirror image. The scar under the second monster’s eye ran down its right cheek, to a chipped right fang.

Lefty, or so I decided the first manticore’s name was, held me a safe distance away from his face, to avoid my flailing hooves. “Shh, she’s waking up!” Lefty said, quirking an eyebrow. He held me with outstretched paws and peered at me for several seconds.

I hung still, not daring to move. Was he going to eat me? I’d had enough of me eaten by wasteland monsters already, thank you!

“Hmm. Guess it was a false alarm,” Lefty said.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Righty. “Find out whatever you can about her. She could wake up at any time.” The manticore reached up and pulled open my torso with a claw. I winced, but it really didn’t hurt. It just felt weird and empty.

“Lots of guns in here!” Righty said, sounding pleased with himself. He pulled a half-dozen assault rifles, two high-caliber pistols, and a minigun out of my chest cavity and stacked them on the ground. Then he opened the top of my skull and pulled out a little brown bottle. “Not much else though: some Buck and general Wasteland wanderer stuff. Nothing special.”

Lefty sounded disappointed. “Okay, well, don’t take anything. If she knows we’re onto her, there might be a problem.”

“We got what we needed. Let’s go,” said Righty.

Lefty nodded and dropped me back into my flowerpot. I sank, down, and down and down...

~ ~ ~

“You two stay here, I’m going to talk to her.”

Mom pointed to some rubble just off the road we were traveling on. There was a space underneath just big enough Lost and I to fit under.

“Alright Mom,” Lost said, and scampered off to the rubble.

“Can, can you check and see if she has any toys to sell?” I asked, smiling hopefully. The Wasteland was fun to hunt through, but still. It’d be nice to have a toy or two to play with. Lost and I could do so much with just one! A traveling merchant would have that, wouldn’t she?

“I’ll ask, honey, but food and ammo come first,” she said, giving me a weak smile in return. “You know that. If I have enough left over, and she has something, I will. Promise.” She had a sad look in her light green eyes, and some part of me knew better than to think we could spare caps on toys, but I had to ask. With a gentle poke on the nose, she motioned with her hoof for me to go hide. “Now, go.”

I did as she said, snuggling against my sister underneath the outcropping of broken concrete and rusty rebar. Together we watched mom run up to the broken road and flag down the traveling merchant, her brahmin and her mercenary bodyguard. We stayed quiet and hidden somewhere safe. Mom handled the trading while we were safely out of sight. Mom was so smart.

“Think she’ll get us anything good?” I asked Lost, leaning against her. This part was so boring.

“I don’t know! I hope she gets some of those snacky cakes, they’re the best,” Lost said, licking her lips. They were delicious, and one of the few snacks mom let us eat. Together we watched as Mom traded and made deals.

Leaning forward, I watched them talk. The merchant was a yellow earth pony with a fairly unique scar across her nose and eye. She had the unicorn bodyguard standing watch, near her brahmin. Flicking my ears around, I could pick up bits and pieces of what they were saying. Something about a gun, she laughed, and said something I couldn’t make out. I strained to hear, and finally heard the merchant say “Pleasure doin’ business, Green Gypsy.”

“Don’t you forget it!” she said happily, already trotting back toward us. Her bags looked much fuller than before, and the smile across her lips meant she’d done well. It faded when she got to us though. “C’mon out little ones,” she said. Looking to me, she offered a hoof to help me get out from under the rubble. “Sorry Hidden, no toys today.”

“Awwwwwwww!” I whined, pulling myself out. Oh well, at least she tried.

“Okay, okay. No toys, but presents at least. Here,” she said, lifting out a package of the snack cakes with her magic. “One for each of you. Lost, you have to share.” She eyed my sister, and wagged a hoof at her in warning.

Together we shared the cakes while we walked. Lost levitated both in her magic, one for me and one for her.

Cheater.

The three of us walked off the road, and back into the ruins. The rest of the day was going to-

Mom stopped mid-step. Without looking at us, she said, “Girls, go hide.”

“But, mom...” I pleaded.

“Now!” she scolded, pointing a hoof.

We did as we were told, finding more rubble to hide in. Nestling together as close as possible, we tried to look as small as possible. It wasn’t really hard for us to disappear into the ruins of old Equestria. Lost was just big enough to protect me if something happened, but I trusted Mom with all my heart. My sister shivered, an anxious look across her face. Mom never yelled like that. Whatever had her riled up must be bad... I swallowed, watching with a heart full of worry. But Mom would be fine, no matter what.

“Come on out then!” she yelled, her horn glowing with a green haze of telekinesis. From her saddlebags slid a hunting rifle and a plasma rifle, her Dedication and Devotion. A worried look crossed her face, and she looked side to side. Whatever she called for wasn’t coming out, and I started to twist my ears about trying to hear whatever she could see.

The ground trembled beneath my hooves, and I shot a glance at Lost. She wobbled beside me, her eyes wide with fear. Whatever it was, it was either gigantic or-

The ground erupted underneath Mom! She dove out of the way, just in time to miss a set of wickedly sharp-looking claws. They stabbed up into the air where she’d stood only a half-second before. The claws shifted, and a hulking monster like I’d never seen burst from the ground. It landed on three legs, with the claws dug through the busted concrete chunk. I slid back further into the ruins, looking at it. This, was this a Hellhound? Mom had mentioned them once before, saying they looked like big scary dogs.

Mom’s story didn’t describe the Hellhound right, calling this a ‘big scary dog’ was like calling raiders ‘unfriendly!’ Trembling, I took in as much as I could, my eyes darting back and forth between Mom and the monster. The creature stood hunched over, wearing heavy armor over his head and shoulders, a ratty brown vest covering his scarred and patchy coat. Mom stood at the ready, looking tiny compared to the Hellhound.

The Hellhound carried a giant cannon in his free front paw, a weapon that looked something like a powered-up version of Devotion. With snarling lips over huge fangs and claws that looked like it could slice her in half, it looked like walking murder. I bit back tears, not wanting to think of what might happen if Mom didn’t win.

Mom didn’t flinch, though. She looked toward us, and then back at the Hellhound. “I got foals to protect,” she shouted at the Hellhound. “PipBuck says you’re red. Either get going this second, or there’s gonna be problems.” She aimed both of her guns at the clawed giant. If she was worried, she hid it well. I hated when Mom was like that, so angry and shouting.

The Hellhound just smashed the concrete stuck to his claws, and before her sentence was finished he charged at her. Brutal claws swept across the air, right at her face.

Mom was faster, though just barely. She danced on her hooves out of the way, spinning the guns in her telekinesis around and firing a shot from each at the Hellhound.

“Lost, I don’t like this! What if he hurts Mom?” I asked in a loud whisper. I curled tighter against my sister, worried about watching Mom die. We couldn’t lose her! The monster was big and terrifying. He could kill Mom in a single swipe if he caught her. I shivered, my mind going wild with possibilities.

“Mom's tough, Hidden, she'll make him go away,” Lost said, and flashed a reassuring smile. She shivered against me, unable to hide how worried she was. Together we could only watch as the two of them traded attacks. The hound’s claws never seemed to land a real blow, only taking out pieces of her mane. At the same time, none of her shots seemed to do more than graze him.

Mom would win. She would always protect us.

The Hellhound didn’t like missing, and leveled his cannon at Mom. She darted out of the way as he fired. My eardrums exploded from the deafening boom. It was so loud that I thought a Balefire blast had gone off in front of me. A sizzling blast of magic erupted from the cannon's barrel, and vaporized the ground where Mom had been standing. He trained the gun on her as she ran, and I clamped my hooves over my ears to keep from going deaf as he fired on her.

Mom returned fire, but none of her attacks seemed to do any good. Bullets didn’t faze him, and the energy blasts barely left scorch marks. She dodged and weaved around the magical energy the Hellhound fired at her. Slowly, she was closing the gap between them, his shots barely missing as he got closer and closer.

I watched, mouthing to myself, ‘Mom, run, please... Don’t get hit!’ Mom was playing this way too dangerous. I knew she was tough, but the monster was too fast for her. Worse still, I saw a- Goddesses no! “Mom, behind you!” I yelled, as the ground buckled and bulged behind her.

“Hidden, stay down!” she yelled back, before turning to see what I’d yelled about. “Oh shit!” Fear in her voice, she turned to the first Hellhound, who tossed his weapon aside and charged her. The ground behind her burst open as another Hellhound charged to the surface.

My heart skipped several beats as I saw her caught between two monsters that could kill her. Celestia! Luna! Don’t take my mother!

She backpedaled a few steps and shielded her face with her Pipbuck. A half-second later, the perilous claws raked right across it. The arcanotech device snapped in half. Lost and I gasped. A missing limb was a death sentence!

The PipBuck’s sacrifice saved Mom’s leg. The tips of the hellhound’s claws dug gashes across Mom’s face. The top half of her ear disappeared into the ruins entirely. Mom screamed and toppled onto her side. She rolled a few times along the dirt before sliding to a stop.

Lost’s hooves on my shoulders were the only thing that kept me from running to her. She held me in place as Mom groaned on the ground. Her guns clattered to the concrete. I tried to get to her. I could help. If Lost would just let me...

Mom worked her way to her hooves. Blood covered the side of her sliced up face, but she’d survived it. I fell back onto my haunches again, practically collapsing against Lost. How my sister stayed so calm during this, I’d never know.

The second Hellhound disappeared. I looked for any sign of him, breaks in the ground, something.

Nothing. This wasn’t good, not at all.

I shrunk back into the overhanging rubble to make myself smaller and harder to see. Lost did the same, and we huddled together, practically in tears. Mom had to be okay! She would kill the monsters and we’d all go home. Just like always.

Mom stood on wobbly legs, her horn sparking back to life. Both Dedication and Devotion lifted into the air, wrapped in the green haze of her telekinesis. She charged the Hellhound, firing the whole time with both guns. She managed to get a few good shots, despite shooting while she ran. She aimed for the sensitive spots, eyes and mouth. If only she could fire and dodge at the same time!

The Hellhound swung at her again, missing by mere inches as she ran past. I clenched my eyes shut, not wanting to see. He roared in frustration, and I opened my eyes just wide enough to see him stop to grab his cannon. With a look of pure rage, he leveled the gun at her. Several times he fired the gun, sending burst after burst of blue magical energy at her. She was alive, and dodging! None hit as she ran, and he couldn’t keep up.

The second Hellhound dug out from the ground directly in front of Lost and me. He looked terrifying, with a giant helmet covering his eyes, and spiked armor over his shoulders. With teeth as long as I was tall, I feared he might just eat us. My heart froze, and I dove behind my big sister, pulling against her to try and get away from the monster’s reach. In the distance, Mom’s voice carried over our screams of terror. As he drew back his gleaming claws, he lurched. The horrific booming screech of the Hellhound’s cannon blew my world apart. The Hellhound about to kill us faltered, caught in crackling blue magic. Before the sound faded, he burst into blue ash.

Mom stood between us and the Hellhound, a smile cross her lips. In the middle of a fight she had figured to use his own weapon against his kind and let him kill his companion. I wished one day I could be as clever as her, at least when I was big enough to fight monsters like this on my own.

“Mom!” I yelled, but she said nothing.

With the second Hellhound gone, Mom could focus on the first one. She turned and charged him again, moving from side to side while firing both guns. Her shots just made him madder. She dodged to the side again, but wasn’t fast enough. The Hellhound actually threw his gun at her, right to where she was stepping. It hit her, hard, and she collapsed to the ground again with a scream.

Her magic broke for only a second. She collected herself and grabbed the cannon from the ground beside her. Even hit with the cuts and bleeding, she was doing well. The Hellhound closed the gap, and raised both paws above her.

She was okay, right? I prayed to the Goddesses. Celestia. Luna. Please, Mom is all Lost and I have. We can’t survive without her. I wanted to look away, to hide my face against my sister and wait for Mom to say it was okay. I couldn’t hide, I had to watch. I had to see that the Goddesses were looking out for her.

The cannon fired, hitting the Hellhound straight in the face. He went rigid, stopped before he could attack. Blue lightning crackling between the armor and helmet he wore. Mom took the pause to her advantage, and scrambled away on her hooves.

The Hellhound collapsed, letting out a deep groan. With a roar, he pushed himself back up. Before he could get back to fighting, Mom attacked, diving in close and stabbing him with her horn. A sickening squelch sound later, and the Hellhound was stopped dead, her horn dug into his mouth and through the roof of it.

She didn’t stop there, though. She brought up the stolen gun and fired over and over into the side of his head. Hellhound were tough, but their own weapons worked wonders against them. Finally sure the beast was dead, she pulled back and backed away from the corpse.

Mom just killed two Hellhounds all by herself! I stared in awe. My mom was amazing! She bleed from the gashes in her face, but she was okay. With blood staining her green coat, she stood and collected her things. Smiling despite the wounds, she looked over to us. Her magic faded, and the Hellhound’s cannon fell to the crumbling street.

Tears rolled down my face. That was too close. She’d barely survived. Her face looked terrible. I could see her teeth through her cheek. I didn’t want to look, I couldn’t bear it, but I had to look. This was the Wasteland, this was what it did. And she surv-

A roar loud enough to shake the building we were hiding under tore through the air. Mom’s eyes went wide and she spun around, full of fear. A positively gigantic Hellhound dug through the base of the building and into view. This one dwarfed the other two, had the same shoulder armor on, but lacked the helmet. We got a good view of the rage in her eyes over the death of her companions. Mom was in a bad spot. Wounded, her guns already put away, and a big monster about to attack her.

“Nope, done with this shit. I got foals to protect,” she announced, spitting some blood out. Her horn glowed again, and the barrel of the fallen Hellhound’s cannon lifted up. “Which means, fuck you.” The gun fired, and another blast of magical energy shot through the air. Covering my ears with my hooves, I watched it catch the Hellhound in the face.

She didn’t stop.

The gun fired until all that came out were clicks. The Hellhound hit the ground, nothing left of her but a mass of blue ash that slowly disappeared into the ruins.

Her horn stopped glowing, and the spent gun clattered to the ground. She stepped over the other corpse and back to us, looking back and forth every so often to check for dangers. Waving a hoof to us, she beckoned that we leave our hiding spot. “Let’s go home kids. I need a healing potion and a long nap. Then we move camp somewhere safer.” With a thoughtful glance, she collected her things, and the weapon the Hellhounds had dropped.

Even covered in blood and bruised, looking terrible, she stood tall and didn’t even limp. Open gashes covered her face. The PipBuck was trashed, cut clean into two pieces with the screen dead. Her mane was matted to her face and covered in blood, just like her horn. She was even missing a piece of her ear. And despite all that, or maybe because of it, she still just looked like mom to me.

She is so cool!

~ ~ ~

I woke up with the sun glaring through the window into my face. It was early enough that the light hadn’t passed behind the clouds. In an instant, I was wide awake. An uncomfortable pressure had me running out of the bedroom as fast as I could. Great way to start the morning, Wasteland. I ran past Lost, who looked over her book at me, and straight into the bathroom. There weren’t any zombies hiding in there, right? Never again...

Feeling far better, I trotted from the room and plopped down on the comfiest-looking tattered cushion I could find. I looked to my sister, who was idly reading the Big Book of Arcane Sciences we’d taken from the Stable Sixty Steel Rangers. I scooted close and peeked over her shoulder to see how far she’d gotten in the book. Apparently very far. Goddesses she read fast.

“Have a good sleep?” Lost asked, closing the book over one hoof and looking at me.

“Yeah. Did you?” I asked her, giving a quick nuzzle. It was weird to not have her nearby while I slept, especially with the weird dream I’d had. So I took what I could get, and leaned against her.

“Nope, up all night reading. I played around with that memory orb we found too,” she explained, setting the book down on the opposite cushion. She hopped up and held the orb in her hooves. “It was so cool! I was inside the body of this other pony. I couldn’t do much, and it scared me at first, but it was really interesting once I got used to it. Everything she saw, I saw. And I had to move when she did, which was really weird. Like, you’re trapped there, there’s no quick way out. But it’s all extremely vivid, everything crystal clear. You can even feel the other pony getting stressed or sweating, everything! The pony I was in had to watch a stupid presentation, some businesspony going on and on about the future and the war. Everypony in the memory was really shocked because of a huge change.”

“Seriously, do you ever sleep?” I asked, deadpan. I knew better than to wait for an answer about her sleeping, and continued. “What was the presentation about?”

“Nothing we didn’t already know,” she said, holding the orb out to me. “It was an hour long talk about how they were changing over to work on armor instead of building skywagons. Apparently, the office building the raiders had taken was part of Leathers too, a separate office away from the noisy factory. I had to sit through the whole thing, and apparently they weren’t the only company in the area revamping.” She flopped back down onto the couch and leaned against me.

“Boring!” I said with a laugh. I took the orb in my forehooves carefully. “So how do you get into it?”

“Magic,” she announced, whirling her hoof in the air with some flair. “And it’s not boring, it’s history! It would have been very interesting if we didn’t already know. I was trying to get into it by staring, concentrating on it, touching it to my head, everything. I gave up and went to levitate it back into the bag and fwoosh! I was inside.”

“Cheater magic,” I fumed. Just another thing I’d never get to experience because I was the odd pony out. I set the orb down on the book and changed the subject. “So, what’s for breakfast?”

“I thought we should wait for Xeno to wake up before we ate, since she’s part of the group now,” L.A. said, giving a little yawn. Dammit sis, no- I yawned too.

“I had a weird dream last night,” I admitted, wanting to pass the time. “It was really strange. Two manticores were pulling guns out of me! It didn’t hurt, it was just... weird.” Openness was important with my sister. After harboring the nightmares that I’d had before, and letting them get to me so badly, I wanted to get things out in the open right away. It was also a good way to pass the time so I didn’t spend it all staring at Xeno’s bedroom door waiting for her to come out.

“Another nightmare? Is everything okay?” she asked, looking down at me with a frown. She wrapped her forehooves around me and pulled me into a tight hug, one I returned.

“No, not a nightmare,” I said, rubbing my flesh forehoof against my mane. “Just weird. They were both the same manticore. Same looks, and both sounded like mares. I don’t know, it was weird.” I wished I could remember more about the dream, but it was hazy and hard to remember. There was the other dream though, abou- “Oh!”

“Oh? Oh what? What oh? Finally decide you like mares?” asked Lost, teasingly. She moved away from me just a hair and looked over her glasses once more. “I’m kidding. Is everything alright?”

“No!” I practically yelled, feeling heat on my cheeks. “I remembered my other dream is all.” Flailing my hooves just a little, I smiled wide. “It wasn’t a nightmare. I had another dream about Mom.”

“Are you sure that’s not a nightmare? The last time you had a dream about her, it didn’t end well,” asked Lost. She placed her hooves on my shoulders and looked directly into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Look,” I said, trying to reassure her, “remember that time with the Hellhounds?” I continued without waiting for a response. “I just... I guess I remembered? Anyway it was super vivid. She took down all three just like she did that time.” The feeling of loss hit me like a bullet straight through the heart. “I miss Mom...”

“I do too, Hidden, but it’s been years,” she said. “We’re adults now. We can’t rely on her strength forever.” She pulled me into a tight hug. “I miss her more than I could ever put into words...” She squeezed as she said it, and I couldn’t resist hugging her back.

“Where’s Xeno, already!” I demanded, changing the subject as quickly as I could. We had things to do here, and didn’t have time to deal with sadness from a lifetime ago. That was just as bad as worrying about the war, a decade, a century, two? What did it matter. Past is past.

“Want to go check on her?” Lost asked, motioning to the door to the room Xeno had slept in.

I nodded and hopped up from the couch, just in time for L.A. to pick the book up in her magic and continue reading. Trotting over to the door, I rapped my steel hoof against it a few times. The extra thunking might wake her up faster. No answer. I knocked again. “Xeno, c’mon. Wake up, we want breakfast and we can’t start without you.”

Rolling my eyes, I pushed the door open and stared at... the... empty bed. Where was Xeno? I looked around the room. Her bag was still full of all her things, nestled in the corner behind a rotten piece of furniture. Her bed didn’t look to tousled. In fact, it looked like she hadn’t slept in it at all. I placed a hoof on it, and felt nothing but cold. She must have been gone for a long time.

“She’s not here, sis!” I yelled into the other room. Grabbing our friend’s things and bringing them out with me, I looked at Lost with worry.

“I never saw her leave. We had a really good talk after you went to sleep last night,” she said, floating the book away and into her bags. “Do you think she’d just leave us?”

“No... She was just starting to really open up. She left her things, too. She never lets them out of her sight. Let’s go ask around town?” I suggested, after plopping her bag down. Why couldn’t I just have magic like my sister? It really wasn’t fair that I couldn’t talk while carrying things.

“Alright, Xeno has pulled a disappearing act before... Let’s have breakfast, see if she comes back. If not, we go looking for our zebra,” L.A. said, pulling out some food from her bags. Well, at least we still had delicious snacks from Marshmallow Sundae.

* * *

“I don’t understand why you won’t let me get Persistence out,” I said, walking close to my sister as we combed the town for our friend. The nagging little claws in the back of my mind were back in full force again. Now that I recognized the lack of mares, I couldn’t help but feel every stallion’s eyes on me.

“Persistence? Is that what you’re calling it?” she asked, skeptically.

“That’s what the PipBuck calls it,” I corrected her. We’d already asked several ponies about Xeno, but none would give us an answer.

“Still no. I told you, if you go wandering around with your guns out, we’re not going to get any answers even if somepony does know something,” she explained, sighing heavily.

Everypony was extremely polite, offering us drinks and an extra night’s stay for free. Sale Price even offered a generous discount for anything we wanted to buy, provided we never let our zebra friend back inside his shop.

“Lost, I’m worried. Nopony’s even seen her,” I said, practically whining. I really didn’t like the idea that we’d lost her already. “She couldn’t have just disappeared.” Something felt really wrong; Xeno never went anywhere without her bag of... stuff. She was super-protective of it, and her going anywhere without it scared me. If she’d really been gone from the time Lost was in the memory orb until morning, I didn’t want to think about it.

“Do you think we should check the town hall?” she asked, pointing to the big building at the top of the hill. I nodded, and we started toward it.

We didn’t get very far before the Goddess interrupted us. She dropped to the ground directly in our path in a cloud of dust. Her marvelous wings outstretched, she stared down past her muzzle at the two of us. “We- have become aware you seeking something in Our- town!” she said in a booming voice. “What is it you are doing?”

“We’re looking for our friend. She disappeared,” I answered, bowing ever so slightly. She was a bit intimidating up close and yelling at us.

“That is troublesome, We- have heard nothing of this. Perhaps one of Our- daughters will be of assistance,” she boomed, smiling wide. “We- will take care of everything.” She looked back and forth between Lost and I. Her wings folded to her sides, her smile disappearing. She leaned down to stare at me. “You trust Us-, do you not?”

“Of- Of course,” I stammered. I could never doubt one of the Goddesses. She might look different from Celestia and Luna, but she was still one of them. “What do you mean, ‘your daughters?’ I just want to find my friend!” I caved, if only to get her to stop staring at me.

Her dark blue eyes squinted, and she lifted her head back to her full height. “We- wish to save Our- daughters, and all ponies. Through Unity the Wasteland will be made safe for them,” she said, explaining exactly nothing. “We- shall allow The Goddess an explanation. Our- words will make it so you may understand Our- goal.” She stopped moving, for nearly a minute, while I stared in awe. What did she mean, ask The Goddess? The Goddesses were Celestia and Luna, there wasn’t just ‘The Goddess’ at all. “Hmm, We- are unable to reach The Goddess at this time. We must take Our leave now.”

With that, she spread her wings and flew off, giving no further explanation. I watched in confusion as she disappeared into the sky, literally. Once she had gotten a short distance away, she just popped out of existence in a flash.

Confused, I asked, “Lost, what was that?”

Lost didn’t answer.

I looked back, but Lost was nowhere to be seen. “Lost?” I yelled, suddenly very worried. Her bags, and Xeno’s, were gone. I circled around several times, looking for anypony that might show me where my sister went. She was gone, her stuff was gone, and there weren’t any ponies wandering the streets.

“Where is everypony?!”

* * *

I knew it. Not wearing guns had been a bad idea. Why’d I listened to my sister? Because she was my sister, and she knew best. I looked down the empty street to my left, then back to my right. No ponies, mare or stallion. Even living in the Wasteland with my sister, secluded and hiding out for so many years, this still felt lonely. All around was silence, deafening me.

The only times I’d ever been away from Lost were in Stable Sixty and around Leathers. Each time, I’d deemed it either necessary or safe. To save her life, she ran and I fended off the Wirepony monstrosity. In Stable Sixty, I trusted every pony there, and knew no harm would come to my sister. But with her just... gone? I didn’t know what to do.

I fell to my haunches, suddenly unable to breathe. I looked around once more. The shops didn’t hold Xeno, neither did any of the housing buildings. That left... I looked over at the town hall. I hadn’t seen a single pony go near it, and part of me wondered if it was an irradiated deathtrap like the far side of town. I needed to narrow things down first. There were plenty of places we hadn’t checked, plenty of places that townsponies had oh-so-politely kept us from looking. If I could find Lost and Xeno before I had to go there, I would. An empty building at best, and at worst?

The fact that I locked up so bad without my sister to guide me was pathetic; weakness beyond the pale. Slowly, I stood and turned to face the building on the hill. An abandoned building would be a good place to hide somepony, but I had been facing it the entire time. Unless they knew some fancy form of cheater teleportation magic? I’d only heard about that from Mom, though.

My ears skewed back, catching something in the air. Somepony talking. It could be Lost. She’d only been gone a minute or two while I was trying to hype myself up. Either this town had some ghosts from old Equestria spiriting away ponies, or... I didn’t want to think of other options. She probably just came up with some idea and bolted, thinking she’d be back before I noticed. I took a deep breath, and ran toward the sound I’d heard.

Following the swiveling of my ears, I rounded a corner behind one of the shops. The alley lead to the apartment building across from where we’d stayed the night. Skidding to a stop, I brought my left forehoof to my face.

“Hidden, start being a thinky pony,” I said under my breath, to myself. I backed into the alleyway again and dropped my things on the ground. Be prepared, just in case. I grabbed my battle saddle, with Persistence and the shotgun. After that, I took out the armor from Stable Sixty. Still wishing I had some cheater magic, I pulled everything on, and checked that my guns were set. Good pony. Thinky pony. Prepared pony.

Through the otherwise total silence, I listened to the murmuring and the voices. I peeked out from the alleyway, right ear twitching, and heard more from the building we’d stayed in. Why hadn’t I thought to look into it last night? For that matter, why hadn’t I noticed it when we first got to town? Two buildings to check, then I could move on.

What if Tally and Tab were still there? Were they in on the disappearances? Could I get past them and sneak by to check? I looked down at my steel hoof. It wasn’t the quietest thing in the Wasteland... Lost was always the pony who was good at sneaking out. If she was there, I had to try.

I laughed to myself. Knowing my luck, there was nothing wrong at all. I was just being a silly pony working herself up over nothing.

I stepped in, already running a speech through my head about how I’d forgotten something in the ro-

Tally wasn’t at his desk. Tab wasn’t at the bar either. I dove around behind the makeshift counter, knocking over Tally’s stool.

Behind the desk, on little hooks, hung dozens of identical sets of keys. Tally hadn’t been kidding when he said he had plenty of extras. I looked for our room, and found three sets. Snagging one in my teeth, I jumped over the counter and scrambled up the stairs. Lost had probably just run back to the hotel, letting me finish the conversation with the Goddess.

I rounded the corner on the second floor, shifting to fit my guns through the doorframe. Nopony in the halls. I walked slow, setting my steel hoof down as gently as I could. I pressed my ear against the first door I came to, and listened.

The voice through the door was soft, wistful. I couldn’t make out a single word it said. The noise was so quiet, it seemed like there wasn’t even a voice. Just an overpowering murmur coming from every direction with no actual origin. Looking at the door, I backed off and moved towards the room we’d stayed in.

The door was open. None of the keys had been missing from the spares, but our door was wide open. I looked inside, checked every room. Nopony. A voice echoed through the hallway. A door slammed.

“...believe it’s been a week already. Time flies,” the voice laughed, “when...” The voice trailed off. It was a stallion I hadn’t heard before. He walked past the door without noticing me, hidden just around the corner. Nopony was with him. Was he talking to himself?

I peeked around the corner, just in time to see the light through a doorway disappear. I trotted over and knocked once. Without waiting, I tried the door. I needed to find my sister, right now. The door opened without any resistance, it wasn’t even locked. Inside was a room nearly identical to the one we’d had, and a quick check showed... Nothing. There were no other exits, and nopony inside. What in the? Where had he gone?

I backed back into the hallway.

This was a dead end. If there even was a pony around, it wasn’t Lost. I had to check other places. I ran. Past the voices that weren’t my sister or my friend, I ran. I needed to find Lost, and fast.

* * *

The second building was much the same. Nopony at the entrance, and every floor empty, with every door locked. I felt so stupid for going ‘tunnel vision’ and looking for a problem I could spot right away, never considering the answer might be held behind closed doors.

Convinced I was alone, I felt safe enough to break one down. I found a door, in a back corner, under a broken and flickering light. I smashed it in. The room was empty, just the same moldy striped wallpaper like everything else. The room was completely clear, just like the rest of the town. The worst part was turning around and seeing somepony leave behind me. I chased, but when I ran down the hallway, there was nothing. Just my hoofprints in the dusty corridor.

Somepony was fucking with me now. I knew damn well I was paranoid around groups. Mom had drilled that into my head. But I didn’t need to be hallucinating just because my sister wasn’t right next to me! I folded my ears back, forcing myself to stop straining to hear every little thing. I backed into the room and collapsed on the nearest couch. The mere idea that I’d missed all this really hurt my resolve.

How could I find my sister, or make the world around me safer, if I couldn’t even tell when something was horribly wrong in the town I was in? I needed to listen to the little nagging claws in the back of my mind more often. Being so associated with that dream had made me tune them out. I didn’t need help. I shook my head to get the thought out of my mind.

“Ignore it Hidden, you’re better than this. Get over your fears. They’re holding you back.”

I stood, mad at letting all this get the best of me. I didn’t have time for self pity. I just needed to beat some sense into myself. Somehow in my frustration, I made it to the wall on the far end of the room. I slammed my head into it, needing something to drill my focus back.

“Why.”

SLAM.

“Can’t.”

SLAM!

“I.”

SL-

“Ahh!” I yelled, stumbling forward as the wall swung open before me.

“What in the...” I asked the air, looking at the hollow opening where a solid wall had been moments before. Rubbing my flesh forehoof against my now bruised forehead, I looked at the false wall. The seams blended perfectly with the stripes in the wallpaper.

“Sneaky bastards,” I muttered, stepping forward. If Lost and Xeno had disappeared anywhere, this would be it. I was going to kill whoever took my sister and friend away from me. I stormed through the secret doorway, ready for whatever might come at me. I wasn’t going to waste the first break I’d had in this search by sitting around and feeling sorry for myself.

* * *

The voices and murmurs were worse in the tunnel. I’d trotted down several flights of stairs, and moved my way into pitch black. It felt like I was underground, but I couldn’t tell for sure. At some point, I lost track of just how many steps I’d clambered down, and what counted as a ‘floor’ anyway? The echo though, that was the worst. I couldn’t tell which way was forward and which was back.

Deep down, part of me wished I was a unicorn like L.A. At least then I’d have a light spell I could use. I didn’t even have the PipBuck for light. The dark didn’t scare me. Not since I was a filly, but... this wasn’t the Wasteland. There weren’t any sounds I knew, there weren’t peeks of the stars through the cloud cover to light the way. I didn’t have a campfire or a sister or a mother to keep watch while I slept.

It was just... Black.

I scraped my shotgun against the wall, moving slowly. If I kept along the right wall, I’d find something eventually. I just had to feel my way through. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and took another step forward. My hoof clanked hard against the stone floor, followed by three softer thuds. I was alone down here. I walked, not counting steps. I didn’t want to think about how far I’d walked down here or what might be just behind or in front of me. Nopony, no monster, was going to sneak out and grab me.

And even if they did, I had guns! I was prepared! Slowly, I stepped forward, one hoof after the other, nice and slow like a thinky pony. Listening. My ears swiveled back and forth, trying to pick up on something, anything. All I could hear was the dull echo of noise far beyond my reach.

The scraping of metal against stone overpowered the sound for the most part, kept it out of my thoughts. I took another step. The wall was gone.

I fell.

The clattering of my hooves and battle saddle echoed all around. More than one tunnel, or just a turn? Goddess, could I ever catch a break? I just stayed still, laid there and listened. Ears flitting back and forth, I tried to pinpoint the sound of the voices to decide where to go.

Scrape... Scrape... Clank.

That... wasn’t my shotgun against the stone wall! I opened my eyes as wide as I could and looked around. Nothing but blackness. Left was black. Right was black. My breathing came in quick bursts as I looked around. I wanted to scream, I wanted to turn and run. Lost would find me if I just went to back. She’d know where to look for me if I disappeared. She was stronger, she was smarter... She could get out of this on her own.

“No!” I yelled to myself, louder than I should have. It echoed around the walls, creating an eerie loop of shouting. I stood up, and leaned against the wall again. I was stronger than that. I could do this. If I turned right, then I was facing... I tried to remember the layout of the town from what I’d seen. Was this toward the town hall? Or was it toward the radiation?

I didn’t have time to figure it out. The voices got louder, echoing in the same eerie loop as my own voice. Closing my eyes again, I took another step.

Scrape... Scrape... Clank!

It sounded closer, or just louder. The sound was almost like chains dragging against the floor... Where was it coming from? I spun in a circle, or tried to, until Persistence got caught on the wall. Yelping, I backpedaled a few steps, and looked back and forth. It was useless, with all the blackness. The minute I got the PipBuck back, I was locking it to my leg and never letting it go. I’d weld it to the steel hoof if I had to, so I could always have a light and E.F.S. to keep me sane.

Had that scraping been going on the entire time I was down here? Was holding the gun against the wall just masking it? It didn’t matter. Without some sort of light, I couldn’t tell where it was, or how long it’d been there. I just kept moving.

Tapping my guns against the walls, I tried to keep from scraping them against the wall too long. I needed to follow the gentle scraping around me. The voices were mostly gone, as if hushed by the sound of the chains it was dragging against the floor or wall or... whatever they were doing!

I stopped in my tracks, and clenched my eyes shut. No. No, no, no! My brain betrayed me, thinking on its own. Chains were like wires... Wirepony was a monster made of wires and steel ranger armor. What if there were more!? What if the town had some sort of chain monster eating ponies for, for... for whatever the Goddesses knew!

I threw my hooves in the air, scraping them against the ceiling. Falling back to the floor, I hung my head. I couldn’t let my mind get carried away or I’d never get anywhere. Chain monster, how ridiculous? Smiling to myself, I let out a little echoing laugh. Like the Wasteland would let another one of those monsters exist.

Having calmed myself down, I took a step forward. This wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be. Just a tunnel from the War, probably used to move ponis safely in the event of a zebra raid or something. I bet there were even lights, they just needed some power.

This wasn’t anywhere as bad-

Something wrapped around my mouth and neck and pulled.

* * *

Straining against the chains that held my legs, I hit the ground. Hard.

“Fuck!” I screamed, looking around. Whatever it was, it’d blindfolded me. What was the point of that? It was already pitch black in the tunnels. Even without a blindfold I couldn’t see shit. I thrashed about on the floor, trying to find a way to my hooves.

“Shut. Up!” yelled a stallion’s voice.

“We’re doomed, you know that?” said a mare. “This one’ll lead her right to us.”

I wasn’t too pleased with being blindfolded, tied up, and carried off to the Goddesses knew where. Even the five minutes that I’d been chained up were enough to push my anger to a fever pitch. For once I wasn’t afraid of being restrained, I was too pissed off to be scared. A hoof pushed my head down, and somepony’s telekinesis pulled the blindfold off. I pulled my chained forehooves up to block out the silvery light, and looked up at the ponies around me: a nearly-black unicorn stallion and an off-white unicorn mare.

“Willow, stop your yelling!” yelled the stallion. The mare looked taken aback. With a grimace, both looked at me. “You’re a right lot of trouble, y’know that?” he said, pressing a hoof to my mouth to keep me quiet.

“You’re going to lead her to us. And then we’re all dead!” yelled Willow, as loud as she could without breaking a whisper. She pointed a hoof. “Get out! Back the way you came.” Following the way she pointed, I saw the same secret door I’d gone in through the room in the apartment building.

They’d carried me back? I glared at the two unicorns, on the verge of killing them. I moved away from the hoof holding my mouth closed. “Give me my sister,” I demanded. I glared at the two, looking back and forth between them.

“Button, we need to get back, fast,” whispered the mare. She looked past the door, staying in the shadow it cast, as if she didn’t dare move into the light. “If she catches us...”

“She has your sister. Now get out. Go fast, and do not return,” said Button, using his magic to push me toward the door. “Lead her to the tunnels, and we’ll kill you.”

I struggled and dug my hooves against the floor as best I could. Damn chains. The mare joined in, using both magic and hooves to shove me past the threshold. I slid past, tripping and falling as I hit a loose floorboard.

The door slammed shut as I toppled over, locking me into the room all alone again. The murmur of voices was gone, and no amount of straining gave me anything. The chains disappeared, and I fell free.

Back to square one...

“Hey...” said the mare through the wall. The door creaked open, barely an inch. A single silver eye peeked through the sliver, a glowing haze making it just bright enough to see. “The zebra’s with us. She’s safe.”

The door slammed shut again, disappearing into the striped wallpaper.

“Town hall,” whispered a voice, just barely loud enough to hear.

* * *

They kept Xeno. They threw me out? How helpful! I had a goal now though, and that was all I needed. Whoever that pony was, she’d given me the confirmation I needed. That town hall. Either it was an irradiated death trap, and the Goddess was turning my sister into a zombie or, worse, maybe it was... I shook my head and ran.

My hooves thudded on the dusty floorboards and pounded the stairs as I ran outside. Nopony to be seen in any direction. Everything looked just like the irradiated buildings across the park. No Goddess anywhere, either.

I mouthed the battle saddle’s bit, gently. I needed to be ready to fire if anypony or anything got in my way. What had that Willow mare meant, when she said they were doomed? Surely there was something more going on than a benevolent Goddess and disappearing ponies. I knew Xeno was ‘safe,’ at least I hoped. If that mare was lying...

Then again, they had thrown me out without killing me, so for now they had the benefit of the doubt.

Something shifted in the corner of my vision, a shadow dancing across the ground. I spun on my hooves, trailing both guns toward whatever it was. Nothing. I looked up, back and forth. I took a step back, shifting on my hooves and heading back on my path. I ran up the shattered road, making far more noise than I was comfortable with as my steel hoof slammed down onto the two-century-old asphalt.

“Just paranoia, Hidden Fortune. That’s all it is,” I whispered to myself around the bit. The words were muffled, but I knew what I meant. I looked forward, trying not to let jumping shadows and whispering voices distract me.

I made it to the door, and smashed through it. It wasn’t locked anyway. Inside was what must have passed for an average town hall, with plain walls of rotting wood, and a whole lot of empty. A smashed terminal sat atop a counter to my right, and to the left, a pair of rotting chairs. There was something creepy about the building, something I couldn’t put my hoof on. Something that made those claws in the back of my mind pick up again and start to dig. I ran past the emptiness, past a staircase, down the hallway. I skipped a break room full of overturned tables and useless junk on a counter against the far wall. No ponies, no clues. Across the hall was another room, with more rotting chairs and more nothing.

I stopped, and closed my eyes. The voices led me on earlier; the quiet murmuring was the telltale sign. If I could find it here, I could find my sister. I strained myself, trying to hear something, anything. Dead silence surrounded me, so quiet I could hear my heartbeat in my head. I spun around and made for the stairs.

I bolted up the stairs two at a time, running as best I could up with the battle saddle. Running up stairs with a huge hunk of metal strapped to me wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. I hit the top step, and pushed through the door. Counting my luck as better than Xeno’s ever could be, it was open. I stood at the landing and closed my eyes, and let me ears do the searching. Just like downstairs, I couldn’t hear a thing. Time to think like a scavenger and check everything obvious or unopened.

With a sigh, I opened my eyes. I looked around. Two rooms to check up here. I crept through the first door, and found a large rotten office, destroyed by two hundred years of neglect. The skeleton of a pony sat in a moldy chair behind a once magnificent desk, a hole through her head and a pistol lying on the floor next to the desk. Poor pony... Was it really so hopeless as to do that? I sighed, wishing I’d never have to see an all-out war like this pony had.

I turned and left the room. It was empty anyway, except for dry bones and two hundred year old regret. The other room lead to a balcony that overlooked the city. To the side, a shattered robot leaned against the wall. Its three arms hung limply from the giant stem protruding beneath its rounded head. Three eye-stalks sagged underneath a gigantic frayed hat.

“What in the?” I asked, my eyebrow twitching slightly. I looked over the balcony, getting a good view of the city. In the distance, I spotted something moving through the barren dirt fields toward the city, a vehicle of some sort with a cloud of dust behind it. But it wasn’t Lost, and thus wasn’t immediately important. I couldn’t see far enough out without the sniper rifle’s scope to make out any details. I knew Xeno had needed a weapon, but I was really regretting having given it to her. I spun around and ran back into the building.

“Think, think, think!” I yelled to myself, prancing in place. Willow said the town hall was the place. There had to be something. Another hidden passage? Did they run the length of the whole town? Whatever they were hiding from must be what was coming. That’d explain why all the ponies suddenly vanished. Maybe the Goddess, if I could find her, would explain. She’d know where Lost was and protect us.

Unless she was hiding her from me herself.

I paced along the walls, resting my flesh forehoof against it and pushing for something that might give. The hallway yielded nothing, so I moved back into the room with the corpse. The gun was rusted beyond usefulness, and the desk held nothing that might help. Papers too faded to read, and a diary so old the pages had fused. No buttons or latches to activate a secret passage. I circled the walls, moving faster. Whatever was coming, I needed to be faster.

“Ugh! Nothing!” I shouted at nopony. This was ridiculous. The best place for there to be some tunnel entrance was the office of the pony who ran this town. That was who they’d want to keep the safest, right? Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough. I stepped to the center of the room and looked around once more. Any little difference could be the key.

Every wall and corner looked identical. Fuming, I ran back to the hall and down the stairs. I hopped halfway down, around the corner and jumped down the flight of stairs. I didn’t have time for safety. I needed to find my sister and figure out what in Luna’s name was coming to the town. What was so bad that ponies were hiding in old wartime hidey-holes? I tripped on the landing, and faltered as my steel hoof punched through the floorboard.

Tumbling forward, I skidded along the floor until I hit the far wall. With a hollow thud, the wall gave in an inch, and I felt a cold breeze across my flank. Slowly, I stood and turned. Before me was the door, hidden well by the warped and rotting wood. Xeno must have been with me, at least in spirit, to make me trip. I looked at my steel hoof and smiled, then pushed the door open and started down.

* * *

The stairs leading down were brightly lit; a stark contrast from the pitch black of the tunnels I’d found underneath the apartments. I slunk down the stone steps, carefully placing each hoof as quietly as I could. If there were more ponies like those I’d met before, I wanted to spot them before they could spot me. I held my breath, listening to hear something before I could see it. I peeked around the sharp corners in the stairway, hoping to catch whatever might be down there off-guard.

The voices were back, echoing softly off the stone walls. The skull-clawing creepiness didn’t hit me like it did before. These voices were happy, and coupled with the warm lighting overhead, made it almost feel homey. I could hear movement too, hooves against the floor, against metal. I kept on, not making a sound. I even went so far as to walk on three hooves to keep my steel hoof from clanking loudly on the stone.

The stairwell ended in a short hallway, with two doors. One was right to my side, with another at the far end of the hallway. Maybe this was where the pony up in the office was supposed to go, but something had stopped her? I looked back and forth. Which to try first? Shifting my ears back and forth, I listened. The voices echoed from the far door. The door next to me held the sounds of moving around, but didn’t sound near as happy or friendly. I decided that talking with friendly ponies was better than whatever I might find behind the closer door.
I trotted down, opened the door and stepped through.
Light, color, and laughter punched me in the face.
Brilliant blue drapes lined the walls, radiant in the clean white light from a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. A dozen mattresses formed a large circle around the center of the room, all covered in spotless linens, cleaner than any sheets I’d ever seen in the Wasteland. Pleasant-looking mares sat on the mattresses, smiling and chatting with the ponies around them. Not one seemed to have a care in the world.

I stomped my steel hoof, sending a metallic ringing into the room. Every mare went silent and turned to look at me. I ignored the ridiculously out-of-place cheerfulness, and focused on looking for my sister. None of the ponies here were her. This was far more than frustrating by this point. I stomped again, wishing I could shatter the stone beneath my hooves. I was beyond pissed-off by this point.

“Where. Is. My. Sister,” I demanded, staring at the ponies.

“We- are all sisters under our Mother, The Goddess,” they all said in perfect unison. “Perhaps she has Our- sister. Soon Mother will take Us- to Unity. You should join Us- in becoming one.” Each mare flashed a smile, all tilting their heads slightly to the right. They spoke just like her, even with the weird tic she had...

“I don’t want your unity, or your freaky talking-together... thing. I want my sister. Where is she?” I asked again. I took a step back toward the doorway, looking back and forth at each of the mares. None of them broke my gaze, none even blinking. What in Celestia’s name was this ‘Goddess’ doing to them?

Their room was luxurious, well lit with clean mattresses. There were shelves with all manner of baubles and several intact books. A polished tub sat against one wall, and there were stacks of clothing and towels on a table nearby. There was food in stacks, sitting in a broken refrigerator and even flowers on top of it. It looked like they had anything a pony in the Wasteland could ever want, but if the price for that was acting like that, and ‘becoming one’ with another pony... was that something any individual could do? I backed to the door and stepped past it, then slammed the door shut. I prayed to Celestia and Luna I never got wrapped up in that.

I shivered involuntarily. I could still feel them all watching me.

As I stared at the door in horror, their voices returned, quietly at first, followed by loud giggling, and finally back to the same quiet murmur I’d been hearing the whole time. I kept backing up, wanting to get as far from whatever in the Goddesses’ name that was. I backed away through the hall until my hooves hit something, yelped like a filly, and jumped to turn around!

Just the stairs. With a deep breath to calm myself, I looked at the closer door. A door in a war-time tunnel meant somewhere to keep ponies safe during the end of the world, right? Slowly I put my hoof on the door to push it open. The ponies here didn’t sound like they were all talking in unison or lying on the floor doing nothing but looking creepy. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than... than that.

I closed my eyes and pushed the door open. The second it opened, I was hit by a cacophony of sounds so loud I had to pin my ears back and reflexively clenched my eyes shut. The hoarse voices of mares and stallions shouted, metal rattled against metal, and the walls echoed with the stomping of hooves and wailing of ponies.

I opened my eyes and looked into the room. It was darker, lit only by the light coming through the open door. Nearly a dozen ponies were down here, crammed into cages barely big enough to fit a filly. A couple were curled in corners, looking completely despondent. Others rattled their cages with hooves covered in blood. Those same ponies shouted at the top of their lungs, words that I couldn’t understand through the hoarseness and desperation. How long had these ponies been caged, and why?

“Hey!” yelled a stallion standing outside the cages. I didn’t notice him over the sight of ponies screaming at me through cages.

The plight of these ponies punched a hole in my heart. It hadn’t been that long ago that I too had been held against my will, and forced to work in horrible mines full of gangers and bloodwings. A day or a lifetime, nopony deserved to be in captivity. Even horrible monsters and ponies who’d given up all right to live as decent Wastelanders didn’t deserve this. Being a slave was bad, being held in a cage unfit for radroaches, trapped in an underground tunnel, locked away from the outdoors, was horrific.

Finally I realized there was a pony yelling at me with a pissed-off look on his face, shouting something I both couldn’t, and didn’t, want to hear. Realizing I wasn’t listening, he raised a tiny pistol in his magic and fired at me. The bullet bounced harmlessly off the armor the Steel Rangers had given me. In retaliation, I hit him, hard. “Why!” I yelled, screaming over the deafening noise of the room. I stepped over him, and stood on his chest to hold him down.

“It’s the only way!” he yelled back, swinging his hoof at me. I smashed it down with my other forehoof. Locking ponies up was the only way? Was that what the Goddesses would’ve wanted? I struck him across the face with my steel hoof, splattering blood and teeth across the floor, and feeling no small amount of pleasure at it. With the guard knocked out, I turned to the caged ponies who’d given up all hope. I checked him over once for a key or something, but all he had on him was the pistol.

I worked to unlatch the first cage, trying to break out a green-maned mare. The latch was locked, and there was no way I could get the lock picked with my hooves before whatever that vehicle was got here. I looked at the steel hoof and wondered if I’d ever pick a lock again. Cheater magic!

“I... I’ll come back. You all wait here. I promise,” I said, trying to sound brave and trustworthy. I just needed time to think. I stepped back into the passage between the two rooms, holding a hoof up to quiet the screaming ponies in the cages. I needed to think. I needed...

I ran away, up the stairs. There was no exit in either of those rooms, unless it was well hidden. Back the way I’d come, then. It wasn’t like I’d be getting any help from the ponies who’d thrown me out of these tunnels earlier. I didn’t need them. I scrambled to the main floor, and pulled the fake door shut.

I had questions, and that Goddess was the only pony who could have the answers. I just needed to find out how to get her to let those ponies go, and let us get away. Whatever this unity was she kept talking about, she could keep it.

What if the ‘she’ the ponies in the tunnel were talking about was the Goddess? Was she the one who was going to kill them? The idea of one of the Goddesses being a murderer wasn’t something I could handle. That would be like saying that Celestia or Luna was personally involved in slaughter. I couldn’t think of my Goddesses like that! They were divine ponies who watched over and protected us. Sure they didn’t always do a perfect job, but it was a Wasteland and there were many ponies with many needs, and two Goddesses could only do so much. Their power only stretched so far. The sun and moon still rose and set, and that was enough to convince me. Goddesses were good ponies.

So why did I have a horrible knot in the bottom of my stomach?

* * *

I wasn’t ready to face her straightaway. If what those ponies had said was true, and I really hoped it wasn’t, I needed to be a thinky pony and figure out what I was up against. There was a reason they were hiding in the walls and afraid of her. I needed to find out what that reason was, before I went in with nothing but guns and my hooves. Without Lost to make a real plan, I would get my flanks handed to me.

I ducked out of the town hall and hugged the wall, crouching as low as I could. I moved quickly, darting behind one of the smaller buildings to the side, then dashing to an alley. I may have been keeping a low profile, but I wasn’t going to find anything by staying out of sight. I ducked into a particularly thin alley, and made my way closer to the center of the town. Crouching down, I looked past the corner of the building to see if anything had arrived yet.

From the opening in the hills we’d entered the night before, came two ponies hauling a large cart. They were strapped in with heavy chains between them, and didn’t look comfortable in their position. Atop the cart rode three mares: two unicorns and an earth pony. The earth pony in the middle was purple and pink, with her mane spiked in a wicked mohawk. On one side of her sat an orangey yellow unicorn, and a blue unicorn sat on the other. I couldn’t see inside the cart from where I was, but if it had anything to do with the ponies locked in the cages below the town hall, I was going to start murdering.

The Goddess appeared.

She didn’t walk into sight, where I could see and avoid her. She didn’t even bother sneaking up on me. She just appeared right in front of my eyes, too close for comfort. Reflexively I bit for my battle saddle. Before I could, she placed a wing between my teeth and the bit. Ponyfeathers weren’t particularly tasty, eugh. She leaned down to eye level.

“Why do you sneak through Our- town?” she asked “We- only wish to save you! Our- daughters wait eagerly for their induction into Unity. Come and accept the gift We- wish to share with you!” She stood tall again, twitching slightly. Goddess or not, her unification wasn’t something I wanted to be a part of. No Goddess would help slavers, or warp innocent mares like the ones in the town hall’s basement. The tic in her speech wasn’t helping convince me she was divine, either, especially since it seemed something the others had picked up on as a personal trait of hers.

“You look like a Goddess, but I want nothing to do with you or your ‘daughters!’” I yelled at her, backing up several steps. She was the only pony who could have Lost. Every other option was gone. I stared her down. “Give me my sister.”

“We- cannot,” she stated, passive and uncaring. “She rejects Our- Unity but she is needed elsewhere. She will aid Our- ally in building a new Equestria. We- must protect Our- daughters. Surrender and go with your sister!”

That did it. I would not allow my sister to be sent away by this monster pretending to be a Goddess. I bit down on my battle saddle, firing Persistence at her.

“Fool!” she yelled, a shimmering sphere appearing around her that stopped my bullets in mid-air. “You cannot defeat Us-, yield or suffer.” Her demeanor changed entirely, going from a regal pony that looked like the Goddesses, to an outright monster. Her wings flared out and her mane began to flow wildly. “WE- HAVE PLANS HERE! YOU WILL NOT RUIN THEM!”

Her horn began to glow, crackling so loud I had to pin my ears back. I turned and ran as fast as my hooves could carry me. She could stop my bullets from hitting her, and she had magic something fierce. I knew better than to stay for whatever she was planning.

I ran back to the alleys.

The sky lit up as if a storm were rolling in, the clouds themselves illuminating as lightning arced along the ground, from the Goddess, past where I’d just been. A crack sounded through the air a second later, loud enough to send me to my knees. I put my hooves over my ears, trying to drown out the pounding.

Whatever that Goddess really was, it had me terrified.

“This isn’t a fight I can win, is it?” I asked the Goddesses aloud. I stared at the now dark clouds, the ominous cover that kept the stars and the true Goddesses from watching over me and mine. While I prayed, I reloaded. “Celestia, Luna. Please? Just this once.”

As if my prayers were answered, a voice called out, “My good alicorn,” it yelled, “have I come at a bad time?”

The Goddess didn’t chase after me, instead turning her attention to the voice. “Mmm, yes. There have been undesirables to deal with. We- have the situation under control, Our- daughters are safe,” said the... Alicorn? Is that what they were called? Did that mean she wasn’t a Goddess? “Our- Unity will not be threatened.”

Taking advantage of the free minute, I ran for another vantage point. Mid-run, I finished reloading Persistence. I’d need everything I could get. The alicorn, or whatever she was, needed to be stopped. Whatever twisted thing was going through the steel-rent mind of hers, it couldn’t be good. Brainwashing ‘daughters’ and trafficking in slaves wasn’t anything a true Goddess did. I was putting an end to this, once and for all.

I found a new spot, a good vantage point a safe distance away. The alicorn had her shield dropped, distracted by the new pony who’d joined her. I aimed Persistence, and bit down hard. The entirety of the magazine emptied at the Goddess, and seven bullets punched through her back and wings. None hit hard enough to do significant damage. Worthless. The beautiful hunting rifle was a good weapon, but it wasn’t a sniper rifle, and at my range... Dammit!

Without even flinching she shot a glare right at me and walked calmly to the radiation-soaked part of the city, spreading out her wings.

The alicorn stood a few yards from the pink and purple earth pony, who had stepped off the cart. The two chatted, the earth pony with an unpleasant smirk on her face. I was too far away to hear what she said. The pale blue unicorn mare with her nodded and trotted forward. She wore several leather holsters across her back, hiding whatever her cutie mark might have been. As she left the group, the earth pony yelled, “Don’t disappoint me, Slipstock.”

I moved again, trying to buy myself time by being somewhere far away from where she’d be looking for me. Between position changes, I reloaded again. Persistence was full again, and I swapped out the shotgun shells for slugs. That alicorn took a full load of rifle rounds without batting an eye, and the slugs were the only things I had that packed more of a punch.

I found myself a good spot where I had a safe place to back against, and waited. The mare had to come in front of me, and I could get her as she rounded the corner. I waited, mouth on the bit and shotgun at the ready. A few seconds would be enough.

The mare rounded the corner. She’d never even pulled her guns from their holsters; what a stupid mare. I bit down, and the shotgun erupted, spitting a slug at the unicorn. Even without the PipBuck, I couldn’t miss at that distance.

The shot missed. No, it didn’t miss... she deflected it! Her revolver clattered to the ground, the metal split in half and bullets tumbling from the cylinder. She just smiled at me, and pulled another one.

I didn’t have time to dodge. A bullet tore through my shoulder, actually going between my armor and flesh before hitting bone.

I stared, mouth gaping as pain shot through me. How in the Goddesses’ name had she done that? I dove away, cursing the mixed blessing my armor gave me. Sure it offered a lot more protection than the nothing I’d had before, but I couldn’t move as fast with it on. Dancing on my hooves, I landed, spun and aimed at her again. A second and third gun flew through the air to block both my gun barrels.

She twisted the pistols in the magenta haze of her magic, and all three fired repeatedly at me. I was fighting for my life, and she... she looked bored. Like this was just another day for her. A mare that could draw that fast wasn’t something I’d prepared for. Bullets ripped through several chunks of my mane, and one of my ears disappeared, torn apart and sent to the wind.

The grace of the Goddesses saved me. I raised my steel hoof to block. It made a good makeshift shield, and kept one gun from landing any hits. The other two missed taking my head completely off, but only because I flinched.

The unicorn continued firing, emptying all three guns at me as I turned tail and ran. I danced side to side, moving in serpentine to try and get away. I wasn’t the fastest on my hooves, and weighted down by armor and the battle saddle, I couldn’t dodge very well. Several bullets grazed me, with more than one painfully digging into my flanks or through my legs. But I’d had worse. I thought back to the pain of having my hoof bitten off, and the searing fire that saved my life. I thought about the surgery, and the nerves they had to connect to electronics to give me the ability to walk. Bullet holes were nothing.

I limped past a corner, tumbling down and pulling out a healing potion from my bag. I downed it, breathing heavy and watching the wounds. The bleeding slowed and the wonderful, itchy, flesh-knitting feeling took over. I was good enough to walk. I just needed time to heal.

A light caught my attention, and I jumped to the side. The three pistols that Steel Rangers had fixed up for me burst from my saddlebags and began firing. That. Was. Just. Not. FAIR! How dare she use cheater magic to- I ducked and covered my head, letting the bullets passed by harmlessly.

Slipstock walked around the corner, her eyes half closed and a frown across her lips. “Are we done yet?” she drawled. “I’m bored.”

“What?” I asked.

“Ya not puttin’ up much of a fight,” she snarked.

“Why are you attacking me? That pony is insane!” I snapped.

“Who cares? She’s ma boss,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Now are ya done yet? ‘Cause I’m seriously thinkin’ ‘bout gettin’ Amble to let me jus’ kill ya already.” She stomped her forehooves a few times, shaking off the dust I’d kicked on her.

“You're just fucking with me?” I asked, staring at her in shock.

“Eh? I had some fun while I was at it. Ya missin’ an ear, ain’tcha?” she answered, pointing at me. Almost as if she were taunting, the three guns she’d taken from my saddlebags were lowered back in, and the haze of her telekinesis closed and latched the flaps.

Realization hit that I’d lost an ear, again, and I stifled a yelp. I tapped at it with my flesh forehoof, praying to the Goddesses. I really didn’t want to have another piece of metal replace something I’d lost! The healing potion was doing its job, and it had already healed most of the way.

I bit down on the battle saddle’s bit, not giving the bitch the satisfaction.

Just like the time before, the slug shattered through one of her guns, drawn faster than I could see. She threw the two pieces of it at me, and slid out two more pistols from their holsters. The shifting leather straps left her cutie mark visible for only the quickest of seconds, a gun exiting a holster. Great, her special talent...

If she was fast enough to block any shots I fired from a distance, then I just needed to get up close and personal. I could hit her with hooves and fight where she couldn’t maneuver. Charging her, I slammed my head into her chin, knocking her up just enough to stun her-

She slid out another gun and fired a half-dozen rounds at my face. I backpedaled before I made any contact, bumping into another gun. In seconds, ten guns floated in a circle, surrounding me, all aimed at my head.

“I won’t miss ya this time. C’mon, we’re done here,” she said with a sigh.

“No,” I said, and struck her across the face with my steel hoof. It was enough to make her falter, and when I pulled the hoof back, I could only smile at the blood coating it. Finally, some that wasn’t mine. “You’re going to have to kill me, if you want me to stop.”

She scoffed and brought the guns around to bear again. All ten fired at once, and dozens of bullets hit the steel armor. Silently, I prayed to the Goddesses for something better in the future. It took everything I had to ignore the bullets tearing through the parts not covered by armor. Fighting through pain, I threw my forehoof out and hit her straight on against her muzzle again. Spinning on my steel hoof, I spun around and bucked her as hard as I could. With her guns all empty, she wasn’t that tough!

I bucked again and hit steel. Getting nowhere, I shifted on my hooves to face her again. I reared up, flailing my forehooves forward and dropped with all my weight onto her. I hit the steel of her guns again. No matter how fast I attacked, something always blocked my path. I slammed a hoof into her face, finally catching flesh. She didn’t flinch, just pistol-whipped me in the same spot with one of her pistols. We kept on for what felt like minutes, kicks here, pistol-whipping there, a swipe with my steel hoof whenever I could. I’d hit, she’d block, and I was slowly losing ground. I could beat her if I were just faster, stronger, not losing blood. Or if somepony else had to deal with the pain... I lashed out as hard and fast as I could, but she blocked more than I landed. For every hit I actually landed, she got two on me.

There was no way I could keep this up. “Fuck!” I yelled in a mix of frustration and pain, and dropped down low. I rammed her in the stomach, but ended up with a face full of metal. Two guns crisscrossed in front of my face, blocking my assault of her weaker spots. Two more slammed into my sides, hitting against the metal and rattling my ribcage. Blood sloshed from inside the armor, adding to the slowly growing puddle we were standing in. She was too fast to keep up with. Well, I was already down here! I pushed forward, past the guns crossed before me, and grabbed her rear legs. Ignoring the surprised ‘eep,’ I lifted her off the ground.

I might not have been the biggest mare, and I wasn’t the strongest in the Wasteland by far. But I was tough enough to take a frail little unicorn and drop her flank to the ground, no matter how hurt I was. She wouldn’t be able to use her guns as a shield for this. The two of us went down hard to the side, and slammed into the blood-soaked dirt. My armor protected me from the worst of it as I slammed into her. And quietly I thanked the Goddesses that the bitch had relatched my bags.

The only thing that managed to fall out was a little, plastic bottle of Buck with perfect timing.

I rolled off the mare and stomped the bottle with my steel hoof. It buckled and shattered. Several of the tablets were crushed, but a few survived. I only needed one. I wasn’t above taking treasure from the ground, and being a hunter I knew I had to take whatever I could.

Fuck Broker, but at least he taught me a lesson about taking what I could get. Even if it meant making me eat off the ground.

I bit down, ignoring what I’d just eaten and swallowed.

Through the grit, I could taste the pill. Coppery, but it’d do just fine. I felt it working its magic, and wanted to smash the mare’s head in all over again. By the time I’d looked up, she’d gotten to her hooves, and was reloading every gun she had all at once. She held two in the air, aimed right at my head.

The blood, the gunshots? Somepony else’s problem now.

I didn’t give her the time. I hit one gun hard enough to knock it from her telekinetic grasp, and then ducked under the other. Shots blasted over my head as Slipstock brought another gun to bear. I spun on my hooves and bucked her in the face. She tried to block it, swinging forward three others and making a barricade with the rest. But I went clean through. The guns hit her in the face, followed by my hooves.

She actually yelped, her accent making it sound almost cute. I didn’t stop. I was strong enough to beat her. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. A fierce buck to her face, and she dropped to the ground. My heart pounding, my breath ragged, I smiled at her. “You shouldn’t have made it into a game,” I said, stomping on her.

Again she tried to block, because even with her fresh injuries, she was still faster than me. But I broke through it, slamming steel to steel to flesh, beating her with her own guns. Another pony could deal with the pain. I just had to hit her harder.

Slipstock spat blood, rolled to her hooves, and backed away. All her guns whirled and struck at me again, slamming into my chest and pushing me away. Distance was something I didn’t want. I needed to be close, I needed to be able to hit her!

We circled one another a few times. I wasn’t fast enough to take her down by myself, and I was too stubborn to let her drop me. One of us needed an edge, or we’d be stuck in this awkward stalemate forever. I needed Lost. Working together we could beat her, and take down the rest. Together we were strong enough to save the ponies here that needed saving.

Breathing ragged, I stared at the mare, looking for a weakness. Pale blue pony, dirty blonde mane, looked extremely bored. She still held the guns around her, though none fired. What could I do to beat her? Gunbuck I’d shot on instinct. Xeno’s brothers perished by my drug induced confidence. Bandits and raiders fell to frantic running and gunning. Wirepony fell to teamwork.

I didn’t have time to be a thinky pony. I charged her. I knew what would happen; I might not consider my actions and their consequences, but I was smart enough to learn tactics. I jumped to the side at the last second, past the guns she’d brought up and into her side. I body-checked her, hard enough to get a surprised yelp.

She faltered and collapsed onto her side. I skidded to a stop, amazed that it’d actually worked. I turned and reared. With my whole weight and all my fury, I pounded her with my forehooves. Again and again I hit her, smashing her ribs and legs until I heard cracks. Bitch wanted to play a game, wanted to torture me and drag things out? I’d show her. Her guns came to block, but I went through them. She was fast, but I was stronger than her magic. The steel digging into my flesh didn’t hurt, I ignored what got through. Satisfied with my work on her torso, I lashed out and cracked her in the side of her head as hard as I could.

She whimpered, and finally slumped into unconsciousness. The magenta haze around her horn flickered out, and her guns fell to the ground. She let out a groan, and I stepped back.

One down.

I walked off, having more important things to deal with. One slaver down. I just had a few more to question or kill. I needed to find my sister. Stopping, I downed another one of Xeno’s concoctions. I had no idea how they fought, and there was no way I was chancing going in unprepared. Fighting three-to-one odds, while full of holes and bruises, was a bad idea, even for a not-thinky pony.

Rounding the corner back onto the main road, I looked to the park where the mares and the alicorn had gathered. The ponies chained to the cart had moved forward, and they were hitching several of the ponies from the town hall’s basement to it.

They had Lost.

Sitting in front of the green-maned unicorn mare was my sister. She had chains and hoofcuffs around all four of her legs, and the purple mare, Amble maybe, was attaching a collar to her neck.

“Lost!” I yelled, charging. How dare they take my sister. I was going to kill them all. Whatever they did to me didn’t matter. It was another pony’s problem to deal with. I was going to break their skulls in with my bare hooves, and make an example out of slavers for the rest of the Wasteland. Nopony fucked with my sister and lived.

The alicorn looked at me, and smiled. She grabbed Lost in a telekinetic field and lifted her into the air. My sister didn’t even flinch, she just stared at me sadly, and then cast her glance to the ground. Was she ashamed that she’d been captured? It didn’t matter; captured meant I could save her, and we could go forward. Together we were strong. I just had to get her a gun, and the two of us could take them down.

“Stop,” said the alicorn, in a calm and almost quiet voice. The normal booming voice was gone, and she sounded so confident that I would bend to her whim.

I did. With Lost in her grasp, there wasn’t anything I could do that wouldn’t be a huge risk. I stopped dead in my tracks, not even lowering my foreleg back to the ground. Like I statue, I waited.

“Beat Slipstock? Pffft, ya kill her?” mocked the unicorn, a bored smirk across her lips. “Took her long enough, eh Amble?” She looked over at the pink and purple earth pony. “Figured she’d go down a lot faster.”

“Drugs helped,” I spat back.

“Hidden, just kill her,” Lost said, finally looking up at me.

“Try it and ya sister burns in radiation,” said Amble, a smirk across her lips. “Ya new here, new and stupid. This is a trade we’ve been doin’ for a long time now. We’ve had troublemakers before, and ya got a real big weakness we can exploit.” She turned to the unicorn. “Hurry up and get them loaded.” She motioned to the ponies chained standing behind the cart. “I’ll take these two as personal pets.” She turned back to me and grinned. The mare had no weapons, and was down a bodyguard, so why did she look so confident?

I ignored her and looked back at the alicorn. If I killed her, Lost would be free. But if I fired, it wouldn’t do any good, that shield would block- wait, where were the bullet wounds from where I’d shot her earlier? The alicorn looked like she’d never been shot at all!

I tried to calm down, and forced myself to take slow deep breaths. The Buck wasn’t helping. I needed to think, not smash. I stomped all four hooves, loudly enough to draw a glare from both the alicorn and Amble. I could feel the pounding in the wound in my ear, and looked back and forth between all three, unsure what to do.

“Lost, I can’t chance that,” I said, finally settling myself. I looked from the bit in front of me to her, then back. I could do it, right? The Goddesses had watched out for me so far. Sure I’d suffered losses and pitfalls, but I came out on top.

I lost a hoof, but killed Wirepony. I got thrown into horribly radioactive mines, but made friends there. I could be a hero. I just had to pull the trigger. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.

“Just do it!” Lost yelled. I snapped my eyes open and looked at her. Why’d she have to get taken? Together we would’ve saved the mares and taken these slavers down. “Hidden, we’ve gotten through tougher,” she screamed, pleading with me. Her hooves strained against the cuffs, and I could see her horn glow, trying to fight the magic that held her. The steel rod in the alicorn’s head glowed blue, but no matter the strain on her face, it didn’t budge.

The alicorn held her strong. Struggle as she might, she could only hover in the air.

“What if I miss?” I asked, looking between her and the alicorn. I wasn’t afraid of hitting my sister, I was afraid of missing altogether. Persistence was a good gun, it fired fast and it fired hard, but the distance between us was too much.

“She dies, we sell ya off ta Red Eye, and then ya gonna wish ya died, too,” Amble yelled at me. She turned to check her progress with the others. “Look. This place is real lucrative for me, and I don’t wanna lose that. This is ya last act of free will, I’ll let ya decide if ya sister here lives or not. That's all ya get. Either way, we take ya and ya end up bein' a commodity. I suggest ya cooperate. I treat my pets a lot better when they’re obedient.”

As if on cue, a bullet tore through the alicorn’s wing, into her chest, and out the other side. Before it finished going through, the shield was up around both her and Lost. The bullet plinked into the other side, followed by all manner of blood and gore. The far side of the shield was painted red, but she didn’t even flinch.

The other two had guns out in an instant. Where Amble had gotten one from, I didn’t know, but the unicorn’s horn was ablaze holding two impressively large plasma rifles and aiming them for the building where the shot came from.

“What was that?” asked Lost, her eyes wide with terror. I could understand, being trapped in a bulletproof bubble with a creature that could easily throw her into the radiation. She shivered, looking at her gore-and-feather-covered tail. “Please, tell me that was Xeno!”

“The only backup we could expect,” I said, grinning. I cautiously mouthed the battle saddle’s bit and looked at Amble.

“Sunbright, find out what that was. I can handle our new pet,” snapped Amble, nodding in the direction of the Town Hall. She spoke like she already owned me. “Find this ‘Xeno’ and kill whoever it is.”

Their alicorn was wounded now, and even if she didn’t want to show it, there was no way she could fight with a hole like that through her torso. She turned slowly, not dropping Lost from her telekinesis, and stared at the blood splatter on the inside of her shimmering shield. “We- are unimpressed by your assault on Our- life, Our- town. Our- daughters are safe,” she said, turning. “Unity will prevail. The Wasteland has ways to protect its own, if only you could see.” That last bit sounded almost sad... Calmly, she strode to the far side of the park, past the point where the radiation had nearly killed me. She trailed Lost along in her telekinesis a short distance behind her. Almost as if she were taunting me, she pulled her just far enough toward the radioactive part of town to set the PipBuck off.

I stared, my mouth actually hanging open. Even at this distance, my ears picked up slow clicking from the PipBuck around Lost’s leg. I prayed she wasn’t too far in. She hadn’t keeled over or started vomiting, so she was probably safe... I looked back at the alicorn, and watched as the giant hole in her chest began to close. Eyes widening, I faltered and took a step back. She... She could heal herself? What in the name of Celestia! Luna, please help. Her wings spread, the far one’s bones snapping back into place and regrowing. I watched in horror as the muscles, skin, feathers, everything reformed as if nothing had happened. There was no way we could win.

I turned back to the slavers. The green-maned mare had disappeared, gone in a flash when I looked at the alicorn. It was only Amble left to deal with. If I could find a way to take her out. All I had to do...

But that still left Lost.

“Hidden, just kill her. I can-” said my sister, before going silent. Her eyes opened wide, and she went stiff in the air, pulling against her chains. Whatever was happening, I didn’t like it.

I took a step forward, only to be stopped by a glare from the alicorn.

“Hey, don’t damage her!” Amble snapped, shooting the alicorn a glare. It worked, and whatever she’d done ceased. Lost gasped for breath, clutching both forehooves at her throat. “Ya unity or whatever might heal you, but I need healthy slaves if I’m goin’ ta turn a profit.” She looked over at me, smirking again. “Anypony who can make short work of Slipstock and still walk away is well worth stealing from my alicorn friend here. I think Red Eye’ll want you for the entertainment, once I’m done.” The mention of this Red Eye scared me. Twice now she’d mentioned that name, and anypony who needed slaves for entertainment was high on my list of ‘things and people to stay the fuck away from.’

“Don’t damage her? What do you want?” I asked, buying for time. She started to say something, but I blocked it out. All I had to do was kill the alicorn. How could I get through the shield? Was there any way I could get her before she could kill Lost? I took a deep breath, ignoring the urge to run in and smash. I was outnumbered, but... But I was strong! We’d killed the Wirepony. A distraction? That worked last time. Would it work this time?

I looked at my sister. She panted and stared at me. It hurt that I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t imagine how she felt, having gotten herself into this situation in the first place. She was crying, and struggled in vain against the chains that held her.

“Lost!” I yelled, cautiously stepping forward.

She looked up at me, and shook her head. Her lips moved, she mouthed the word ‘fire’ at me, but I ignored it. It wasn’t worth the risk. When I shook my head, she just... it looked like she gave up. Her eyes went wide and she hung her head. Her legs went limp in the chains, and the alicorn lowered her to the ground. Slowly, she looked up at me. I stared right back, wishing I knew what to do.

I wished I knew, too. I wanted to yell to her. We could win, I knew it. I just... I didn’t know how. Lost’s plans would work, somehow. But with her stuck in the shield that Goddess-impersonating bitch created, I just... I couldn’t think of a way. Without Lost, all I had was impulse and recklessness, both of which would get us killed in this situation.

She looked away from me, and stared at the ground. For the briefest of moments, I thought she might fight back. Might try to use some little bit of cheater magic to do something, anything. But, all Lost knew was how to lift, light, and heal. Instead she just stood there, dejected and alone. I wanted to be by her side, but...

“Give my sister back, and we’ll leave,” I begged, hoping we could barter.

“Unacceptable,” said the alicorn, “It is for the preservation of Our- Unity. For the safety of Our- daughters.”

“Okay, look. Ya put up a good fight so far, and I like that stubborn streak,” said Amble, flipping a hoof up. “It’s somethin’ I like in my pets.” She grinned a big, shit-eating grin that I couldn’t stand to look at. “But I’m getting impatient. Ya have fifteen seconds to get ovah here, and I won’t sell ya to Filly. Once I finish with ya, I’ll personally sell ya to a nice bar or brothel instead. They’ll treat ya good.”

“We’d still be slaves. I can’t,” I said, shaking my head, “can’t just give up like that. We came here to help ponies. To stop ponies like you.” I bit my tongue, and closed my eyes. I shivered, my legs twitching back and forth. I didn’t want to say what I had to. It was the only way out.

“Nopony up there boss,” said the voice of Sunbright. She stepped out from behind Amble, as if she’d never left. “Just a dead robot and some wartime corpse.”

“Whatever, I’ve got bigger issues to worry about,” snapped the purple earth pony. She stared me right in the eye.

I faltered, and looked at Lost. “Let us go. We’ll leave. I promise on my mother...” I winced, nearly choking. “On my mother’s grave.” That did it. I opened my eyes, and stared through tears at my sister. She had to understand. I couldn’t chance her life. It wasn’t worth it to try for a shot and miss. If she died... “Please just... Let her go. And we walk off. None of this happened. I never heard of this town.”

“Get real ya idiot. I promise I'll pull a skywagon out of my ass for ya to fly away on,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The only promise ya can make is the promise to stay dead when I kill ya to make sure you don't come back. Ya not walkin’ away from this without chains on ya hooves and a collar on ya neck. I already own ya. Why don’tcha learn ya place?”

I placed my teeth on the battle saddle’s bit. I could win this, but it would be a bloodbath. Lost would be fine. She was strong. She was my older sister and I trusted her with my life. They could fire at me, and she had the PipBuck. She could be safe. She was smarter anyway.

I looked at Amble, and Sunbright behind her. I hated this mare as much as I hated Wirepony. How dare she toy with me? At least that monster had been a mindless killing machine, it didn’t know any better. Amble knew damn well just how to get at me... Use my family against me and taunt me with promises I couldn’t trust her to keep. And worst of all, the whole time, she did it with a smile.

I brought my mother into this. I couldn’t feel my heart anymore. Everything inside felt dead. I looked over to my sister, who stared at me with tears down her cheek. I could practically read her mind, yelling ‘how could you’ at me over and over again.

I’m sorry, Lost. I... I tried.

“Lost, get ready,” I yelled, and looked back at Amble. Fine, if she didn’t want to trust my word, didn’t trust me swearing on the mother that given her life to protect us. It wasn’t worth trying to reason with her any longer. I just had to fire, and have faith that the Goddesses had a-

Click.

My ear flicked. It couldn’t.... I looked over, straight down the barrel of a revolver. “No...” I whispered, looking past it. Slipstock stood behind the gun, looking far from bored, and more than a little pissed-off. I looked past her, past the bloody stains and splotches on her mane and coat. Why hadn’t I just killed her?

I looked back at Amble, cursing the smirk across her lips. One last time I looked at Lost, who stared back with unfocused eyes. She wouldn’t meet my gaze, and finally I just... Let go.

“I’ll be good...”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Scrounger – Seriously, you're just now getting around to taking this? I thought this was your raison d'être or something. Oh well. You have better luck finding items in the Wasteland, and can search extra times to see if you missed something. With a little help from your special talent, you always seem to find something worthwhile.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Blessed By Luna – Your habit of staying awake through all hours of the night has given you a +2 Intelligence and +2 Perception bonus from dusk till dawn. These bonuses can temporarily raise your Intelligence and Perception to levels far exceeding normal pony abilities. This perk does not stack with the Touched By Luna Trait.

“What about Xeno?”
“I don’t know, she’s safe. At least that’s what I heard the ponies in the walls tell me.”
“Ponies... in the walls. Hidden, have you gone insane? Just. Look. Do you think she has a plan?”
“With our luck?”
“Itis my luck you must worry about, ponies. I have a good feeling about today!”
“Good feeling about today? Are you daft?”
“Good feeling... Shit. We’re all doomed.”

Author's Notes:

(A massive thank you to Kkat for creating, and everyone else who has helped to flesh out the universe of Fallout Equestria. And to everyone who has/will help with with editing and making this more palatable... Big hearts to Dimestream[Who wrote the amazingly surreal dream sequence above! Everypony should go thanks Dimestream for being awesome!], Sabsy, Heartshine, Moth, and everypony else who helped with ideas, editing, and brushies. And of course everything is copyright their respective owners. ~Hnetu)

DIMENOTE: Hidden must have rewritten this chapter four or five (Three actually ~Hnetu) times trying to please all of her picky-ass editors, so she deserves a giant hug and possibly also some chocolate. And you pricks had better appreciate what good quality this turned out having, too! Or I’ll find a way to SET YOU ON FIRE OVER THE INTERNET.
-Dimestream

Chapter 10: Lead A Pony To Water

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There is a trigger warning for this chapter, please see the notes at the bottom of the page for more details.

Chapter Ten: Lead A Pony To Water
“I’ve got plans for you.”

Chains.

Turned out, the cart was just for possessions and trade goods. Of course, Amble and her personal guards rode atop it, getting a nice look over the rest of us, and a pleasant trip since they didn’t have to walk. They’d stripped me of my guns and belongings, and tossed them into the cart to be added to the slaver’s belongings. Only insignificant or impossible-to-remove items were left. Lost got to keep her glasses so she could see, and the slavers didn’t have the proper tools to take off the PipBuck, or so they thought. Once all of their, no, our stuff was loaded up, the slavers chained Lost and I to the other slaves. Hoofcuffs held our legs, alternating sides on each pony. Chains held my left fore and rear legs, while Lost’s chains held her right fore and rear legs. They forced us to march.

I looked at the ponies all around me. At least a dozen mares, not counting Lost or me, marched in front of and behind us. A few stallions marched with us, at the far end of the chain. Some looked horrified at what was about to happen, others just stared ahead. I recognized some from under the town hall, but several were new faces not from Skirt. They had that dejected look Lost had when she’d realized we were beaten. I wondered if I had the same look. A few of the ponies from underneath the town hall shot me glares, since they recognized me, but they said nothing.

If I’d had two more seconds, we could be free, and all the ponies here would’ve been safe. If I’d just had the PipBuck, we’d have been fine. The extra time from S.A.T.S. would’ve been enough time to think up a good plan and get us out. But no, I had to be careless and let that Goddesses-damned gunslinging bitch survive. How dare she sneak up behind me and pull a gun on me! I’d fought her fair and... Oh right. I’d snuck around a corner and tried to blow her head off with a shotgun when she followed. Well, that should have worked, dammit.

I looked off to the distance as we walked, and saw the ruins where we’d killed the raiders. I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself or complain about what could have been. I needed to think of a way to get out, or at least ask if Lost had an escape plan. We worked together, and we had a zebra on the outside. Goddesses... please let Xeno be as loyal as I thought she was.

Lost walked in front of me, staring forward blankly. They’d put something on her horn. I didn’t know what it was, but it kept her from using any of her magic. Apparently it was some sort of arcane technology used during the war, kept unicorns in line. It almost made me laugh, because, for the first time in our lives, we were on even ground, and both had the same abilities. The irony... I was more useful than her now. Knowing how to use one’s hooves was a good thing in the Wasteland, and Lost had always relied on her magic.

“Lost, we’ll be fine,” I started. “Okay? I promise, we’ll-”

“Hey! What’d ya say yer name was?” yelled Slipstock, staring at me. Several bandages covered the wounds I’d given her, including one over her eye. It actually made her look really funny. I didn’t laugh.

“Fuck you!” I yelled back.

“Well, Fuck Ya. Shut the fuck up before I come down there and Fuck Ya,” she snapped back, tapping one of her guns along the railing of the cart. She smiled wide at me, and turned back around. The gun stayed though, tempting me to speak up. Her ears skewed back, listening. Great.

I kept walking, head down. Rather than zone out, I kept an eye on the surroundings. I couldn’t leave, but I could trace our steps, and make sure that whenever I got free, I could come back and do some real serious fucking damage. The minute I was out, I was going to bring the Goddesses’ wrath down on Amble and Sunbright, kill Slipstock with my bare hooves, then haul flank back to Skirt and burn it to the ground.

The Wasteland would rue the day it decided to make a slave out of me. Captivity only held so long as I couldn’t overpower the captors, and I knew damn well that I was strong enough to overpower that bitch, if I could get her away from those Goddesses-damned guns.

For half a day we walked, never stopping. The hills and mountains began to fade behind us. We followed a cracked and broken highway along the edge of a ridge, one that gave a fairly good view of where we’d been. It was a small blessing, but at least I could gauge where we were going and where we’d come from. Far off in the distance, I could see Leathers. The building looked lonely, sitting intact yet surrounded by ruins. I looked at the river that ran behind the factory, where Éclair was buried. Upstream would be Pommel Falls, where the Star Paladin and his family were, and downstream? I looked, and saw nothing that would serve as a decent landmark. Leathers it was, then, as the landmark to finding our way back. Follow the river, then rain fire down on that bitch of an alicorn.

That worked, for a while. As we got further and further away from Skirt, I started losing track. After hours of walking, we were past anything I even remotely recognized. My hooves felt raw from the rubbing of the chain and the trot we were forced to keep wasn’t what I was used to for long travel, but we couldn’t stop. The fact that they hadn’t healed me from my fight with Slipstock made it worse. I was just happy I’d stopped bleeding. The sun sank in the sky behind us, so all I really knew was the general direction I’d need to go to get back. I couldn’t trust that I’d get the PipBuck back, and without it I had no map.

I looked ahead, hungry and ready to stop, but couldn’t. The chain kept pulling my hooves, and I kept walking. Nopony said a word, lest we bring the wrath of Slipstock upon us. Distance stopped mattering, just one step after another. I gave up trying to figure out how many hours we’d walked.

At the edge of the horizon, just barely where I could see, were several buildings. Each was nearly pristine, all sitting clumped together. Between them were walls, sturdy ones built high, past where raiders or gunfire could get through. One looked like a factory, almost like Leathers, another was a tall office building, another so black I could practically see a reflection on it despite the distance. I couldn’t see anything on the far side from so far away.

“‘Ey! C’mon ya. Slowin’ us down’ll get ya killed,” snapped Amble. The chain gave a tug, practically pulling my leg out from under me. Half the chain line nearly tumbled and two of the mares dropped completely. We weren’t in any position to bargain about how fast we went. With Slipstock’s guns covering us, and Sunbright staring down from above, following orders was the only thing we could do. And that’s what happened. The mares scrambled to their hooves, and we marched.

After several more hours, when I could barely keep my head up, we passed some threshold. The sun hung low in the sky, casting its light on the underside of the clouds; had we really marched the entire day? All three of the mares riding comfortably on the cart sighed, and Amble shouted “Home sweet home!”

A sign hung over the road, with several letters missing or faded, and all that was left to identify what the place had once been was ‘U CIG.’

Apparently, ‘home sweet home’ meant another few hours of walking. Even the strange pristine buildings I’d seen a few hours ago had disappeared over the horizon. When I looked for U Cig, I could only just make out a settlement on the horizon. Guard towers dotted makeshift walls that stretched between buildings. I didn’t like the look of the walls. The built-up, very obvious reinforcements outside, where they wouldn’t do any good for keeping out intruders. Walls usually meant safety, to keep out bad ponies, but these ones? They looked designed to keep ponies in.

“Alright, we’re here. Pull off,” yelled Amble, before picking up a whip in her teeth and cracking it over the two ponies who hauled the cart. One yelped, and the cart turned off the side of the road toward a patch of broken down ruins. The cart haulers pulled up behind the only building outside the wall that was still mostly-standing, and we creaked to a halt.

Amble and her bodyguards hopped down and pulled out several keys. They shouted orders to the cart pullers while unhooking the chain line. The two mares hoisted the cart farther, tucking it away between some ruins.

“Right, cart’s hidden from the main road. Sunbright, head back to the town. Tell Cherry Pick and Lead Line that I’ve got...” She paused and counted, a hoof pointing to each of us in turn. “...Seventeen new slaves. Make sure Lead Line starts the paperwork. Fourteen mares, three stallions.” She flicked her hoof and the green-maned unicorn vanished with a flash. “Right, ya lot! Into the buildin’. Now!” She cracked the whip above our heads, loud enough to make several of us jump.

Even me.

They shuffled us in through the back door of the building and forced us to sit in a large circle, the chains still latched to our legs. Slipstock was nice enough to release the rear leg hoofcuff from everypony in the room, except for me. I was left locked so that I couldn’t turn or sit comfortably like the rest of the captives. Mostly unhooked, we were left to our own devices. Amble slammed the door shut without a word, locking Slipstock in to play watchdog. I swore Amble smiled at me...

Slipstock glared a moment, then trotted over to stand before me.

Click.

The door locked, and Slipstock just smiled. “About that steel hoof,” she said through gritted teeth. “Off with it.”

“It’s attached, you dumb cunt,” I snapped, spitting at her.

That pissed her off something fierce. She reared up, kicked me hard with both forehooves and I went down. One hit wasn’t enough, and she stomped me repeatedly. “Bullshit!” she screamed, kicking my foreleg hard with a hoof. She stood on it, just above the graft. Other ponies watched with mixed expressions, some in horror, some holding back laughter.

“Stop!” yelled Lost, lunging at Slipstock. She couldn’t reach because of the chain attached to the next mare behind her. To shut her up, Slipstock cracked one of the pistols across her head.

My leg twisted and stretched painfully, but I just gritted my teeth and glared at her. It hurt more than I wanted to admit, especially with the fresh wounds from our fight, but I refused to give her the satisfaction. “I lost it killing a monster far tougher than you. Whatever you can do, I’ve had worse.” I looked to my sister as she shook her head to clear it from the pistol-whipping. “Just remember, whatever you do, I’ll do ten times worse when I get free,’ I said, smiling as wide as I could.

She hit me harder after that, switching between hooves and pistols. One particularly large revolver hovered, aimed at my sister to keep her from interfering. I didn’t bother blocking any of her blows. I took every single one with a smile while L.A. watched in horror. Battered and bruised, at some point, I slipped from consciousness...

* * *

I was bored out of my mind after several hours of sitting doing nothing. My everything hurt from the beating Slipstock had given me, but I wouldn’t let her know it. I smiled at her again as she stood by the door, reading a magazine.

I looked around the room. The only other exit was a doorway full of rubble. Half the building was collapsed after all. Furniture was nonexistent. Just warped, cracked walls, and dirty hay on the floor. It didn’t look anything near edible. A giant steel loop stuck out of the wall near the corner, hooked to our chains. Sighing, I looked around to the others. Twelve dejected mares and three stallions all sat staring at the floor or walls. Two of the stallions were having a conversation.

“Shoulda known better than to let you go to Idle,” said one of the two.

I leaned against my sister, and closed my eyes, ignoring the conversation across from me. “So how do we get out?” I asked in a whisper. She’d have a plan. L.A. always had a plan.

“I didn’t know they were connected,” said the other stallion, defensively. I didn’t look over, and just listened to my sister.

“I don’t know yet,” Lost whispered back, looking at me. She coughed a few times, turning away. Her free hoof went to her throat to rub it a little. She looked back and forced a weak smile. “Sorry, the alicorn choked me really bad. It still hurts.” She looked over at Slipstock, and then back at me. “We can’t do anything right now...” She held up the chain around her hoof. “As soon as we get a chance, we’ll find a way out.”

“Can’t leave you alone for a second,” said the first stallion with a sigh.

I shot the two a quick look, but turned back to my sister. I had more important things to worry about. “If we have to split up?” I asked, thinking like a thinky pony.

“You didn’t have to come with me!” said the second, starting to whine.

“Of course I did, I always watch out for you,” responded the other stallion. It was becoming harder and harder to ignore the two of them. I tried to focus on what Lost was saying. The stallion continued, “Especially when you go drinking.”

“I don’t know,” Lost said, tapping the base of her horn with her free hoof. “Worst case, back home.”

“Alright,” I said. “But let-”

“Okay,” The first stallion said with a very long sigh. “If we get out of this, I won’t go ever again, I-”

That was that. I looked over at the two with a glare. Lost stared too.

“-swear to Luna!” The small green unicorn stallion voice hit a pitched whine, cutting me off. His purple eyes stared pleadingly at a much larger stallion, his face flushed.

The bigger stallion just grunted, shaking his hoof against the chain. I grimaced. The buck looked like he’d been orange at one point, but so many scars and burns covered his coat that he looked more mottled blood-red and brown. He looked intensely intimidating, like he’d been through a lot in the Wasteland. And I knew just what the Wasteland could throw at a pony, given I’d had a hoof replaced.

“Trust me, i-if I’d known, I promise I wouldn’t have gone!” cried the green unicorn. He covered his eyes with his hooves, rustling the chain and pulling the two ponies next to him closer.

“Gone where?” I demanded. They’d been interrupting my conversation with L.A. long enough. I knew I should just keep my mouth shut, but sitting in a locked room made it hard not to eavesdrop. It’s not like I could just get up and trot away somewhere quieter! Ignoring the gun Slipstock raised to point at me, I gave my friendliest look to the stallions.

“Some bar in Idle, didn’t water their shit down. The runt can’t hold his liquor,” rumbled the scarred unicorn. He opened his eyes and stared daggers down at his companion. One eye was a brilliant light green, but his other eye was missing entirely. The eyelid hung loose, covering a gaping hole long since dried from exposure.

I shuddered, remembering the look of Lamington’s eye, freshly wounded after the battle at Leathers. How had he survived in the Wasteland like that? I didn’t have time to ask, as he jerked the chain back down, stomping his hoof on the floor. Both his friend and the mare on the other side of him lurched as their chains were pulled tight.

“Shut the fuck up, or I’ll make sure ya see Vice Brand first thin’,” threatened Slipstock. The threat seemed empty, as she didn’t actually look up from her magazine or pull one of her guns away. Her ear flicked back and forth a few times.

The big stallion shot her a look, then turned back. “Dumb fuck got wasted, got into a fight, and couldn’t pay the repair bill for breaking all the owner’s shit. Of course, he passed out afterward, and the owner chained him up,” he explained in a low voice. He closed his eyes, er, eye once again, thankfully. “I got dragged along, because he can’t keep his flanks out of trouble without me.”

The smaller stallion turned from green to bright red as he blushed, embarrassment painfully obvious. “I’m sorry, Cluster. Please, what can I do to fix this?” he begged, his eyes tearing up. All the unicorn could do was fiddle his forehooves together, seemingly unable to come up with a reason for his actions.

“Fix this?” I asked. With a sigh, I hung my head. “Little late now to fix things.”

“Hidden, don’t be like that,” Lost whispered, leaning against me and wrapping her hoof around my neck awkwardly. Damned chain. “Things can be fixed, it just takes some work.”

I leaned back against my sister. “Sorry,” I whispered to her. I turned to the stallions and apologized to them. “Sorry, I’m just... Exhausted.” My stomach rumbled loud enough to startle me. “And hungry. It’s making it hard to look on the bright side.”

“Walking an entire day will do that. What’s your name, cutie?” asked the green unicorn. Him calling me ‘cutie’ made me shudder, but he had a friendly smile, and Slipstock would stop him if he tried anything. Right? Probably not... Either way, the change in subject calmed him down a little. He didn’t look on the verge of crying anymore.

Cluster whacked the smaller unicorn with a heavy hoof, glaring with his good eye. “Shut. Up.”

“Oof! Yes sir!” he yelped, lying himself down and covering his head with his hooves. They might have a history, but there wasn’t a reason to hit him like that.

Nopony spoke much after that. Occasionally one of the mares would break down and cry, but none said anything I could make out. One talked to herself every so often, spouting nonsense before quieting down for long stretches of time.

I tried to get some sleep, but I couldn’t. Lost leaned against me, occasionally nuzzling me and whispering bits and pieces of ideas for our eventual escape. Not much of what she said was coherent, whether because she hadn’t slept at all the night before, or because hunger was getting to her. She coughed from time to time, and I worried that the alicorn had done more than just choke her. But she was the medical pony, not me. And without some sort of cheater magic or, or something...! I had no way to know how bad it was. I was useless. I just wrapped my free hoof around her and tried to get comfortable.

My stomach grumbled again, demanding food. This was going to be a long night...

* * *

Thunk, thunk, thunk!

“Everypony up, now!” yelled Slipstock, with an buck to the wall. The whole building shook, the sound of her hooves against the rotten wood as loud as a gunshot. Maybe the silence we’d been sitting in was just that unsettling. Every one of us chained together jerked to attention.

Lost woke with a start, but I held her tight with my free hoof. She looked back and forth a few times, from Slipstock, to me, and then to the others we were still attached to.

“I said up!” the blue mare screamed again, pistol-whipping the nearest slave to her.

We all stood, shaking. Chains rattled and hooves shifted as we got used to standing again. I’d lost track of how long it had been, but it had to be well after nightfall by this time. Lost faltered, coughing and clutching at her throat with her free hoof. For nearly a minute straight she hacked and coughed, hard enough to dislodge her glasses from her nose.

“Sis, you okay?” I asked. She nodded a few times.

Slipstock turned, and the chain began to glow in the magenta haze of her telekinesis. Each of the spare shackles lifted, and clasped around the leg of the nearest pony.

All except me, I already had both on.

I bent down to pick up my sister’s glasses, something Slipstock apparently didn’t like. Crack! The butt of her pistol cracked into the side of my head, right below the ear she’d shot off. “No talking!” she snapped.

I didn’t bother flinching against the blow. Showing weakness would only fuck me over in the end. I’d beaten her once, and I’d do it again. If the chance presented itself, she was dead. I passed my sister the glasses, and nuzzled her side.

L.A. returned the nuzzle, then took the glasses. Without her magic, she awkwardly put them back on with her hooves. I couldn’t move mine far enough to do it for her. Blinking a few times, she nodded, and whispered, “I’m fine,” low enough Slipstock couldn’t hear it over the stamping of exhausted pony hooves.

Thunk! The guardpony slammed a hoof against the door, and with a loud click, it unlocked and opened. Another unicorn mare walked in, this one deep purple and wearing glasses like L.A. She looked over the group of us, and raised an eyebrow. An umbrella and a notebook hovered in the air next to her. She ticked a few things off with a pen in the book, then turned to Slipstock, gave her a nod and left.

“March, slaves!” yelled the pale blue mare. Without much choice, the seventeen of us did as instructed. At least one pony was crying, begging to be let go. When she only got a glare as a response, she gave up, lowering her head and marching out as told. As I walked by, Slipstock smiled, and slammed me in the head with the pistol again, “Faster, ya walking glue bags!” she screamed in my ear.

With the chains pulling me along, I did just that. I had no choice. Patience, then revenge. Stepping past the door, I shuddered. Frozen rain fell from the cloud cover, sending a shiver down my spine. The ice cold rain chilled me to the bone, and made my joints ache, and the graft for my steel hoof burned like frozen fire where the metal merged with my flesh. My soaked hooves felt heavy and hard to move, but the chain pulled me along.

Night fell while we were locked away. The clouds hung high above, dropping the torrent of rain down on us. Really, Goddesses? The cart was gone, and so were Amble and Sunbright. The purple mare stood off to the side, holding the half-torn umbrella over her head. It levitated just right to keep rain off the journal that she kept floating with her magic. Every few seconds she’d look from the book to a watch strapped for her foreleg and back again.

“That way!” she yelled, with a sweet voice, horribly out of place for her job. She pointed her hoof, the one with the watch on it, to another building, with a door open and another pony waiting. The stallion guarding the door looked even bigger than Lamington in full armor, with a gun just as big as he was, mounted on a battle saddle. He didn’t make eye contact, just stared, waiting, mouth on the bit.

A gust of wind cut through me, sending another shiver through my soaked coat and mane. We shuffled into the building as fast as we could, only to bump into another guard. The new guard was a unicorn, holding a whip with a series of razorblades threaded into the end. She cracked it above our heads, herding us all down a set of stairs and into a passageway underground. Stairs were terrible to walk down, going at a trot with chains on our hooves. Every step ached after the day’s march, punctuated by the heavy chain clinking and clanking down.

“Stop!” yelled the purple mare. By the time I got to the bottom and managed to stop, the last slave mare was through the door. It slammed shut, and locked. Slipstock and the slavers sauntered down the steps. We stood still. The only sound coming from us was the dripping of water from out coats onto the floor.

“Right. This is where processin’ starts. Say goodbye to yer freedom, if ya haven’t already,” taunted Slipstock. “Follow Lead Line here down.” She pointed a hoof to the purple mare with the notebook. “Step out of line once and ya get whipped. Step out of line twice and ya get beaten until ya can’t stay in the line. Step out of line a third time, I put a bullet in ya head and let our guards fuck the corpse.” As if to prove her point, she kept one gun out and spinning idly in the air.

“March, trash,” snapped Lead Line, folding her umbrella and striking the lead mare in the flank with it. She yelped, and we began to move forward down the tunnel. Only the three unicorn’s horns lit the way, so we had to stay close to them at all times. Lead Line worked her way back and forth among us, swatting ponies with the umbrella whenever they slowed too much for her rushed pace.

In the distance bobbed another light, brighter than the three flanking us. It shone painfully, enough that I closed my eyes and just ran forward with the chain as a guide. It pulled, I moved, trying to keep pace. I opened my eyes a fraction, trying to see past the red glow shining through my eyelids. The light at the end of the tunnel came from another female unicorn. I tried to look at her, but I could only make out a thick pair of glasses and a grin with jagged teeth. Whatever light spell she used, it lit the entirety of the corridor and then some. She grinned, dimmed the spell, and took the glasses off.

Hollow white eyes stared at our group, slowly moving across each pony. Canting her head to the side, she grinned and gnashed her teeth at us, then pointed to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Whether or not she could actually see, I didn’t know. I just knew I wanted away from this guard. Her grungy grey coat and hollow eyes didn’t do her any favors, either.

Lead Line opened the trapdoor with her magic, and another set of stairs lowered down. We cantered up them, the heavy chains thudding across the stairs. Halfway up the step, the hollow eyed mare put her hoof up. The lead pony froze, and we all stood waiting.

“I’ll be watching you, pretties,” she jeered, tongue flicking over her sharpened teeth. “Oh, and enjoy your stay.” She snapped her glasses back over her eyes and laughed cruelly. Her horn’s light disappeared completely, leaving us in near total blackness.

The chain glowed, and dragged us up the stairs to the floor above. We ended up in a well lit room, one that seemed to be in amazing condition for being two centuries past its prime. Lead Line sat at a desk near the far wall, with Slipstock next to her, pointing at folders on the desk with a hoof and whispering to her. Both slavers wore towels across their backs, giving them some relief from the ice cold that chilled through the rest of our bones.

Lead Line pointed to a number of folders, each overlapping the next in an intricate pattern. After a few minutes, the two stopped talking and Slipstock’s horn lit up. The chains fell from our legs and coiled up in the corner.

One mare made a break for the door, and got close enough to touch it with a forehoof. Before she could open it, her forehoof exploded. She collapsed to the floor, screaming in pain and grabbing at the missing hoof. I winced in empathy. Slipstock put her gun away and rolled her eyes.

“One for Bonemeal. I’ll take her,” said the blue coated bitch, cursing under her breath. She trotted to the door and nudged it open, still looking at the mare. Never breaking her glare, she lifted the wounded pony in her telekinesis and left for ‘Bonemeal.’ As she left the room, the three guards from the tunnel emerged and shut the door. Each moved to a corner: the two unicorns on one side of the room and the earth pony on the other.

“How am I supposed to turn a profit with her ruining all my product?” sighed Lead Line. She grabbed the first of the folders with her telekinesis and looked us over, “This will go much faster if you all cooperate. I’m already behind schedule.” She looked over her glasses, scanning the dripping and shivering lot of us.

I glared back, stomping my steel hoof.

“And take off any personal effects. If you don’t, I’ll let Slipstock have you,” she snapped. “First, Spark Light?”

The smaller of the two stallions from earlier moved forward. He wobbled on his legs, practically falling over with each step. “Y-yes?” he asked, staring at the floor.

“Quit being a fucking coward, Spark,” rumbled Cluster. “You were raised a raider. Fucking act like it.” He motioned as if he wanted to hit the green unicorn, but stopped at the last second. “At least act like a stallion, and not a broken mare.”

Good! Resolve, that’s exactly what we all needed. None of the other ponies seemed to take Cluster’s advice, though.

To his credit, Spark Light stood taller and steeled himself. “Spark Light. Whatcha want, you tarted-up whore?” Defiance might be the only thing he could get away with, considering the three guards, but he did it well. He flashed a shit-eating grin and stepped close enough to the desk that he could have touched noses with the slaver.

In a flash, his file snapped shut and hit him across the face. Lead Line spun the folder and slashed the edge across his muzzle. With a yelp of pain, he fell back from her smirking face. Blood coated the sharpened edge of the folder, and he ended up with a gigantic gash just past his nose. “I want you to stop being a smart-ass. You’re a unicorn. Go stand with Flood Light,” she said, pointing to the white-eyed mare.

As Spark slunk away from Lead Line’s desk, she flicked the folder a few times to clean the blood off, then stuffed it into a drawer in the desk. One by one, she called each of our names, making sure they matched whatever was written in her folder and putting them off to the side. Every unicorn lined up against the wall between Flood Light and the whip guard. Any pony that had any possessions were stripped down, their things thrown into a pile behind the desk.

“Lost Art?” she called, looking at a rather thin folder.

My sister stepped forward, only pausing to ask, “How do you know my name?”

“We bring slaves in, if we can, in groups of at least two. Gives us a chance to...” She paused for a moment, looking for the right word. “...catalogue our stock. I know both your and your sister’s names thanks to how talkative you are.” She lowered the folder to her hooves and snapped it shut. “Amble has special plans for both of you. I get the PipBuck and your glasses, though.”

“It doesn’t come off,” L.A. lied. She held her dripping hoof up and shook it a few times for emphasis. “Locked on tight. And I can’t see at all without these.”

The purple mare raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Keep the damn glasses then, I don’t fucking care. I’ll have Bonemeal cut your leg off later,” she said calmly. The bitch swatted L.A. across the flanks with the folder and pointed to the wall with the other unicorns. “Out. All of you! Get out of my office and to the filthy pen you belong in, slaves!”

The whip-carrying unicorn opened the door, and the two guards shuffled each unicorn out, last of all Lost. I stared in horror. Unable to see her go, I charged after. Something caught my steel hoof, and I faceplanted the floor before I could even get to her.

“Hidden!” she screamed, trying to run back to me. The whip slashed across her back, slicing her open and dropping her to the floor. She stared over her glasses at me, tears in her eye. “Stay safe...” She couldn’t get anything else out before a slaver lashed the whip around her tail and pulled her through the door.

With a purple haze, it slammed shut, locking me away from my sister.

Lead Line just smiled. “And you must be Hidden Fortune.”

* * *

“Get in and shut up, slaves,” snapped the new slaver, a pastel pink earth pony with a pissed-off look in her eyes. She and a guard led the remaining five of us to a large communal pen and ordered us all in. At least the rain had slacked off from a torrential downpour to a light drizzle.

Every pony inside was an earth pony, with stallions and mares of all shapes, sizes, and colors milling about. Most looked worse than me, with some still showing enough free will to fight one another. Two mares rolled through the mud, hooves flying at one another over something I didn’t care to know. I didn’t get far into the pen before I collapsed into a shivering ball of pony against the wall and started to dry heave.

I considered myself a survivor. Living with just my sister for years in the Wasteland, and having to scavenge each day had done a lot to toughen us up. We were both lucky though, and managed to always find something to keep going without having to go across the Wasteland to find it. I’d never been without food for too long, though I had a bad feeling for the future, going by the looks of some of the slaves... I’d thought we had it bad before.

The meal from the previous morning just wasn’t enough though. After an entire day without anything in my stomach, coupled with the long march here, I couldn’t hold it in. Throwing up whatever little was in my stomach, I sat there and dry heaved my desolation away. Really, vomiting because I was having bullets dug out was one thing, but when I had nothing to give but the acid and bile inside, it gave me a new appreciation for just how bad my insides could taste.

I tried looking around at the ponies in the pen with me. Half seemed like they’d given up, just lying curled up in small groups to combat the rain and the cold. The other half seemed content to watch the fight between the two mares in the corner. Somepony was shouting, taking bets on which mare would kill the other. The less attention on me, the better. Moving away from the mess I made, I found a somewhat empty spot between two piles of collared slaves and flopped myself onto the wet ground.

I tried to get comfortable, curling into a ball as tight as I could. I needed to be a thinky pony, I reminded myself. Think, learn, find out the consequences. I sighed. Without Lost I didn’t even care. But, I needed to. If we were going to get out, I needed to learn the ins and outs as best I could. To my left, ponies, all wide awake and staring. I could see ribs through their rain-soaked coats and a general sorrow from all of them. I didn’t want to talk to these ponies either, fearing they’d just drag me into their depression. Maybe some sleep, then hopefully some food.

I just needed to close my eyes, get a few hours to recharge from that forced march. I’d slept in the rain before. It sucked, but I could do it. First thing in the morning, I’d find a way to get to Lost. Hopefully, she’d have a plan by then.

Somepony was shouting at me. “You with the X! Get...” I didn’t hear the rest.

I’d be fine after a good night’s sle-

CRACK!

My back erupted in agony. My eyes shot open and ears pinned back, trying to make heads or tails of what had just happened. Turning and looking, I saw a line of blood traced down my back. Another ‘CRACK’ split the air and the fire on my back flared again. Another line of blood formed, and I curled up to get away from it. Another pony with a whip? I clenched my eyes shut and and tried to crawl away. Crack! I screamed as a third attack sliced at my side.

“Why!” I yelled, looking for my attacker.

“No sleeping, wretch!” yelled some mare from outside the pen.

I stared at the edge of the pen, where the voice was coming from. “No sleep?” I asked. I couldn’t see the pony who’d whipped me. With a heavy sigh, I turned away and trotted off. If I could find somewhere where they couldn’t spot me, I could get some sleep. I looked back and forth. I was surrounded by ponies who looked like they just wanted death. I couldn’t be around this.

Walking around got me pretty much nowhere. The pen was surprisingly large, enough that the fifty or so ponies I could see were all comfortable... ok not comfortable, but we had enough room that we weren’t squished together. I could move between groups of ponies huddled up without any problem. One group though, I had to stop and see.

Four of the mares I’d seen underneath the town hall huddled together. They spoke in hushed voices, occasionally looking out and to the other slaves. Since we’d been separated, a few of them were gone, and only the earth ponies were left. I stayed a short distance away, not wanting to get too close in case they recognized me. I didn’t have the brainpower to put up with it, if they chose to blame me for shattering their little fantasy world. Still, I swiveled my ears forward and strained as hard as I could to listen in on their conversation. Figuring I’d be listening for a while, I laid down where they wouldn’t see me.

“This cannot be where Our- Mother said we would be headed,” said one, her voice cracking every few words. The fear in her ruby red eyes reminded me of how I felt when I saw Wirepony rebuilding himself. She looked horribly out of place in a slave pen, with her curled, styled blue and green mane and perfectly clean lime green coat. Then again, I probably looked out of place too, what with the shiny steel hoof at the end of my leg.

“No, We- were promised salvation from this...” said another. She wept openly, not bothering to hide it for pride or courage. The other two held and consoled her, trying to get her to stop.

“Allegro, please calm down, We-... We’ll be fine. Mother wouldn’t lie to us,” said the first again, leaning down to join in consoling her. “We... I... I’m sure somepony will save us, and we’ll go back to her. She’ll take us to Unity herself this time.”

I scooted closer, trying to get as close as I could. Little steps with my hooves, never lifting more than a few inches off the ground. Thanks to the clanking hoof, I wasn’t the best at sneaking, but they didn’t know I was trying to sneak. Perfectly sound logic.

“Fouetté, don’t lie to her,” whispered the second consoling mare, looking back and forth. She leaned in close to the first mare to try and make sure the others couldn’t hear. I could barely hear them through the sobbing, but if I strained...

“If we don’t stick together through this, what’s going to happen?” snapped Fouetté, glaring at the other mare. “The only thing we can do is pray that Mother will find out. This Amble pony isn’t going to take us there. Even if we do make it to Fillydelphia, why wouldn’t she have us separated from the slaves? We aren’t slaves! We’re going to Unity one way or another. I’m sorry, Battu, but I’m not giving up hope.”

I backed off after that. I might be delusional a lot of the time, and treat the Wasteland like a giant playground, but this was ridiculous. We all had coping mechanisms. ‘Treasure hunting’ was always going to be better than ‘scavenging,’ but there was a big difference between finding a fun way to handle what the Goddesses dealt, and willfully ignoring what life has become. I knew I was going to be treated like a slave, but I only had to deal with it until I broke out. Knowing what I was up against made all the difference.

I found a nice spot to sit, as far away from the guards as I could manage. I looked at the ponies around me, all half awake and looking like death warmed over. I sighed.

It really was going to be a long night.

* * *

I hit the guard with my steel hoof as hard as I could. How dare he think he could grab me like that! I hit him again and trotted toward the pastel pink pony that stood waiting. I knew I’d probably catch a beating for attacking one of the slavers or guards, but that didn’t matter. They’d kept me up all night and I needed to vent some rage.

The mare just smiled at me. An earth pony like myself, I wondered if she was related to Amble, what with her purple eyes and a pink mane. Such a similar color scheme. Her cutie mark was something else, a black rod with a noose at one end. I wasn’t sure what talent that might represent, but I’d probably find out shortly. She motioned to another guard and he hit me in the face hard enough to drop me.

The stallion, a huge unicorn, grabbed me by my mane with his telekinesis and dragged me from the pen into the street. He held me just low enough that I couldn’t get to my hooves, and got to feel every piece of broken asphalt dig into my belly and legs. We trailed behind the pastel pink pony, and when she motioned for us to enter another building, they threw me in and I slammed into the far wall. It cracked and the building creaked.

I groaned, but didn’t bother yelping or screaming, even though the throw had burst open the cuts on my back again. I didn’t have the energy anyway; I was so tired. The hit I’d given the guard before wasn’t near as strong as I could have, but steel gave me a bit more force no matter what. I pushed myself up onto my hooves, shook the dust off, and sat down against the wall. I stared at the pink bitch through half-closed, slowly swelling eyes, smiling as wide as I could. I just hoped Lost was having better luck with the slavers than I was.

“Not gonna break me,” I taunted. I didn’t bother looking at the room, I stared straight into the eyes of the slaver as she walked in. Every part of me wanted to kill her, from my hooves to the blood-covered cuts on my back. I grimaced and waited. I still needed to find Lost, and I couldn’t blow my chance just yet.

The guard stepped in with her, and put me in chains. He locked one around each hoof, making it so I couldn’t move more than an inch or two in any given direction. He smacked me across the jaw as a parting shot, and trotted out to stand just outside the open door.

“I don’t get to, unfortunately,” said the mare, “I’m Cherry Pick, and I normally do all the separating and training. You belong to me; all new meat belongs to me and mine. Amble might have something special planned, but whenever you’re not under her watchful gaze, expect my guards to treat you just like you deserve to be treated.” She smiled and trotted over to a desk.

I finally broke eye contact and looked around. The room was in a sorry state. The broken supports barely kept the roof above our heads. The wall I’d hit wasn’t doing much more than keeping the wind out, and even that was questionable with the giant crack I’d put in it. Two desks sat on opposite sides of the room, one labeled Cherry and the other labeled Hoof. Their names were written crudely, carved into the fronts of the desks.

“I had Lead Line come up with something special for you, though,” she said, pulling something up with her forehoof. Hooked in her fetlock was a collar, with something grey and shiny pressed along the inside. “This is our standard slave collar, we use them for all the new ponies. At least until we break them down and make them realize their place. You belong here. Whatever your old life was is gone, and this is where you will find your true calling!” She looked up as she said it, as though believing in the reverence of it.

“Fuck you,” I spat at her.

“You’re not my type,” she said, rolling her eyes. “This is a special collar.” She placed it in her mouth and stepped over to me. She sat in front of me, staying just out of reach of my chained hooves, not that it stopped me from trying. Dropping the collar into her hooves, she continued, “The frequency we use to detonate it is... Well, reusable. See. We have a lot of property here that we break, train, sell, or transport. But we’ve only got so much from the old world we can use.” She slammed the collar around my neck and held it there, unlatched. “This one is yours; you get to keep it on until Amble decides it can come off.” She slammed the collar closed, and it snapped into place. “Only Sunbright and Slipstock know the secret to unlocking it once it’s on. They’re smart enough to know that only Amble can order it removed.”

I didn’t respond, I just stared at her with a smile.

“Here’s the fun part,” she smirked, “The frequency for yours is connected to three random other ponies. So if you step out of line, we kill all of you. If any of them step out of line, say goodbye to the rest of your body. I’ll give you a hundred caps if you can figure out who else is tied to you. Of course, you won’t have a body left to spend them with, unless you can keep every pony in line.” She patted me on the head with a hoof and turned. “Get her out of my sight. Amble wants her new toy now.”

I stared, not wanting to let on that I was officially terrified. My resolve had been great up until there, even with attacking the guards I felt pretty confident in myself. But now that I knew there were other ponies’ lives depending on mine, and that I could be killed at any moment...

The guard came in and unchained me. I didn’t fight. “Come,” he said, and started toward the door.

I followed obediently.

“Oh! Before you go, tell Amble I said hi. And, here’s a hint,” she paused, making me wait, “One of those three ponies is your sister. Hoof made sure of it. See you soon.” She gave a little wave, and dismissed us.

* * *

I stared at the guard as I followed a few steps behind him, not that he bothered to look back. I figured he must be confident that the collar threat was enough to keep me from trying anything. Stupid stallion. Halfway down, he transferred me to another guard, who kept me in her sights the entire time. She also kept a baton pointed at me, as insurance that I wouldn’t act up.

I made a point to look around, take in what I could. There wasn’t much I could do with the collar around my neck, but I could at least get a good understanding of the layout while I had the chance. I did my best to be a thinky pony and memorize everything I saw. What buildings were where, where alleyways were and how wide roads were. I knew I wouldn’t remember it all, but every detail would be useful. The more information I had, the more useful I’d be when Lost and I came up with a plan to get out.

She led me to a salon called Mane Attraction, with fancy glass windows offering various deals on mane dyes and tail curling. ‘The best deals in town!’ for whatever that was worth. One of the windows was missing the top half, while the other seemed to be completely intact. Surprisingly, both were polished and crystal clear.

Through one of the two gigantic glass windows, I could see two rows of chairs along each wall, a mirror flanking every one of them. There was a desk at the front, covered in messy stacks of papers, a far cry from the neatly organized desk in Lead Line’s office. The room was lit perfectly, by a combination of functional lamps and the light through the windows. Over a half wall at the back of the main room, I could see the pink and purple mohawked mane of Amble.

The guard opened the door, and a little bell rang. She stepped back, and pointed her hoof inside. “In.” When I hesitated, she cracked her baton against my cutie mark and smiled wide.

With a stifled yelp, I cautiously stepped through the door.

“Oh, they’re gonna eat you alive,” she snapped as she walked in, “and I can’t wait to see you break.” With a flick of the baton in her magic, she led me to the back of the room and past the half wall. She sat me down in front of Amble, who didn’t acknowledge the two of us entering, too busy staring down at an old-world magazine, idly flipping the pages.

I sat across from her, in a surprisingly comfortable cushioned chair.

The guard left, moving past the half wall and heading for the entrance. She left, and stood just outside the door, with her hoof holding it open.

Amble still said nothing, but reached below the desk, opened a drawer with one hoof, and placed a brown metal box onto the desk. A shiny red button sat atop it. She flipped the page she was reading, and said nothing. With a nod, she tagged the page and folded the magazine closed. The cover was emblazoned with a soldier holding a minigun and firing off the page, under the Equestrian Army Today title.

“Hey, that’s mine!” I said, reaching out to snatch the magazine from her.

“It is. Ya have good taste in readin’, this is a good edition. The article about soldiers and dealin’ with Wartime Stress Disorder is fascinatin’!” Amble said, looking up at me. I must have had a surprised look on my face, because she continued, “What? Do ya not think I enjoy a good read? WSD is amazin’! Very good for conditionin’. It can be caused by a number of thin’s. Usually, as we see here,” she placed her hoof on the cover and slid it toward me, “an example of stress due to fightin’. Seeing yer comrades die around ya and not bein’ able to do a damned thin’ about it? It fucks with ya.”

“You’re insane. What do soldiers and their reactions to war have to do with your little twisted slavery ring?” I asked, not looking away from that shiny red button.

“Funny ya should ask,” she answered. “Yer focusin’ on the wrong part. Wartime Stress Disorder can also be caused by significant trauma!” She sounded very excited, and clopped her hooves down on her desk hard enough to make me jump. “And causin’ trauma is how we break property in!” She stood and trotted around the desk, pulling the box with the red button on it along with her. “The risk of death, pain, and all of that delicious torture. That causes it too. We make ponies into property, teach them their place, and break their will to run.”

“So, you’re admitting to being a monster?” I asked, raising both eyebrows at her.

“No, I’m a businessmare. I work for a profit, and honestly do try to make sure my thin’s go where they’ll be most useful,” she said, rolling her hoof along the metal box at the edge of the desk. “WSD causes, sometimes; flashbacks, nightmares, and reactions to thin’s that remind my property of what broke them. So when they see the collar,” she tapped the collar around my neck with her hoof, smiling wide, “they remember watchin’ their lover’s head get blown clear off, and they remember their place.”

I said nothing.

“There are ways to treat it. That’s what the article was about,” she explained, “but I prefer to keep it goin’ as long as I can. Ponies that know their place are happier! I promise ya that.” She held up the red buttoned box again, and moved it closer. “Ya wanna push it, don’tcha? Because ya dunno what it does. Here.” She set it on the chair, between my hind legs. “Go ahead.”

I stared at the button, wanting to push it. It was hard to resist, polished and shining like it was. I reached out with my flesh forehoof. Just before I touched it, I looked up at the slaver, and the huge smile she had across her lips.

Oh shit. Was this the button for?! My eyes widened and I tried to pull my hoof back.

I managed to stop right as my hoof touched the button, but I flinched. My hooves scrambled, trying to catch myself. I only succeeded in knocking the detonator off the chair and onto the floor. I watched, eyes wide, as it tumbled, and inches became miles. I tried to catch it, reaching down. I wasn’t fast enough, and all I could do was clench my eyes shut and waited for the end.

Amble laughed. It wasn’t a wicked laugh, but a hearty warm laugh. She actually started giggling, and when I finally opened my eyes, I saw her holding her side with a hoof and leaning against the table. “Every... Hahaha,” she had to stop talking to laugh. “Every. Single. Time. I never said what that was, ya took guess though, didn’t ya?”

“What!?” I yelled at her, standing off the chair. I stormed over to her, only stopping when I felt the collar shift on my neck. Misbehave, and I kill my sister, two innocents... and myself.

“Everything okay?” asked the guard, who eyed us from the doorway.

“Jus’ fine!” she yelled to the guard. “I like ya a lot, Miss Fortune. Ya got spunk and drive, ya managed to hurt Slipstock in a way that she won’t get over for a long time,” she said, picking up the fake detonator from the floor in her mouth. Her words stunned me, and I just stood there in shock. She trotted around the desk and set it in a drawer. Pushing it closed, she hopped up into her chair and leaned over the desk, “I don’t wanna haveta break ya like that. Ya could be very useful to me, as a bodyguard or slaver. I promote from within if ya prove yerself to me. For Celestia’s sake, my doctor is a slave!”

I blinked a few times, and finally said, “I’m not following.” I didn’t have the energy to think right now.

With a sigh, she continued, “I use tools to break my property in, then I sell ‘em off. It’s economy, and that’s jus’ how the Wasteland works. Ponies are a commodity just like water. Breaking them, inducing things like WSD, jus’ a way to keep them in line. Numbing down dreams and ambitions means they jus’ accept their place. Because this is where they belong. Jus’ like ya, ya belong here. Don’tcha see? I can give ya a good place, ya can have ya sister back even!” She slid the magazine over to me, and I took it from her. “Show a faith. I’ll do my best to not use the bomb collar, or beat ya within an inch of ya life.”

She held out a hoof to me.

“Deal?”

“Never,” I said, snatching my magazine back from her. “I will take the magazine though, I’ve been meaning to read it for over a week now.”

“I thought we could do this the easy way, my pet,” she said, shaking her head. “I guess I was wrong. Go talk to Cherry again, tell her...” She raised a hoof to her head and closed her eyes. “I... I don’t even know. Forget it. Just get back to yer pen.” She turned and looked over the half-wall, and shouted to the guard. “No rations for her, or her sister!”

“What?” I asked, in shock. “Lost didn’t do anything to deserve that! She doesn’t need to be punished because you’ve got an issue with me.” I understood that they were punishing me through my sister, but it was worth it to at least try and talk them out of it.

“Have a good day, Miss Fortune,” she said, waving her hoof at me. “We’ll try this again another time.”

Slipstock stepped in, in place of the earlier guard. She didn’t have her holsters draped over her back this time, just a single saddlebag. Her cutie mark was just as I’d thought before, a gun sliding out of a holster. All of her bandages were gone, and she had a wide smile like she was excited, instead of the bored expression I’d gotten used to. She looked at Amble. “Can I brin’ her to Vice Brand? I want to make sure she can’t pull any tricks,” she said. Apparently she remembered my switch up when we’d fought.

Amble was thoughtful for a moment, and said nothing. She tented her hooves and closed her eyes. After what seemed like forever, she opened them again and nodded. “I think that’s reasonable, given all that ya told me. It might just speed up the process,” she said, then looked at me. “Miss Fortune, while I treat my favorites well, I also punish them the harshest, because I know they can be somethin’ more. Yer not a hero. Yer not... whatever that steel hoof makes ya think you are.” She pointed to the steel hoof, and continued, “Yer mine, and I’m going to make ya see that.” The slaver mare turned to Slipstock. “Take her to Vice Brand, and let that be her punishment instead of starvation. Leave her sister alone. For now. I want leverage for later.”

Slipstock led me from the building to the road outside. She’d mentioned a pony named Vice Brand twice now, and from context, I was getting a bit worried. What kind of a pony was he, that he was the standard threat for this place? Amble had been fucking with my mind, trying to confuse me. Slipstock was flat-out sadistic. What more did they need?

In my frustration, I hit Slipstock as hard as I could. One little bit of revenge I could probably get away with. If I was really Amble’s current favorite pet project, surely she wouldn’t have me killed for one little thing. The hit didn’t do much anyway.

With a sigh, Slipstock cracked me right between the eyes with a buck from both hind legs. In my exhaustion, I went down like saddlebags full of too much treasure. At least Lost was safe for now.

* * *

Slipstock dragged me off to another building on the far end of the compound. Halfway there I stopped struggling and she allowed me to walk on my own. She stayed behind me, and I knew she was watching my every move.

I didn’t try anything, just kept marching wherever she told me to go. I held the magazine I’d been meaning to read for days under my leg. I tried my best to memorize where I was going, but in the haze of hunger and lack of sleep every building looked exactly the same to me. The pen I’d been kept in overnight was... somewhere? I sighed, the layout of this town was confusing, and I didn’t even want to think straight. I just wanted to bash Slipstock’s head in, run off, find my sister, and leave.

Celestia, Luna? Grant me your strength to kill this pony and break free? I closed my eyes for a moment and stopped walking, breathing heavily. I was too tired and too hungry to go on. Was it this bad for L.A., too? Trying to look ahead my vision started to blur and I wobbled on my hooves.

“Stop stallin’,” she snapped, jabbing me a few times in the side. She aimed for where the whip had cut me open the night before and the slowly healing gunshot wounds she’d made. After the fight and the march, she had no small number of painful places to prod me.

I flinched a few times, still rather tender. She hit me across my flank hard enough to wake me from my stupor. I looked at her, nodded and got myself going again. I wasn’t beaten this time, and I just kept forward. She took me to another building off the main road, attached to the outside wall.

The green unicorn I’d seen before, Spark Light maybe, walked out of the building behind a guard. His green coat was splattered with blood, and he seemed completely unfocused. For half a moment he looked at me, shivered, and stared back at the ground. Just what went on in this building? I didn’t have time to wonder, as Slipstock pushed me through the entrance.

Inside was a small room with several counters. I didn’t recognize anything to tell me what this room might have been before Balefire turned it into a rusted and rotted tomb of the past. Skeletons were piled in the corner, for who knows why. Scattered on the counters were sets of cuffs and shackles along with piles of metal scraps and chain. Old world tools hung along the warped and battered wall on pegs and hooks. Whips, chains, and gruesome tools I’d never seen before adorned the opposite wall.

“Stand here,” ordered Slipstock, and I obeyed. She trotted off and yelled something in another room.

After a moment or two, another voice answered, and a gigantic unicorn stallion entered the room, followed by Slipstock. “Yeah yeah, I’ll do the dirty work. Don’t mean a thing that I was trying to spend time with my daughter. Slave or not I-” he stopped, and looked directly at me, “What do we have here? A stubborn mare in need of hobbling.” He smiled wickedly, a twinkle shining in his yellow eyes.

“I don’t really know,” I said with a shrug.

He hit me across the face with his massive hoof so hard that it floored me. “I wasn’t fucking asking you, slave,” he bellowed, before stomping my side. The attack nearly knocked me out cold. Whatever this stallion was made of, he hit harder than a bullet. “Now, hold the fuck still.”

I held the fuck still. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Slipstock smiling at me.

His horn began to glow, and a welding torch from the far wall lifted up and floated toward me. He looked down at my steel hoof and asked, “That thing come off?” Not waiting for an answer, he grabbed it in his magic, dropping the torch onto the floor next to me.

I flinched away, thinking it was going to hit me. I couldn’t pull the steel hoof back, as he held and tugged against it. I could feel the graft giving way under his telekinesis, and shouted, “Attached! It’s attached! Sto-” before screaming in agony. It felt like my entire leg was going to split open again, just like it had been when they were installing the steel hoof. In horror, I watched as the seams Praline had made started to tear again, and blood began to seep out. I clenched my eyes shut and ground my teeth. Finally I yelled, “It’s... A replacement. I lost my hoof.” I gasped, clutching at my leg to try and stop the pain.

“Rip it off, Vice,” goaded Slipstock, smiling so wide I thought the top of her head might come off.

The stallion just raised his eyebrow, and released his telekinetic grasp. “No. Less wasted materials this way,” he said, and started up his telekinesis again. Three hoofcuffs and a length of chain lifted from the counters and off the wall. He held me down with one forehoof and began moving the hoofcuffs toward me.

The chain dropped onto me and draped over my neck, making it hard to breathe. He took one of the hoofcuffs and wrapped it around my left foreleg, then slammed the two halves together. Six small rods lined the outside of the hoofcuff. I didn’t want to guess what they might be. The torch lifted and he melted the two ends of steel together, locking it in place. The metal burnt horribly, but after the first flinch I didn’t move. Hot glowing metal was one thing, a flame on me was another entirely. I just wanted it over with. When the magic let go, I dropped the hoof to the floor and stared at it. Morbidly, I actually wanted to know what the six rods were for.

“Let me do it,” said Slipstock, her smile turning to a wicked grin. She trotted over and stood above me. Her horn glowed. I watched, terrified and almost curious, as to what she would do. Then my world turned into unspeakable pain. The six rods all shot into the hoofcuff until they were flush on the outside. On the inside, six spikes stabbed into my leg and cut straight to the bone. I screamed, louder than I thought possible, until I ran out of breath, and could scream no more. Blood soaked my leg, and I could feel each individual spike inside my flesh. I shook wildly, trying to remind myself I’d been through worse. Having my hoof bitten off and seared shut was worse, right? I’d had Med-X and Buck in my system then though. This I could handle... at least I prayed.

She burst into laughter, cackling madly. “One down,” she whispered into my ear.

He ignored my screams and whimpers. Without a word, he lifted a sheet of metal with a looped steel ring on it and wrapped it around the hoofcuff. With the welding torch, he attached it over the six spikes so they couldn’t be pulled back out. When he was finished, it looked like one solid piece. He dropped the telekinesis around my forehoof and I let it drop to the floor. The steel shackle hitting the steel floor sent lightning bolts of pain up my leg. I screamed again.

He grabbed my rear left leg and held it up.

“Please, stop. No. I’ll be good. One leg is enough!” I shouted, trying to pull my leg away. I looked back and forth between Vice Brand and Slipstock pleading, “I don’t need another one of those. One’s plenty! I’ll be good. Collar, spiked cuff- I can be very obedient.” I kept trying to pull my leg away. “Anything! You name it, anything. Please, don’t do it again. I’ll be good, just take me back to Amble. I’ll be as good as you need. Anything she says! A good little slave, sell me off and I’ll make some pony very happy!” I talked as fast as I could, trying to convince them that I didn’t need another one attached to me. He welded the hoofcuff around my leg, and her magic flared to focus on the rods. “Pleasepleaseplease I know my place! I belong here, just like she said! Obedient property at her side. No, no no! You don’t need-” I screamed out to the Goddesses for mercy as she pierced to the bone with the horrific steel spikes.

The stallion said nothing. He stared stone-faced at his work and melted the steel solid. He picked up the third cuff in his magic and slowly levitated it toward my other hind leg. My tears weren’t going to stop him, and neither was my begging.

I stared through the tears as the cuff wrapped around my leg and closed. This was the end, wasn’t it? I went limp, unable to keep fighting. It snapped shut, and the welder closed it. I didn’t even feel the burns anymore. My breath came slow, almost calm. Slipstock wanted to punish me, but... Was this even punishment anymore? I would accept it, if it made the pain go away. “You win...” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Please... No more. You. Win,” I said louder. It didn’t work.

Slipstock’s horn began to glow, and I just closed my eyes. Despite gritted teeth and every attempt to block it out. The stabbing of the spikes into the bone was too much. She laughed with glee at my whimpering. The energy to scream or cry for mercy was gone. If it would make the pain stop, I’d do whatever they wanted. If only to get rid of this pain...

Since my last hoof was already made of steel, he instead attached a single steel ring, identical to the other three, and used the torch to fuse the parts. Finished with the cuffs, he laced the chain through all four and locked the ends together between all four legs.

“Please...” I begged, staring at my blood-coated legs. The only response was another stomp to the stomach. That answered that.

He lifted me in his telekinesis, and threw me toward the door.

I flew through the open doorway and out onto the street. Tumbling a few times, I screamed in pain, before coming to a rest right as Slipstock walked out. “Hey,” she said with a grin, “have fun?” When I didn’t answer, she grabbed me in her magic and dragged me by the chains back toward the pen.

* * *

Slipstock threw me back in with the rest of the ponies. Most of them avoided me. Apparently having the spiked shackles wasn’t very common, given the looks. I was used to it. Mom’s paranoia was still strong with me, and I didn’t trust them any more than they trusted me.

I flopped onto my side where I landed. Slipstock stayed for a few minutes, laughing at me. “Enjoy yer reminder a how tough a pony ya really are,” she mocked, before finally walking off.

I didn’t have the strength, mentally or physically, to do anything but lie there. I didn’t bother keeping track of how long I lay in the dirt, trying to not think of the pain in my hooves. Everything ached, and even though the wounds were technically plugged up, I swore I could feel myself bleeding.

I tried to move, but the chains held tight. I struggled, but pulling one leg away did nothing more than pull in the others. Every movement twisted and dug at my cuffs, pulling the spikes around. My mind couldn’t even find a way to register that much pain. I gave up and laid still. I just wanted to go back home, crawl into the remains of my bed, and pretend this had never happened. I could wake up tomorrow, and my sister and I would go find a new ruined building to dig through. We’d bring home some new treasure, some food, and maybe something unique to add to the small collection of interesting stuffs we had. That would be perfect.

Too bad pain like this couldn’t ever be from a dream.

Or a nightmare...

I scrambled to my hooves, ignoring the pain, and stared at my legs. Shackled, bound. Tears hit the ground, darkening it in little spots. I just shook my head, it couldn’t be. It wasn’t. It wasn’t the same at all. I fell back, and pushed myself as best I could until my back was at the wall of the pen. Wildly, I looked back and forth at the other ponies. I knew they were just lying there, distraught and afraid of what would happen next, but I could feel them looking at me. I knew they were sizing me up, now that I was bound. I was a target.

There were stallions here too. Not many, but enough. Stallions? Stallions!? I laughed inside my head. After what Slipstock did to me, I was scared of all of them. One pony tilted her head, looking at me fairly intently. She started toward me, and, all I could do was fall on my side and curl up.

I couldn’t run. What was I supposed to do? I pulled at the hoofcuffs and chains, clenching my eyes shut. The pain didn’t hurt as bad as I thought, I told myself. I could just break the chain. I was strong. My mind raced to dark memories of darker dreams, and against my will I thrashed against invisible ropes put up by a raider that wasn’t even there. I wanted, no, I needed Lost. I needed my sister. She could tell me what to do, she could help. We’d protect one another. We were stronger together, so it only made sense that they’d split us up. Celestia, Luna, please let my sister have a plan...

“Slipstock?” asked the pony.

I opened my eyes, slowly, and looked up at her. I didn’t expect what I saw... I figured there would be a pissed-off mare ready to attack me because I couldn’t fight back. I nodded just a little, still wishing Lost was there to tell me what we could do to get out.

She held up her left forehoof. Around her light cyan coat was a steel shackle just like mine. The loop on the side of it looked well worn. The mare stood a few inches taller than me and small scars covered her thin frame, but she grinned wryly as she sat next to me and hunched over. She sighed. “What’d ya do?”

“I don’t. I don’t even know,” I said, swallowing to keep from crying. “I think she wants me dead.”

“She wants everypony dead,” said the mare. “You just got it sooner than most I’ve seen.”

“Does this happen often?” I asked, trying to wrench my mind away from the fact that I was chained up and couldn’t move than a few inches. I ignored my own thoughts, and focused on the conversation.

“Only when Amble lets Slipstock have her way, which is rare. Still too often though; it’s us versus them here,” she explained while looking around. “They haven’t broken me yet, and I don’t plan to let them.” The wry smile crossed her lips again, even though she refused to make eye contact with me. She might not think she was broken, but she was definitely close.

“Spikes?” I asked, finally pushing myself into a sitting position. It wasn’t easy, but I just had to focus on something else. Talk, get Lost back, leave. Break these things off somehow...

“Spikes?” she asked back, looking at the banded hoofcuff on her leg. Realization must have dawned on her, as her eyes went wide as saucers. “You... Three of them?” She pulled her own cuffed hoof toward her and cradled it. “No... I’ve only heard of one other pony getting the spikes. She didn’t last a week, or so they say.”

I shrunk down, curling against the chains that bound me. How was I going to get through this? How had the Steel Rangers gotten through this sort of thing? They watched family die in front of them, and were fine the next day. Was there some secret to blocking out that sort of pain? It got hard to breathe. I gasped for air, and my vision swam. Somewhere, a guard yelled something, I thought, but the pony I was talking to said something. No whips lashed out, thank the Goddesses. I couldn’t take any more. Not now.

I needed sleep. I needed food. I needed my sister.

“Look... If... If you need anything, and you feel better, ask around. Name’s Sourbelle. Other ponies who haven’t totally given up will know where I am,” said the mare before standing up. She trotted a few steps away and turned to face me. “Good luck...”

Yeah, luck. Like Xeno always said, a special kind of luck seems to hover around...

* * *

The mess hall was gigantic, and housed far too many ponies. The chains were gone for now, and I could move on my own, just barely. Guards led small groups of us inside the gigantic building, one with row after row of tables, each full of starving ponies eating whatever they could get. Even though every step was agony, and dug the spikes into me, the idea that I was going to get food was too good to pass up. The only bright side to having what must have been every pony in the city in the room was that I might see Lost.

The guard shuffled me into a line at gunpoint. I stepped in behind another pony, a stallion with a green tail, not that who it was mattered. We took slow steps forward, and I gritted my teeth. The smell of whatever food was being prepared had me drooling, even if it was something I hated. A delicious snack from the Stable 60 Steel Rangers would be perfect, but at this point I would take anything I could get my hooves on.

The tiny bowl of unidentifiable gruel met my expectations pretty much exactly. Whatever it was, it was probably edible, and I was going to enjoy it. There was a small amount of freedom, as the guards allowed the slaves to choose their own seats. I might not have been allowed to talk, and there were still dozens of guards on the ground and standing on balconies built into the walls, but I could at least sit where I wanted.

I looked around for purple manes and bandanas. My sister had to be somewhere; I just needed to find her. Looking over large groups of ponies wasn’t really the best way for me to spot one particular pony, but I tried. Nothing seemed in focus, though, and I had a hard time picking out where one of the masses stopped and another began. On top of that, I had no idea how long I’d have to eat. I might only have a few minutes before the guards shuffled me back.

Not bothering to find a seat, I tilted the bowl in my fetlock and swallowed its contents. I was still hungry. I dropped the bowl on a table where several others had been stacked and looked back over the group. I looked at the line again, but when I stepped toward it, the guard just smiled and lifted a whip in my direction. No second helpings, I guessed. Hanging my head, I walked out into the room, looking side to side to try and find my sister.

“Pssst,” whispered somepony, “psst, Hidden!” It was Lost! She waved me over and made room for me on the bench she sat on. Her face fell as she saw the hoofcuffs around my legs. “What did they do to you?” she whispered, pulling me close.

I sat down, and just closed my eyes. I leaned against her, saying nothing. Rest and relaxation, if only for a minute or two. I had my sister back, and she was okay. The only thing I needed right now, was to know that she was doing well. She didn’t look hurt, so she was faring better than I was. I rested my head against her. “Slipstock,” I whispered. “Pain. Lots...”

“Oh Goddesses, Hidden, you didn’t fight back, did you?” she asked as quietly as she could. Looking around at the guards, she bent down and took a few more bites of whatever her gruel was. The ring was still over her horn, keeping her from using any of her magic, but I didn’t see any other injuries. She still had the PipBuck, too! Her glasses even looked like she’d had a chance to clean them.

“No. Revenge,” I said, before breaking down and telling her everything. As I went on, my voice slowly rose, and the guards started to step over to us.

Lost cut me off with a hoof over the mouth, and I went silent. “Shh, we'll get away, we just need to wait,” she said. “Just stay strong, little sis.”

One guard stepped over and stood directly behind us, “You. Up,” he ordered, and grabbed Lost. She stood without struggle, and turned to nod at him. “It’s been long enough,” he said, then turned his back to yell at a huddling group of mares.

When he turned, Lost bent down and whispered in my ear. “Play along,” she said. “They’re nicer if they think you-” She stopped when the guard went quiet. Turning her back to me, she looked back past her glasses and held a hoof up. Several ponies were standing now, blocking the view of other guards. She whispered once more as the stallion trotted off to lead her group away. “Behave, survive.”

Then she was gone in the crowd.

* * *

Play along. Behave. Easier said than done. I stared across the desk at Amble. The guard didn’t led me back with the rest of the group. Instead, she brought me straight to the Slave Mistress herself, at least that’s what the guard called her. It didn’t matter. All I had to do was play along and behave. Answer her questions. Listen, smile, and nod.

“Tell me about yerself,” Amble said. She propped herself up on her forehooves, leaning onto the desk. “I want to know jus’ who Miss Fortune is.”

I didn’t answer. My brain couldn’t process that. Even the little claws that normally picked and prodded at my psyche weren’t bothering me. Was I really so tired...? I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Nothing special,” I said.

“That can’t be true. There’s gotta be a reason for the steel hoof,” she said, pointing at it. She had the same bored expression, with her eyes half-closed. “Are ya some sorta hero, savin’ the Wasteland from dangers? I heard on the radio somepony called ‘Gunbuck’ killed off a monster a few days ago.”

“I’m not a hero,” I explained, “just a pony hunting for treasure, and chasing ghosts.” I didn’t want to tell her that I was that somepony. That might get me in an even worse situation. What would somepony like Amble do with a ‘hero’ anyway? My stomach growled. That food wasn’t enough... I let out a deep sigh. “Why?”

“Miss Fortune, why don’tcha get some sleep? Ya look exhausted,” she said, sounding legitimately concerned. When I opened my eyes, I didn’t see a horrible slaver trying to break me into nothing and rebuild me. I saw a savior, a pony who wanted to give me some relief.

I don’t know if I fell asleep or not, just that a smile crept across her lips.

“Who said ya could sleep!” yelled a very angry mare.

My eyes shot open, and I saw up straight in the seat. Where was I? Who was I? What time was it? I looked at a purple and pink earth pony who sat across from me at a nice desk. She didn’t look happy at all.

“What? I...” I said, shaking my head to clear my thoughts. I hunched over, holding myself up with my forehead against her desk. Feeling it shift, I sat back up. “You said...” I tried to remember. “You said I should get some sleep?” She had said that. I remembered.

“Why the fuck would I let a worthless mule like ya sleep?” she demanded, slamming her hooves on the desk. “Ya supposed to be tellin’ me yer life story. I own ya, and I ordered ya to tell me. So do as I say, or I’ll find a way to make thin’s very, very unpleasant for ya and yer sister.” Her frown switched in an instant, and she flashed a friendly smile. “C’mon now,” she coaxed. “Be a good pony, and do what yer owner tells ya to.”

“But you don’t own me,” I said, blinking a few times. I clenched my eyes each time, trying to remember. I knew she’d said I could sleep... She said I was exhausted, and could sleep.

“Miss Fortune, don’t fight. Ya belong here, it’s easier this way,” said Amble, tapping a hoof on the desk. She frowned and tilted her head side to side, almost as if she were examining me. “I don’t want to let Slipstock have ya again, she’s a bit too...” She paused, tapping her chin with her hoof. “...rough on my toys.”

“But I belong with my sister,” I said. I needed L.A. She’d have a plan by now, and then we could leave.

“She belongs here too, ya two will be together soon,” she smiled wide. “I promise. Now tell me ya story. Tell me what makes ya tick. I’ll let ya visit her after this, if ya tell me.”

I looked at the floor, my thoughts still hazy. Lost said to play along, and if I got to see her, I could play along. I looked at the mare, and smiled weakly. “Promise?”

“Of course,” she said, offering me a hoof. “I promise.”

I reached out and took her hoof, watching the shackle on mine. My heart started to pound, and I found it hard to swallow. I could still feel the spikes, and I was still covered in my own blood. Didn’t she see what they’d done to me? Did she want her belongings in such poor condition? Wait... had I just thought of myself as a belonging?

“Ok, since... since you promise,” I said, forcing myself to swallow. “Umm, where do I start?” I asked, not knowing what she wanted to know. I wanted her happy, so she wouldn’t hurt me again.

“Why not start from the beginnin’? I want to know ya,” she said in a sickeningly sweet voice.

“Oh, okay,” I whispered, more to myself than her. I tried to think what I could get away with not telling. I didn’t want too much information about myself out. If she knew we killed Wirepony she might... I didn’t even know.

I started to tell my story, parts of it. I didn’t mention certain things, like details about where I was born or lived. I told her parts about mom, and that she was dead. Amble seemed genuinely surprised that I’d been honest during the standoff. I explained that we were treasure hunters, and how we scavenged. I made sure to go into detail about hunting for treasure, because it was fun to do but boring to talk about, and ate up a lot of time.

Her interest peaked when I talked about Stables 21 and 12. She also liked the part about how we’d learned to grow up once mom died.

“And we’ve killed some raiders, too. Bandits too, that one time,” I said, trailing off. What else was there to say?

“And then Skirt?” she asked. Happy with my nod, she continued, “Do ya know who the ponies ya killed were? What their lives were like?” When I shook my head, she kept going, “Did ya ever stop to think they might have family? Just how many lives have ya ruined, Miss Fortune?”

I stared at her, unblinking. Those ponies were raiders! They were insane bloodthirsty killing machines who would shoot us as soon as look at us.

“Ya never even thought about it, didja?” she said with a laugh. “And ya call me a monster. At least I think about yer future. Where yer goin’, even if it is Filly. I’ve broken hundreds, if not thousands of slaves, and they’re all the same. They think they’re somethin’ special, no matter where they’re from. Raiders, bandits, scavengers, soldiers, even heroes. They think they’re too good to be a slave. Yer right though, yer not a hero. I’ve met a lot of ponies with similar lives, but ya? Yer just a murderer.”

“No, I’m not,” I countered, staring at her. “I killed to survive, and to help! I never just... Murder.”

“Ya jus’ told me yer life story,” said the slaver. “Ya sound like a murderer to me.”

“No, there’s a difference!” I yelled, shifting. I wanted to slam my hooves down on the table, to make her see my point. I tried, but raising my hooves hurt, they were heavy and I just wanted to go back to sleep and deal with this later. Why couldn’t Lost be here to back me up? “Accidents, murder, self-defense! They’re not the same. Sometimes we have to kill.”

“Ya believe that?” she snapped. “Where were ya when ya killed the bandits?” She smiled wide, sitting back in her seat.

“We were in,” I said, stopping when I realized the truth. “...their home.”

“So ya broke into their home, and killed them?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“They said,” I tried to remember. So much had happened in the past few days I couldn’t remember what those three stallions had said. “I don’t remember, but I remember they were going to hurt me!”

“Ya were in their home, Miss Fortune. What did ya expect?”

“We needed a place to sleep...”

“And the raiders?” she asked.

“We were hunting for treasure, the building was the only one standing. So, we went in. Then they attacked us,” I explained. I tried to remember the details as they happened. That was two days ago, so why was I having so much trouble remembering?

“Again, ya went into their home and killed them. I’m beginnin’ to think ya have problems with decision makin’,” she mused. For a slaver, she sure had a lot of philosophical thoughts. “Ya say there’s a difference between self-defense and murder. How can ya call it self-defense if ya went into their home and killed them? Did ya even try and talk to them?”

“When they fire first, you don’t stop and try and talk. I acted on instinct,” I announced, trying to hold my ground. I was right. We were killing to survive, nothing more. I didn’t feel any guilt at killing them, because if I hadn’t killed them, they’d have killed me. I felt bad about Gunbuck, because it was just him, and I could have talked it through. I felt bad about mom. And I felt bad about the good stallions who’d tried to help me, and gotten killed for their trouble. Those were my fault.

“I still think ya have a problem with decision makin’. It sounds to me like ya don’t think yer actions through,” she said, tapping her hoof on the desk. She looked deep in thought, before she looked back at me.

I didn’t like that look. I knew I wasn’t a very thinky pony, and I had problems with shooting first and asking questions later. But I was still a good pony, right?

“This is why ya belong here. Ya won’t haveta make decisions,” she said with a wide smile. “I want ya to think about that. Stay by my side, and I’ll make sure ya know what ya gotta do each day, and there won’t be any chances for ya to make little mistakes like that.” She offered me her hoof. “Bein’ a slave is better than bein’ a murderer, don’tcha think?”

I didn’t take her hoof. I slid off the chair and turned from her. “I’m not a slave. I’m a pony, and I make mistakes sometimes. But I’d rather be my own pony with a bad record than a slave without any thoughts of my own.” I just needed to find Lost, and get some more food and sleep. And get my shaky memory working again. “You promised I could see my sister now?”

“I don’t remember sayin’ anythin’ about that,” she said, raising her eyebrow again.

“But you promised. I remember,” I reminded her.

“I said no such thin', but ya did as I asked, so... How about this,” she said with a smile, “as a reward, I'll let your sister get a full night's sleep and three meals tomorrow?”

I blinked several times, but nodded. Lost probably needed anything she could get. A reward for her was worth doing what Amble said, this time.

“Good, now get out of my sight.”

* * *

The guard didn’t take me to see Lost.

She marched me agonizingly slowly to some ruins at the far end of the town, and into another holding area. The brick walls had either fallen apart or been broken down in a particularly elegant manner and were less than a full story tall. It meant I couldn’t do anything to get out, and that the ponies situated on the guard towers looking over the walls of the town could watch my every movement. They carried guns I’d be envious of in another situation, but were on towers tall enough that they’d be out of earshot.

Once inside, I sat down to lessen the pain in my legs. The cell was completely barren. Four walls and not a damn thing else except the pony inside. I sat in the corner, trying to look at small as possible. I knew the guards watched me, even if they didn’t look directly at me. Maybe I could get in some sleep since there were only two guards? Amble had said I could get some sleep. I knew she had.

I closed my eyes. Just a few hours, and I’d be fine. Then come up with a plan. It might not be as fancy as Lost’s plan, whenever I learned it, but it could get us out! Just a little bit of sleep, like Amble said.

A bullet slamming into the wall behind me woke me right up! It shot through where my ear would have been, had it ever fully healed. I made a mental note to get that fixed as soon as possible. Then I figured out what had just happened, and scrambled to my hooves.

“No sleeping, got it!” I yelled, staring at the guard. I gave a salute, but got nothing back. Whatever, fuck her then. I sat on my haunches again and just stared up. The clouds were moving, little by little, and I had a pretty good view of a total square of gray with a guard tower on either side. Wonderful.

And I wasn’t allowed to sleep, still.

So, I had plenty of time to think. Amble said I was a murderer. I wasn’t a murderer, I was just a pony trying to survive. I wasn’t any better or any worse than some of the ponies we’d met in the Wasteland. Okay, so I didn’t kill ponies who wandered into my home without asking questions first, but I also didn’t go out of my way to fight for others at the drop of a hat, even when they’d burst into my home. I was both better, and worse, than other ponies. Did that make me average. Was there really anything to feel guilty about?

Raiders and bandits were evil ponies who didn’t have any redeeming qualities. ‘Kill and steal and leave you for dead’ ponies with nothing about them that benefitted society. They were content to let the evils of the Wasteland flourish and take advantage of better ponies. Was it just because that was all they could do?

Of course not! There were always better ways. Searching for food was fine. Lost and I survived just fine like that. They chose to murder, and I chose to stay alive. That’s just how it was. It wasn’t fancy or glamorous, it was just survival. I knew very well that if I’d been born in Equestria as it was in the history books, before the war that turned it into this Wasteland, I’d have had a different life. And those raiders, maybe we’d all be friends. Life just put us in situations we couldn’t handle the best way. The Goddesses watched out for us whenever they could, but ponies still made their own decisions. They weren’t always the best, but they were just a way to survive.

The shack was full of garbage, nopony could live in it. Lost and I were used to living in ruins, but that place was filthy even by Wasteland standards. It was a bed, and not dirt. That was good enough for a night’s sleep. Abandoned buildings were so common. When we walked in, the place looked abandoned. How was I supposed to know that it was the raiders’ home? And the raiders, well how were we supposed to know it was a raider nest? They shot at us without so much as a second look! I wasn’t a murderer; I was a survivor!

Maybe I was just telling myself that. I stood up and started pacing around the walls. Walking hurt, but it kept me awake and unshot. This was me being a thinky pony, trying to make sense of what they did. I killed Gunbuck without a second look. I saw him, jumped, and pulled the trigger. I didn’t even think about it; it just happened. So what if the raiders were like that too? Shoot first and ask questions later. Did that mean raiders were just as good as me, or that I was as bad as a raider? They deserved what they’d got. I’d heard the stories. I never killed innocent ponies or raped mares or sold off others into slavery... Oh, the irony. Everypony who lived in the Wasteland knew what raiders were like, and bandits too! They were bad ponies who killed for fun and pleasure, and they did a lot of terrible things to ponies they killed, or intended to kill. I wasn’t like that!

Did I need to feel guilty for killing those ponies? We’d helped take something evil out of the Wasteland, and made it just a little bit safer. Just like killing Wirepony. That monster needed to be put down. It was the same thing, killing to help ponies and to survive. That wasn’t murder, and I wasn’t a murderer.

I kept pacing, trying to get used to the new weight on my hooves. Could these ever come off? I felt the spikes scraping against the bone when I set my hoof down, and dig an agonizing scratching pain deep inside. By keeping myself occupied, I didn’t feel it too much. It was like the little claws in my mind; every so often, I’d realize it was there, and do my best to not think about it. If I didn’t give the pain any power, it couldn’t hurt me. The weight took some getting used to. They weren’t particularly huge shackles, just flat wide bands welded to me. I laughed to myself. It was almost funny that them being welded to me and not being bulky was their saving grace. I reached the corner and slumped down into it again, making sure to keep moving and keep my eyes open so I wouldn’t get shot at again.

I lifted my hoof and looked at the cuff around it. The welds were obvious, a line traced through the steel that ended where burns on my coat started. Skilled or not, he’d welded them on to a point where I didn’t think they’d ever come off. The spikes underneath were fascinating, if horrific. How had such a deep spike fit in such a thin hoofcuff. Were they retractable? Whatever cheater magic they’d used, it hurt just as bad as losing my hoof did. Holding up both forehooves, I compared. I was broken now, missing one, with metal loops for chains. A shiver went down my spine and I put my head in my hooves, feeling the cool steel.

Was this really who I was now?

“Mom? Is this what you wanted for us, when you had us leave the Stable?” I asked nopony in particular. I wanted to remember what happened, why we’d been cast out. She never talked about it much, and just said that it wasn’t something I needed to concern myself with. Her and Lost together, they’d been close, but she was older and remembered more of what had happened than I did. I wanted to ask Lost when I got the chance, after we escaped. I wasn’t good at planning, and I didn’t know enough to figure out a way to escape.

I leaned forward and faceplanted into the ground.

“I just want to go home,” I whispered into the dirt, before pushing myself up. The guards would shoot if I looked like I was sleeping. See, I was a thinky pony, I could learn!

What about the ponies who died helping us? Were those really my fault? Did I murder them? Xeno’s brothers killed one of the stallions. The other got himself killed. The third was killed in battle. I was there for all three, but were they my fault? Each would’ve died eventually, and two of the three under similar circumstances. Poor Sweet though, having to leave him like that? I didn’t like that, but it was survival, not murder. Éclair just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. If it’d been Crème who got shot instead of Éclair, would I have felt so bad about it? I grimaced, knowing full well I wouldn’t have felt bad for a pony who hadn’t offered to help me without even being asked.

Maybe, I was a monster.

NO! Gunbuck, I killed him with my own hooves and that was my fault. Mom, she died because we were inexperienced, but it wasn’t anypony’s fault. The raiders and bandits deserved to die for what they did to the Wasteland, and I didn’t feel a scrap of guilt for that. Situations got ponies killed, but that didn’t mean I put them to their deaths. I was a good pony! I helped others. I killed Wirepony, for Celestia and Luna’s sake!

Only...

It wasn’t just me. Lost was there too. In fact, she’d done more than I had, solved problems I was too stupid to figure out. She reacted faster, and came up with plans to win. If she hadn’t been there to save my flank, Wirepony would have eaten me alive, and that was only the most recent time she’d saved my life. Was I really just good at following orders?

Maybe I did belong here? Somewhere I could follow along and not do any real thinking for myself. No actions, no consequences. That would mean giving in, and not just playing along.

I sat and put my head in my hooves. I needed Lost.

* * *

I went in circles, trying to point out to myself which parts of my life were things I deserved blame for, and which were just survival. The door opening broke my train of thought, and Slipstock trotted in. I looked at her, closed my eyes, and let out a little sigh.

The bitch mare stepped up to me and roughly pushed me down onto my flanks. “Hooves up,” she ordered, and I complied without complaint. Given the last time she’d seen me, she’d had the hoofcuffs installed, there was nothing I could think of that would be outside her imagination of torture. She inspected the work on the cuff, grabbing it in her magic and roughly twisting my leg back and forth until she was satisfied, “Not his best work, but good enough. Can ya walk?” she asked, almost pleasantly.

“Barely,” I answered, not making eye contact.

“Good, follow. Slave,” she ordered, her emphasis on the word ‘slave’ grating on my nerves. As if I didn’t know my place right now. She walked to the door and stood just outside of it, a smirk across her lips. As I passed her she snap-kicked my left foreleg’s hoofcuff. Shockwaves of pain blasted all through my leg and down my spine.

“Goddesses! Why?” I screamed at her. I stopped and stared, holding the aching hoof up.

“Ya mean aside from ya beatin’ me to within an inch a my life?” she asked with a deadpan look. It was hard to tell that from her normal bored expression. She slid one of her pistols out of its holster and cracked it across my skull. “Because yer a cunt of a wannabe hero who thinks ya better than others. Ya rush in like a fool and start shootin’, not even tryin’ ta ask what’s what. I was doin’ my job and ya left me for dead in an alley,” she explained. Once more she cracked me with the pistol.

I didn’t flinch either time, but I could at least understand her. While our morality might be opposite, she was just doing what she did, and I was just doing what I did. Revenge was something I understood well enough. I thought the exact same way, that as soon as I got the chance, I was going to cause her as much pain as I could before finally letting her feel the sweet embrace of the Goddesses’ love in the afterlife. Once I got these shackles off...

She led me past another set of pens. Just how many of them were there? I looked inside as we passed, and saw several unicorns. In the distance, I swore I saw a white pony with a black bandana and a purple mane. That had to be her. I looked over at Slipstock, who just glared at me. I said nothing, but made a mental note of where L.A. was being kept before I moved on. If she was in this pen, I just needed to figure out where it was in relation to mine, and then I could start my plan.

We walked to a building, intact enough to support two stories and some actual glass windows. A carving of a heart with with two crude bones painted in an X-shape across it marked one of the doors. Going by threats I’d overheard since I’d gotten here, I could only guess this was ‘Doc’ Bonemeal’s clinic. Slipstock pushed past it, and with a loud chime, I found myself in a long hallway. One of the interior walls sported a window that looked into the next room. When we walked by, I snuck a glance.

The room held three cots. One was empty, the second held Fouetté, one of the unity mares from my pen. She slept soundly, with a bandage wrapped around her head. The third cot held Cluster, the stallion I’d met when we first arrived. Bandages covered his body and face, several of them were still bright red. I couldn’t tell what they covered, whether it was wounds from fights with another pony, or just from one guard too many whipping to the bone. He was awake, and stared back when I walked by. He looked pissed.

Slipstock opened the door on the opposite wall, and pushed me in. The room on this side of the hallway must have been the operating room. A white sheet covered a table, and blood spatters stained the counters. A little wheeled stand sat next to the table, holding tools from centuries ago, still cleaned and prepared for operating on ponies.

In the corner of the room, a pony washed blood off her hooves in a shiny steel sink. She wore a blood stained smock, and a slave collar just like mine. I looked from her straggly mohawk, with several clumps of hair tied up with thick straps to keep it off her face, to her similarly maintained tail. Just like Lemon Tart, her hooves were visible and her coat trimmed nicely. At least she had the same level of professionalism as a Steel Ranger. Even though Slipstock cleared her throat to get the mare’s attention, she ignored us and continued scrubbing her hooves.

“What?” she finally asked as she turned off the water. She turned around, and I got a glimpse of who the doctor really was. She was a unicorn like many of the slavers, though for the first time since I’d gotten here, that was a relief. At least she’d have some cheater magic for healing, and not have to fix everything with her mouth. My relief fell flat when I saw the horribly defeated look in her eye. Dark lines, not unlike Xeno’s, crisscrossed over her tan coat. Maybe she was part zebra, and that’s why her mane was tied up like that? It wasn’t really worth the time to consider. She clacked a hoof against her collar and stared at me. “What’d you do this time, Slipstock?” she asked, closing her eyes and sighing softly.

“Just heal her up so she can work for Amble; we’ve got plans for her,” Slipstock explained with a roll of her eyes. She pointed me to the sheet covered table, and I crawled up onto it.

The doctor walked over and grabbed one of my hooves gently in her magic. After the harsh twisting of Slipstock, this was almost nice. She looked me over carefully, saying nothing as she worked. She seemed fascinated by the steel hoof and stared at it for several minutes, but said nothing.

“So what’s the damage, Doc?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Deep down, the idea that it might be bad news terrified me, but I didn’t want her to see it, and I didn’t want Slipstock to have even an inkling that I might have a weakness.

“Well,” she said, “from the looks of things, Slipstock and Vice Brand went overboard again. You’re not the first pony they’ve pulled this stunt on, though... You got three out of four, and I’m guessing they only stopped there because of this.” She tapped my steel hoof a few times. Her horn flared to life, and she began looking back and forth from hoof to hoof. The whole time the spell was active she chewed on her lip as if she were deep in thought.

Finally, her horn’s glow faded and she looked up at me and said, “The good news is, with the spikes inside there’s not too too much damage, because they’re holding everything together. The bad news is, you can’t take them out. The spikes he prefers to use go down to the bone, and they’ve got little barbs that make them impossible to slide back out. Just ripping them out would actually be what cripples you, unless you had an Autodoc or a very experienced surgeon. With them in, they’ll keep it from getting worse. The best I can do is heal up what damage has been done and make it less painful to walk. I can’t imagine that’s been pleasant or easy.” She looked at me with a depth of sadness I’d never seen before.

Without another word, she tilted her head down and pressed her horn to my forehoof. The familiar feeling of knitting flesh overcame the pain, and I could feel the wounds closing around the spikes inside. Any lingering aches slowly faded away, and even though I had the steel spikes still imbedded in me, I could move the hoof without bolts of pain lancing through me. She repeated the process with both of my rear hooves, and it felt... better. Compared to what it was before, I guess. I couldn’t complain.

The doctor was nice enough to fix up my ear, too. It required hacking part of it off to make it regrow, but that was worth it to get my full ear back again. Finishing her work, she looked at me with that same melancholy, and waved a hoof. “Go. I need to finish cleaning.”

Slipstock collected me, and together we paced, faster and less painfully, back toward the building they were keeping me all alone in. The day was nearly over. Celestia’s sun was so low that the light hit the bottom of the clouds directly. I only hoped I could get some sleep under cover of darkness in the pen. Being left to my own thoughts was just more torture at this point.

* * *

Back in the pen with the other earth ponies, I had a lot to think about. Lost’s suggestion to behave and play along worked out, so far. I hadn’t received any more ridiculous punishments, and I was able to get a good look at the camp’s layout, at least the places I’d walked so far. I tried as hard as I could to keep a mental map. There were a lot of places: dozens of buildings, only some of which I’d seen in use. There were several pens, of varying shapes and sizes, with entrances built to be hidden from the slaves they were breaking.

I trotted around the pen a few times, actually enjoying being able to move without the constant pain. The hoofcuffs weren’t so bad, now that the open wounds were healed. Each step still hurt; as I put my hoof down, the spikes twisted and yawed inside, scraping against the bone. But when I wasn’t moving, I couldn’t feel them. I looked at the ponies I was passing, trying to find the mare who’d introduced herself to me before.

I found a group that didn’t look completely hopeless, but it was the four Unity mares. They seemed to have a bit more resolve now, and weren’t focused on trying to keep from crying. I still kept my distance from them, but felt a little better since they seemed to have grown up and decided to act for themselves. I moved to another group, but they just looked away when I approached. With a frown, I moved on to the next group.

“Anypony seen, umm... Ah! Sourbelle?” I whispered, asking the nearest pony who would meet my gaze. He looked away, and I headed off in that direction. “Thanks,” I muttered.

I found the blue-maned pony leaning against the wall, idly chatting with one of the guards. If Lost’s suggestion of playing along and behaving was a good idea, this seemed the perfect example. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but they talked as if they knew one another, without any loud, overbearing threats or slurs thrown at the slave pony. I stayed a short distance away and watched. If only I had a guard that was so nice, I might not have ended up with horrible spikes dug into my legs.

A few incredibly boring minutes later, Sourbelle walked away from the guard, and I trotted up to her. She nodded in greeting, and pulled me further into the center of the pen. Once we were surrounded by several groups of ponies, she smiled and clopped a hoof onto my back.

I winced hard. She’d managed to find the spot where I’d been hit with the whip. Saying nothing about it, I smiled weakly at her. “I’ve got some questions, if you can help,” I said, looking back and forth to the groups of ponies around us.

“Well, I could get into shit for it, but anypony who can deal with three of those things is worth at least hearing out,” she said with a shrug. “What do you need?”

“How long have you been here?” I asked her, shifting from hoof to hoof. I felt agitated. The hunger and lack of sleep were really getting to me.

“Nearly a month, why?” she asked. She raised an eyebrow at me, and lowered herself to the ground.

I followed suit, lying across from her. “How long does Amble usually take to break a pony?” I asked. I needed to know how long I could stall and work around her. She’d already gotten me to question my motives, and I knew she was lying about a lot of things. If I knew how she worked, I might be able to resist it better. “And do you know where they keep the unicorns, compared to here?” I needed to know that who I saw was really who I thought it was.

“It depends! Some ponies go down in a day, some of us hold out a lot longer. I fought every step of the way, and it hasn’t even been a full month for me,” she explained. With a long sigh, she continued. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m still fighting. It only leads to more pain. I know at some point, I’ll be taken away, out to the far end of the city. When I come back, I won’t be the same. None of those ponies come back the same... If they come back.” She shuffled her hoof a few times, not making eye contact. “Each slaver uses different tactics. Amble doesn’t always do the breaking. I just try and stay positive. It keeps me sane.”

“Goddesses, why do you make it so hard?” I asked and stared at the near-black sky. The information didn’t really help, but if I could make it last a whole month, that would be plenty of time to meet up with Lost and get out, I just needed some patience. I looked back at the light cyan mare and asked, “What about the unicorns?”

“Same style of pen, different location. Rotations happen every so often, and one group gets moved to another. It’s always random too; they don’t regulate it,” she explained. She pointed out at something, “In that direction is another group pen.” She pointed a different direction, and explained, “There’s another there. And a third one far past it. Plus the one building...” She indicated at a building in pristine condition, between two of the pens she’d pointed out.

“Wow, any idea where to start? I need to find my sister,” I said to her, trying to remember the locations of each of the pens she’d pointed to. I frowned when she shook her head. “That’s fine, thank you Sourbelle.” I didn’t want to admit that her information wasn’t really useful, but she was only mare who’d been nice to me so far, and I didn’t want to lose a friend.

I lifted my cuffed hoof to her, as a sign we were in it together. She met my hoof with her own, the one with the cuff on it. We nodded to one another, and I trotted off to find another place to rest without sleeping. Staying together too much, especially considering how friendly she’d been with the guard, wasn’t something I wanted to do. It would just draw attention to me.

I trotted to the wall of the pen, and looked out the gaps in it. I could see the pen Sourbelle had pointed at in the distance. I sat and watched. I couldn’t see much inside, but if I waited, I might see my sister. I couldn’t sleep anyway, and this was a far more productive use of my time. She’d told me to be patient, behave, and play along. I trusted L.A. I trusted her planning skills. She might not be mom, but she was just as good in a tough situation. I just had to wait it out.

* * *

Two monotonous days of torture. Is that the point where a pony can call torture monotonous? I sighed, staring at the gate of the pen, waiting to be taken. I might only get one meal a day, and it might be even less than what I could scavenge in the Wasteland on my own, but it was something. And it was the only time I got to see Lost. And I was hungry, dammit!

My mind drifted, hunger being the only true constant. Amble’s tactics were altogether boring, lots of talking with little actual work. She spent her time lying to me, but at least I was getting to the point where I could recognize them, I thought. Every so often I swore she would say something, only to find out that I was completely wrong. Either she was a crafty bitch, or I was going crazy. It was probably her. I couldn’t be crazy; if I were crazy, I’d have given in already. That’s what crazy ponies do, they give in when a mare promises something and then takes it away, even though I knew she promised. I faceplanted the dirt in the cell and grumbled. I was sure she’d promised... But lunch was more important right now.

My stomach grumbled. Yes, lunch was much more important right now. I wanted to introduce Lost to Sourbelle as well. She seemed to have the same idea about playing along, and if I could get the two of them talking, I might be able to get information passed back and forth. I terrible using another pony as a middle-mare to talk to L.A., but I was running out of ideas.

A thinky pony would have better ideas. And I wasn’t one, not quite yet. But I was working on it.

I pushed myself up from the dirt and looked around one more time. She was always there when we went to lunch, or was that just my imagination as well? What if the guard she kept talking to was just really watching us. I hadn’t heard him say anything, and nopony else had spoken to her, or quieted her down when we were discussing the layout. Surely there was some slave out there willing to sell out their fellow ponies for some better treatment? I shook my head. No. Sourbelle was real, no questions asked. She answered things that... I looked down. No wait, I knew about the pens from walking past them when I was taken to to wait alone after the talk with Amble. And that building was completely sealed, there couldn’t be any slaves hidden in there.

Ok, I was going crazy! Either that or I was so overthinking all of this...

I hit myself upside the head with my steel hoof, smacking my skull a few times to jostle the information into a pile that made sense of things. Sourbelle was real, just like those things Amble had said and then said she didn’t say. I was not making anything up. I looked back at the gate and focused on my hunger. Barely any sleep or food was really getting to me now, worse than it had been a couple days ago. I waited patiently for the guard, like a good little slave would. Playing along and behaving. Go straight to get food, talk to my sister, leave when they tell me to. I could be a good pony, yes I could.

When the guard opened the door, I got into position where I knew I’d be required to. I looked down the row of ponies, both in front of and behind. At the end of the row I could see the blue mane of my, well, friend I guess. The guard walked down the line, holding a hoof up to count. She passed over, hoof bobbing up and down with each pony she passed. Expectantly, I watched, waiting... the hoof passed right over Sourbelle and the guard turned around. Wait, had she been counted?

I looked straight forward, stood up straight, and closed my eyes. “Just march, Hidden,” I told myself, and started on with the line. No thinking about what might or might not have just happened. I was just exhausted and hungry, and overthinking things.

We marched to the mess hall, and filed into the queue for food. Same as the past few days, they gave me half of a meal and sent me on my way. Today’s entrée was something I couldn’t find words to describe, and didn’t particularly want to taste. I trotted to where I normally sat, and found Lost’s normal seat empty. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach as I sat down, and slammed my muzzle into the gruel. I ate quickly, both to sate my hunger as fast as possible, and to allow myself time to look for L.A. Halfway through eating the tiny helping, she slumped down across from me. I looked up at her, and lifted my head only far enough for my jaw to drop back into the bowl.

She looked horrible, her coat a few shades off from normal, and her eyes glazed over. She didn’t have the horn ring on anymore, but still carried the bowl in her hooves. When she saw me watching, she blinked several times, adjusted her glasses, and smiled wide at me. “Hey, little sis,” she said, sounding as tired as I felt.

“Are... Are you okay Lost?” I asked, finally managing to pick my jaw back up.

“Yeah,” she said past the smile, “just fine.” The bags under her eyes were far worse than normal, and her coat was matted down from sweat. “Playing along, getting treated okay,” she explained. Slowly, she raised a forehoof and pressed it to her horn. “They took the ring off!” She didn’t use her magic though, when she ate, she just lowered her head down to the bowl and ate like I’d been.

I took the time to finish mine, since we’d only get a few minutes to talk before the guards noticed and carted one of the two of us away. Considering we’d done this every day since we go there, I was honestly a bit surprised they weren’t just waiting to split us up. Was this a new kind of torture? It was working, because seeing my sister look so rough was the most painful thing they’d done yet. I only guessed she felt the same. Hoofcuffs only hurt my legs, not my heart.

“How have they been working you?” she asked, not making eye contact with me. Her breathing was heavier than usual, and she’d gone pale, even through her white coat.

“Same as the past few days. Talk with Amble, listen to her tell me all the things that aren’t really happening...” I explained. I finished the last bite of my ‘meal’ and pushed the bowl away. “I made a friend, I think. Another mare with a hoofcuff like mine,” I said, looking for Sourbelle to point out. “She’s, umm...” I couldn’t find her. “Anyway, she’s been here a while, and seems to be pretty smart. I think she could talk to you during the meals? Share our plan between us.”

“Mmm, maybe. Do you trust her? What does she know?” she whispered to me, looking around at the ponies sitting beside us. With none watching or listening, she just closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. Her heavy breathing was really starting to worry me. “Sunbright’s been a lot better than Slipstock,” she said. “No shackles so far.” She stopped, and put her hoof to her mouth. Several coughs and a wretch later, she continued, “I think I’m getting it a lot easier than some of the other ponies I’ve seen her work on...”

A group of ponies approached, searching for seats. L.A. kept a watchful eye on them until they passed by. She turned back to me and continued. “That one you spoke to when we first got here, Spark Light? He’s gotten it a lot harder than me. We’ve been talking. If your friend can’t be trusted, we can-”

One of the guards started toward us, and I tapped my steel hoof on the underside of the table to let her know. She looked up at me, a horrible sadness in her eyes. “Behave, stay strong,” she whispered, and stood up. She looked at the guard for only a moment, collected her bowl in a hoof, and trotted off.

The guard smirked, and walked right past.

I sat back on my haunches. The ring was off, which meant Lost could use her magic again, but she didn’t. Was she that exhausted? With the lack of sleep and terrible food, I couldn’t blame her for saving her strength. She was such a smart pony. I looked past the table, and caught her tail dragging limply behind her as she walked off.

* * *

“I said no sleeping!” yelled the guard.

“I wasn’t asleep! Praise Luna, Praise Celestia, I can stay awake with my eyes closed!” I snapped. A whip crack across my back reminded me not to talk back. I just whimpered, and closed my eyes again. The night had been terrible, a half-dozen new ponies were shuffled in and created quite a stir. They were rowdy, and since they weren’t wracked with hunger and exhaustion yet, they took the time to pick on some of the weaker slaves. It took a steel hoof to their leader’s face to get them to calm down. I just wanted a night to rest.

The guard latched a leash to the bomb collar around my neck and dragged me off. The leash really wasn’t necessary, where exactly was I supposed to go? I had never been a morning pony, but being whipped and taken somewhere when the sun was barely past the clouds was a new kind of suffering. As if I needed more new kinds... I just needed another hour off my hooves and I could survive another day of Amble’s rambling monologues. “Faster,” the guard snapped.

The guard didn’t take me to Amble’s salon. Instead, he took me a few turns in the opposite direction, to the far side of the slaver city. Along the way we ran into Amble’s second-favorite guard.

“Oh, finally ya turn, eh?” said Sunbright to me, with a wide smile. She trotted up and walked along side the guard, looking me over. “Y’know, yer sister’s been kinda fun to work with. Not in any way ya’d understand, but still fun. Want me to tell her ya said hi?” she teased.

I didn’t respond, just kept going forward. The guard must have had something special planned, to use a leash, but I didn’t know quite what. We went around another turn and walked toward another building.

The wide, low building stood apart from everything else except the wall and guard towers. I could see, through collapsed sections, that there was no roof. I didn’t like the fact that it was so separated. What could go on there that needed to be secluded from the rest of the town? Several other ponies filed in, under the direction of a dark blue stallion with a stupid-looking green goatee.

Inside stood more guards, watching a few slaves that couldn’t even look up from the floor. The guards dragged us all off to separate corners of the building. I could see through half walls and broken windows that the center was hollowed out, and nothing was left except a rotten wooden floor. Inside were two ponies, one with a look of horror on her face, and the other bleeding out on the ground.

“What in the Goddesses’ name?” I whispered to myself. Were they? I shook my head. No! Amble was too frugal to pull a stunt like this. It must be a show or something, more scare tactics and monologues and lies and fake ponies that didn’t really exist. I rubbed my eyes, and trotted after the guard a little faster.

He led me into a small room off to the side, and we waited. After a few minutes, the noise from the main room subsided, and the guard tugged on my leash. Back out we went.

The pony I’d seen earlier was gone, and the... the other pony I’d seen wasn’t there either. The floor was amazingly clean for being two centuries old, and there wasn’t even a speck of the blood I’d seen earlier. I suspected cheater magic, but I was too tired and too confused. I must have been imagining that too. See, it was just a case of, well, seeing things that weren’t there. I shook my head, trying ineffectively to clear the thought.

“Well, lookie what we have here,” said Slipstock, snark obvious in her voice. “I’ve been waiting for this...” She sat up in the seat she was in, a nice comfy looking one in the corner of the room. All along the corner were holsters and pistols, dangling there just waiting for her to use them on me.

From the other side of the room, the green unicorn, Spark Light, was brought out. He stumbled on his hooves, the defiant look he’d had when we were separated completely gone. The other stallion with him said he was raised a raider, and to act like it, but this pony looked like one who’d been a slave their whole life. The guard stopped him directly across from me, and left. My guard left as well.

Amble sat just outside the room, leaning over one of the rotting half walls. It creaked under her weight, and she looked me straight in the eyes. With a small smile, she pointed at the stallion. “Kill him,” she ordered.

“No. This isn’t a death match. You’re not that wasteful,” I snapped, somewhat confident that she wouldn’t kill me right here. “I told you, I only kill to survive.”

“No, ya said ya were a murderer and took pleasure in it,” she corrected. “I wrote it down, I can show ya. Now prove what ya told me. Kill this pony.”

“Why?” I asked. I’d never said that! I wasn’t a murderer. Why would I tell her I was a murderer? She would only use something like that against me. I looked at the stallion and sat hard on my haunches. I tapped my steel hoof on the floor. “Why would you waste one of your slaves?”

“Wow, talkative for a murderer,” she said in an annoyingly happy tone. “He’s useless and won’t bring a profit like ya will. Broke like a filly under a raider warlord who ain’t got laid in a year. All he’s done is fuck up. I’m wastin’ more caps feedin’ him than I’ll make sellin’ him.”

“That’s not a very good reason to kill him,” I said, looking away from her. There was no way I was just going to kill a pony because she told me to. That wasn’t the kind of pony I was, and there was nothing she could do to change that. Standing, I dusted my forelegs off and turned to walk toward the door. “I’d rather listen to you tell me how much you love the stubborn ones, and how you have special plans for me. I’m not going to kill him.”

“Miss Fortune, come now. I’ve got plans for ya, I do. But I need ya to be loyal to me, or it’s all worthless,” she said in a soft voice. “I want to put yer skills to use, in a way that benefits us both. Don’t make me do somethin’ terrible... Yer sister’ll be the one who suffers.”

I turned and looked at her. Threats to do something terrible? She let Slipstock do terrible things all the time already. Raising my hoof, I winced at the shifting hoofcuff. I might be more used to that pain, but it was still a reminder of what I’d gone through for the past few days.

I just needed to hold out. Hold out and pray she wouldn’t hurt Lost like she’d hurt me.

“I said kill him!” she yelled. “Now!”

The stallion whimpered. He stared at the floor trembling. “Just do it,” he whispered, “I’m already dead... Just take the pain away okay? They’ve done some terrible things, and I just...”

“No!” I screamed back, rearing up and slamming both forehooves into the ground.

“...I just want it to be over,” he finished. Tears fell to the ground below him.

“Miss Fortune, now.”

“Never,” I snapped.

“Slipstock?” Amble said, turning to the bodyguard.

A bullet tore through his horn. The stallion yelped in pain and fell to the floor, clutching with his hooves at the shattered bone. He looked up at me, past his tears, almost as if he was accusing me of letting it happen to him.

“Stop!” I screamed, looking at the two ponies in shock.

“Are ya gonna do like I asked?” Amble teased, giving a look to Slipstock. “Kill him, and his pain ends. I know ya take sadistic pleasure in this sorta thing, but we got other ponies to handle today.”

What! I didn’t take any pleasure in this! I wanted the stallion’s suffering to end, I wanted him healed and put back into the Wasteland where he could survive on his own and make something of himself. Killing him was pointless! I wasn’t that kind of pony!

“Miss Fortune, I don’t have all day,” she snapped, with more urgency this time. She sighed loudly and closed her eyes. “Just let me know that ya accept that ya belong here like I need ya to. I won’t make ya kill again, without reason, if ya do. Isn’t that what ya said ya wanted?”

“I don’t want to kill anypony if I don’t have to,” I argued. She was wrong. I didn’t belong here, and I didn’t need to kill him. We could leave together, go back to the pens, and think of a plan. Lost would tell him what we could do, we’d talk, and then we’d all get out. It would be okay, if we could just-

Her logic was all wrong. If I was a murderer, wouldn’t I want to do this? Was it just because I was fighting against her suggestion? Was she trying to make me a murderer? I shook my head, looking back and forth between the stallion and the slaver. I closed my eyes, I couldn’t make sense of it all. I just wanted to go.

“Alright, Miss Fortune here obviously doesn’t want to go back to see her sister,” Amble said in a calm voice. She would let me see my sister, I just had to kill for it?

I stared at her, my jaw hanging slack.

The bodyguard moved her hoof.

Spark Light’s collar exploded.

It wasn’t fast. It was more like a sparkling firework than a bomb. The collar didn’t take his head off like they’d threatened. Instead it burned through half of his neck. He screamed in pain before his vocal cords sizzled into burnt ruins. The horrific whine that came after was something I knew I’d never forget. He went limp on the floor. Occasionally he twitched.

I could hear him gurgling.

I could hear him still breathing.

“See what happens Miss Fortune? Ya kill ponies no matter what. Like a murderer. All ya had to do was end his pain. That’s mercy, not murder. Can’t ya see the difference?” Amble lectured, flipping her hoof in the air. “Ya coulda done it fast and painless, at least.”

I wasn’t paying attention to her words. My mind racing so fast that I could barely collect my thoughts. Was I a murderer or wasn’t I? Which was it? Would I really get to see my sister? Did this poor stallion have to die slow like that?

He didn’t die when she set the bomb off. I stared in horror as he bled out, drowning on his own blood. Everything seemed to stop around me, and my thoughts quieted. Just like...

I fell, hard. Just like Lost had. I wanted to run, escape from all of this, but I couldn’t move, not with Slipstock and that murderous gleam in her eye.

I wanted to tell him it would be okay, and end it quick. My legs wouldn’t move, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t have a damn thing to save him.

And I had to... I had to watch him slowly drown.

He looked at me, a mixture of rage and pain in his dimming eyes.

Why didn’t I just end it quick for him? Finally, I found the strength to stand, and I walked over. I raised my steel hoof and pressed it to his forehead.

“I...”

He was already gone.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Fight The Power! – You gain a +2DT and a +5% Crit Chance against organized groups within the Wasteland. Enclave, Steel Rangers, and Red Eye's Slavers better watch the buck out!

Lost Art:
New Perk: Fight The Power! – You gain a +2DT and a +5% Crit Chance against organized groups within the Wasteland. Enclave, Steel Rangers, and Red Eye's Slavers better watch the buck out!

“Didn’t we do the ‘get enslaved thing’ already?”
“Well yeah, but the author is a sadist.”
“That’s not an excuse for bad writing...”
“I know, just let her get it out of her system. She says it’ll be better later.”
“Do you really think I believe that?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“And just who the fuck are you?”
“One of the editors...”

Author's Notes:

(A massive thank you to Kkat for creating, and everyone else who has helped to flesh out the universe of Fallout Equestria. And to everyone who has/will help with with editing and making this more palatable... Big hearts to Dimestream, Sabsy, Heartshine, Moth, and everypony else who helped with ideas, editing, and brushies. And of course everything is copyright their respective owners. ~Hnetu)

Disclaimer: For any readers who have followed chronologically up to this point, I’m sure you’re well aware of what’s going to happen in this chapter. Slavers are not good ponies and often do despicable things to their ‘property’ in an effort to make them compliant... So this is a warning before you can start, that this chapter will contain torture. A lot of it. This includes traditional brainwashing techniques, gaslighting, physical and emotional torture. So please, if any reader feels that they might be upset or triggered by any type of torture, please skip this chapter. I will be posting a brief summary at the beginning of Chapter 11 to make sure every reader is on the same page.
Trigger Warning: Torture, physical, emotional, and mental. Read with caution.

Chapter 11: Make Her Drink

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There is a trigger warning for this chapter, please see the notes at the bottom of the page for more details.

Chapter Eleven: Make Her Drink
“Follow the rules, and this will end much happier for you.”

Mercy.

She said killing him was mercy.

I stared at the clouds as they passed across the sky. Sourbelle sat next to me, talking about something or other that I couldn’t focus on. I couldn’t get that sound out of my mind. Idly, my hoof trailed along the collar on my neck. Would mine take my head off, or would it let me drown in my own blood? Would I make that sound when I finally pushed Amble too far? I didn’t want to think about it, but my mind wouldn’t switch to anything else.

“Sourbelle?” I interrupted, looking at her, “has she tried to make you kill anypony?” I didn’t really want an answer, but I needed to know if I was the only one getting this kind of treatment. I wanted to know if she’d given in. I needed to know how it felt to give in.

“Yes,” she said, after several moments of silence.

“Did you do it?” I asked, again not wanting an answer. I needed the answer.

“No,” she answered immediately.

“Why not?” I stared at her while I asked, trying to process what could push a pony that far. At some point, would I crack and do what she wanted? Would I enjoy it...?

“I can’t let her control me like that. If I give in, she’s won,” Sourbelle explained, staring off at the clouds. Amble’s specialty was control. She had walked me in circles already.

I gave the mare a hug. I wanted it for me more than anything else, and without Lost around to be close to, I needed to latch onto somepony. She hesitated, but when she finally returned it, I honestly felt better. “Thanks,” I whispered.

I now knew I wasn’t the only one, that it wasn’t more of Amble ‘special treatment’ for me. I just had to find out how to get out of another kill test without giving in to her little games. I let go of the blue-maned pony, and sat on my haunches. I could talk to Lost at lunch, and let her know what happened. I could see if she’d come up with a plan yet.

I really wished Xeno were here... Her crazy sleight-of-hoof trick to make things appear and disappear would be amazing for this. We needed to get out, before I started to go crazy. I looked to Sourbelle. She was real at least; I’d felt her with my own hooves. One less piece of crazy to worry about.

Crazy wasn’t my only problem anymore, though. It was just most of my problems now.

I was a murderer now, the type of pony I’d always tried not to be. The worst part was that I didn’t feel guilty about any of it. I felt like I’d been justified in almost all of my kills so far. The ones I hadn’t directly caused were circumstantial, and probably would have happened anyway, eventually. Ponies died. That was just how the Wasteland worked. But shouldn’t I feel guilty? I felt more guilty that I hadn’t killed Spark Light. It was an almost alien feeling, guilt over not killing. He suffered because I hesitated, and that was what really got to me.

Was this just a part of Amble’s strategy? I wasn’t even sure what to think anymore. I wanted to go back home, I wanted to search for treasure, and I wanted my biggest fear to be a roaming Manticore. I went back to idly tracing my hoof along the collar. I never thought I’d be in this situation, let alone in this situation twice! The mine had been better than this. At least there, we’d had a chance to get away. Bloodwings or bomb collars, which was worse?

Who were the other two ponies that my collar was attached to? Why did Amble care so much about me? Was there any way the Stable Sixty Steel Rangers could come rescue us? How much longer did I have before Amble got frustrated with my progress and had Lost or me killed? I had too many questions, and needed a break. Couldn’t it just be lunch time already? Wait, that was a question too.

I needed to have faith that L.A. would have a plan. She’d looked less worked-over each time I’d seen her. If Amble was telling the truth, which I doubted, it meant Lost at least got extra meals and sleep whenever I was a good little slave. I’d ask her about it today when I saw her. I needed to get out of the place, before they threw me into another one of those kill tests. Watching another pony die a slow painful death in front of me was just... something I didn’t think I could handle.

My heart shattered, torn between two options that both ended in sadness. Was killing a better option here? Was refusal and suffering, with no guilt, better? Giving in and doing what Amble wanted was the smart choice. It would give me options. The option to get the collar removed, the option to be with my sister, and the option to avoid all the crazy torture. I didn’t want to consider it, I tried not to consider it, but the thought wouldn’t leave my mind.

If I gave in, things would get easier.

No! Murder was not the best option! I could get away without having to kill ponies, or making her kill a pony for me because I couldn’t. I’d killed ponies before, and I’d do it again, I knew it. But I wasn’t going to let some psychopath slaver decide who I killed. Lost and I could have been mercenaries instead of treasure hunters when we were growing up, and we chose not to go down that path for a reason. We learned to survive without needing to turn to murder or raiding.

“I’m still my own pony, right?” I asked Sourbelle. I looked over at her, frowning.

“I think so. Have you let her into your head yet?” she asked back.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said, with a quiet, uneasy laugh. I facehoofed and looked at Sourbelle. Seemed like there were no little ponies walking about inside my head. Realizing how insane that sounded, I finished lamely. “I must be going crazy...”

“That’s how they get you,” she replied, and motioned to the pen’s door. “Here they come.”

Guards collected us, barked orders at us, and marched us around. When I listened to the guards, they took me where I needed to go without beating me, or threatening me. I just had to behave and do whatever I was told. Like a good pony...

* * *

I stood in line behind another stallion, a bigger pony with an orange coat covered in darker scars. I didn’t pay much attention until he turned to the slaver who worked the mess line and stared at him with one eye. Oh Goddesses, it was Cluster. I shrunk back, hoping he hadn’t seen me. I didn’t want to have to explain where Spark Light had disappeared to, remembering that the two had come in together. I watched in horror, as the stallion turned away and headed off with the tray held in a weak telekinetic haze in front of him.

He hadn’t seen me, which was a huge relief. Thank the Goddesses for his missing eye.

I grabbed my own food bowl, bit into the edge of it, and carried it off to find my sister. The first place I went was the normal spot, and found her just as I’d hoped. Excellent. That meant we’d get more time to see one another and talk. I sat across from her and dropped my bowl.

“Hay,” she said, forcing a smile.

I took a few bites of the gruel and forced my own smile back. “Hay,” I said. “How are they treating you lately?” I asked, hoping for a bit of good news.

“Like a slave. Sunbright is...” she trailed off, and took a few bites. After an awkward pause, she finished. “...fine. She’s taught me some new magic. She's treating me alright, for a slaver at least.” She talked fast and didn’t make eye contact, the whole time staring into the empty bowl. “You?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I answered. “Got a plan yet?”

“Oh yes... a plan,” she said, quieting down to a whisper. She looked around a few times, checking for any guards or eavesdropping ponies who might sell us out. “I can get us both into the same pen. Spark Light will tell you tomorrow. If I can pull it off soon enough...”

I felt the blood drain from my face. I didn’t want to tell her what had happened to Spark Light, not when it was so fresh. I’d been the cause of his death, and she’d been counting on him as a part of her plan. Maybe he’d have gotten freedom, even...

“They’ve had him all morning though,” she said with a sigh. She leaned up and looked around, giving me time to wolf down the last of my food. She watched me eating, with a weary look. “Have you seen him at all?” she asked.

I started to answer, to tell her everything. Before I could get a word out, a gigantic pink stallion with yellow eyes and a light blonde mane walked up. Feeling myself shiver, I looked up at him, and nearly fell from my seat. A set of spiked shackles rested on the pony’s flanks. Vice Brand...

“You two. Up,” he ordered, and hit Lost in the back of the head with one of his massive hooves.

I did exactly as he commanded and not a thing more. He said up. I got up. I stared straight forward and said nothing. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see other ponies moving back, away from the two of us. My legs began to ache. I could feel blood running down to my hooves. It was all in my head, I told myself, the doctor healed them. Seeing the stallion again brought back the experience.

Lost didn’t recover or get up fast enough. Vice Brand lifted her roughly in his magic and slammed her into the table. He pulled her up to eye level and glared.

“Special punishment,” he said, and looked to me. “Follow.” Then he turned and bellowed at the crowd. “All of you follow me!” He was so loud that I felt it in my bones.

“Special punishment? Why?” Lost yelled, kicking her legs up and down. “I’ve been good! Sunbright says I'm coming along nicely! What have I done? Please... I did what I was told!” She twisted and turned in the air, struggling every step of the way. Nothing she said got through to to the massive stallion though.

I followed behind him, ears pinned back, hoping Lost wouldn’t get the same treatment I had. She didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve to go through what I had. I’d been hobbled long enough, and still felt the pain whenever I thought about it. I was a sturdy earth pony, I could endure. But all she had was cheater magic. What would that torture do to her?

This was all my fault. Could I tell her what happened? That might break her... My breath came in ragged gasps. I should have killed him. I could be a murderer if it meant Lost was safe. I just needed to tell Amble that. I would submit so Lost could be safe. I might... I might just enjoy it after a while.

Every other pony from the mess hall followed, too. Not a single one dared to step out of line. I heard murmurs from the group, snippets of ponies talking. They said he was vicious. They said he held power over other slavers. They said he would rape or kill anypony who didn’t listen. One pony whispered something about his daughter, but was quickly silenced.

I refused to let my mind wander the possibilities.

Vice Brand didn’t lead us back to his shop, instead he led us to a pit on the far side of the slaver town. Opposite the pit was a stage, with a rack and a couple of ponies standing on it, and guards flanking it at a distance. He threw my sister down into the pit as hard as he could. As my sister picked herself up from the dust he stepped up onto the stage. His horn glowed and he dragged me up onto the stage by my steel hoof.

Both ponies waiting on the stage were pegasi, one older and the other still a filly. The mare looked like she’d had a beautiful brown mane and lovely yellow coat at one point. Now she was covered in dirt and had nothing but a hollow look in her eyes. The filly was just as dirty, with greasy streaks through her mane and a wicked grin. Vice Brand nuzzled the smaller pegasus as he passed. She grinned wider and hugged him. Just how had he come across pegasi to catch as slaves?

Did that matter right now?!

“Alright, little one, pay attention to what daddy does,” he said, brushing his hoof against her chin. He barely touched her, but it was enough to push her back onto her haunches. She must have been the daughter he’d been trying to spend time with- “because one day I’m going to break you like this.”

“Just like you broke mommy, right?” asked the filly, nudging the older pegasus. Her mother said nothing, just gave a quiet grunt and blinked. Her eyes seemed dead, like there wasn’t a pony inside anymore.

“Yes dear, just like mommy. Watch and learn,” he said to her, then stood tall. “This pony,” he announced, pointing at me, “has shown time and time again that she does not understand her place. That she must be shown what it means to belong here.”

He turned and said directly to me, “You are a slave, just like my daughter, like your sister, like all of the ponies here!” He pointed his hoof out to the gathered slaves. “You are our belongings, our property, for us to do with as we please.” He set his hoof down and looked to my sister. He smiled, and my blood froze. He shouted at the crowd. “Anypony who teaches this mare a lesson gets a day of freedom, with full meals, and a night of uninterrupted sleep!”

The mob went wild and individual ponies started to advance.

“Teach this slave a lesson. Beat it into her sister so she’ll never forget!” he yelled.

Several ponies jumped at the chance, diving toward the pit. Cluster was one of them, and with a giant smile, he beat the other slaves away. He kicked and bucked until they all stood back, allowing him to stand alone at the edge of the pit. “She’s mine,” he hollered as he jumped in.

Lost stared up, her head snapping back and forth to look between Vice Brand and Cluster. She shook, the stallion landing in front of her and towering over her. “What the fuck! Why?” she demanded, all while taking a few steps back. “Hidden, what happened?”

I watched in horror, wanting to jump down. I knew I’d be punished, but it was worth it to stop the assault on my sister. The second I raised my hoof, it was encased in Vice Brand’s yellow haze. I yelled, helplessly, “Lost, I-”

“Shut up and watch,” the stallion ordered.

The pegasus filly latched herself onto me, and draped a vomit-green wing across my back. “Daddy takes pride in his work, even if it means taking time away from us. You should really listen to him,” she said.

I tore myself away from watching Cluster advance on my terrified-looking sister, as she tried in vain to back away. I looked at the filly. “How could you enslave your own daughter?” I asked him, aghast.

A hoof slammed onto my head, and I fell to the stage floor. My jaw crunched against itself when I struck, and pain shot through my entire skull. He forced my face forward with a twist of his hoof. “Watch,” Vice Brand yelled. “Bittersweet, this is a punishment. Shut up.”

I stared forward into the pit, terrified of even blinking. I could feel the stallion watching me, and didn’t trust him not to split my skull open. Part of me tried to scramble away and drag myself from the scene. My hooves scraped against the wood without purchase until my body finally realized what my brain picked up on the minute it happened. I was stuck.

When Lost hit the wall of the pit, she shrunk down, crouching as close to the ground as she could. Her horn sparked, a flash of blue erupting over it before sputtering out. “Stop it!” she screamed, “Fuck off!”

Cluster just smiled. He jumped onto her, both forehooves dropping onto her frame with all his weight. She screamed in pain, howling for him to stop. He didn’t, instead he smashed his hoof into the side of her head, throwing her off her hooves and onto the dirt. When she finally stopped rolling, she dragged herself away from him. He didn’t give her the time to move, and lunged again, beating her with his forehooves until the sound of bone cracking echoed up, much to the delight of the ponies standing around the edge and watching. Screams of encouragement drowned out my sister’s pleas for him to stop, as he stomped down on her legs, her head, as he pulled at her tail and mane, and cracked a hoof hard onto her horn. Every time she’d get some distance, he’d drag her back with his teeth and continue his onslaught. Her coat began to shift in color, and her begging died out, replaced by her screaming and crying.

I couldn’t take it.

The stallion faltered, clenched his eyes shut, and grimaced. A green haze appeared around his horn, followed by a second, larger haze around it. A similar haze wrapped around Lost’s neck, and he lifted her battered body up. Spinning on his forehooves, he bucked her hard in the chest and sent her flying into the wall of the pit. She hit hard enough to leave a dent. Dropping to the ground, she just moaned and laid there, bleeding and twitching. It wasn’t enough. He stormed up to her and stomped on her again. Several ear-splitting cracks filled the air, and her side bent in, her ribs shattered. She screamed, her eyes shooting open and her pupils shrinking to pinpricks. She went limp, her eyes rolling back in her head. Cluster’s horn lit up again, and a green haze appeared around Lost’s neck. She lifted into the air, dragged against the pit wall. The stallion attacked again, smashing her with both fore and rear hooves. With a warcry, he sliced his horn across her chest.

Was it worth it to disobey an order and let others suffer? First Spark Light dying a slow and agonizing death? Now his friend getting revenge, even unknowingly, on my sister... Was it worth it? No. No it wasn’t, not this. I would be a murderer if it meant saving Lost.

My voice returned to me, and I yelled, begging,“Stop! I’ll listen. Celestia, Luna, have mercy!” Anything to make him to stop. I finally clenched my eyes shut and pinned my ears back. I could still hear it, and the grace of my eyes being closed did little to stop it. My heart wrenched, all too aware that my sister’s suffering was entirely my fault. I yelled over the din echoing up from the pit walls. “I’ll kill all she wants. Anything she wants. Tell her to use me. I’ll do anything. Please, please let my sister go. She didn’t do anything. Please, Vice Brand.” I corrected myself. “Master. Please!” I had to drown that sound out.

“Do not kill her,” ordered Vice Brand calmly, ignoring my begging. His filly just laughed at me.

It should have been me, down there being kicked and beaten. I flinched with every sound, not daring to open my eyes. I didn’t know where the blows were landing, but the crunch of bone and the heavy thuds of hooves against flesh was enough to spiral my mind back to where it had been the night before.

I slammed my hooves against the stage, trying to force myself up.

I opened my eyes. I couldn’t not watch. This was a horror I had to see. It needed to be burned into my memory forever. When I fucked up, my sister paid the price. Until the day I died, or... or the day I got her killed. I needed to remember what happened for my mistakes. I watched the stallion whip Lost around the pit, smashing her into the walls and slamming her into the ground. I watched him kick her hard enough to break her open, to show bone. I watched him snap one of her legs.

Every blow, every wound, I felt them too. My body ached because I couldn’t be there in my sister’s place. It was me who failed to kill Spark Light, and I deserved whatever Amble could throw at me. Tears rolled down my cheeks, but I couldn’t tell if it was from my heart breaking, or from the fear that Lost might end up dying, no matter what Vice Brand had ordered.

She wasn’t fighting back, or begging for mercy. Her screams had long since gone silent, the only sound came from the stamp of hooves on the blood soaked ground. I couldn’t watch any more. Not with her head lolling to the side and her leg swaying back and forth below her. Cluster had stopped attacking, whatever enjoyment he was getting out of the fight gone. He held her in the air with his magic, showing off his work to the other slaves. Once more I closed my eyes. I prayed to the Goddesses, even if it was in vain, for my sister to live. I prayed Amble would order her healed. I couldn’t watch, I could only pray, and hurt.

Without the sounds of the beating, all I could hear was the maniacal giggling of the pegasus filly. My breath came ragged, and I kept flailing. I had to get down there. I had to make sure she was okay. The noise had stopped, and Vice Brand hadn’t said to stop. Lost might be dead. I needed to know. I didn’t want to look. I just-

The hoof on my head moved. “Enough,” yelled the slaver. “That, Bittersweet, is what can happen to you one day,” he said to the filly in a voice sweeter than he should have been able to talk in. He leaned down, and I could feel his breath in my ear. “Ponies who refuse to submit, who refuse to acknowledge their place... This is where they go,” he whispered. “Maybe if somepony had learned her place, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

I finally opened my eyes. I forced them open, against everything that told me to keep them shut. I looked into the pit. Inside stood Cluster, breathing heavy and covered in sweat and blood. Lost lay on her side, blood draining from her in several places. Both her eyes were swollen shut, her horn was chipped, and her leg hung loose below her knee. Several of her ribs showed through where Cluster’s hooves and horn had cut into her and torn the skin away. Several chunks of her mane were missing, ripped loose from her torn bandanna and scattered around the pit’s floor. Purple spots dark enough to match what was left of her mane spotted her sides, throat, and legs.

Cluster yelled out a warcry, forcing his horn to life again. He hoisted my sister up in his magic once more and flung her from the bottom of the pit up onto the stage.

She landed with a heavy thud and let out a quiet grown before falling silent. She was breathing, barely. The crowd of ponies across the pit yelled as loud as they could, cheering on the stallion who just beaten my sister into unconsciousness.

“Lost!” I yelled, and dove to her side. I didn’t touch her, afraid that I might make it worse. I cried over her, reaching out with my hoof and holding it just above her. I wanted to hold her, I wanted things to go back to the way they were before we started all this.

“See what happens when you disobey orders?” asked the slaver stallion.

“You’re a fucking monster,” I snapped, glaring at him. I wanted to do much more, but I was at his mercy. My legs started to ache. I collapsed next to Lost, and gently took one of her hooves in mine. The pain and rage in my heart felt good. Rage I could use the minute I got free. Pain I wouldn’t ever forget. The kind that I’d give back to him when I ended his miserable life.

“And?” he asked.

“Daddy does his job great! One day he’ll even do me, and I’ll be his perfect daughter forever,” said the filly. She stomped down on my sister with her little hoof, a sadistic smile across her lips.

Lost groaned quietly, gasping.

“You’d torture your own daughter?” I asked, my rage turning to horror. Whatever Lost’s plan was, we needed to put it into motion now. Any more of this and I wouldn’t be able to go back to who I’d been before. My mind started to put together little possibilities, ideas of what would happen if I had to watch something like this again. The shaking of my legs, combined with the fear that my sister wouldn’t get up again after that beating, was nearly enough to kill me from guilt alone. Or to make me kill without any guilt.

I’d just gotten over being guilty over every other thing I did, over all the pain and death I’d caused. When it was family, that wasn’t something I could get over. We needed out before I let Amble get in my head.

“She was born a slave, and will learn her place,” he explained. “Can’t you see? This is a job. It’s a means to an end. Yes, I’m the bad pony. Fuck you. I’m a dedicated pony. I do my job, and I do the best I can, moral or not. Slave or slaver, does it matter?” He grabbed the filly in his foreleg and hugged her tight. “I keep me and mine safe, through whatever method. You’re just a worthless piece of trash who hasn’t learned that the Wasteland is bigger than you, and that there are other ponies with their own lives and motives.”

I stared up at him. A torturer, a slaver, lecturing me about how the Wasteland worked? I knew it didn’t revolve around me. I’d spent an entire night telling myself that ponies all had motives and that we all did what we had to to survive.

“Amble’s wrong about you. You don’t belong here, Miss Fortune,” he said, spitting my name. “You belong at the bottom of a grave with that one.” He pointed to my sister.

“I belong with my sister, free of you!” I yelled at him, unable to contain myself. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

“You belong in your pen,” he said, stomping. “Look at her, suffering.” He pointed to Lost. “If you cared half as much about your sister as I do about my daughter, you’d have let Amble have you already. Slave or not, I care about Lemonsweet and our daughter. I’m the big bad slaver, tasked with showing the goods their place, but y’know what?” He got down in my face, and pressed his muzzle against mine, “I know when to stop fighting the way things work. I could try and let them go, against orders. Know what that would get me?”

He paused for me to answer, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make everything worse.

“I’ll fucking tell you,” he snapped. “It would get that bitch to put a collar on me, and to sell my family off.” He looked over to the two pegasi, then back to me. “What would you do in my situation? Fight and lose everything, or do what you have to in order to keep your loved ones safe?”

He admitted to being horrible. And he made a good case for being horrible. Isn’t that what I’d been doing? Making a case for why it was okay for me to do horrible things? If it kept Lost and I safe, could I really become a monster like him?

“Bittersweet, collect your mother,” Vice Brand ordered his daughter. “Let’s go reward our prized property.” Without the need for more prompting from her father, the filly fluttered over to the older mare, who hadn’t moved from her spot. Vice Brand’s horn began to glow, and Cluster lifted from the pit below.

The raider stallion smiled wide when he landed next to Vice Brand, and continued to work the crowd with that giant smile plastered on his face. The other slaves cheered and stomped their hooves, giving him their admiration. Vice left the stage, and his filly gave me a parting kick as she followed, a grin across her lips. She led her mother off after the two unicorns.

“Guards, take care of those two. Get the group back where they belong!” yelled the pink slaver over his shoulder.

From all sides, guards and slavers appeared as if from the walls themselves. A short guard with a black coat came and collected my sister and I. “Up ponies, back to your pens,” she said. She helped Lost up while I stood and watched.

Ponies?

The guard threw Lost onto her back and started off, motioning me to follow. I stared at the guard as I followed. Watching her walk, I swore I’d seen that swaying gait somewhere before. I shook my head to clear it, despite the dull ache in my neck. Following so many ponies in the past few days, it all started to blend together. Lots of ponies walked like that, with swaying white tails and black coats. I’d seen half a dozen guards just like this one.

My mind went over possibilities that couldn’t ever come true. I felt horrible for thinking about the guard, for thinking about escape, instead of thinking about my sister. I looked at her, draped across the slaver’s back. She cracked one of her swollen eyes open and looked back at me. Her normally white coat was almost completely purple now, and covered in slowly drying blood.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

She smiled back, and just closed her eye. She had a plan, we just needed to set it in motion.

“I need to see Amble,” I told the guard.

* * *

“What do I need to do so you’ll heal my sister?” I asked the second I sat down. I wasn’t going to let her ask any questions or start her mind trickery on me. I asked directly, not wanting to let her think I was desperate.

“Tell me, Miss Fortune, did ya enjoy the show?” Amble asked, a small smile creeping across her lips, splitting her purple coat to flash her particularly white teeth. She sat at her desk, eating a delicious-looking meal of two-century-old snack foods and a Sparkle~Cola.

I stared at her, unanswering. I should have known that there was no way she’d give me anything so easily. I didn’t have time to play the mind games. I was cracked enough already. I just... I needed to play along. Behave. That’s what Lost would do. She must have been behaving, because I hadn’t been punished for her failures.

While Amble waited for an answer, she took another bite of her snack cake and looked at me. “Well?” asked the Slave Mistress after swallowing. She rolled her hoof in the air, wanting me to answer.

“Well what, Amble?” I asked. “I asked the first question! My sister needs to see Bonemeal.”

“Ya really need to learn ya place. My associates and Red Eye, or his ponies, can call me Amble. To ya, I am Mistress,” she corrected. “We’ll get to yer sister later, now I asked ya a question. Answer. How did ya enjoy the show? I’m sure a brutal pony like yerself got some pleasure out of it, even if it was yer sister...” She leaned back and smiled, wiping the crumbs from her lip with a hoof.

“I th- It-... You have interesting guards,” I stuttered, avoiding the subject. I knew what she wanted, but I didn’t want to give it to her. I stared at her desk instead, studying the patterns in the wood. They all seemed like little swirls, trailing patterns across the top. I didn’t want to think about whether I’d enjoy seeing a pony beaten near to death, even if it wasn’t my sister. Watching that was horrible and I could still feel the ache in my heart. I just needed to focus on getting her fixed up. “Please, I understand now. I’ll do whatever you need, if you promise to heal my sister!”

“Miss Fortune, answer my question before I have ya punished again,” she ordered, her tone changing just slightly. My pleas to help Lost fell on deaf ears.

“I hated it.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard. Here, eat. I need my favorite pet nice and healthy,” she said, reaching down and grabbing another snack cake. Smirking, she offered it to me. Despite the look she gave me, I took the cake from her outstretched hoof.

I raised it to my mouth, but stopped at the last second. This was too easy, she never gave me something without something in return. I closed my eyes, holding the cake still in front of my face. I wanted to take a bite so bad, but I couldn’t. I inhaled deep, and savored the smell. It was better than nothing.

“S’wrong Miss Fortune, don’t ya trust me?” she asked, a playful tone in her voice. “I’ve given ya everythin’ ya could ever want. Freedom from choice, a place to live, time with ya sister.” She slammed her hooves on the desk. I flinched.

“You hurt my sister,” I said, opening my eyes and looking over the snack. “And she needs to be healed. That raider fucked her up badly!” I still didn’t eat it. I wasn’t sure I could stomach anything after that. I just breathed in the scent, buying as much time as I could. The show was how I saw... If she was working for- No that didn’t make any sense.

Focus.

“Ya hurt yer sister, not me,” she corrected me. “And stop stealing my fucking food!” Reaching across the table, she snatched the cake away from me. “Yer a murderer, not a thief.” She took a bite of the snack cake and smashed the remains on the top of the desk.

“I’m not the one who threw her in the pit and had another slave beat her nearly to death!” I yelled. I hadn’t stolen the cake, either. She’d given it to me. Hadn’t she? I wanted to lean down and eat the pulverised remains. Just for a taste. I hadn’t tasted a snack cake in months. Or was it days? It felt like months... It would be worth it to steal one from her. I just reached out and grabbed.

Wait, when was the last time I’d had a real meal?

“Yer the one who decided ya were too good to murder,” she said, scooping up the snack cake remains and tossing them into her mouth. She chewed slowly, making me watch her eat. There must have been drool running down my chin, because she smiled, licked her lips and swallowed, “Sorry ‘bout that. I keep tryin’ to tell ya, all ya gotta do is listen. Show me ya understand where ya belong. Tell me how hard that really is, Miss Fortune.”

“Fine, I belong to you,” I said. If it would get my sister healed, then I would say it. My pride wasn’t worth her suffering any more than she needed to.

“Ya don’t mean that. Yer sayin’ it because ya want something, not because ya believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “Where do you belong?”

“I belong back home, with my sister,” I said. I looked away from her.

“Home? Which one?” she asked, a sly smirk crossing her lips.

I just glared at her but kept my mouth shut. They were bad ponies, just like her. Just like... like Vice Brand. With families and worries and dreams. Bad or not, they deserved to live. All ponies under the Goddesses did, no matter how bad they were. They were all still ponies. Ponies I’d killed. She’d changed the subject again, and I’d fallen right into it.

She wanted to have me by the tail like she had Vice Brand. Like that sick, twisted filly of his, Bittersweet. What an appropriate name. Family at a price was exactly what Amble wanted. I needed to behave so Lost could get fixed up by Bonemeal.

“Amble-”

“Mistress,” she corrected.

“I can’t call you that,” I argued. I saw in her deep purple eyes that she was a pony who knew her place amongst every pony around her. The Slave Mistress, calm and always in charge. I couldn’t call her that though.

“You can and will,” she said. She grabbed the Sparkle~Cola and took a deep swig. “Try again.”

I gritted my teeth, and grumbled, “Mistress.” Fuck my pride.

“Very good, now continue, Miss Fortune,” she ordered.

“Mistress, will my sister be healed?” I asked again. I stared at the desk. Focused on the swirling pattern. I couldn’t let her get back into my head. Taking a deep breath, I followed the little patterns. They led to safety. They led to freedom. L.A. would come up with a plan, and together we’d get out. We just had to try for it. Just like asking, if I didn’t try I’d never know. Or they led to ponies I would one day kill with a smile.

“See, that wasn’t so hard was it?” she asked with a smug smile. “We’ll see. Depends on whether ya behave or not. How bad do ya want yer sister to be safe, and free?”

“Well I-” I started. She put her hoof up to stop me. Twists and turns, little curves here and there. Don’t pay attention to what she says.

“I wasn’t done,” she continued, “Are ya ready to truly admit ya belong here, believe it, and work with me?” She paused for a moment, sat back in her seat, and closed her eyes. After a pregnant pause, she sighed and opened her eyes. “Y’know what, Miss Fortune? Just go. Yer not strong enough to hurt my operation anyway. Just walk out the gate and never come back.”

I didn’t wait for her to change her mind. I was out of the seat and running for the door. Thoughts of revenge played through my mind. Yes, a murderer. A murderer of slavers. Murdered with a smile across my face. That’s what she wanted, after all.

“Unless...”

I stopped in my tracks.

I knew it was too good to be true. She never told the truth. So far all she’d done was fuck with my head. Or... Had she even offered for me to leave in the first place? I tried to remember. All I could think of was that pause before she spoke.

“Do ya really want to go back to bein’ a murderer. Come, Miss Fortune. Sit,” she ordered.

I could feel her smirk even with my back turned. I trotted back and sat down in the seat without hesitation. Had I really just obeyed a direct command? I shook my head, eyes clenched shut. I wasn’t her pet and I wasn’t her slave and I wasn’t listening to orders! I... I just thought it was better to sit and wait and find out what she had to say. Especially if she would help my sister. I still didn’t know for a fact where Lost was held, and I’d almost just run off without considering whether she’d be let free with me. It was completely my own choice to sit and listen. A thinky pony would listen. A sane pony would listen.

“Good filly, see? It’s not so bad when ya listen. If ya did that all the time, ya might just get a reward out of me,” she said. She grabbed the Sparkle~Cola bottle and took another drink, then passed it to me. “Here, Miss Fortune. Drink.”

I grabbed it, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to drink after this pony. Everything about her was horrible, did I really want to touch anything she’d touched? I took a drink and finished the bottle. “I’ll do whatever you want. Can you please heal Lost?” I asked.

“Ya know what I want? I want a murderer, somepony without morals,” she pointed at me. “A pony like ya. I point. Ya kill. It’s that simple. Ya kill, yer sister stays safe, and healed.” The pink and purple slaver slammed her hooves down on the desk hard enough to make it bounce off the floor. “And ya know I’d never lie to ya.” A wicked smile formed on her lips.

“You’ve lied to me on several occasions,” I corrected. “You call me a murderer, I’m not a murderer.”

“Miss Fortune. I am not a liar, I have never been a liar, and I will never be a liar,” she said, glaring at me. “I am a businessmare. I do remember tellin’ ya that. I have a perfect memory ya see.” She waved her hoof in my face, much like mom used to do when scolding my sister or me. “If ya think I’m lyin’, I suggest ya have the next guard take ya to Doctor Bonemeal and get yer head fixed. I don’t take accusations like that well.”

I said nothing. I wanted to leave. I wanted to find that guard. I wanted her to get out of my head.

“Okay, now that we’re on the same page. Tell me, Miss Fortune, did ya enjoy the show?”

“No. I did not like the show,” I answered.

“Then why do ya put yerself into situations like that?” she asked in a gentle calm voice.

“I didn’t... You did.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Ya put yerself into the situation.” She pointed at me. “Ya just need to learn to listen so this type of thin’ won’t happen again.”

It wasn’t my fault! I hadn’t thrown Lost down there. I hadn’t... It wasn’t me who’d killed Spark Light. But I did let him bleed and die slowly. I had let him suffer.

Just like I’d let Lost suffer.

I looked away from Amble, down at the floor and hopefully somewhere where my face was hidden enough that she wouldn’t see me start to cry. I wanted out. I needed out. The plan had to be something that worked.

Please let that guard be... I chuckled under my breath. There was no chance. Not with my luck...

“Just throw me back in my pen.”

“Promise me, Miss Fortune. Promise me, and mean it, that ya work for me, and turn that ruthless murderer inside ya in the right direction,” she ordered. “Swear yer loyalty to me. Until the day ya die,” she flipped a hoof, “or until I get bored of ya. And I’ll let ya sister go. No collar. No bomb. No punishments. A place to stay in a room with you, and three meals a day. It’s that simple. Promise me, Miss. Fortune.”

I turned away from her. I didn’t know if I could trust her. She’d made good on her threat for punishment. Was the promise for reward just as good. Was she actually being honest?

“I...”

“Yer gonna be able to prove yerself later. I know just how, too...” She pointed to the door. She said, ever so politely, “Now, would ya kindly get out of my sight.”

* * *

“I’m sorry...” I said, without making eye contact. I hadn’t seen Lost at lunch yesterday. I was so happy to see her today when I walked in that I nearly jumped the line and ran straight to her without food. The bandages were off-putting though, and made my heart ache when I saw them.

“I’m sure there was a good reason,” she said with a grimace. One eye stared at me, the other taped over with gauze. Her bandana clung tightly to the remains of her mane, though I had trouble telling where purple mane ended and purple bruising began. A bandage wrapped around her torso, and a splint encased her hind leg. “They won’t let me see the doctor again. She got me stabilized, and then they dragged me out,” she explained.

We ate in silence afterward, until both meals were gone. I snuck looks whenever I felt I could, to see just how bad the damage was. She could still walk, which was the most important thing, aside from her being alive and well. Actually, ‘well’ was the furthest thing from what she was, but the fact that Cluster hadn’t killed her was huge.

“I’m still sorry... It’s my fault,” I said with a whimper.

“Let's change the subject, we don't have long to talk and that isn't important right now,” she said. She pushed her bowl away with a hoof. “I can start the plan soon. They time our contact here, I'll have Spark Light fill you in tomorrow. Have you seen him at all?” she asked. She tapped at the table idly, and looked around with her unpatched eye to see if a guard would wander by.

“No... Not in a few days,” I said, aching. The knowledge that I’d failed Amble’s test, and that it was what made them throw her into the pit weighed heavily on me. I’d tell her, just not yet. I was horrified that Lost would see though my bluff and know that Spark Light was dead. Or worse, find out that I killed him.

Or find out that I hadn’t shown him mercy when I had the chance.

“Did you get a look at the guard that brought you out of that pit?” I asked, not wanting to talk about Spark Light or kill tests or Amble’s slow shattering of my confidence in my decisions. Maybe I should tell her. She’d know what to do then, and maybe it would help make her plan better?

“No, Hidden. My eyes were swollen shut. I couldn’t really see anything,” she answered. “I got a look at her eyes when we got there though. I need to plan better. Change things.” She closed her eye and leaned down onto her hooves on the table. “Make the plan better...”

A guard walked up before she could tell me any details. She just sat there and stared at the table, muttering little bits and pieces to herself. I reluctantly left with the guard, not that I had a choice in the matter. Lost just sat there as the guard took me away. She didn’t look after me, or say anything.

I watched Lost until she was out of sight, and then I turned to follow the guard. She led me out of the mess hall and across the courtyard, swinging a baton in her magic while whistling a tune. It sounded like something I’d heard on the PipBuck’s radio, but that was so long ago that I really couldn’t place it.

I missed the radio...

The radio! The radio had a broadcaster. Did Lost remember? Would it do any good? I was a murderer, would the Steel Rangers want me back? I laughed to myself, knowing full well Praline would welcome us with open hooves even if we burned the entire Wasteland down. The thought gave me something to focus on as I followed the slaver guard.

If she could get ahold of Praline, or Lamington, or any of them! We could get them to come rescue us. And then we could find where my gun was. And I could murder every single one of them!

No. Bad Hidden!

Amble said I’m a murderer. I couldn’t prove her right. I could get out of this without killing everypony. Just a few need to die. Really Slipstock was the only pony that needed to die. I’d gladly be a murderer if it meant killing that bitch.

Thinking about revenge again... I needed to stop thinking about that, especially now that Amble had her hooves in my mind. I wanted revenge. I needed it. But I needed it out of my mind more, no more fuel for her fire.

I was a good pony. I only killed when they deserved it. Or when they attacked me. Or when they came back to their home and somepony else was sleeping in it. But I wasn’t a murderer! I was a survivor, a treasure hunter. Not a puppet for her to use as a killing tool.

I would ask Lost about the broadcaster the next time I saw her.

“Oi! We’re fuckin’ here,” snapped the guard. She put the baton to my neck to stop me. She’d stopped several hooves back and I was so lost in thought that I’d kept on past her.

We stood in front of the building Spark Light had died in. I shuddered, and backpedaled to stand behind the guard. “Why... Why are we here?” I asked as quietly as I could. A good slave didn’t ask questions, but I needed to know.

She just laughed and hit me with the baton across my cutie mark. I jumped, and she led me inside.

Standing in what must have been a lobby was that stallion with the stupid-looking green goatee again. Ugh, he even wore a striped vest that looked even stupider than his goatee. Did slavers really think dressing like that was a good thing? He smiled the moment he saw me and stepped up.

“So! You must be my star today!” he said, taking my steel forehoof in his. “A pleasure to meet you, I say, a veritable pleasure. I wager that you’re most excited to kill today, aren’t you, Miss Fortune?” He backed up and placed a hoof in front of his chest. “Miss, you are dismissed,” he said to the guard, pointing his other forehoof toward the door. He stood up on his hind legs, and flashed a wide smile that might have been nice if he wasn’t a slaver, and continued, “Introductions are in order! I am Mister Sell. Hard Sell. Under normal circumstances, I am the arena master here, with the exception of the rare event where Amble herself personally hosts a show.”

I stared at him, extremely confused. I was also really jealous of his balance on his hind legs.

“If only I had an audience to purvey my shows to...” he lamented. “Alas, slaves are not particularly enthused by the prospect of watching one of their fellows ‘bite it,’ to use the colloquialism.” He dropped back down onto all four hooves. “Follow me, Miss Fortune.” He trotted down one of the hallways, and I followed him without question.

I took the time to check the cutie mark emblazoned on his dark blue coat as we walked. A cane with the end covered in blood. How fitting for a slaver, or arena master, or whatever he was. I shook my head.

With great enthusiasm, he continued his speech. “Now, I have heard about your dismal performance the other day. I do think we can get a better show out of you this time. It is a simple matter of motivation!” he said and stared at me. “So, I think...”

He paused for a moment, before finally opening his eyes wide, smiling, and raising a hoof to the air. “Aha! Motivation. Would you like to choose the pony you will kill today?” he asked, the sick smile still across his lips.

“I’m not a murderer,” I snapped.

“Oh, pish-posh! Certainly you are. You should pay better attention to Amble’s lessons,” he said, and his smile vanished. “Otherwise we might see more of one another. I am certain you’d fit right in. We can skip the selection process, if you prefer.” He paused and looked to an open doorway on the left side of the hallway. “Wait a moment, if you please. I need to retrieve something.” He ducked into the room, clattered about, then popped back out with a long, segmented cane held in the air, surrounded by a deep red haze. “I do apologize. Come now, slave. We have a show to perform!”

He stood me in the same spot I’d been in the other day, when I’d gotten Spark Light killed. I shook, my legs unsteady, not wanting to see the pony they’d bring out. I closed my eyes and pinned my ears back. Slipstock wasn’t in the room with me, and neither was Amble. Did that mean I was in the clear? The sound of slow hooffalls broke my concentration. I opened my eyes and watched a familiar green-maned unicorn trot in.

Sunbright. Great. I was fucked.

Sunbright flipped her mane and took a seat in the corner of the room, right where Slipstock had sat the last time. She glared at me, looking none too pleased about being in the room to watch. Just what type of torture had she done to Lost to make her stop using her magic? To make her look so sick?

Hard Sell trotted in with another slave in tow. He held the leash to a young mare, barely older than a filly. She struggled and pulled at the leash with every step, flailing her pink and blue mane around and stomping her hooves as much as she could. Hard Sell ignored her, and forced her to stand across from me.

“Now, I’m sure you know what to do!” he yelled. “So... GO!”

I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to kill another pony, no matter what. They could just take her back and take me to my pen and we’d be done. “No.”

“Dammit, Hard, ya know she’s not goin’ to,” Sunbright snapped. “Skip the shit.”

“Tut-tut, Sunbright. We must give her a chance,” said the unicorn stallion, waving his cane in the air.

“Just fuckin’ do it already,” said the other slave, staring me down with her golden eyes. Her sides heaved, and her nostrils flared. She had no slave collar on, so they weren’t going to kill her, even if I didn’t. I breathed a sigh of relief. The other slave jabbed me in the ribs. “Come on. C’mon!” She gritted her teeth in a defiant attempt at a smile. “I bet you can’t. Wuss. Too much of a pussy.”

“Whoa, no. I’m not a pussy,” I protested. “I just don’t kill ponies that I don’t have to. I’m a survivor, not a murderer.” All three burst into laughter.

The slave cut off harshly and twitched a few times. “Fuck you,” she said. “You’re big, you’re strong, you could get the fuck out of here if you just did it, and you’re sitting here, taking the moral high ground? They practically hoofed me to you on a plate.” She growled and shoved me. “And you can’t even do it. Coward.”

“Come now, speed this process along,” said Hard Sell in the kindest voice I’d heard in ages. “I don’t want to make you. You can do it, I believe in you!” He practically shouted the last part.

I didn’t want to kill this pony! I’d never even met her before. What reason did I have to kill a random pony? I wasn’t a fucking murderer! My own mind screamed at me, I’m not a fucking murderer. I could kill her easily. She was barely bigger than a filly. But I wasn’t that kind of pony!

I shook my head a few times. “No,” I said. I didn’t want to think about what would happen with my refusal, but I just... I couldn’t take this step. Lost would suffer, but they’d already beaten her. Amble knew better than to just throw her bargaining chip again, so what more could they do to her? I couldn’t give in and let Amble have that power over me. Not at the cost of another pony’s life.

“Alright, you leave me no choice,” Hard Sell said, and stepped forward. His cane floated up, then crashed down across the slave’s back, hard enough to drop her onto her knees.

“What? No! Stop!” I screamed, grabbing at the cane as he swung it through the air. He lifted it up and flung me away. I slammed into the corner. “Stop it! There’s no reason!” I yelled as I got up. I didn’t try and physically stop him again, knowing better. I looked down at my hoofcuffs.

The slave screamed, but the assault didn’t stop. Over and over he swiped and smacked the mare. He didn’t smile or laugh. He worked silently, so that the only sound was his cane cracking against her hide. By the time he finished, she was covered in bruises and cuts. He beat her until blood coated his cane.

I flinched with every hit. Each bruise, each cut, it was as if I’d beaten her myself. Would it be mercy to end this? She could get better. Sure, she’d be sore, but that would pass in time. I stood my ground, refusing to kill her. Even if part of me wanted to.

Behave. Obey. Save Lost.

“Stop I’ll... I’ll do it. Just,” my mouth said on its own. I blinked a few times, in shock. Had I really just said that? No! Amble won if I let her get to me, if I let her make me kill a pony to show my loyalty to her.

But if I killed her...

Lost would go free, and be allowed to stay without being a slave. Amble promised that, didn’t she? I swore she did, but she promised a lot of things that ended up just being my mind playing tricks on me.

“B-bullshit. You can’t... kill me,” the mare said, spitting blood. She looked scared now, and shook on her hooves. Tears trickled down her face from the pain, despite her defiant grimace. “You won’t. You,” she paused to cough up more blood, “wouldn’t. You c-can’t.” She took a shuddering breath, and snorted, regaining her footing. Was it false bravado she was showing off? Trying to get a dignified death from another slave, rather than having a slaver use her until she expired? Maybe she wanted to scare me off, or maybe she was trying to make me do it out of rage?

“Please...” she whispered, her voice cracking. “...don’t kill me.” Her horn sparked a few times, as if she were trying to do something. No magic came out.

“No... you’re right,” I said. “I... I can’t.” I was going back on what I’d said not a minute before. I needed more time! I couldn’t give in and let the Slave Mistress win!

“This is takin’ too long. What’s yer verdict, Hard Sell?” asked Amble’s bodyguard. She looked bored again.

“Give her another minute or two,” he responded. “I want to see where this goes.” His cane twirled in the air, splattering flecks of blood along the floor and walls.

If I had some Buck, I wouldn’t need to think about it. It would just happen. That wonderful euphoria of ‘must smash everything’ could take over, and kill this pony for me. Actually, Buck would be perfect for this. Take away the pain, let another pony somewhere else far far away deal with the guilt. Dull the ache and make me smash this mare without worry or stress. It was worth a try to ask? “Do... Do you have any Buck?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“No, no, little slave. That would be cheating. It needs to be honest, loyal,” explained Hard Sell. He snapped his cane down and splattered the rest of the blood off it. “I do believe that I’m beginning to doubt your resolve. How disappointing. Do you feel any loyalty at all to our beloved Slave Mistress? She has such high hopes for you, Miss Fortune. Come on, step up, prove yourself! Break down that final wall of pesky thinking. Give in, accept your place by her side!” he shouted, holding the cane up as if he were a regal prince.

The slave mare stared at me. Her knees shook, and her eyes shone with fire. I could see the muscles in her jaw clench. She didn’t want me to kill her. She didn’t think I could, did she? Almost... Almost as if she thought that taunting me would make me back off, and fail this test.

Did she know they’d kill her anyway?

I swallowed hard. I needed to kill this mare.

I had to do it for Lost. If this pony died so my sister was safe, that was just another means of survival. Thinky ponies made decisions based on what they knew. Lost made decisions on what she knew, on the best chances to get out alive, or the best chances to find treasure when hunting. If I killed to save Lost, did that mean I was loyal to Amble, that she’d gotten into my head and I let her win? Or did it mean I was getting better at weighing my actions against their consequences?

“For Lost Art. I’m doing this. For my sister,” I announced and took a step forward.

The cane blocked my path.

“For all the wrong reasons,” said the green-goateed stallion. “Alas. I am very much disappointed. You were so very close. The killing itself was of very little importance. It was, sadly, the reason you were to kill, that was important.” He pushed me back with the cane, and held it at my chest. “Sunbright, if you would be so kind, teach Miss Fortune another important life lesson. Let her know why the proper reasons for killing are important.”

“What?” I yelled. “I said I would-”

Sunbright’s horn flashed bright orange before I could finish my sentence.

The young slave mare burst into flames.

“-kill her...”

The slave screamed as her coat ignited. Her eyes began steaming, and her mane caught fire and began burning away in an acrid wash of black smoke. Her hide blistered and flaked. Her screams broke into hacking, screaming coughs.

I stared. No. I didn’t. I hadn’t. I would have. I said I would. But this. This, I... I...

She wheezed and fell over, twisting and writhing. Her flesh cooked and bubbled, sizzling as her own body fueled the fire that consumed her. I smelled the cooking flesh and burning fat.

Memories of the fire from Wirepony flared in my mind. I backpedaled against the wall, afraid of the fire. It once meant light and heat. Now it just terrified me. I felt my back and leg tense, making me squirm. I could tell both Sunbright and Hard Sell were enjoying themselves as they smiled, watching me. Fire, something that had once come close to killing me.

The cooked red of the slave’s skin gave way to a sickly, ashy off-white. She stopped screaming, but kept moving. There was no mercy in the fire. She was still alive, and thrashed even worse. She foamed at the mouth, and the painful breaths she managed were gasps and coughs. Her skin started cracking and shrinking off her body. Clear liquid seeped and out from beneath and pooled down into the flaming puddle around the mare.

Was that what my back looked like after Wirepony launched a grenade onto me? After the flamethrower charred my hide?

My shock finally faded, replaced by all-encompassing terror. “Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop making her suffer!”

They didn’t stop. She kept burning. Sunbright cooked her alive. Her eyes... Oh, Goddesses... I threw up what little gruel I had in me. I couldn’t tell if it was from fear or the gruesome sight.

She finally, agonizingly, died. The fire kept burning, sloughing her skin off and dripping it to the ground. It looked like the flesh that the Wirepony kept inside its armor, only less rotten and more charred. By the time Sunbright put her out, there was nothing left but blackened bones and scorched flesh in a puddle of burned grease. The smell was unbearable.

“Well. I suppose I’ll need to have this cleaned,” muttered Hard Sell. He held a hoof over his nose, a sad grimace on his lips.

“Why?” I asked, shaking.

“You took too long, and you weren’t obeying orders,” Hard Sell explained. “You need to be loyal to Amble first, and your sister second. You’re a tool now, not a pony. Now come.”

I stood and followed, wobbling on my hooves. Fine. Amble won. I couldn’t take this anymore. I took one last look at what remained of that pony. She was so young, with a streak of rebellion that I would have admired, if the situation were different.

Be a tool. Save my sister.

Fine. Amble had her tool. I’d prove it the next chance I got.

She had my sister beaten to within an inch of her life. Killed a pony by letting him bleed out. Condemned a mare barely out of fillyhood to die by fire in front of me. I could obey. Even I wasn’t that stupid or short-sighted.

I needed to tell Lost as soon as possible. I’d let Amble know too.

“I’ll be her tool.”

“I knew you’d see it our way,” he said with a smirk. “Next time, you can prove it.”

Next time. Next time indeed.

* * *

“I really wanted to do this on better terms, but ya just seem intent on pushin’ my limits,” explained Amble. She sat at her desk, her hoof propping up her head. She looked rather annoyed and impatient. “Oh well, it’s an interestin’ aspect of the business. Ya woulda seen it sooner or later, anyway.” She looked toward the door, then rested her head back on her hoof. “As soon as yer sister manages to hobble in.”

“I understand my place, Mistress. Will you please heal her?” I asked, staring at the desk again. The swirling pattern didn’t mean anything anymore. The lines trailed into nothingness, no end and no beginning. “Please?”

“We’ll see,” she snapped. “Ya proven yerself to be nothing but a disappointment. If ya learn yer lesson and understand that why ya belong here is just as important as knowin’ that ya do belong here...” She tapped her free hoof on the desk a few times, trailing off. Frowning, she changed topics, “She’d better hurry that broken ass’a hers up.”

“Mistress she’s hurt, please give her time,” I said barely above a whisper. I wondered what it meant to have pride, now that I’d let another pony get so far into my head and control me. I just wanted my sister to be safe. I swore I’d do whatever she wanted, so why the show of power?

Did I really need to kill a pony to prove myself to her?

The door chimed and creaked open. I didn’t look up. I knew who it was. Off-beat hooffalls echoed through the open room and past the half-wall. Amble smiled and said, “There ya are, about time.” We both looked over the half-wall to my sister.

She wore the same bandages from before, already soiled from her wounds. The splint held her leg in place, but she grimaced every time she put her weight on it. Her movement was slow, barely above a walk. No guard escorted her, because there wasn’t a need for one. Where would a pony in her condition escape to? She looked at me with her unpatched eye, forced a weak smile, and worked herself into the seat beside me.

She whimpered as she sat. Her leg swung out awkwardly, and some joint or another popped and cracked when she put her weight down on the seat. Her eye shut tight, and she grit her teeth, but made no other noises.

“Excellent, now that yer both here. Get up. We’ve got business to tend to,” ordered the Slave Mistress. She hopped up and grabbed a saddlebag from a hook on the half-wall and started toward the door. “Now, I want to show ya a more interestin’ part of the business,” she explained as she walked.

I helped Lost out of her chair, and we followed. I moved slow, staying next to my sister and helping to keep the weight off her leg. Just like she’d done when my leg was broken. Neither of us talked, fearing that Amble might do something wicked. She could do anything she wanted and get away with it. No torture was outside of her imagination, not to mention the slavers she kept under her. I looked down at my hoofcuffs and shuddered against my sister, making her groan in protest.

I stared at the swaying tail of the pink and purple pony. Would she have been so wicked if Equestria had never fallen? I fought back tears, not sure if they were of pain or just sadness. Something pushed an intelligent, strong mare to this point, made her wicked. A businessmare? She could have saved the Wasteland if she only put that mind to better use. With so many ponies rallied under her cause, what made her snap?

Did it matter? She owned me now, and deep down in my heart I knew I would never get out. The most I could hope for was total submission to save my sister. Lost could be healed. She could be saved. Was I too far gone?

We followed her to the far side of the town, past the pens and the pit, past the smiling guard with the sharpened teeth. She stared at us as we passed, gnashing them together. It didn’t bother me anymore, knowing that we were under guard at all times, that one wrong move could kill us. Lost shivered against me, and I looked her in the eye.

She gave me a look, winced, and kept walking. Her steps came steadier as we walked, whether from my support or just because the pain was lessening, I didn’t know. Maybe she just got used to it.

“Keep up,” Amble ordered, “I want to make it before they start. We need to see Bright Eyes.” The pony turned around a corner and we had to rush to keep up. She made no special treatment for how slow the two of us needed to move. She sped up as we crossed, looking back with a grin, daring us to go too slow with her smile.

We finally arrived at a building in the corner of the town, alongside a large stage and several rows of seats. A few ponies were sitting in them, but Amble directed us into the single story office building before I could get a look at any of them. The building looked like it had once been several stories taller, but Balefire and time had worn away the top. Windows were shattered and boarded up, nothing could be seen of the inside.

Amble kicked the door a few times and yelled, “Bright Eyes, open up!” She kept slamming the door.

“Bright Eyes is busy right now, Am- I mean, Mistress,” yelled a meek voice through the door. It opened with a creak and single eye peeked through the crack. A violet mane fell across the eye and covered it, before a hoof could push it away. “She’s prepping for auction...”

“I don’t care, open up Bell, before I sell ya off to the brothel in Idle,” snapped Amble. She squinted and leaned in close. “Don’t tempt me.” Her hoof slammed into the door and pushed it further open, before it caught loudly on a chain.

“Give me one minute! I’m not presentable!” yelled another mare’s voice.

“Presentable my flank! Open. Now!” Amble yelled again while pounding on the door. “Ya open up now or yer little assistant here becomes fodder for Slipstock til a buyer shows up!”

“Fine fine! Give me just a second,” yelled the voice again.

I couldn’t tell whether I would be more scared of being sold, or being stuck here with Amble for the rest of my life. I looked at my sister and hugged her gently. This was one of the few moments of affection and closeness I could get from her, without a guard around. I took what I could get. The nuzzle she gave me back lifted my spirits.

The door finally opened and an absolutely gorgeous unicorn mare stepped into the light. She stood a bit taller than the three of us, with thin elegant legs. Her mane practically gleamed crimson and gold, teased off to the right side of her face. She stared through me with ice blue eyes and cocked a wicked smile. Turning with a flourish, she showed off a cutie mark of an auction tag with a tube of lipstick, and motioned for us to enter with her. The only flaw in her perfect appearance were the patches of grey showing through her white coat.

Amble pushed past her with a grunt, and we followed. Inside looked as expected of an office from before the war. Desks were pushed to the sides of the room, and covered in makeup, brushes and dyes. A filthy mirror was propped up on one of the desks against the wall, and jury-rigged lights hung atop it to make it easier to see through the grime. Several streaks of dye splattered across the top, and empty bottles littered the floor.

The pony who’d answered the door sat in the corner, looking away. A two-toned mare with a tan coat and purple mane, she twitched nervously, while looking at the pony Amble called Bright Eyes. Her long straight mane swayed with each flinch. Her tail curled against her side as she tried to make herself as small as possible, neatly framing her makeup set cutie mark.

Bright Eyes on the other hoof looked all too pleased. She smiled at Amble, and picked up a small black brush in her magic. “Now, Amble, I swear,” she said, “if you’re going to be doing business in public, you need to look the part. Hold still while I put some mascara on you. It’ll bring out your ey-”

Amble smacked the mascara out of the air and stepped closer, frowning something fierce. “If I come knocking on yer door, ya better open it the first fuckin’ time,” she yelled. “Now listen, fix up the one with the bandana. I need her lookin’ perfect. Get her as close as ya can to it without actually fixin’ her. And explain to ‘em both what ya do.”

“Yes ma’am!” answered the unicorn mare with a curtsey.

“Bell Boot. Hooficure, now,” Amble snapped. The slaver sat up on a desk and pointed at her rear hooves. The other pony snapped to attention and grabbed a file from the desk. Dropping to the floor before the pink and purple earth pony slaver, she got to work on the offered hoof without hesitation.

“Miss Fortune, sit down. This might take a while,” Amble ordered, leaning back and smiling. She looked very content, having her hind hoof worked on by the other pony.

Part of me wondered what having my hooves cared for would feel like, especially after the spikes and having a hoof eaten. I curled them close to me as I sat down. I didn’t want anypony near them ever again. I stayed quiet, paid attention, and did as I was told. I didn’t need to give Amble anything more for her to use against me.

“Okay! This will be a bit of work, but I’m sure I can pull it off,” said the white-dyed pony with a forced smile. “Just sit here and... Mmm.” She trotted off.

Lost looked at me, and I just nodded. We both knew, behaving was the only way to get out of this alive. Maybe I’d be prettied up next and... I didn’t want to know what Amble had planned.

“Normally I don’t see ponies in such bad condition,” Bright Eyes explained, “but I can make it work.” She levitated a brush up and began to work on the remains of L.A.’s mane. “Now, nopony wants to buy somepony that looks like trash. A slave’s only worth what she looks like she’s worth. And since there’s not a rental option, we need to make you look pretty.” She brushed hard, making my sister wince and grimace as the knots were worked out of her mane.

“See, there’s a minimum buyout,” explained the unicorn as she brushed. “If we can’t get more than we’ll get from Red Eye for the goods, there’s no reason to sell.” She put the brush down and grabbed some shears. Without a word she cut the bandages around Lost’s chest off and frowned. “This is going to be a lot of work....”

“It just has to look nice, understand?” asked Amble. She kicked Bell Boot in the face. “Other hoof.”

“Yes ma’am,” answered Bright Eyes. She lifted up a needle and thread and got to work stitching Lost up.

Lost did her best to hold back any screams, only allowing herself to cry and whimper whenever Amble wasn’t looking. I wanted to go to her, and make the pain stop, but with Amble watching me, I couldn’t do anything. I had to be a good slave, I had to know my place. Lost’s safety was more important. She could get over some stitches.

“Alright, that’s...” whispered Bright Eyes. “I guess it’s fine. Whatever.” She tossed the needle onto the desk with her telekinesis and grabbed a pen. The pen traced along L.A.’s side a few times, each pass making her wince and shy away. When Bright Eyes deemed her work done, she tossed the pen away. The dyed unicorn then grabbed a puffy-looking ball from the desk. “Well, it’s a start...” With a smash into some powder, she coated Lost’s side and covered up the bruises and cuts. The slaver pelted the powder puff hard and fast enough to create a cloud of powder in the air. “Good enough. This really isn’t my forte... I’m used to dyeing ponies, not ponies that are dying!” she said with a laugh.

“Just make it look good.”

“Of course! Turn your head this way, slave,” ordered the... what were they called? Beautifier? Beautician? Yeah, I think I’d seen that somewhere. She grabbed Lost by the jaw with her telekinesis and wrenched her head to the side. “You know Mistress, this would be much easier if you’d let me into that salon of yours.” She powdered Lost’s face until all the blood was blended away, and then tossed the puff ball aside.

“Stop harpin’ on gettin’ my office,” snapped the Slave Mistress. She pulled her rear hooves away from Bell Boot and motioned for her to work on the forehooves. “Yer here because it’s close. Ya know damn well that we can’t let our secrets out. My business would go under in a heartbeat...” She glared at me, and I knew better than to ask questions.

“I know, the lighting would just help ever so much,” she said in a sickly sweet voice. Her magic wrenched Lost’s jaw to the other side. “Close your eyes.” Lost did as she said, and she grabbed a pen and started to draw on my sister’s eyes. “This’ll make them pop, and that’s what brings in the big caps!” she announced with a giggle. “Bigger cut for me!”

“You’re not going to... Sell my sister... Are you!?” I asked, horror overtaking me.

“We’ll see what happens.”

“Ma’am, what should I do about the brace?” asked Bright Eyes.

“Worry about that later,” ordered the Slave Mistress with a grin. She stared me right in the eyes. “Now do ya see what happens if ya fail me? Ya won’t listen to reason, ya won’t listen to force. So, we’re at an impasse.” She pointed her free forehoof at Bright Eyes. “Her specialty is makin’ ponies look good. Let’s hope we get a good price.”

My brain locked. I felt my body shake on its own. “You... You can’t!” I argued. “I’ll do whatever you want! Anything! I-” A hoof in the air stopped me. My mind raced. Selling Lost? No, the Goddesses wouldn’t allow it! Amble wasn’t this stupid, without my sister as a bargaining chip, how would she keep me under... I hung my head. Did she not need my sister as leverage anymore? I stared at Lost, trying not to let her or Amble see my heart shatter and my tears flow. I mouthed the words ‘you can’t’ over and over, unable to find a voice for myself.

“Ya had yer chance. Sit, and be quiet,” she ordered. “Bell,” she said, looking at her hooves. “Good job. Go get Fine Tune and the others. I want today to be a good day for caps.”

The tawny mare saluted and bolted from the room.

“Really Ma’am, the change-” started the beautician. She clasped her hoof over her mouth as her eyes went wide. “Anyway! I need to cover this chip in her horn!” she said, busying herself with the supplies on the desk.

Amble shot her a look, and snarled. “Bright Eyes. I swear I’m gonna sell ya one of these days... You,” she said and pointed a perfectly polished hoof at me. “Come.”

I got up without a word, still mouthing to myself that she couldn’t sell my sister. When Amble left the room, I followed. I looked at my sister one last time. She sat there unmoving, her unpatched eye wide and full of terror. I tried to go back to her, but my legs took me after Amble outside of my control.

The door slammed hard, echoing deep inside my hollow, shattered insides.

* * *

A dozen or so ponies sat in rows before the auction block, talking in quiet murmurs as they waited patiently. Amble and I sat on a raised platform at the back of the auction floor. I looked over the ponies, trying to distract myself. Most were just Wastelanders, a regular bunch of ponies I never would have expected to be slavers if I saw them anywhere else. A few stood out; a purple unicorn wearing goggles over her horn who looked around with a raised eyebrow and had a strange gun strapped to her. One member of The Ashen sat a few seats down, a yellow mare with several green rings around her forelegs and a gigantic rifle strapped across her back. A dark unicorn stallion with a monocle sat reading a book to pass the time. The most interesting one though, was a very colourful zebra who seemed to be the most out of place, both the ‘white’ and ‘black’ parts of his coat shifted colors in differing shades from red to violet and back again.

I supposed Amble sold to whomever paid most, rather than discriminate against any type of pony or zebra.

“I want you to pay attention,” Amble said, hitting me on the back. She gave a few thumps and smirked. “This is a business. I can’t tell ya my secrets, for obvious reasons...” She shot me a glare. “But I need ya to see what happens when ya fail me.” She waved a hoof at the ponies all sitting and waiting. “I take loyalty very seriously. Remember I said my doctor was a slave? She’s still a slave, and the minute I feel her loyalty to me slip, I will put her on the auction block and find another pony to do her job.”

I nodded.

“So when I tell ya that I want my slaves to be loyal, I want them loyal not just because they fear the consequences,” she continued, “but because I know what’s best for them.” She looked down at me with a wide grin. “Ya know I know what’s best for ya. Ya belong here by my side, killin’ ponies that get in my way, and protectin’ yer sister. I watch out for my own, ya know.”

I nodded again. My brain hadn’t caught up yet.

“Assumin’ she doesn’t get sold today...”

I yelped, and looked over at her. My body finally moved when I told it to. “No, please. Look, I understand. You know what’s best! If you want a murderer, I can be a murderer. Just let me and my sister stay together,” I begged. I put my forehooves together, clanking the shackle against the replacement hoof.

“See, there ya go again, with that ‘me and my sister’ business,” she chided. “Ya need to understand, it’s not about the two of ya. It’s about me and what I want. Me allowin’ yer sister to stay is charity and should be understood as such.” She pointed over to Bright Eye’s building, where a door on the side was slowly creaking open.

I followed the line of her hoof and resigned myself to what came next. Bell Boot trotted out with a pony on a leash. I didn’t recognize the mare, but it didn’t matter. She trotted her up to the stage, followed by Hard Sell with his goatee.

The stallion had a brilliantly white smile, and took place at a the center of the stage. He twirled his cane a few times, and hooked it into the end of the slave’s leash. Bell Boot trotted back to the building and out of sight, pulling the door closed behind her.

“Welcome fillies and gentlecolts! I’m so glad you could all make it! I trust getting through security was no problem?” he asked, flashing that wide smile. The crowd muttered all at once, and he took the time to shush them. “Tut tut everypony, there is a reason we have such high security. If there are concerns, please, talk to Flashbang at any time and he’ll clear up all of your misconceptions.”

My ears skewed forward to listen, interest betraying my horror. Slavery was terrible, I knew first hoof. Under no circumstances should any pony be bought, sold, or owned. But the process... I could pay attention at least once. I would be sold one day, like a good slave, once I wore out my usefulness. I should at least take in what I could of the process while I had the time.

Deep down I cried. I kept it bottled as far down as I could, past the pricks and pokes of the claws in my brain that told me how wrong this was. Down past the spot where my heart should have been, and past the twisting knot in my stomach. I hid the pain somewhere I couldn’t reach or think about. If only I could kill Amble here, where no pony would see, behind all the other guards.

Would I live long enough to get Lost if I did? I looked over at the slaver. Once Amble had me in her grasp, she wouldn’t need to be so terrible, right?

Of course!

Once I was a good little pet bodyguard or whatever she wanted of me, my treatment would get so much better! Why hadn’t I realized it before? I laughed inwardly, feeling a bit stupid. It made so much sense!

I missed the introductions.

Hard Sell swung his cane down, slamming the tip onto the rotting wood of the stage. The mare next to him turned around to face the crowd. “As you can see she’s in perfect physical condition,” announced the arena master turned auctioneer. “The slave comes trained and broken, ready to do whatever you may need! Per our usual, collars are not included! You may purchase one extra, but you will need to speak to Hoof Pick after the auction has completed. Shall we start the bidding at...” He paused and looked the slave. With a nod, he gave a price, “Two hundred caps.”

One pony shouted something, and then it became a frenzy. Hard Sell spoke so fast I couldn’t keep up, the words all ended up blurring together. Ponies called out and Hard Sell responded by pointing his hoof and shouting faster. The poor slave mare on stage just quivered and stared at the floor.

I knew how she felt. I looked at my shaking legs. When did that happen?

“Sold!” yelled Hard Sell, and he motioned to a slate grey pony off-stage to step up. They traded the pony off and lead her over to Lead Line, whom I hadn’t noticed seated next to yet another holding pen with her paperwork. She scrawled quickly into her papers and ordered the slave be put in the pen.

Bell Boot brought out another pony, and the process started again.

By the fifth pony I was past being shell shocked or interested in how the selling of ponies was handled. They brutally handled the slaves to show off every feature and made it look even more horrible than I imagined. The only pony that broke the monotony was pale blue unicorn stallion with crystal blue eyes that had no pupils. Was he related to Flood Light? Goddesses she really didn’t have any problem selling families apart. Nearly every auction went the same, aside from Amble’s commentary.

She took a twisted pride in her job, explaining how certain ponies were broken, and how much of a fight they’d put in. She made little comments about the ponies who did the buying, which were new and which were regulars. One in particular, she kept pointing out, saying that if the mare didn’t buy anything, she’d catch her and sell her off.

Everything went in one ear and out the other. The longer the auction went on, the worse I felt. By the tenth pony I was holding back throwing up from stress. I knew I was sweating and fidgeting the whole time. When was it going to end? Was Lost still going to be sold? “Why...” I asked in a whisper.

“I will humor ya askin’ a question out of turn because ya been sittin’ quiet and watching,” Amble said. “Why what?”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked. Before she could answer, I finished, “I mean, making me sit here, thinking every pony that comes next will be my sister...”

“Helps ya remember,” she said. She grabbed the bomb collar around my neck and pulled me close to her. Pressing our noses together, she grinned. “Remember this always, and remember yer place. That feelin’ sittin’ here waitin’ for a loved one to be sold off. If that sister of yers doesn’t get sold off today... Ya get to know exactly the feelin’ any time ya do wrong by me.” She explained so matter of fact and calm that my heart practically stopped.

“Yes, Mistress.”

“She’s next,” Mistress announced. Oh, so she’d known the whole time and just wanted to see me squirm. That made sense.

True to her word, Bell Boot came out with Lost in tow right after. L.A. looked better, aside from the splint holding her broken leg together. The puff-thing did a number on her coat, hiding the bruising so well I could have sworn she’d been healed by Bonemeal. Her eye still sat half-closed, not yet completely healed, but apparently well enough to not have the patch over it anymore.

She trotted and stood in place. She looked around a bit, until she saw me. The terror in her eyes must have mirrored my own. Without staring, she looked at the crowd and then to Hard Sell. She said nothing, and held as still as stone.

“Oh, wonderful... Today, fillies and gentlecolts! We have a special piece of property to sell!” yelled Hard Sell loud enough that his voice echoed back from behind me. “This pony here goes by the name of Lost Art, and she is one of our newest, most promising future glue bags! I expect to get good bids from the lot of you. Shall we start off at say, five hundred caps?” He smiled wide and tapped his cane across my sister’s muzzle a few times.

Nopony said a thing, whether because the price was too high or something was wrong about her as a ‘product.’

“I understand!” shouted Hard Sell. “This is a steep price for a product in such bad condition. I promise you, she is well worth it.” He turned to my sister and cracked the cane across her back. “Turn.”

She bit back a yelp and did as she was told. The stallion began to show her off. I squirmed in my seat as he poked and prodded her with the cane, giving off tidbits of info he seemed to know about her. She squirmed just as much, holding her tail down between her legs.

“Now look, the broken leg will be repaired free of charge if you purchase her today. I give you my personal guarantee!” he announced, swatting the splint with his cane. “This pony is prime though, just look. She is a hunter of treasure in the Wasteland, perfect for scavenging supplies.” He tapped her cutie mark, “She comes with a free PipBuck, since they don’t come off.” He tapped the PipBuck as well.

One pony made a bid.

Lost shivered with each tap, shifting her weight to move further and further away. Her white coat slowly turned red from embarrassment as he worked her over.

“And the bonus, because I know very well,” he stopped and pointed the cane into the crowd, “Yes! Yes. I know, exactly what you want!” His telekinesis flared and he grabbed Lost’s tail. With a swift jerk, he lifted it up and pulled her directly into the front of the stage.

No!

“Not many of our products are left intact!” he announced with a wicked grin. Lost’s entire coat went bright red and she slammed her hind legs together. “Oh look at how eager she is!” More bids went off as several ponies tried to buy her.

I shook in my seat, jaw practically on the floor. How could he! Luna. Celestia. Smite him this instant! I begged the Goddesses. This was a step too far! Yes, this was the straw that finally broke the back. These ponies wouldn’t die fast, they would all die slow painful, bloody deaths. Preferably by their own collars.

Hard Sell stopped working the crowd with my sister and instead started to encourage the bidding war. Ponies hooves raised repeatedly, glares going back and forth between several of them as each tried to get her for just a few caps more. The price slowly rose, a few ponies dropping out as the caps crept higher.

“Ah, this is a good show. They like what they see,” Amble said, clapping her forehooves together a few times. She seemed positively giddy to watch my sister treated like a piece of meat.

I felt horrible, my heart ached and my stomach twisted itself into such a tight knot I could barely stand to not vomit. I didn’t dare let on to Amble that this was getting to me, I did my best to stay strong. I knew she could tell though, by the glint in her eye. Taking a deep breath, I looked back down.

Fewer ponies were bidding now, just three. Hard Sell did his best to keep the caps rising, and by now they were far higher than the initial price he’d set for her. His cane moved between the three bidders, as if he were taunting them. His grin and the tapping of his cane on the edge of the auction stage etched into my mind forever.

One of the ponies dropped out. The remaining two started with renewed fervor. I looked at the bidders, wanting to memorize for later just where my sister would be. I’d need to break out and rescue her... One sat out of sight, in the corner, worthless to me. The other. Oh Goddesses. The other was the Ashen Hooves ganger. I sank in my seat, fearing the worst... If they brought her back and Seethe recognized her.

I shook the thought from my mind.

The bidding dropped to little increases.

A cap here, a cap there. My throat closed tighter with every bid, until I finally forgot to breathe.

The Ashen mare stared at the pony I couldn’t see, gritting her teeth as she bid. Hard Sell looked to be having the time of his life. Lost quivered and shook, her tail once again tucked between her legs to cover herself. Her coat was still red from embarrassment.

The green ringed hoof dropped. I finally found my breath.

“SOLD!” Hard Sell yelled, his magic tossing his cane into the air and catching it with a little twirl.

“Perfect,” Amble whispered. She turned and looked at me. “So, do ya understand what can happen?”

What can happen? What kind of a crazy mare was she! I couldn’t force my brain to think straight and even begin to wrap it around what just happened, and she wanted me to understand what could happen in the future?

“You just sold my sister!” I yelled.

“Yeah, I did and I bought her too,” she said, grabbing me by the collar again. “Next time ya see her up on that block, she’s off for good, ya hear? This time I paid ya a favor. Push yer luck again, and I won’t be so generous.”

* * *

“I’m runnin’ thin on patience, now,” said Amble. “One last chance.”

I sat in the same room under the same guards as nearly every day prior, alone except for the slaver. I nodded to her. I understood.

“Yes, of course,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“Consider ya options overnight.”

The door slammed shut, leaving me with nothing but dirt, brick, and the threat of death if I did something wrong. I stared at the door for several minutes, then laughed.

Options.

“Hahaha~” I laughed, falling over and kicking at the air with my hooves. “Options!” I laughed more, “Options she says!” I laughed hard, hard enough that I found it hard to breathe. Tears rolled down from my eyes as I coughed, sputtered, and finally collapsed in a heap.

Options.

What a load of shit.

I pushed myself up and got comfy on the ground. Sitting here so many times I’d worn a little comfortable groove into the dirt. I looked down at the shackle on my leg again and compared it with the steel hoof. All because of a little PipBuck on a treasure hunt. Hunting treasure and chasing ghosts... I wasn’t a hero, and now I was just a slave.

I slumped down a bit, and stared at the ground before me. Was this home now? I would be a good little slave and do whatever Amble wanted me to, kill for her, all for survival? Could I even call that surviving? I closed my eyes and hung my head.

What would Lost say?

“Behave, do what she says, we’ll get out,” she’d say. And then she’d give a weak smile and make me feel better. “I’ve got a plan,” she’d whisper. I’d believe her. Because Lost was a smart pony and she was good at working out details. I just needed to hold out.

“Ya gonna lose everythin’ that way,” Amble would say. She’d be right. The longer I waited and pushed my limits, the more chances she had to hurt, sell, or kill Lost. I’d rather take my chances with Wirepony again, at least it went straight for my hooves and didn’t taunt me about it. Okay, it did taunt me, but that wasn’t the same. It went on instinct and hunger, it didn’t want me as a toy.

“You’re not a toy, you’re my sister,” L.A. would remind me. Patience, she had a plan. We’d get out and go home. I trusted her. She’d saved me so many times before, this wouldn’t be any different.

“And just how ya gonna get out?” Amble would ask. “I’ve got the keys to ya collar.” The collar. Just like the PipBuck, another piece of technology strapped to me that changed my life forever. This one just held the end of my life within its steel grip, ready to go off at any second if I did something wrong.

I wouldn’t do anything wrong. I would be a good slave. It was the right thing to do. Give in and let her win, then bargain to make sure my sister was safe.

“She’s not going to keep that promise, you know that right?” asked Lost. She gave a smile and raised her eyebrows, “You can’t trust her.”

“I know, sis. But you-”

“Trust me Hidden, I have a plan,” she assured me. She always had a plan. “Just another few days.”

“Ya gonna believe that?” Amble snapped. A wicked grin spread across her face.

I shook my head. My mind was getting the better of me. The pen was empty, just me and my mind.

“That’s how we get ya,” whispered Amble. I felt her breath on my ear. A shiver ran down my spine.

“Stop it! You’re not real!” I yelled as loud as I could.

“Ya think so? I’m as real as the spikes in ya bones...” she whispered again. She was on the other side. I turned to look at her.

Nothing but brick and dirt.

I let out a soft sigh and turned away from the wall, settling back into my groove. Well, at least my yelling kept the guards from looking at me. I couldn’t be asleep if I was having a breakdown and yelling at nothingness. I looked in front of me.

Right at mom.

“Little one, are you okay?” she asked.

“No mom. I’m fucked up something fierce right now,” I answered. “And you’re dead.” I stared at her, wanting so bad to reach out and hold her. She could comfort me now, if only she were really there.

“Hidden, I’m here for you, like I always was. Trust your family, Lost knows what’s best,” she said. She looked perfect, no bullet holes, no scars. Her ear was whole again, not a single rust-colored hair was out of place in her mane. Even her PipBuck was intact. She trotted over and sat next to me. “I know that the Wasteland is hard, it always was, and will be for a long time probably. You just need to know how to survive. I taught you everything I knew, even though you didn’t listen to the first rule.” She nudged me gently, and pulled me against her.

I leaned over and rested against her. I cried softly, whispering, “I miss you, mom...”

“I know love, but I’m here now. Tell me what happened,” she said in her most comforting mom-voice. She wrapped one of her legs around me and hugged me close. Just like when I was a little filly... “What’s been going on since I was gone?”

“We followed your rule... For years. We spoke to traders once and a while, just like you did. Stay hidden away, stay lost from society,” I explained. My voice wavered. I tried to keep it calm, because I wanted to look like a big strong mare for mom. That’s what she wanted me to become. “There was a rumor... Dragons, treasure. I couldn’t help it. I dragged Lost off to a cave, and-”

“And what hun?” she asked, running her hoof through my mane. She traced her hooftip along the stripe that ran through it. I smiled up at her, feeling like I’d just gotten my cutie mark.

“Lost got shot.”

Her eyes widened and she stared at me. “Is she okay!?” she demanded.

“Yes, she told me what to do and I fixed her up... We found a PipBuck, like yours,” I said, tapping my steel hoof against the device. “Then things went to shi-” I realized I really shouldn’t swear in front of my mom. “Things were bad. We killed some ponies and zebras, and met some raiders. And then there was this wire monster. He ate my hoof...”

“Oh Goddesses, Hidden, what have you gotten into?” she asked. She cried, grabbing my steel hoof and holding it to her chest with both forehooves. “I never should have left the Stable.” She grabbed me and held me close, and it was all I could do to keep from breaking down completely.

“We’re okay mom, aside from being slaves,” I said, trying to sound like I had everything under control. “My hoof is fine, we made friends with Steel Rangers! A Knight, Praline, a friend. She fixed it for me. It’s better now, stronger. Like you wanted, we got stronger. We can survive.”

She looked down at me, and I felt like a filly again. But I survived. We both survived.

I didn’t tell her about the spikes in my shackles. The blood dried had flaked off days ago, so they just looked like normal hoofcuffs. I didn’t need her worrying any more than she was already. I wanted her to be happy, to be proud.

Pursing her lips, mom nodded. “Friends,” she whispered, distantly. She squeezed me in her hooves, frowning ever so slightly. “I’m proud you’ve made it this far.”

“Lost has a plan.”

“A plan that ain’t shit. She ain’t slept in days and ya talkin’ to yer dead mother,” snapped Amble at me from behind.

I spun around.

She sat there, right next to me, staring directly at me. I turned and looked back at the door. She’d never walked- Where was mom?

“Look, ya gonna be a good little bodyguard for me. I got faith in ya. Just admit it’s what ya want and we’ll be done here,” she said, raising a hoof in truce. “Know ya place, Miss Fortune. Know it and accept it. Yer gonna be happy once we put this unpleasantness behind us.”

“But-”

“No buts. Ya got three ways outta this,” she said, and hit me in the head with her hoof.

“Gettin’ sold.” Crack.

“Submittin’.” Crack.

“Dyin’.” CRACK!

I fell onto my side hard, splayed out in the dirt. I stared up at the sky and watched it change colors. The clouds swirled past glowing bright as Celestia’s sun broke past the cloud cover and shined on their undersides. I used to think it was beautiful, but now it was just the ceiling to the cage. A sky that sat above me and held me down. I laughed a little, what did I think I was, a pegasus?

The clouds grew darker as the sun passed behind the mountains. Tomorrow was the final day, where I made or broke everything. Lost’s safety, and my own, hung in my hooves. I held them up and stared past. Could I do it? Could I really admit that she knew what was best and admit that she owned me?

She seemed to know when I was lying.

I wanted to be a good pony, and keep everypony safe. I wanted my sister to live without fear of being sold, because I was terrified of her leaving me... If only I had the PipBuck, I’d have called Praline and got the Steel Rangers to rain fire down upon this town and reduce the whole of it to cinders. But I didn’t, I was on my own and I had to be strong enough to save the pony who meant the most to me in all the Wasteland all by myself.

I was a good sister. I was a good pony. I was a good slave.

“Are you gonna lay there all night? Get up, we need to talk,” said Lost. She looked down on me from between my hooves.

I poked her horn with my steel hoof, making her giggle.

“Up!” she said, and lifted me with her magic. It felt good, to have that familiar blue haze around me. She sat me down across from her and gave me a hug. “Feeling any better?” she asked with a smile.

“I guess, no,” I answered. I wasn’t sure. I felt better because I knew what I had to do, but I felt worse knowing the only answer. I needed to be a good little slave and acknowledge that she knew best. Because she held every single card in the deck. She could keep me safe and employed, with a room and food. She could keep my sister safe.

“As long as I do everything she says, to the letter, we can survive and buy time,” I told my sister. “Time to plan, food and sleep.”

“I have a plan Hidden, don’t give in just yet,” she said. She gave me a tight hug, and I curled against her. She wasn’t as good as mom, but then, nopony would ever be. But she was my sister, and I knew she knew best. She knew better than Amble, even if Amble held everything in her hooves.

“One more day?” I asked, giving her the most hopeful look I could muster.

“Just hold out one more day,” she said, squeezing me tight.

“I can do one more day...”

I could do one more day. A good slave obeys, and my sister was giving me an order. I could treat it like that, and it would be easy to follow.

“One more day’s more time than ya got,” snapped Amble, shoving my sister away. Lost vanished into the ether. “Ya take orders from me, and that’s all ya do. Ya understand?” she snapped. She sat across from me and stared into my eyes. “Ya got one, more, chance. Prove yerself, or I’ll kill the bitch myself.”

“Yes, Mistress!” I snapped, horrified.

“Good, see, was that so hard?” she asked. Her smile returned and she passed me a snack cake. I don’t know where she got it from. “Eat, my pet. Big day tomorrow...”

“What happens tomorrow?” I asked, taking the snack and eating it in a single bite. I didn’t really care where she’d gotten it.

“Tomorrow ya prove yerself. Tomorrow ya get yer sister back,” she cooed.

“Yes, of course,” I agreed. Tomorrow the torture ended. Tomorrow I became a murderer. Tomorrow I became a tool for her.

Tomorrow I got my sister back.

“Because you know best,” I whispered.

“And don’t ya forget it,” she whispered.

I sat alone in the room, surrounded by four brick walls. I sat in the dirt in my little groove. The sky was pitch black and freezing. Rain fell from the sky and turned my dirt to mud. When did it start raining? That didn’t matter. I wanted the sun to come up.

I needed to talk to Amble.

I needed to prove myself.

For my sister, I could admit Amble was in charge. I could admit she knew better. Because Amble knew how I could get my sister back.

“You win,” I whispered to the sky, to the rain and the clouds.

“You know best.”

* * *

Dawn of my final day. I considered my options. Do what Amble said and admit that she knew just what I should do to get what I wanted, or push my luck and end up banished to the moon like the legends about Princess Luna.

“How long do I have?” I asked the guard. I hoped the same guard as before would come to collect me, but Xeno’s luck decided to fail me. Not that I was surprised anymore.

The guard didn’t answer. He led me back to the pen with the rest of the earth ponies and ordered me inside. More time to sit and wait, sit and think about the ‘choice’ I got to make whenever Amble came to collect me. I prayed to the Goddesses it would be soon. I couldn’t sit through another episode like last night.

“I miss you, mom,” I whispered to nopony in particular. I swore I could still feel the softness of her coat and the warmth of her breath. If I failed, and Lost and I both died, would we get to see her again? Maybe that was a better ending to this whole situation.

Servitude to a psychopath, or a reunion with the two ponies the Wasteland took from me. I knew which I would-

“... okay?” asked Sourbelle. She placed her hoof on my shoulder and shook me just a little.

“What?” I asked. I looked at her and tried to smile. My lips wouldn’t pull the right way, so I just stared. “Sour?”

“Yeah...” she said, taking a step back.

“How have you survived so long?” I asked her, “You’ve been here longer than me, and you haven’t cracked. How?” I pointed a hoof at her, not completely accusingly, but more than a bit suspicious.

She sat next to me and looked at the ponies in the pen. The unity mares huddled together like they always did. One disappeared days ago, but the other three managed to stay strong. They spoke in hushed voices and looked around frantically. Maybe today was their last day too?

“I don’t know, to be honest,” she answered. “I don’t have anypony or anything for her to use against me. She hasn’t done much in terms of physical torture either. Everything...” she trailed off and looked at me. Her lip twitched and she bit down on it. “Everything slacked when you showed up.”

“Wha...” I asked, trying to piece it together. My brain didn’t respond. I hit myself in the head with my flesh forehoof to try and jumpstart, but I couldn’t piece together what she meant.

“She hasn’t been anywhere near as diligent on the rest of us since you showed up. It’s like every ounce of her will she’s put into breaking you,” she explained. Her voice faltered and she stared back at the unity mares. Those poor ponies.

“Well, that explains a lot. She’s good at her job...” I said, whispering the last part. I felt myself start to shake, even though I didn’t move from my spot.

“What? No! No, don’t give in!” Sourbelle yelled, grabbing me by the shoulders. She stared me right in the eyes, and I stared back. Did she always have freckles? “Don’t let her get in your head! You can get out of this.”

“How?” I asked. What did she know? “Unless you know some secret to escape, then there’s no choice. And you won’t know unless you’re not really a slave,” I said, grabbing her.

I slammed her down hard. “Are you?” I screamed. I put my hoof to her throat and pressed down. “You’ve been here a long time, and you’re still not broken.” I ground steel into her flesh and twisted. “What are you?”

She didn’t have time to answer before a guard pulled me off her. She cracked the whip across my back and neck and dragged me from the pen. Sourbelle didn’t get up, she just laid there on the ground, breathing heavily, and stared at me with an incredibly hurt look in her eyes.

“I’m your friend!” she yelled as the guard dragged me away.

Friend... That’s right. She’d been there when Lost couldn’t. She helped me when I needed it, listened and kept my spirits up. How dare I attack her, accuse her, like that.

“Caught you just in time, vermin,” she snapped. The whip fell across my back one more time. “Might as well start now.” She kept dragging me down the streets. We passed another guard and she barked an order, “Tell Amble. She’s ready.”

I didn’t struggle. I let her drag me down the broken streets, past the ruined buildings. I saw the other pens and the ponies inside. I saw Lead Line and Cherry Pick organizing a new group they’d brought in overnight. The place went like clockwork, and today was just my day to go off. At least I’d get my sister back when Amble knew I accepted that I belonged to her.

My collar felt heavier today.

The guard dragged me straight into Hard Sell’s little arena building and past whatever lobbies and rooms they had set up to make ponies wait and suffer. She threw me through the doorway and into the mane floor. I rolled to a stop and pushed myself up, now used to being treated so poorly.

Hard Sell stood at the far side of the room, a smile across his face. “Perfect timing my dear! Amble will be along in just a few minutes. Come, sit, relax,” he said, patting the floor next to him. Just a few more minutes until my fate was sealed. I could enjoy a relaxing sit until then.

I did as I was told and sat next to him. He patted me on the head with a hoof. I didn’t need praise for my timing, I didn’t get to choose when I showed up or left anyway, it was always up to Amble and her slavers.

Amble walked in with a similar smile. Her pink and purple mane was styled up and back today, and her hooves still sparkled from Bell Boot’s hooficure. She trotted up and stood right before me. Her smile disappeared and she cradled my jaw with a hoof. She pushed it up enough that I had to stare her in the eye.

“Well, this is yer big day. I hope ya make me proud,” she said solemnly. “Last chance,” she reminded me.

“Yes, Mistress. I’m ready,” I answered. I stood and trotted to the same place I’d stood twice before. I looked down at the floor. I didn’t want to know the pony I was about to kill. It would be better if I just did it on orders and didn’t feel anything. Listening to pleas for mercy or arguments about how strong I was would only hurt my resolve.

“When the pony walks in. Kill. Don’t think,” I repeated to myself, over and over under my breath so the slavers couldn’t hear.

“Open it!” ordered Hard Sell. The sound of hooffalls on the floor and the creak of a door meant his order was followed.

I stared at the rotting floorboards. Don’t think about the pony. Don’t think. Just do. Do as your ordered.

The hooffalls fell silent. I closed my eyes and skewed my ears toward Amble.

“Kill her.”

I hit the pony hard with my steel hoof. I heard the thud, and opened my eyes. A cyan coat. At least it wasn’t Lost. I hit her again, aiming for the head. I didn’t stop. The pony screamed for help. The sound of her skull cracking filled the air, almost louder than the screams.

I didn’t think about it.

Hooves flailed in vain. I stepped on one with my other hoof and kept my attack up. The floor creaked under my stomps. The cracking got louder. The voice stopped crying for me to stop. She was dying. I did as I was told. Stomp. Crack. Stomp. Crack. Blood ran along the floor. My hoof was covered in blood as well. I kept going.

I kicked her hard in the throat. Her struggling stopped. I turned and bucked a few times, slamming her head with my rear hooves. I didn’t think about it. I just did it. I looked at Amble. She smiled wide, nudging Hard Sell and pointing at me.

She was happy with me. I did as she asked. She broke me.

I smashed down one last time. The body shuddered. A metallic thud sounded against the floorboards. A single hoofcuff bounced.

I looked back at Amble, then down at the pony she made me kill.

No...

I looked over at Amble again. “How could you!” I screamed, and fell to my haunches. At... At least it wasn’t Lost. I threw up, mixing the blood with whatever still sat in my stomach. I couldn’t...

“Easily. Tell me, Miss Fortune. Who’s the one in charge?” she asked.

“You are, Mistress,” I answered, not thinking about it. I didn’t make another outburst. I didn’t want her to know how bad that was. I didn’t want her to see me as weak, or unworthy of her time. If she didn’t think I was hers entirely, I might not see Lost. I had to play the game, and I believed every bit of it. “You know best. I do as you say, because I cannot be trusted with making decisions,” I explained. Just like she’d told me.

“Because I’m a murderer, a tool for you.”

“Good, ya finally get it,” she announced and trotted over. “Come. Let’s go make preparations for this afternoon. I have big plans...” She walked past me, and I got up to follow. I couldn’t help it. I took one last look.

Goodbye.

Sourbelle.

I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. It hurt more that the last thing I’d ever said to her was accusing her of being something she wasn’t. It hurt that Amble got so deep into my mind, into my soul, that I couldn’t trust a pony who’d been nothing but nice to me.

I’m sorry. But, it was for my sister...

She’d understand, right?

Goddesses, please save me from what I’ve become.

* * *

Time dulled the hurt. I didn’t feel much of anything. I sat in Amb- Mistress’ office and stared into space. I wasn’t listening to her. She hadn’t called for me, so there wasn’t a reason to pay attention to her words. I just sat and didn’t think. I waited until I was called for. Waited to do as I was told. It was simple. I don’t know why I’d fought it so hard, if all I had to do was take orders and do whatever Mistress said, and I got to see Lost... I chuckled to myself, quietly so she wouldn’t be interrupted.

It was so easy.

I heard bits and pieces, ‘collar,’ ‘sister,’ ‘kill,’ ‘proud.’ Proud stuck out the most. Either she was proud of me or she thought I should be proud of myself. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to think about it. She needed to give an order so I could do something. I didn’t want to make a decision on my own.

Because I was a murderer.

Decisions meant that I chose whether ponies died. Sourbelle would be the last pony to shed blood on my hooves of my choice. I would listen to orders and be the best damned bodyguard she ever had, because that meant I could get to my sister.

Lost would understand, right?

She slammed her hooves down on her desk and glared at the steel colored mare that stood on the other side of her office's half wall. She yelled, “Dammit Hoof I wanted this shit done t’night! Ya have any idea how long I been pushin’ for this one to break?”

Hoof Pick, I thought that was Cherry Pick’s sister? She shrunk back and shook her head several times. “Don’t know what ya expect of me! Cherry and I have been pulling double-time because you’ve been so wrapped up in this special case of yours,” she said, pointing an accusing hoof at me. “Err, not that there’s a problem! It just means our work gets scattered a bit. Tomorrow morning, first thing. Promise.” She raised a hoof and held it across her heart, made a little cross and stuck it into her eye.

I didn’t matter exactly what she was saying, I’d already missed too much of the conversation. My eyes just trailed to the floor and I went back to staring off at nothingness in the distance. Tomorrow something happened. Too bad what happened didn’t matter, I’d still have the collar on and still be a murderer.

“Will I get to see my sister?” I interrupted. I knew it was a bad idea, but I didn’t really think before I said it. That was how I always acted though, never a thinky pony, always a pony who acted then worried. Mistress was right. I wasn’t to be trusted with making decisions, I just proved it with a perfect example. I spoke out of turn without thinking, because I never thought.

I waited for my punishment.

Both slavers turned and stared at me. A dark purple set of eyes held relief mixed with rage. A lighter purple set, Mistress’, sparkled with amusement. I broke eye contact and stared at the floor.

“Well, a promise is a promise,” Amble admitted reluctantly. “And considerin’ the problems this one-” she shot Hoof Pick a glare, “-has caused, I suppose ya can tonight instead of tomorrow.” She smiled and stood up. “Come, we’ll go move her with ya.” She motioned for me to follow, and I did. She stopped short though, and stared at Hoof Pick. “Get it fixed, or I put a collar on yer sister. The tricks I used on her can work on ya.” She jabbed the mare roughly and walked past. “I’ll make ‘em work if I gotta.”

The two of us walked from her office past a shivering Hoof Pick, and out into the afternoon light. Amble stepped lightly, nearly prancing as she walked. Apparently she was very happy with her success in breaking my will to think, or act, or survive, or... anything really. I followed with my head hung low, the collar feeling particularly heavy now. Even the spikes in my bones felt worse than just a few hours ago, and I was in agony with every step.

I ignored it as best I could. Every step brought me closer to a much-needed reunion with Lost Art. Tomorrow I could worry about assignments or chores or whatever the slaver had planned for me. Tonight I just wanted to relax, curl up in my sister’s hooves, and pass out without thinking about anything that happened in the previous week.

I didn’t ever want to think again. I couldn’t really, that was beaten out of me already. Did Lost’s plan still matter? If we were together, and had a place to live and work and she was safe...

She threw me into the solitary again, I found my groove and sat. She smiled at me and said, “Ya did good, my pet. Tomorrow’s ya big day.” Tomorrow being a big day terrified me. Whatever she had planned couldn’t be good. I’d need to to do the best job I could, though. I needed to do the job that allowed me to stay with my sister.

The door closed and I sat with nothing but my thoughts.

“Mom... Are you proud of me too?” I asked nopony in particular. “I got stronger, in the worst way. I did what I had to, to protect my sister. Does it still count?” I waited, hoping she’d appear again. Even if she wasn’t really my mom, just the sight of her would make it a little bit better. Just something to tide me over until Lost showed up.

I stared into space, praying to the Goddesses and to my mother for I don’t know how long. Some other pony must have needed a lot more help than me... Maybe the hero they mentioned on the radio needed help right now?

I missed the radio a lot.

What an odd thing to find important right now... I looked up at the sky. The sun was sinking low, casting long shadows across the clouds and lighting up just a sliver of the walls holding me in. Another night alone... Even though Amble promised.

She did promise didn’t she?

I got a prize for doing what she wanted... Or was the prize not being punished?

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The door rattled on its hinges and creaked open slowly. I looked over and watched as the black guard who had collected Lost after her beating walked in. A helmet matted down her mane, pushing it over one eye, and she wore a massive silenced rifle on her back, she just smiled at me. I looked back at the floor. Another pony come to tell me that my sister wasn’t coming to see me? She stepped to the side.

Lost walked in.

She looked damn-near perfect. Splint gone, eyepatch missing, her coat actually clean, and the chip in her horn barely noticeable. She looked amazing. A big smile spread across her lips, she ran over, and grabbed me in the biggest hug I could ever remember feeling. She held me for a long while, but it took nearly a minute before my brain caught on and I hugged her back.

Affection seemed so distant.

“Lost they-”

“Not now, we have to get out. Tonight,” she said, looking up at the towers.

“But the guard...” I whispered, pointing at the rifle-carrying-slaver.

"Xeno," Lost said, gesturing to the waiting guard.

The guard took off her hat and shook her head a few times. Her mane popped up into a grey and white mohawk, and she smiled at me. “Silly pony, you didnot think I would come?” she asked, her accent nowhere near as thick as I remembered. She rubbed a hoof against her cheek, brushing black powder away to reveal her light grey stripes. “It is very interesting what you can do with a good lie and some luck.”

“But I...” I stuttered. It was her! I knew it! Why hadn’t I just trusted myself? Because I didn’t believe it could be true? I didn’t trust myself, not after everything Amble had said. I let go of Lost, and trotted over to the zebra. I raised my hooves to hug her-

-only to find the sniper rifle pressed against my chin.

“Sit. There are guards watching,” she said, looking up with just her eyes. She shifted her haunches and put the helmet back on, pushing her mohawk back down, and brushed it to cover where she’d wiped the black cover off. “I wondered how long until you pretended... She is a very bad pony. Playing along with her game is best.”

I did as she ordered. Pretended. Right...

“I will be waiting. We have not much time,” Xeno explained with a frown. She stepped out the door and closed it behind her. A loud click echoed as she locked us back in.

“But, Lost-”

She pressed a hoof to my mouth, and I wretched a little. Tasted the same as when this whole ordeal started. I coughed and scraped my tongue a little. “Shh, sis. Like you say, listen now, worry later.” She sat and pulled me close. “Amble came in, ordered me out. Said we get a night together.”

“I- I did what she said,” I admitted, tears forming in the corners of my eyes. “She got me...” I tried to tell her what happened, only to be stopped with her hoof against my mouth again.

"Hidden, I promise we can talk later, but right now..." she said. She gave me a look, then looked up at the guards. “Xeno’s dealing with the guards now, we need to move.”

I nodded a few times. Listen, take orders.

“Remember I told you I had a plan? Well, I need you to do exactly as I say, and we can get out, okay?” she asked. The look in her eyes... I wanted to trust her. She was my sister, she had a plan. She always managed to get me out of trouble. Saving me was practically her special talent!

“I can’t... I...” I said, shaking my head. I pointed at the bomb collar and held up my shackled forehoof to her. “We can’t leave. If we stay I can keep us safe! We have a home and a-”

“Shut it.”

I silenced myself.

“This is not safe, Hidden. This was never safe. Any moment she could tell you to do something you can't do, and then she'll sell or kill me,” she said, a hurt look crossing her eyes. She took her glasses off and stared at me. “I can get us out, trust me.”

I wanted to... But if all of this was in my head, then it would crumble the minute we tried something. I didn’t know what was the truth anymore. She kept telling me she had a plan, though. I should.

“Please?”

I nodded. “Just tell me what to do,” I whispered. I could take orders.

“Hrk!” yelled a voice from above. Thud. Thud.

I looked up at the guards. One stood the same as always, looking out over the wall through the scope of her rifle. The other I couldn’t see. Probably out of sight guarding something. I looked back at Lost. A smile crept across her lips again and she moved toward the door.

“C’mon, we don’t have a lot of time,” she said.

The door creaked open and Xeno poked her head in. “Sisters, we must go. They willnot be still forever,” she said, looking at me with one deep blue eye from underneath the slaver cap. A little wisp of smoke trailed from the barrel of her rifle, just barely enough to see.

Lost walked past her and looked side to side. Both motioned for me to follow.

I stepped forward.

I tried to step forward.

My legs didn’t listen. Amble would catch us. The punishment would be terrible. I didn’t want to test that mare. I knew just how far she could push things. The collar... The shackles... She’d just let my sister die, Xeno would be taken as an exotic pet, I’d be forced to kill-

I shuddered. Not even Amble was that cruel.

“Hidden, come on!” snapped Lost. She sounded urgent, almost ordering me.

I tried. Amble’s hold ran deep. Every time I moved my hooves, they just shook in the air and fell back where they’d been. My breathing came ragged and I looked up at the guards. The minute she found out.

“Great misfortune will come to us if you donot come quickly,” said Xeno, looking up at the guards as well.

I finally walked forward like she ordered. I followed the two of them into the street as they rounded a corner and ducked into an alleyway. Xeno exchanged nods with my sister and then left us. As she trotted back around the corner to the mane street, a cigarette found its way to her mouth and left a trail of smoke behind her as she walked.

“Lost,” I whispered, stepping closer to her, “what is the plan?” I looked back behind us, terrified one of the guards would find us. If Slipstock managed to catch me trying to escape, there wasn’t any way I would survive.

“We need to get the remote. Amble keeps it on her, so we’re going to distract her,” she answered, tapping her hoof slowly. She didn’t look at me, but instead stared at the rotten and rusted roofs all around us. “We’ll steal it while she’s busy, then have Xeno walk us out. We say she’s following Amble’s orders.”

I whispered, “What about-”

“Hidden. Drop the act. I know you’re stronger than this, we can get out,” Lost snapped. She looked at me hard, but her expression softened. “We’ll get through this. We’re going straight home. Follow me.” She darted across the road and to an alley across the way, behind another nearly destroyed brick building and into the darkness.

I did as she told me to, and followed across to the other alley. Somewhere in the compound, shouts rose as foul, choking smoke wafted across the street.

An explosion shook the ground beneath my hooves, sending shocks of pain up my legs from the spikes. I closed my eyes and tumbled forward the last few hooves into the alley. Scrambling back up onto my hooves, I looked out past the corner of the building into the street.

Down several blocks a fire blazed where once sat a pile of wooden ruins from some long forgotten building. Another explosion tore through the air and startled me enough to send me onto my haunches. Hooves reached out and pulled me back into the shadows of the alley. They held me tight and spun me around. I looked up, and my sister nodded for me to follow.

We scrambled through the alleyways, staying out of sight from the mane roads. Every step Lost took seemed to have a purpose, and I just followed as best I could. I stopped when she stopped and I ran when she ran.

The entire town went crazy. The sound of our hooffalls in the alleyways were drowned out by the slavers and guards running from place to place, as they grabbed tools and water in buckets and magic to fight the fires.

“Pretties!” called a voice, “I know what you’re doing. It won’t work!” The guard with the blinding light, she was the one who called us pretties. I shuddered, remembering the hollow white eyes that seemed to see everything. If she found us in the alleyways, we’d be proper fucked. Amble had already proven that she could do terrible things, and I didn’t need to see another example.

Lost didn’t falter. She stopped when she heard the voice and set her raised hoof down slowly. Her ears flicked and she leaned against the wall. I did the same, following her lead.

The grungy grey mare ran past on the mane road, her sunglasses covering her eyes. She glanced down the far alley as she ran. “You!” she yelled at somepony, “Check every building. Check every alley.” She spoke like a mare on a mission, and I hoped she was the worst we’d have to deal with.

“Ma’am!” yelled a guardpony. She galloped off, calling for others.

We moved forward to the edge of the alley, crouched low to stay out of sight, and peeked around the corner. I wanted to go back to the solitary pen and wait this out, be a good slave. But I had to be a good sister, because Lost needed me. If she got caught, and I wasn’t there to take the brunt of the punishment, then she might be killed.

Or worse.

Xeno trotted up behind the white-eyed mare. “Flood Light. Reports of ponies, slaves, setting off the fire. I sug-” Another explosion interrupted Xeno, and both mares faltered as shrapnel flew through the street.

“Fuck ‘em. Flashbang’ll find any who try to escape. Patrol the roads, keep an eye on the alleys and sewers. Got it?” she asked, taking her glasses off with her magic and glaring at Xeno with her dead eyes.

“Yes madam,” replied the disguised zebra with a salute.

Lost just grinned. “Perfect.”

“The fuck is goin’ on here!” screamed the Slave Mistress, loud enough that I swore her voice was magically enhanced. I couldn’t see where she was, and her voice was so loud that it could be coming from anywhere. “Ya! Get the unicorns to their pen. Ya! Earth ponies to pen three! Lock down the room or I’ll sell ya myself.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” whispered my sister. She crept out from the alleyway, hugging the side of the building I was behind, and ran to the next alleyway. I silently thanked the Goddesses that Flood Light was distracted by Xeno and the yelling.

I wanted to follow. I tried. Xeno looked over and raised an eyebrow. I knew she meant for me to go while Flood Light was distracted. I swallowed hard. I ran. My side dragged against the wall. I cut it too close. I needed to get out of sight. Before Flood Light or Mistress saw me.

Flood Light’s horn lit up and cast a long shadow from me across the wall of the building. Her hooves shifted, clopping hard on the shattered pavement. She saw me. I knew it. We were dead. Punishments would follow. They’d be terrible.

“Madam,” said Xeno, clearing her throat.

The hooffalls stopped, and the light disappeared.

“Speak,” the grungy guardpony ordered.

Xeno spoke when ordered. I got around the corner and into the ruins of the next building, through it rather than past it. I didn’t hear whatever she said to distract Flood Light.

My tail hung low behind me, my hooves felt heavy. The shackles must have been heavier than I’d thought. I looked at my sister as she motioned for me to follow. We climbed a collapsed ceiling into a room full of skeletons from the War. I hoped for better luck surviving than they’d had. We ran through the room, out into a hallway. Down the hall, past a bathroom still spewing out irradiated water from a broken pipe, two centuries after plumbing should have stopped working.

Lost pushed aside a dresser, and looked through the broken wall, down at the street. Ponies ran back and forth below us. Whips and batons were out in force. Unicorns carried buckets full of water. Some carried the water in giant wobbling spheres in their magic.

I laughed a little to myself. Cheater magic. I laughed at how little it mattered now.

Lost stepped outside onto the ledge, in plain sight of the ponies below. She trotted along the outside and onto the roof above. It creak loudly, but it held her weight just fine.

Trotting in place for a moment, I forced myself to follow. I was stronger than this, dammit! I killed a fucking monster pony that ate my hoof! I ran circles around it, shot the fucker to pieces, and blew it back to Equestria. I could beat a simple earth pony who fucked with my mind!

I stepped out onto the ledge and ran to the roof. It hurt, every step, but I made myself. I had to. I had to listen to my sister. She’d lead me out.

Mistress’ voice carried above the noise. “Get it out now! I swear, if a single one of ya fucks this up. I’ll murder the lot of ya!” she screamed. The fire spread behind us, taking over another building. Black smoke rose from the blaze, mixing with the dark clouds overhead. “Lock everything down! Flashbang, seal the exits!”

Lost jumped across to another building, and I followed. She didn’t say anything. We didn’t need words. She ducked through a shattered section of roof, and down into some family’s bedroom. I jumped down to the wooden floor below, landing hard enough to rattle the building.

The floor collapsed. The two of us fell into a heap, both yelping when we hit the ground. I looked over. She looked back. We covered our mouths with our hooves. As if the gesture would keep guards from hearing us.

No guards came.

A light shone through the window. Flood Light’s horn. We dove. If she found us, we were through. I hid myself under the fallen bed. Lost ducked out of the room into the kitchen. The light passed slowly, almost catching me. I curled as tight as I could to keep out of sight. Let no light hit me. No shadow. I could be quiet and go without being seen.

For years we’d avoided ponies. It was just what we did.

The light passed. I breathed a sigh of relief. One more step done.

“Clear!” I called to Lost. I got up, bolted from the room. I tried to remember what mom taught us. How to stay out of sight of ponies.

Seeing her brought so much back. It hit me hard. I wanted to stop running. I wanted to submit. To sleep. To dream and remember. I had to get out. Mistress would catch me if I stayed. Out the back door, through a gap between two buildings where trash piled up and blocked the view from the street. More ponies yelled, slaves this time. They screamed in unison, demanding to know what was going on. We didn’t stop.

Just keep moving, I told myself. Save ourselves.

Through another alleyway. Down another broken cobblestone path to the mane street. Hide and wait. Guards ran by. They dragged slaves behind them, moving ponies from place to place to keep them away from the fire.

Caps meant more than the short term health. Ponies could be healed. Dead ponies didn’t turn a profit. Slipstock’s voice yelled through the commotion. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but I recognized her voice. I ran faster.

A guard stepped in front of us, at the edge of the alley.

Lost and I froze. The guard stared right at us. She said nothing. Looking away, she tilted her head and stepped off.

“No ponies here. Itis clear!” she yelled, and ran off.

Lost ran across. I waited. We got closer to Mane Attractions, I recognized the ruins around us. The salon sat just down the street.

The fire spread to another building. That’s what the slavers were yelling. I didn’t stop to think about it. We didn’t have time. Just kept running. Past ruins. Across the road. Down an alley. Blocked. We turned and ran back, Lost didn’t look happy. Her plan wasn’t perfect? What had Xeno set on fire anyway?

That bright light shined down the road again. I skid to a stop to avoid it. My steel hoof dug into the broken pavement, and I threw myself back hard. I hit some rubble with a crunch. Separated from Lost. I felt blood. Bad bad bad. A trail of blood would lead them to us. Just like the bloodwings.

Flood Light ran past, gnashing her teeth loudly. A white stallion dressed in black followed her, with glasses sitting above his horn. Both guards with the same hollow eyes, just like the pony auctioned yesterday. Would Amble really sell these ponies’ brother? The stallion turned and looked right at me.

I didn’t move an inch. Play dead, just like playing along.

He turned away and ran off. Was he actually blind, or faking it like Flood Light seemed to? Did it matter? I got up and followed, staying in out of their line of sight. The two of them running masked the sound of my steel hoof hitting the road.

I needed to find Lost. She must be going for the detonator. Mistress kept it somewhere safe. The distraction had to work. I saw the salon and ran to it. I slammed into the door, hard enough that I heard a crack as my nose shattered against it.

Falling back, I stared at the blood smear left where I hit. With my steel hoof, I cracked my nose back into place. It hurt, but I didn’t scream. Glass not shattering was new, but if it had survived two centuries and the destruction of the world, my head wasn’t nearly hard enough to break it. Lost peeked out from behind the half-wall where Mistress’ desk sat.

How’d she known how to get in? I tapped the glass to let her know I was there. I’d been sitting in the road too long. This was bad. I couldn’t afford to be seen. This was too obvious. Raising a hoof, I tried to clean the blood away, but only made it worse. “Fuck!” I snapped, and slammed my forehead into the door. I looked back up.

I couldn’t see my sister.

“Hay!” yelled a stallion’s voice. “Let us out, too!”

I turned and saw a pen across the way. Cluster, the pony who nearly killed my sister, yelled to me, his hoof through the fence of the pen. I shook my head.

Xeno trotted up next to me and grabbed me by the collar. “Got one!” she yelled, dragging me to the ground and standing on me. I prayed this was an act. She stomped on my head, and I crumpled. Two guards ran up and nodded to her.

“Good job, throw ‘er in the pit. Vice can deal with her later,” said the guard, a mare with a big scar across her face and up her horn. She pointed the direction we’d come in. “Fire’s getting worse. Toss her and help with that.”

“Right,” Xeno said and stomped on me again. The two other guards ran off, but only after kicking me in the side.

“Arg!” I yelled, curling from the attacks.

“You arenot a smart pony today,” she said, taking her hoof off me.

“I’m sorry... That slave,” I said, pointing. “That’s the one that hurt Lost.” I glared at him from the ground. That brilliant green eye, the empty socket. I’d never forget that raider. I wanted him dead. If Mistress had given me the order to kill him, I’d have been happy to.

“Hay! If she’s on our side, make her let us out!” Cluster yelled, sticking his head through the bars.

“So he is,” Xeno said. “I shall handle it.” She slid the rifle up off her back and stood on her hind legs. Bracing against the salon window, she fired a silent shot straight through Cluster’s good eye. The back of his head exploded in a shower of blood, bone, and brains that covered the ponies behind him. The few that weren’t already panicking began to scream.

He slumped down, one leg and what remained of his head still stuck through the bars. Blood dripped from his bottom jaw and the whole pen creaked under the weight.

“Revenge,” she said, tossing her gun back and dropping back to all four hooves. “We must hurry, Hiddenpony. To the office of Lead Line. We must get out.” She helped me up.

“I... I wanted to.”

“We donot have time. The fires will only distract for so long. Go!” she ordered. Her tone wasn’t one I could argue against. I did what she said, and bolted past the pen to another alley. I prayed Lost would meet up with me. If it was her plan, she must know the next step.

I wanted to know how she’d gotten into the salon, though. I’d ask later. Once we were safe. It didn’t matter right now. Getting out did.

“Whoever killed my fuckin’ guards. I will end you!” screamed Mistress Amble’s voice over the din of ponies moving around.

I ran back behind another building. The distraction was good so far. The guards all focused on the fire and making sure that pens and rooms stayed locked. Xeno’s magic luck followed me so far. I just had to get down another few blocks to Lead Line’s office. Then we could sneak down the tunnel we came in. They’d lock the gates, but one mare who focused on books against three of us, we’d win. We’d escape.

“MISS FORTUNE! STOP. NOW!” she screamed.

I froze in my tracks.

Whoever managed to make her voice carry so far and so loud was a unicorn I could respect, if only because the sheer volume scared the shit out of me.

I stood still as stone, not even lowering my rear hoof back to the ground. I shook. I hated it. I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t move. I saw Lost in the alley, staring past me at the remains of Cluster. I saw her smile, then wave her hoof to get me to follow. I stared, crying. I wanted to. I whispered, “Go. Forget me.”

I remembered the detonator. What happened if we got too far? What about the two other ponies attached? What if the fire got them? Would that detonate the collars? Would all these slaves die just so the two of us could escape?

“Hidden. Now!” Lost yelled. She waved for me to run. I couldn’t.

The sound of hooffalls echoed down the street. Two lights reflected from different directions off buildings down different roads. They’d catch me. We were done for.

“Hidden!” Lost yelled again. I didn’t answer. Grimacing, she stomped her hooves a few times.

“I can’t!” I yelled back, trying my hardest to make her understand. “She got to me, Sis... She won.” I started to cry. “She broke me, made me kill.”

“Hidden, she didn’t. You did what you had to to get out,” she said, taking a step forward. “We all do that, it’s fine. Now come on. We have to go.” She looked over her shoulder, out toward the street.

“I want to!” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “I can’t move my legs even when I try. I can’t disobey!”

Lost paused for a moment and screwed her eyes shut. Her hoof came up and tapped against her forehead. “Miss Fortune. March!” she yelled and pointed to the ground in front of her.

I ran as fast as I could to her and nearly bowled into her. She got out of the way in time, and I stopped before I hit her or the wall. I did it. I did what she said, and not what the Slave Mistress said. I could beat this!

The guards ran past, back toward the fires. They shouted something, lost to the sound of ponies battling the flames. I know they said my name, but I didn’t listen to it. I covered my ears and blocked it out. I didn’t need to lock up again.

Lost flashed the detonator. She held it close with her magic, her horn giving a spark every now and then where the chip was taken out. We ran through another alleyway, dodging the smoke that billowed out of the shattered windows. The fires took over more buildings, and we were running out of time. Either the flames and smoke would get us, or the guards would find us as they tried to follow the moving blaze.

We ran from the alleyway into an open road. No guards patrolled here, as they all worked to keep the fires at bay. We ran down the road, dodging cracks in the pavement and stopped right at the door to Lead Line’s office. Just another few minutes, and we’d be free.

Lost stopped me with a hoof, and looked in through the window. I peeked in through a corner as well. Lead Line crouched in front of the trap door that led out of her office and to the outside. Lost cracked open the door, and we both stepped in, me on three hooves to keep from making too much noise.

Lead Line fumbled some chains in her magic, locking up the door. Shit, she was locking our only way out! I wanted to scream and charge her, but Lost stopped me by holding the detonator in front of my face. I grabbed it in a fetlock and looked over at her.

“Fucking slaves. An escape attempt like this’ll ruin us,” she grumbled to herself. “Profits will be shot for months with all this damage.” She slammed her hooves on the chains and pulled them together with her magic.

Lost’s horn began to glow again, sparking silent flashes of light every few seconds. She strained, clenching one eye shut. One of the folders from Lead Line’s desk lifted into the air, a faint, barely visible haze wrapped around it. Slowly, Lost closed the folder, all while gritting her teeth to force the magic. She took a few steps forward, nearly silent under the constant grumbling of the slaver.

A lock lifted from the ground and wrapped around the chains.

“Drop it,” Lost snapped.

“Aw shit,” whispered the purple unicorn. She lifted her head and looked at us, not dropping the lock as Lost ordered. “Make me. It’ll cost you.”

“Fine,” said my sister, her tone serious. The folder flashed through the air and cut across the mare’s neck.

Blood splattered through the air, onto L.A.’s face.

To the bitch’s credit, she didn’t even scream. She just smirked and slammed the lock closed around the chains, locking them in place. With the lock shut, she let it go and collapsed onto the floor with it. Blood poured from her neck, coating the chains and forming a puddle on the wooden floor.

“Good riddance,” said my sister, tossing the folder over her face. She looked relieved, but breathed heavily. It happened in an instant, and the mare was dead. My sister was a murderer just like I was, but this was for survival, not because we’d snuck into some pony’s home and waited.

I shook my head.

“Fuck!” my sister screamed, at the lock. She slammed her hooves down on it, and kicked it. “There’s no key. It’s a combination lock.” She flipped the lock over and looked at the back. “No combination here. It might be written somewhere. Help me find it!” She grabbed the folder in her magic again, grimaced, and flipped it open to search.

I grabbed the detonator with my mouth, held it there very very carefully, and started on the desk. None of the folders held anything that looked like a combination, so I tossed them to the floor and scrambled to find any numbers written or carved or anything on the top of the desk.

Lost screamed in frustration and ran over. Together the two of us tried every drawer to find anything we could that might help us get the lock off. Even a pair of cutters to snip the chains might help. We didn’t find anything, aside from detailed paperwork about how much profit could be made off each slave, as well as particulars about where they were captured and how their processing went. Part of me wanted to find my and my sister’s information, but we didn’t have time.

Xeno ran through the door and slammed it shut behind her. She didn’t have her helmet on, and the stripes on the side of her face were plainly visible. “We must go, ponies. Theyare getting closer,” she said, pulling the helmet from her back and pushing it back over her mane. “Down in the tun- Why is this pony dead?” She looked over at us.

“She’s a slaver; I killed her because she was in our way. But she locked us in,” L.A. explained, pointing to the chains and the lock.

“You didnot get the key from her first?” Xeno asked, her eyes wide in confusion.

“No, I didn’t see it was a combination lock. Not until afterward,” Lost said, walking around the desk and grabbing the slaver’s corpse. She turned her over twice, looking underneath her, then kicked the body one last time. “New plan. Take us out the front gate.”

Xeno and I both stared at Lost like she’d just asked us to go to the moon.

“Are you kidding? There’s no way the gate’s still open! Is there even a gate?” I screamed, dropping the detonator to my forehoof. I slumped back onto my haunches in defeat.

This was bad. This plan wasn’t going according to the plan. That made no sense! We couldn’t get out the way we came in. Were there even any other ways to get in? Why did I think we could even escape in the first place? Mistress was going to find me, and... I grabbed onto the collar and tugged at it.

I didn’t want to go back. I couldn’t.

“They let ponies in for auctions, and they probably don’t want their secret passage to become common knowledge,” Lost said, matter-of-factly. “There has to be a front gate somewhere. Xeno? Any ideas?”

“Yes, itis a short distance. This is quite the gamble, sisters. We donot know if my luck will change,” Xeno said with a somber look in her eyes. She was completely right. So far the escape attempt had gone well, and pushing our limits would most likely get us caught.

Still, it was better than my plan, which was to give up.

“Let’s go then,” Lost said. She grabbed the detonator from my hoof and stuffed it into Xeno’s saddlebags. “You got our stuff, right?” she asked as she looked in the bag.

“Yes, itis all safely hidden outside the walls. We must go now though. The slavers will be catching up to us soon,” Xeno said. She locked the saddlebag tight and motioned for us to leave the room. With a look back at the dead slaver, we all ran for the gate.

With Xeno with us, we didn’t need to take the alleyways. Instead, every time a guard looked toward us, we’d slow to a strained trot and make it look as if Xeno were taking us back to a pen. Most of the ponies knew me as Mistress’ special project, and didn’t bother to question whatever special rules might be governing us. Xeno seemed to have snuck in and made herself one of them easily enough that nopony thought she might be a zebra in disguise.

Her luck really was legendary, considering her muzzle and eyes were distinctly zebra-shaped. We found our way to the gate without incident. No guards stood watch, all gone to help with the fire.

I looked back at the town. The fires were slowly dying down, as the slavers put them out and worked to clean up the mess we’d created. Screams were getting quieter, and even the smoke was dissipating. It did its job though; now we just had to walk out.

The gate was closed, but not locked. Whoever closed it must have been in a hurry, to leave it without a single bolt or chain. But, considering the distraction, there might not have been time. Every other slave had been locked down, and we’d managed to hide in the shadows to keep from being noticed. Only Mistress knew I was missing, but with her shouting, every pony in the area must have quickly figured it out as well. But they hadn’t- I was thinking too much!

Xeno and I pushed the door open, and we ran through without shutting it. The goal was to get as far away from this miserable place, and deal with consequences of the past week later. Xeno said our things were taken care of, so we just needed to get out and go.

Sunbright’s voice cut through the air, and chilled my spine. “Leavin’ so soon?”

Together, the three of us stopped and spun around. The orange-yellow pony stood on her hind legs, braced up against the wall just beyond the door’s frame. In her magic hung a magical energy weapon that matched the hollow outline of her cutie mark. It floated idly by her head, not yet aimed at us.

“And here I thought what we had was special,” she said, staring right at Lost. “I taught ya so much, and this is how ya repay me? And ya?” She pointed the gun at Xeno. “Ya workin’ with them? Jeez, findin’ good help these days...” She dropped down onto all four hooves and trotted up next to us.

Lost’s horn lit up and a burst of blue energy passed right by the bodyguard’s face. When did Lost learn how to do that?

Blinking several times at the near miss, Sunbright looked at my sister. “Really? Is that all ya got?” she asked, sounding bored. She looked the three of us over, and hoisted her gun. She pulled the trigger with her magic. The rifle sparked, but nothing came out. “Smarter than I thought,” she snapped, and threw the gun to the ground.

Lost just smirked, despite the sweat already forming on her face. Just what had they done to her magic?

With how much trouble I’d had beating Slipstock, with my guns, I shuddered to think how bad this was going to be.

“Okay, Amble wants ya both alive,” she said, and pointed at Xeno. “Yer dead though. Come with me, and we do this the easy way. I understand, nopony wants to be a slave.” She shrugged her shoulders and placed a hoof on her neck. “Collar’s too itchy.” She scratched where a collar would have sat. “C’mon now.”

Lost fired another blast of energy at her, brighter than the first. She grimaced as she did, clenching her eyes and focusing hard. The blast hit dirt, sending a spray of dust into the air. When it cleared, Sunbright was nowhere to be seen.

Had... had Lost just completely disintegrated her?

Sunbright reappeared and bucked my sister in the side of the head, then went invisible again. Lost faltered, but caught herself. We both looked to where Sunbright had just been. What just happened?

Cheater magic was lost on me most of the time, but I knew I’d seen Sunbright pull that disappearing trick before. She disappeared and reappeared the first time I saw her, so many days ago... so I ducked.

A hoof appeared above me, then faded just as fast. An invisible pony. Great.

“Xeno! Go, wherever you hid it. We need our stuff,” Lost yelled.

“I have the only gun, pony,” Xeno started. “Would not I-”

Lost cut her off with a glare. “She can light ponies on-”

Before she could finish her sentence, an orange glow radiated from nowhere, and Xeno’s mane burst into flames. She looked much like Lost did when she’d ended up on the wrong end of Seethe’s flamer.

Somehow, through luck or skill, Xeno reacted faster than L.A. had, and managed to trip herself into a roll. She scrambled to her hooves, the fire snuffed, and bolted. Deep down, I prayed that our possessions were safe, and that L.A. knew exactly where to meet up. Lost was a smart pony, there had to be something planned.

“One down,” said Sunbright’s voice from nowhere, taunting us. The orange glow of her horn appeared again, creating an eerie outline of her invisible face. The cracked ground around us started to ignite. Sparks flared up to full flames while the slaver laughed.

I started to panic. Fire and I didn’t get along, at all. With her locking us in a small ring, we’d be taken back, and something terrible would happen to punish us for what we’d done. I couldn’t help notice, somewhere deep in my mind, that fire started our escape, and fire would end it. I looked back and forth, before racing toward the closing gap between the two edges of the fire.

“Hidden, stop,” Lost ordered. She didn’t look even a little scared of the flames. The terrified pony who’d skittered past locked furnaces seemed a distant memory. Just what had changed in the past week?

I stopped in my place and stood still. We needed to flee now, before other guards could show up.

Sunbright appeared right in front of me and headbutted me, right in the face. She hit hard, and knocked me down. In my weakened state, an attack I could have easily shrugged off dropped me to my knees.

Lost shouted, and launched another of the blue magic blasts at her. It splashed across Sunbright, but did little more than singe her coat. Once more, the slaver vanished. Lost smiled though, which made me feel a whole lot better.

“Hidden. Be ready,” she said. Her eyes darted back and forth behind her glasses.

“But, I-”

“No buts! Be ready to kill her,” Lost ordered.

Killing another pony. Orders. Could I do it? This wasn’t Mistress messing with my mind and trying to use me as a tool. This was surviving and escaping so I could be with my sister and my friend, and get as far away from this place as we physically could. I stomped my steel hoof, and nodded. I could do it. I just couldn’t think about it.

Sunbright’s hooves slammed right into my jaw and knocked me to the ground. I sprawled, hitting the packed dirt with a resounding thud. Then the unicorn vanished. I hated invisibility. I hated cheater magic. And I really hated Sunbright. Working my jaw back and forth, I coughed up some blood, then forced myself back up.

Lost said nothing. She just looked around. I did too, looking for anything that might give Sunbright’s position away. Lost and I stepped closer to one another, facing opposite directions. The fire moved as if it had a life of its own, and slowly the circle around the three of us shrank. From the corner of my eye, I watched her for a signal, ready to act as soon as I could.

If the slavers didn’t get us, the fire would.

Aside from the sounds and smoke from the fire, everything remained perfectly still. I ducked again, going on instinct that Sunbright would attack again, but nothing happened. Either she’d decided it was better to wait until our guard was down, or she had some sort of plan.

Lost snapped her head to the side, and clenched her eyes shut tight. Her horn glowed, and another burst of energy shot from it. The bolt sailed through the air, but hit nothing, and kicked up a spray of dust as it hit the ground. Lost looked around more, searching for the slaver. Her eyes darted to the side, looking behind me. She grinned.

“Buck!” she ordered.

I kicked back with both legs as hard as I could without thinking. They connected with something, and a loud crack echoed against the walls of the slaver town. Sunbright dropped like a rock, hitting the ground with a thud.

She groaned, then vanished again. A splattering of blood coated my hooves and the ground below me.

“Got her,” said L.A. She spun around to face the same way as me, her eyes locked on the ground in front of us. “Hidden, shadow,” she ordered.

In an instant it made sense. I didn’t need to be told twice. A pinprick-sized shadow moved around on the ground, the only bit of darkness in the circle of flames. I charged and hit something invisible, but very solid. I dropped it to the ground, and stomped it. The pony flashed back into sight. I kicked her with all my strength, aiming for her horn. I smashed it again, sending a horrible crack through the base of the horn, and nearly snapping it off.

“She’s down,” I said, looking back at my sister.

L.A. nodded and motioned for me to follow, then bolted.

I looked down at Sunbright, who lay there groaning. She couldn’t fight anymore, not with her horn cracked like that. If she was healed she might pose a threat, but right now, I could just leave. Lost said I needed to be ready to kill her. I could do that right now. It would be so easy. Just- just like I’d done to...

I stared at the groaning slaver. I didn’t feel like I shouldn’t kill her. I didn’t feel anything at all. I raised my steel hoof.

We’d ended it fast, just like we’d needed to. Mistress Amble trusted Sunbright, and would expect our capture. There was plenty of time to flee. But should I kill her, and end this right now?

Time to prove Mistress right.

“Hidden, we have to go!” shouted Lost.

I turned away from the crippled slaver and left.

Orders were orders, after all.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Bringer of Justice – A fire of revenge, brainwashing, and a general hatred for all things wrong in the Wasteland has given you a fervor to kill those destroying ponykind. You do extra damage against raiders, slaver, criminals, and other evil creatures.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Hobbler – Strategy usually demands keeping ponies alive to get answers, you learned that lesson the hard way. When aiming for the legs, you are more likely to hit.
Quest Perk: Offensive Spells – During your time in U Cig, you were taught how to defend yourself using only your magic. You can now cast the Arcane Blast offensive spell.

“So this mean we’re done with all this super grimdark bullshit?”
“Yes, apparently writing some of this really fucked with the author, even...”
“And one of the editors.”
“Not you again...”
“Look, let’s just go back to adventures and treasure hunting and doing good!”
“Things’ll get better from here on out, right?”
“I sure hope so... I sure hope so...”

Author's Notes:

(A massive thank you to Kkat for creating, and everypony else who has helped to flesh out the universe of Fallout Equestria. And to everypony who has/will help with with editing and making this more palatable... Big hearts to Dimestream, Sabsy, Heartshine, Moth, and everypony else who helped with ideas, editing, and brushies. And of course everything is copyright their respective owners. ~Hnetu)

Disclaimer: For any readers who have followed chronologically up to this point, I’m sure you’re well aware of what’s going to happen in this chapter. Slavers are not good ponies and often do despicable things to their ‘property’ in an effort to make them compliant... So this is a warning before you can start, that this chapter will contain torture. A lot of it. This includes traditional brainwashing techniques, gaslighting, physical and emotional torture. There’s also a trigger warning for pyrophobics or anypony with a history of seeing/experiencing horrible burns. It’s pretty graphic. So please, if any reader feels that they might be upset or triggered by any type of torture, please skip this chapter.
Trigger Warning: Torture, physical, emotional, and mental. Read with caution.

Chapter 10 Synopsis: As promised, here’s what happened in Chapter 10.
Hidden and Lost are taken to a city called U Cig, where they are kept in holding outside the city limits until after dark. They are marched into the city under cover of darkness and separated. Both sisters are kept from sleeping and given only enough food to keep them alive. After being collared, Hidden is given private sessions with Amble to break her will to live outside of slavery. As revenge, Slipstock has a torture-pony named Vice Brand equip her with shackles, shackles which have spikes that dig into her legs. Lost tells Hidden that she has a plan, and Hidden relates that she’s met a mare named Sourbelle who has helped to reassure her. Hidden is thrown into solitary to consider her options, then healed up for something special. Finally, she is told that she must prove loyalty in following any order, and made to kill a pegasus stallion named Spark Light. She fails, and he is killed in front of her in a hauntingly familiar way.

Chapter 12: The Way Back

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Chapter Twelve: The Way Back
“I don’t even know you anymore...”

Home.

We ran home from that horrible place, letting the fires burn, and not worrying about the other slaves tethered to our collars. Sacrifices for our own survival deemed necessary, no matter the cost. We didn’t stop running until the town was out of sight, and even the smoke on the horizon slipped from our view. Once we stopped running from the slaver camp and met up with Xeno, we slowed to focus on getting back and not burning out before we could get home. The trip took us a night of non-stop walking, down the same road we’d come, following markers Xeno had left us in her freedom.

I saw the river and we followed it, looking for the landmarks I’d seen on our slave march. None of the landmarks held our interest for being anything other than markers that showed we were heading in the right direction. The buildings in the distance weren’t opportunities for treasure hunting. They only meant we were closer to home. We used them to get our bearings, and moved on through the darkness of the Wasteland. We didn’t speak as we walked. Our escape had drained all our energy.

The march back wasn’t nearly as bad as the pace Mistress Amble and her bodyguards had kept us at. We went at our own speed, as quick as our tired hooves and shattered resolve would allow. The Wasteland was merciful for once, either through Xeno’s luck or because the slavers were smart enough to pick a path nothing else dared use. We saw no ponies on our way home: not a merchant, not a raider, not even a ghoul. Monsters left us alone, and even the radroaches stayed off the road. I didn’t question the blessing from the Goddesses. Ever since Gunbuck, we’d had nothing but bad luck. Any break we got was nothing short of a miracle.

The moment we reached Xeno’s hidden cache, she supplied us with our things, bags, weapons, and my battle saddle. Whatever she’d done to sneak in and blend in with the slavers also gave her full access to their armory. I knew I’d have to ask her at some point how she got in, but through the entire walk home, I could only think about getting back and flopping down into the bed we’d set up, and sleeping until I could put this all behind me.

Had we seen any other ponies, we’d have looked like nothing more than a slaver taking her possessions out from the town, which could have gone well or poorly, depending on who found us. Lost and I both walked with our heads low and eyes on the ground, with Xeno leading the way. She’d managed to sleep and eat well while we were captured, and led us back without problems. Whether that was part of her magical zebra luck, or just good survival skills, I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

Beyond just accepting it, I didn’t dwell on it.

It felt like we walked for a lifetime, constantly looking over our tails in fear that the slavers would be right behind us, but finally, we made it home.

We had a few hideaways spaced out here and there across the places we’d been: dugouts with a sleeping bag or two and a place for a fire. But Home was different. Home was the place we kept as the last resort if we went out, fearing that if a raider clan, or a pack of ghouls, or even a loose-lipped merchant were to find it, then we’d have no place to go. We’d found it shortly after mom’s death, and made it our own.

Home had once been somepony’s house, long before the War, that somehow managed to stay standing long after the owner died, and everypony in the world moved on from whatever used to be here. A half-dozen similar houses survived the destruction of Equestria, along a little back road, right at the edge of the woods. Our little secluded neighborhood. All the homes here were similarly ruined, with warped walls and rusted supports, and stone arches that collapsed over their doors. We hadn’t been able to get into any of the others yet, because when we’d found the place, we’d never had the strength or skill to find an opening.

This one, though, this house was our home. We’d made it look particularly difficult to get into for anyone other than the most seasoned scavengers, and pushed rubble over the doorways to make it look like nopony could get in, even if they tried. The secret we used to get in was on the roof, through a small hatch Lost had made, and a series of dangerous stepping stones to sneak up. A door on the main floor could open inward, allowing a pony to sneak in, if they knew which stones to push out of the way.

Lost and I had made the holes just large enough for the two of us to fit through, and since both of us stood just a few inches shorter than the average raider, we could sneak in while crouched down, and manage to be safe if somepony larger ever did manage to follow us home. Bastards like Seethe, as big as he was, wouldn’t have a prayer of fitting, unless they destroyed the entire building in the process. Unfortunately, that meant the entrance was also too small for Praline or Lamington, if they ever managed to visit.

Somewhere along the line, I made a note to talk to Lost about making the entrance bigger for emergencies, or for friends.

When we reached it, Lost went up and inside the house through the secret hatch, while I showed Xeno how to unblock the door so we could get in without climbing. A few moments later, I heard Lost’s familiar hooffalls on the other side of the door, clopping against our wooden floor. The door creaked open, and Xeno and I both crouched down and crawled in. We pulled the rubble back over the doorway and slammed the door shut.

It felt good to be home.

* * *

I jumped down from the terminal desk we used to barricade the front door. Hitting the ground, I dropped my saddlebags, and kicked them back underneath. Without the extra weight, I felt better, but still needed some time. I trotted on aching hooves to my bed. Lost tried to follow me, but I shooed her away. I needed a few minutes to myself to work my jumbled thoughts out.

I frowned at the broken staircase and the ramp we’d set over the rubble in the corner to reach it. The ramp didn’t bother me, but every step up the stairs, jostling as they were, sent bolts of pain through my legs. Whether the spikes or the aches caused it, I didn’t let it get to me. The threat of slavers following us had long since passed. I only wanted a moment to rest, then to get back to our normal life. Mistress Amble had done a number on my psyche, but without her around to lord over me, I could go back to how things were.

Right?

I flopped down onto the tattered and worn mattress, and looked down past the remains of the floor at my sister and Xeno below me. Home wasn’t in the best condition after two centuries of rot. We had set up a short wall through the center of the old bedroom, giving us some semblance of privacy in our own makeshift bedrooms. When we’d moved in, most of the second floor was collapsed down onto the first in pieces and rubble. We had cleared out or moved everything, leaving the upstairs as nothing more than the access hatch, our bedrooms, and a little storage area over the old kitchen.

I looked down at the table where Lost and Xeno sat. They’d set our bags up and were going through them, probably to figure out what went where, and what belonged to who. L.A. met my gaze a few times, but gave me space, all while working with our friend on our bags.

I couldn’t get comfortable. I rolled from my stomach to my back to try and find a position I could actually get some sleep in. Instead, my mind trailed back to Sunbright.

“I shoulda killed her,” I muttered. She’d been right there in front of me. A single stomp. One more second, and there would have been one less slaver to worry about. Instead, my sister gave me an order, and I couldn’t not follow it. It happened almost like instinct, but at least it wasn’t something Mistress Amble had ordered me to do. My hoof idly traced along the collar around my neck.

I could live with following my sister’s orders. Even being a murderer for her, that I could handle. I didn’t have a problem with the killing, not anymore. Guilt seemed so far away now... I rolled over again and looked at the dresser in the corner. I smiled. No guilt meant I could get revenge and not feel bad ab-

“Wait a minute,” I said, and rolled back over. I looked down at Lost and Xeno. “Hey, sis?”

“Yeah?” L.A. answered. She looked up at me, pulling her hoof from the saddlebag she’d been digging in.

“Can you check my bag for a dress?” I asked her. I hopped from the bed and faltered. The shackles dug in as I hit the floorboards hard, and I swayed, nearly losing my balance. I caught myself, and laid on the floor, just peeking my face and forehooves past the collapsed edge.

“Dress? Another one?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and looking over her glasses frames. “You don’t even wear the ones you have, when did you have time to get another one?”

“I found it right before that wirepony attacked, the first time,” I explained, ignoring her accusation of never wearing any of my collection. I didn’t know what made me think about it, but I suddenly really wanted it. I could put it in my dresser with the others and keep it as something to distract me, to remind me of a time when Equestria wasn’t a Wasteland, where I could have had a real life and not be fucked over by Mistress Amble and her slavers playing with my thoughts. “Just, can you please check...”

“Sure, hold on,” she said, and turned to grab my bag. She dug around in it, tossing out a few guns, and stacking ammo on the counter behind her. “I don’t see one. Why?”

“Those bastards!” I yelled. I wanted that dress! To calm down, I took a deep breath. I had more, and I could always find another one, I had thinky pony things to worry about now. “Oh well... Thanks, L.A.”

She shrugged at me and gave an apologetic look. “You okay up there?” she asked, “I can come up whenever you need.” She looked at Xeno and started to excuse herself.

“No. I just...” I sighed. “No, I’ll be down in a minute or two.”

“Alright, well,” she said, looking down. Her horn began to glow faintly. She closed her eyes, and another glow appeared overtop that one. In Lost’s telekinetic haze, the PipBuck floated from her leg and to the second floor. When I extended my leg, she wrapped it around, and latched it shut. The glow faded from her horn in an instant, and she gasped. “There... That’ll give you something to do... Until you’re ready to talk,” she said, forcing a smile.

“Thanks,” I said with a genuine smile. I made a mental note to ask her later about what had happened between her and Sunbright. Right now, I needed something to keep my mind off the stress of being enslaved. And until I could get the damn collar off... I ran my hoof along it again. Until I could get past what Mistress Amble had done to me. I blinked a few times as the familiar display appeared in the corner of my vision.

I switched it back to green.

Grabbing the broadcaster in my teeth, I pulled it from the slot it rested in. I didn’t want to be blasting music into the entire house. Hopping back onto my bed, I got comfy, and pulled the earbloom from the casing. After sliding it into over my ear, I turned the radio on and closed my eyes.

I just needed to hear a story about the hero I’d heard about when I was recovering with Chocolate Fondue. That’d be perfect to distract me.

Instead, the DJ announced a song by a mare named Sweetie Belle, and music played, giving a nice soundtrack to my thoughts. It was better than nothing. I laid my head on the tattered pillow. I really wished I lived in a different time, that Lost and I could have been born before the War and enjoyed a nice life of peace and quiet. A life where we had jobs and didn’t have to hunt for treasure, unless we wanted to. Then again, I always wanted to treasure hunt, so I doubted that would change. Still, it would’ve been nice to have a life where we could wear pretty dresses and go out with stalli- okay I could go out with... I sighed and laughed, just a little. None of that mattered. I didn’t have time to be interested. My fantasies revolved around living sometime where I didn’t have to fight to survive every day of my life, not worrying about wooing a special somepony.

I didn’t want to let Mistress’ hooks stay in my mind forever. I actually missed the little claws that played with my deepest fears and nagged at me to make everything I thought was wrong a million times worse than it actually was. Which was worse, coming up with horrible scenarios in my mind, or having them be real life torture? It wasn’t a hard choice. I wanted my nagging claws back.

I lifted my head from the pillow and skewed my ear back, listening to the scratching and banging of things on the tables and counters below. Did Lost ever have thoughts like this, little inner demons that she dealt with? She’d always been more composed than me, and she’d gotten me out of slavery. Despite being tortured, ill, and with that chip in her horn, she still managed to save me.

Like always.

No! I wouldn’t let this be how it went. I could be stronger than this. Mistress Amble couldn’t find us now. We were far enough away, and they hadn’t followed us. We were safe. I didn’t need to let her conditioning get to me!

The song ended, and the DJ’s voice returned while I was lost in thought. I missed what he’d said, but instead of another song playing, another stallion’s gravelly voice burst into my ear. With that static, it sounded almost like... I turned the volume down so I could actually make out what was being said.

“...you're looking for a hero, look to Chief Grim Star. He bravely sacrificed himself to save all of you. I only wish I could have saved him,” the stallion said. “Sheriff Rottingtail had been gathering a veritable army of zombie-ponies in the maintenance tunnels surrounding Tenpony Tower.”

Tenpony Tower? I rolled over and asked Lost, “Ever heard of a place called Tenpony Tower?”

“Tenpony Tower...?” she said, and shrugged, looking up at me. The bags sat on the floor next to her, and she and Xeno had several rounds of ammunition piled in little stacks on the counter. “No, why?”

“No reason, thanks,” I said, then rolled back over. I turned my attention back to the radio, hoping the talking was done and another song would play.

“...jeopardy. When I informed the Chief, he insisted we go down to investigate the Talons' story. We found the door and ventured through with the intention of making sure it could not be opened from the outside. We were destroying the terminal that controlled the door access from the maintenance tunnels when the zombie-ponies attacked us en masse,” said the stallion who couldn’t be Lamington. Eugh, zombie-ponies. How I missed that amazing brush gun I’d used on the ones we found in that Stable so long ago...

I flipped the radio off. Turned out, hearing about heroics wasn’t the perfect distraction. I found I wanted music to keep my mind busy instead. I didn’t need to be listening to the heroic tales of random stallions fighting zombies, or about the heroine I’d heard about before. After a week of having everything I knew shattered, it just rubbed in how much I’d truly failed at everything we’d done.

Maybe if I just threw the PipBuck into the Wastes as hard as I could? Then we could forget about how much our lives had changed, and go back to normal.

But if I did that, it meant that Mistress won. I closed my eyes, rolled onto my back, and took a deep breath. “Put it behind you, Hidden,” I told myself. End of conversation.

I looked down at my legs. A reminder. A reminder of what I’d escaped. A reminder of what I’d overcome, and something to drive me to get stronger and faster and better, and to make better decis-

Lost could make decisions for a while. She made better ones than me anyway.

* * *

I woke with a start. When had I fallen asleep? I looked at the PipBuck, and noticed only an hour or so had passed. “Must have needed a nap,” I whispered to myself, trying to wake up. I didn’t have time to sleep. I.. I felt like I should probably go talk to Lost. I rolled off the mattress.

“Hey,” I said as I trotted down the last bit of ramp and walked to the table. I forced a smile.

“You okay, sis?” L.A. asked. She walked over and grabbed me in her forehooves. She hugged me so tightly that I could feel her legs shaking.

I hugged her back, and nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I muttered. “We’re away from her now. I’ll be okay.” I forced the smile again and took a seat at the makeshift stool in front of our table. Looking into the kitchen, I scanned the work they’d done while I stewed over my problems.

The kitchen had a nice wrapping counter that went along the whole wall. Aside from the rotted bit where the sink had fallen through, it looked pretty good. The fridge lost its door ages ago, but since it had burnt out long before we arrived, that had never mattered. We kept our food there anyway. Right now, the counter was covered in odds and ends taken from the slavers. I saw Persistence lying on its side, looking as pristine as ever. Next to it sat a shotgun in far worse condition: definitely not the one I’d had when we went into the slaver camp.

The battle saddle Lost and I had worked on sat on the floor next to the counter, which actually brightened my day considerably. It had taken forever to get it to fit perfectly, and having it back made things a bit easier. Unfortunately, that and Persistence seemed to be all the weapons Xeno managed to get back that actually belonged to us. I looked across the counter and saw my shovel! I'd never been so happy to be wrong. My smile twisted into a full grin. Shovel good, shovel meant slow, personal, death for the slavers.

More weapons lay on the counter in neat rows. I saw both types of magical energy weapons, plasma and laser, and a few older revolvers. Some apple-shaped grenades lined the wall, several with different colored bands across their centers. I looked to the far side, and let out a relieved sigh. In the cupboards bolted to the wall above the counter lay the armor that Elder Drop Scone had given us.

The important things were back; my sister, my friend, and the gifts from our new family... and that meant the world to me. I looked over to Xeno and motioned for her to come closer.

The black-coated zebra walked over, her eyebrow raised and a smoking cigarette in her lips. “What isit that you need, Hiddenpony?” she asked. She still wore the slaver barding that she’d taken with us, which gave me a moment of hesitation. But she wasn’t a slaver. She was Xeno. She was my friend.

I grabbed her in aching legs, and hugged her as tight as my weak body would let me. It took a moment for her to accept it, but after relaxing, she reached around with a hoof and patted me on the back. I finally released her, and looked past her white mane to her deep blue eyes. “Thank you,” I said, “for saving us.”

“Youare welcome,” she replied. “Isit really something you must give thanks for? I have forgiven the ponies who killed my brothers. I understand now, more than I did when I left home, why ponies shoot before offering to talk.” She patted me on the shoulder with her hoof. “One must only search to find the good ones. The ones who do not attack to kill, but to survive.”

She stared at me, hard enough that I faltered back. The look, coupled with the barding she wore sent a shiver down my spine. “Worse ponies, and zebra, are out there,” she continued. “Itis better we work together to stop them, before they can stop us.” She looked back toward Lost, then to me again. “Also, thereis the moving of my brothers, and for that, Iwill need help.” She nodded and turned back to my sister. “You are stained with black, Hiddenpony. Clean yourself.”

I walked to the bathroom as she ordered, and washed myself off. The leaky sink and cracked tub we had couldn’t compare to the warmth of a Stable’s shower, but it got the job done of washing whatever she’d used to stain her coat off of mine. I scrubbed myself clean and looked in the mirror, ignoring the idle ticks of the PipBuck on my leg. I couldn’t see much of myself through the grime that clung to the mirror’s surface, no matter how we tried to clean it.

I looked past the dirt, at the mare behind the glass. She stood there, white coat and green eyes staring back. A green mane with a single black stripe hung down over one side of her face, still wet with the water she'd used to wash off just a moment ago. We looked almost identical, her and me, but the eyes that looked back weren't ones I recognized anymore. I smashed the mirror with my steel hoof, hard enough to make a gigantic crack straight through from top to bottom. At least it went off to the side, so I could still see my whole face.

Wasn’t there a saying about mirrors and bad luck?

Maybe this mirror gave bad luck until you broke it. I looked at myself one last time, then walked off. We had food to find, collars to remove, Steel Rangers to call. I didn’t have time to wallow.

* * *

“Hold still!” L.A. shouted. She grabbed me with her hooves and twisted my head straight forward again. “Do you want me to kill us both?” she asked, her angry voice cracking. The haze of her magic wrapped around my collar again and pulled it back slowly.

I felt a jab from a screwdriver, then the collar dug into my throat.

“No, Lostpony, it is this one first,” Xeno said, poking me in the back of the neck with a hoof.

“I know, that’s the one I’m going for. I can't see what I'm doing, and it's not easy,” my sister snapped. “If it wasn’t going to explode, then I wouldn’t have any problems. But as long as the trigger’s there, I need to be careful. Just... Tell me again, please.” She let out an exasperated sigh and her magic released my collar. She started to breathe heavily, nearly panting.

I looked back at her and asked, “Can I?”

“Yes, you can get up. We’ll try again in a few minutes,” she answered. Sweat coated her forehead, and the chip in her horn gave off a spark every few seconds. Even the bags under her eyes looked bigger than normal, which sent up a red flag in the back of my mind. It was the first time I’d seen them like that since mom died. “Now Xeno, tell me again.”

“Itis simple, watch,” Xeno said, grabbing me by the neck. She sat me down between the two of them and pointed her hoof at something I couldn’t see. So much for getting up... “Thisis the the one that sets it off. And this one. And this one. The Hoofpony explained it all. She said much, very happy to have someone to work with on the collars. Theyare very boring to set up.” She tapped my neck a few times. “Thisis where youhave been working. The collars have many sittings to keep slaves from breaking them off. Careful, or you both die.” She tapped my neck one more time, off to the side.

I sat still, letting them do the work. The last thing I wanted right now was to die, especially since that meant my sister would die too. Dead ponies can’t get revenge. Dead ponies can’t help friends bury family.

“If they were easy to remove, anyone captured would simply take them off,” Xeno continued. “Itis important, no. There is a word.” She said a few things in her native tongue that I didn’t understand. “Ah! Mandatory? Thatis the word, yes? Itis mandatory that the collar’s trampling sensors are- Where are you going?”

“Fine. Fuck the collar. We’ll get it later,” Lost said, cutting her off. She threw the screwdriver she’d been using onto the counter. With a peeved harrumph, she turned and stormed off, up the stairs.

Once Lost moved out of sight, I leaned over to Xeno. “What’d they do to her in there?” I asked. Xeno knew more than she was letting on, and since Lost wasn’t going to tell me exactly what happened, I needed to ask somepony.

“Much,” she answered. “Itis not something I know all the answers to. Itis something sisters should discuss.” She stood and trotted off in the other direction, stepped into the bathroom, and slammed the door.

Wonderful.

I didn’t have the brainpower to be a thinky pony and help my sister yet. I still needed to work through my own problems. I stood and trotted slowly up the ramp, and to the stairs. One of the lights in the ceiling was burnt out, leaving us nearly in the dark. Just another thing to add to the list of treasures to hunt for when we finally got back out there. I stopped at the wall, and rapped my hoof against it a few times.

“Sis?” I asked. We didn’t have much in the way of privacy, considering that when the second floor collapsed after the war, it had torn down the inner wall of the two bedrooms. That left each of us with three walls and no doors. At times, that had been... awkward, but we both made sure to give one another as much privacy as possible. Right now though, we needed to talk.

“Yeah?” Lost said from the other side.

Slowly, I stepped into her room and knelt next to the bed. It hurt my shackles to put so much weight on them, but more important things needed handling. “Mistress-”

“Amble.”

“She got me bad, and I shattered,” I whispered, not wanting to admit it to myself. “But, I can’t let her keep that hold now that we’re out. She did terrible things. I know what happened to Spark Light, she had him killed in front of me.” I tapped the bomb collar around my neck with my steel hoof. “Blew his collar up when I didn’t kill him myself,” I continued, ignoring her shudder. “She killed another pony in front of me, because I couldn’t. Burnt her alive, because I couldn’t give her a fast death.”

Part of me, somewhere deep down, wanted to cry. I wanted to curl up in Lost’s hooves and bawl like a filly who’d just learned her cutie mark was something she hated doing. I felt like I should be blathering everything out, sputtering and having to stop between sobs. But it didn’t happen. I felt fine, almost cold, and still thought about the burnt out light with more concern than I did the deaths of the ponies in Mistress’ little kill tests.

“When she had you auctioned off, and I thought I was going to lose you... That’s when I lost it. She locked me alone overnight. And I told myself that you’d be there, and you’d have a plan. I saw it, I saw Mis-” I tried. “Mistress Amble.” Failed... “I saw her, heard her tell me how badly I would fail. I saw mom...”

Lost rolled over to face me. Her glasses lay on the bed, and tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. She grabbed me in her hooves and pulled me down onto her. She held me, and I closed my eyes and let her. The story could wait.

I climbed up onto the bed with her, glad that the dirty old mattress was big enough for the two of us and then some. Holding with all my might, I let her cry into my chest. I thought I should cry too, but I didn’t. Still, I didn’t feel anything. What happened, happened. There was nothing to feel anything about. Regret didn’t exist, neither did guilt. Just curiosity, and worry for my sister.

After a few moments, I spoke again. “I killed Sourbelle without hesitation. Mom told me to trust you. The first thing I needed was for us to get back together, and... I didn’t even think. It just happened. Mistress told me to kill and I did. But she can’t get me here. We lost her.” I grabbed my big sister and held onto her for dear life.

“I can get past it. I need to know you can too,” I pleaded. “What happened?”

“Sunbright took... special care of me,” she answered between sobs. Her hooves held onto me tight, rubbing my shoulders idly. She didn’t look at me, but instead stared at the few remaining books on the shelf in the corner of her room. “I learned a lot from her. She's a... very efficient teacher. She didn't leave any permanent damage, not like Slipstock.” Her voice cracked. “I learned a bit about not having magic, until I figured her out. She taught me that magic energy bolt, if only to taunt me about it.” Her chest heaved and I felt her swallow hard.

“It’s not important, Hidden. What they did to me, it’s nothing compared to what they did to you,” she said, her voice back to its normal unwavering tone. “Sunbright did what she did, the end.” She pushed me off her and stood on the bed. “I'm going outside to hunt for food. I want enough to hole up here until we’re all ready to move out.”

“Going out? Where?” I asked, standing on the bed as well. “If you’re going for food or supplies, I can come with.”

“No, I want you here and resting. I'm taking Xeno, we'll handle it,” she answered. The look she gave said I shouldn’t argue. She trotted from the room and past the remains of the separating wall to my room.

I followed, arguing, “Lost Art. I’m fine.”

“Sit down and stay here. We’ll be back,” she ordered, and trotted off.

I sat, and watched her walk down the stairs and out of sight.

That was not fair!

* * *

Lost and Xeno had been gone for what felt like ages. I looked at the PipBuck’s clock. It had been... thirty minutes. I heaved a sigh and trotted from my room to the kitchen. The stairs still made my hooves ache, but even the few hours I’d rested this morning made the pain less intense. It felt good to be home. Sure, there was still rubble in the corners, and the ripped couch we’d found and shoved into the center of the room was covered in dirt and grime, but it was our rubble and our couch, and that made it the comfiest couch ever.

I crawled up onto it and looked around. Compared to what we’d lived in at the slaver camp, it felt like a mansion, like I could close my eyes and be in Canterlot. Beds upstairs, dressers, books that were still legible, safely barricaded doors, a small stash of food, and odds, ends, and little treasures we’d picked up stashed in lockers. How could I be sad and dwell on the torture when I was home? I rolled onto my back and looked at the roof above me. Stretching as far as I could, my back a cracked several times and I let out a relieved sigh. I draped my tail over the slashed-up arm of the couch.

Thank you Goddesses, for letting us find this sanctuary in the Wasteland. Your protective gaze gave us the greatest gift ever. I could ignore the moments you watched and protected others, because right now, life was perfect.

But, sitting here all alone, waiting on my sister and Xeno to come back with food, left out of the treasure hunt... I was lonely.

I pulled my hoof back in front of me and looked at the PipBuck’s screen. I ran upstairs, plugged in the Broadcaster, and returned to my comfy spot on the couch. Wriggling down into the cushions, getting to that perfect spot, I pressed the button with my hooftip to figure out how to use the damn thing. Five minutes later, I found the ‘on’ button, and the right frequency to call Praline. I really hoped it was the right one at least. The last thing I needed was to announce my position to the entirety of the Wasteland. Given my special brand of luck lately, the first pony to pick it up would run off and tell Mistress Amble, assuming it didn’t beam my location directly to her.

Celestia, Luna, please let this be right.

I hit the button, and the speaker of the Broadcaster erupted into static. Wrong signal? Did she have to answer? I didn’t know how this thing worked! The basics were fine. I’d figured out the E.F.S. and S.A.T.S. on the run, but the instructions for how to use the broadcaster were gone. I shook the PipBuck a few times, knowing it wouldn’t really help. I muttered to myself, “Okay Hidden, just...” Not knowing how to finish convincing myself that I knew what I was doing, I just stared at the PipBuck and tapped the screen a few times. The frequency should be good; it was the one Praline had called us on and nearly gotten us killed.

“Hello!” I yelled into the device.

No response, just more static. I poked it a few more times, then twisted on the couch and looked at the counter and the table. Did Xeno manage to... what if Amble had the frequency! No, no, no! Bad! I slammed my hoof into the screen. I just needed to turn it off, and then-

“Hi!” yelled the cheery voice of Praline! “Who’s this? Is it who I think it is? I bet it’s who I think it is!” She sounded as happy as always, and in the back of my mind I knew she was bouncing around like an idiot.

“Praline, it’s me, Hidden Fortune,” I said to the PipBuck, still unsure where the microphone was.

“I know, silly! That’s who I bet I thought it was!” she exclaimed. “Hold on, let me go outside!” The static overtook her voice, though I could hear the heavy hooffalls of her armor clanking off in the background as she walked. A moment later the static mostly-faded and she yelled at me again. “Sorry! I was in the Stable, the reception is terrible down there!” she said.

“The Stable? Back at Sixty? Or are you working in Twelve and Twenty One?” I asked.

“We’re working on Twenty One right now. There’s a whole lot of good stuff down here!” she said, her voice getting louder and happier. “The ponies you warned us about must have been really stupid to leave so much stuff. We found parts to fix the- Wait.”

“Yeah?” I asked as quiet as I could. Here came the million cap question. I’d rather listen to her tell me about what she’d been doing than admit anything that had happened to me over the past week.

“How come you didn’t called sooner?” she asked. “I’ve missed you both! It’s been over a week, and I was worried!” I could practically feel her pouting at me.

“We were busy, and Lost had the PipBuck,” I admitted. “I don’t know why she didn’t, and I haven’t had a chance to ask her. Just... tell me what you’ve been up to. Please?” Just keep talking like you do, take my mind off everything I’d been through. “You’re the happiest pony I’ve ever met, and the one thing I need right now is some happy.”

“Oh, well, I’m very happy. I haven’t heard from you in ages, and this was great timing!” she said. I heard the clanking again, and guessed she was jumping up and down in her armor. “Lunch break just started, so I was coming up anyway. We started stripping Stable Twelve as soon as we got down here. The parts proved to be super valuable. The town, Pommel Falls? So many nice ponies there!”

“Nice, yeah... If you don’t accidentally kill Hydro’s lovers,” I said, my ears drooping. “So, you got the place up and running? Fresh water for all?”

“Well, yes and no,” she said. “We set up a talisman for it, and Lemon Tart helped to get it powered and running again, but there’s no way it can purify that much water. Sure, it’s mostly clean already, and the best thing a pony can drink outside of Stable water...” She sighed. I wished I could be there in person to see what she was doing. The blank PipBuck screen just didn’t feel right. “Anyway, there’s just a lot of it, so we need to strip out everything we can to add to the facility.

“I listened to the recordings left in the dossier, and they explained a lot. But with two centuries of not being used, a lot of the purification and recycling machines just lost every bit of power they had.” She started to talk faster and faster. “Everything down here runs on a big alternator and if they don’t keep running, they eventually shut down. The way it’s set up is to alternate between two machines, one charges the other while it idles. And both being down for so long... Err. The batteries just died!”

“Oh... Well, Stable Twenty One still has everything working right?” I asked. Since I didn’t have to watch her talk, maybe I could get up and check for some food? Or clean Persistence? I hopped off the couch.

“Yeah! That’s all still- what?” she said, suddenly sounding further away. “No, it’s Hidden Fortune. She- okay, Crème Brûlée wants to know where Lost Art is.”

“She’s out finding food with Xeno. I’m home alone right now,” I answered.

“Okay, hold on,” she replied. “No, she’s not there. Yeah, I’ll tell her. Crème! I’m trying to tell a story!” Her voice got louder again and she continued. “Hold on, I’m going to go somewhere more private.”

“Okay.”

While she walked, I trotted into the kitchen. I cracked open the locker we had standing in the corner near the barricaded kitchen door and looked for something to eat. We just had to have something left.

Nothing...

“Sorry about that!” Praline yelled into the PipBuck. I nearly fell over from the volume. “Had to get somewhere where I could still get a signal and be away from everypony else. It gets very loud when we’re all eating.”

I thought back to the conversations in the Stable with them. They were louder than what I was used to, but once I settled in, it didn’t seem so bad. Maybe they got new ponies?

“So... Did Crème Brûlée and Lost Art have something going on that I don’t know about? She keeps asking about her, it’s starting to get really annoying,” the chipper Knight said.

“Noidea!” I yelped. Eep! This was bad.

“Hmm, oh well. We’re all worried about you three. Mom keeps saying we should have made you come with us, and then she and Lamington get into little fights about it. He’s stubborn about the rules, but...” She stopped, and sighed. “Y’know, I think he’s been a bit heartbroken since we left. Either he really misses home, or there’s something else going on.”

Goddesses, maybe she talked too much. This idea was terrible! I damn near crawled back to the couch and curled myself up on it as small as possible. All I could do was whisper, “Uh huh?”

“He wanted you to join us, but now that we’re here, he doesn’t like that we’ve slowly been collecting helpful ponies. There’s only a few, but apparently that’s too many for him. I’ll introduce you some time!” she said with a laugh. “You really need to stop by. Now that we have a second Stable, well, second and third, we have plenty of raw materials for everything!”

“We will Praline. I miss you all too,” I said, feeling myself smile. Whether she talked too much or not, she made me feel better.

“Yay!” she shouted. “I can’t wait for you all to visit again! We’re not going anywhere for a while, so any time you decide to stop by will be great! I can show you around, well, I guess you already know your way around, but I can show you everything we’ve done and how we’ve helped here and introduce you to everypony who’s new and check on your hoof and make sure that Lamington gets to see you and make sure that Crème Brûlée gets to see Lost Art and everything will be perfect and I just can’t wait!”

“Praline, do you ever breathe?” I asked.

“Yeah, through my nose, silly!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Either she was oblivious or an idiot, but it helped so much. A chance to forget everything and laugh was just what I needed. She laughed with me on the other end, giggling like a foal with a new toy. We laughed together for a while, I don’t know how long.

“Thank you,” I said finally, wiping a tear from my eye with my flesh forehoof. “It’s been a rough week,” I admitted. “I’ll tell you about it some time, but umm...” I felt warmth on my cheeks. “Can I talk to Lamington?”

“Well you can, but you’d be talking through my armor! If you want, I can set up everything so the broadcaster’ll work with him. His armor’s always had a problem with its mic, so the static might make it hard to hear anything. He refuses to use any other armor, though. Either way, I think it should work, after some finagling,” she said. I heard the light tapping of steel against steel. “It might take a day or two though. I’ll get right on it!”

“Okay, thanks again, Praline. Just taking the time to talk to me... that means the world to me. You have no idea,” I said, from the bottom of my heart. “I miss you all...”

“I miss you too! I’m gonna go get to work now, lunch is almost over!” she shouted at me. “Byes!”

The broadcaster belched out some static, and I knew she was gone. I clicked it off and closed my eyes. Might as well pass the time some other way. I got up from the couch and grabbed Persistence. She could use a good cleaning, or maybe I could use a good anything to pass the time. Sitting at the table on one of our makeshift stools, I got to work.

* * *

I attached the nice and clean Persistence to my battle saddle, and pulled it on. The weight on my back felt good, despite the metal digging into the scars from the slaver’s whips. I’d missed it. She might not be the best weapon in the Wasteland, and certainly not as powerful as that brush gun, but having Persistence back in my hooves and ready to use for protection gave me the peace of mind not even the loving embrace of the Goddesses could. I didn’t bother with the trashed shotgun.

I couldn’t blame Xeno. She didn’t have to come save us, she didn’t have to get our possessions and stash them. If she’d been caught, things could have gone terribly. I needed to give her another hug. I pulled the release strap for my battle saddle with my teeth and let it fall to the floor. Now that my weapon of choice was combat ready, it was time to check my armor. I grabbed it from the counter, tossed it onto my back, and moved it to the table.

I was halfway through giving the steel armor a good polish, when I heard the trap door opened. My ears flicked as it clanked against the rotten wood of the roof, but I kept working. Lost would have food and we could make plans for the rest of the day. I finished with the leg of the armor, then moved to clean and polish the Stable Sixty insignia on the chest. It didn’t look like anypony’d worn the armor while we were being broken, but that didn’t mean they weren’t tossed around as roughly as possible. I dug in deeper.

Wait, why hadn’t Lost said anything yet?

“Hey sis?” I asked. I looked up at the ceiling, and saw the opening was closed off. I shrugged and went back to work. Considering that only the other night I’d had a full breakdown and felt my dead mother touching me and heard her voice, I didn’t think it was outside of the realm of possibility to mishear a sound.

The trapdoor slammed open, and I heard Lost swearing as she worked her way down. Xeno followed her, and the two walked down the ramp to the first floor. Xeno seemed pretty laid-back as usual, but Lost had her glasses off and was chewing nervously on the corner of the rim.

“Not a fucking thing,” Lost spat, taking the glasses from her mouth and setting them on the table. “Three of the neighborhood houses and not a fucking scrap, not even a single animal. I’m sick of this!” She slammed her hooves down on the table. “One. Break. That’s all I want,” she said, her teeth grinding behind her grimace. “One fucking break!” She looked over at me and her expression softened. “Hey, Hidden,” she said softly.

“Hey, Lost,” I said to her.

“So, we didn't have any luck finding food outside. Come out and hunt with me?” she asked. “We just... need to find a few days worth of food so we can stay in and rest up here.” She raised her forehooves in a shrug, sitting down next to me.

“Yeah, I could use a good meal after what we went through,” I said. I grabbed one of her hooves and pulled her into a tight hug. “Crème Brûlée misses you,” I whispered, then let her go.

My sister leaned back when I released my grip, and stared at me with her jaw halfway to the floor. Her white coat turned red, and slowly got brighter and brighter as the blush overtook her. She blushed so bright that even her mane looked like it might turn red.

“We should probably go now. Food is important, Hidden, we can’t get better unless we eat. Especially after the last week. Let’s go now. It’ll get late if we don’t. Hidden, c’mon!” Lost said. She waved her hoof for me to follow as she trotted back a few steps. “If we wait, it’ll end up dark, very dark, and then we won’t find anything!” The whole time her voice went from a yell to a whisper and back again. Without waiting for me to agree, she scrambled back up to the trap door and disappeared through it.

“Sorry, Xeno, can you watch the house for a while?” I asked as I stood up. Home had always been a safe haven in the years we’d lived here, so I left the armor on the table. I grabbed one of the better-looking pistols, and tossed it into my saddlebags, just in case. I took an extra magazine for it and threw that in too, then tossed my saddlebags over my back and headed up the ramp. “We won’t be long, I have a knack for finding whatever we need.” I waved to her and trotted up the stairs.

My shackles barely hurt at all.

Up and out the trap door I went, into the Wasteland once more. I looked up at the sky above, overcast with clouds so thick no trace of the sun could be seen through. It wasn’t raining though, not yet, so that was a good sign. Before us, several houses stood in a small circle, with one road leading out. Each was built close to the next, meaning that several had become one large ruin over the years, rather than individual houses. I turned the other way and looked back to what had once been a forest behind the house, but now was just more of the Wasteland. The mountains rose in the distance, and I could see a little indicator in the corner of my vision where the Stables were.

Good, a way to find friends.

I looked at the PipBuck screen. For a two-hundred-year-old piece of equipment, it somehow managed to know where everything relevant was. That had to be the magic of Stable-Tec. I turned around again and gave my sister a hug. Getting back to normal felt good, and even though I knew that deep down, Mistress Amble still had hold of my mind, right now that could... That could just be somewhere far, far away.

I really wanted to go treasure hunting again.

I checked the corner of my eyes, and saw several little red markers on my E.F.S. Really, danger this close to home? I prayed the markers just meant radroaches or something equally unimportant. Since I didn’t have Persistence, I didn’t want to go off fighting raiders or zombies, but little radroaches or even the larger, and far more disgusting, radscorpions I could take with my hooves. Plus, radroaches meant food, even if it wasn’t the best out there.

“So, where to first, L.A.?” I asked, not wanting to decide for myself.

“Well, I found a backdoor into the basement of that house,” she said, pointing to the house off the far side of the shattered street. “We'll give it a search, then move into the next house.” She stepped closer, leaned against me, and pointed off to the side of the building. “See there? We can cross into the next house over that collapsed wall.”

“Sounds good. Lead on,” I said with a smile. I could ignore the collar. I could ignore the shackles. I could ignore the steel hoof. It was just me and my sister, digging through rubble and finding treasure, just like we’d been doing for years. I smiled and looked up at the cloudy sky. Thank you, Goddesses.

The two of us trotted across the street, hooves clacking over cracked pavement. We circled around the back of the house, and Lost pointed out where the door was. The joints that once held it finally rotted through, and after years of living within spitting distance, we could finally get into our neighbor’s house. I pulled it open and looked down into the house’s cellar. Inhaling deeply, I smiled. I’d missed the smell of a house that hadn’t been looked into in over a century.

We walked down the rotting stairway into the cellar, while I kept an eye on the E.F.S. for anything that might sneak up on us. Lost’s horn began to glow, lighting up the entirety of the underground room with her magic.

I looked over at her, just in time to catch a second glow erupt over the first one. The room looked much the same as any room I’d ever dug around in searching for treasure, with boxes stacked high in the corners and enough dirt in the air to choke a manticore. With a nod to my sister, we got to work. I stayed close to her, and we dug through everything we could, searching for anything that looked even the littlest bit interesting or worth any amount of caps. Most of what we found in the cellar looked positively worthless, like things a pony threw down in storage because they couldn’t think of anything to do with them, but didn’t want to get rid of them.

Is that what ponies did in Equestria before it became a Wasteland?

“You know the PipBuck has a light, right?” Lost asked. She looked at me, sweat covering her face and her horn sparking.

“Oh... A week with Mistres-”

“Amble.”

“Her,” I said. “A week with her makes you forget a lot.” I pressed the button she pointed to and the screen of the PipBuck lit up bright enough that we didn’t need her horn anymore. “Sorry,” I said to her, and dug my way back into another box.

“It’s okay, it’s just...” she said with a sigh, “hard to keep any spell going for more than a minute...” She sounded exhausted, which didn’t go well with her lifelong habit of rarely sleeping. She knew well how to counteract any need to sleep for days on end. I needed to have a long talk with her about that.

“Ahh!” I yelped, finding a radroach in the bottom of the box. Without thinking, I smashed my steel hoof in and cracked the little brown bastard’s head in. I really should have seen that, given that I finally had the PipBuck. A week without it made me a bit too rusty for my own comfort.

“What!” Lost yelled.

“Sorry! Radroach, it was under this... Whatever it is,” I grabbed the fabric that covered the radroach in my teeth and pulled it out. Looking into the box once more, I grimaced at the roach remains and passed the thing I found to Lost.

She grabbed it in her magic with a grunt, and held it up. The ‘thing’ I found was actually a patchwork brown leather jacket, something that had probably been put into storage after the previous owner decided it wasn’t worth sewing back together.

It might not bring in a ton of caps, but the patchwork design looked cool. I stuffed it into my saddlebags and looked back into the box. “Great way to start,” I said, stripping some meat out of the dead radroach. I threw that in the other saddlebag, and looked at my sister. “So, I’ll let you decide who gets what!”

Treasure hunting beat slavery, any day of the week.

We collected everything else in the box and kept working, moving from one end of the room to another until we hit the staircase. Anything that looked even the slightest bit useful or valuable went into our saddlebags. Together, we killed two more radroaches in the cellar before trotting up the stairs to the main floor of the house.

“Even if all we find is the roachmeat, it’s better than nothing,” Lost said, sounding a bit more chipper than before. She pushed the door open and together we walked into the much-better-lit first floor.

Half of the back wall leaned in, on its last support, but didn’t quite collapse to destroy the entirety of the house. The stairs to the next floor were completely gone, and, similar to our home, a majority of the floor had collapsed down to the level we were on. Still, a kitchen nestled in the back corner, and there were two other rooms we could reach.

Without the need to share the PipBuck’s light, we split up. I dug through the remains of the living room while Lost went to the bedroom in the back to hunt. I found a few odds and ends, a box of bullets in a rotten nightstand, along with a gun far too rusted to use. Some old-world bits from a cabinet found their way into my hooves, and so did a bent pipe that stuck far enough out of the floor that I could unscrew it to replace Lost’s missing pipe.

As I pulled the pipe back, she walked from the other room and into the second one. “Hwe, Wos’,” I said through the pipe. Realizing what I said made no sense, I spit the pipe out and repeated myself, “Hey, Lost?”

“What?” she snapped. She stopped mid-step and looked at me, her glasses sitting atop her horn and her eyelid twitching a little.

“Well, umm... How come you didn’t call Praline or the others while we were there with the slavers?” I asked, not making eye contact. She seemed mad, and I didn’t want to push the issue, but I needed to.

“Don’t you think I fuckin’ tried, Hidden?” she asked with a snarl.

“Well, I didn’t know if you even could. I was just asking,” I explained, shrinking back a little.

“It's not like I had a whole lot of free time to be making calls on the broadcaster. What do you think they’d have done if they caught me?” she asked. She took a few steps forward and bucked the wall behind her. “I tried, every free chance I got. I’m not stupid, sis. But nopony ever answered.”

“Oh,” I started.

“All I got, every time, was a burst of static and then nothing. I stopped risking it when I realized what would happen if I did get ahold of them. You think that bitch wouldn’t take the chance to get a whole family of highly armored Steel Rangers?” she yelled at me. “Of course she would! Lure them in, get them to lower their guard. Snap some sort of explosive to them. Then we’d be proper fucked. No, I tried, but there wasn’t any way I was going to put Crème Brûlée in danger!” She stomped her hoof on the floor again.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said, moving into the kitchen.

She followed me.

I opened a cabinet and looked inside, trying to keep busy to keep the fight from going on.

“I wanted nothing more than for them to show up. Save the day, be big heroes! See ponies we care about again,” she said, still stomping. “I thought I’d lose you. I didn’t need to lose them too, just because we were too weak to handle it!”

“Then why are you yelling at me about it?” I snapped at her, before realizing what I’d done and shrinking back. “All I asked was why you didn’t call. All you had to tell me was that you did. That’d have been enough!” I explained, quietly.

She shrank back too, almost mirroring me. It didn’t last long, before she took a deep breath, snorted, and stood at her full height.

I stared her down.

“That’s what I’m telling you now!”

“No, you’re yelling at me!” I turned away from her, flicking my tail across and kicked open another cabinet. Empty. To vent, I kicked open a few more. Each one came up short, nothing but cobwebs and dust.

“Because you asked a stupid question!” she snapped, “I didn’t want the last time I saw... I didn’t want to see them again only to have them taken away. I can’t go through that again!”

“Oh, sure, like I can? I went through torture there, Lost Art. Torture.” I turned around and stared her in the eye. “Mistress made me kill a friend, just to prove I’d follow orders without question. Mistress broke me down so far that I did without even thinking about it.” I leaned down a few inches and pressed my nose against hers, then pushed our foreheads together. I kept pushing, making her take a few steps back. “Remember how bad I felt about Chocolate Éclair? How Rough made us feel about Sweet Dreams getting sucked dry by bloodwings? Something that I damn near experienced myself, I might remind you!”

She said nothing. She just pushed back.

“I don’t feel a Goddesses-damned thing about it. And if it were up to me, or up to Celestia and Luna, I’d have the pain and the guilt back. I don’t get to choose that, though. I’m terrified of making even the slightest decision now, because Mistress Amble-” Lost tried to correct me that time, but I just kept talking, “-got it in my head that no matter what I do, I’m a fucking murderer,” I smashed the broken refrigerator with my rear hoof, and glared at her. “I know how stupid that sounds,” my voice cracked, “but I can’t... Not... Believe it...”

I slumped down, the full weight of it hitting like a bullet to my heart.

“I... I just wish I’d known the cavalry was coming,” I said. I fought back the tears, I didn’t need to be crying. We had food to find.

“I’m sorry, Hidden...”

I pushed myself back up, and returned to opening cabinets. Don’t think about it. Don’t let Mistress Amble win. The cabinet I pulled at didn’t budge, so I pulled harder and snapped it off the rotten hinges. I closed my eyes and moved to another cabinet. Just keep opening. Nothing.

“Hidden?” Lost said, calling for me.

“I’m fine,” I answered. I opened a drawer.

“No, Hidden, look,” she said. She sounded far calmer than just a few minutes ago.

“I know, I’m fine,” I pulled another drawer open. Some silverware lay in neat rows inside. One knife looked nice and sharp. I dug in and pulled it out in my teeth, then looked to my sister to show her my find.

She stood on her hind legs, pulling things from the corner cabinet that hung on the wall atop the counter. She pushed food from it onto the counter, organizing them with a weak telekinetic field into little rows of like food-types.

“Finally!” she shouted, lifting up a can of corn from before the War.

So much better than radroach meat!

* * *

“Nothing interesting, no,” Lost said, turning away from the terminal. “Some company notes. Apparently whoever lived here worked in an accounting office. Blahblah, finances.” She shrugged and we left the room.

“Think it had more to do with a company like Leathers?” I asked. “Converting over to make things for the War?” I hopped down onto a pile of rubble, groaning as I hit. “Owow...”

“You okay?” Lost asked as she hopped down after me.

“Fine... just the fucking shackles.”

“Alright...”

“Well?” I asked again, “y’think it was about a company working on stuff for the War?”

“I think so, the numbers were pretty steady for a long time, then shot up through the roof and stayed that way,” she said with another shrug. “So, more than likely- It doesn’t really matter, this house is clean. Let’s head back, have lunch, and start on the next place this afternoon.”

“‘Course,” I said. Shifting the saddlebags on my back, I followed her down the stairs and out the back. We’d found plenty of little things we could sell, some bottle caps in a disgusting old trash can, and the nice jacket I planned on wearing. Plus all that food! Sure, we’d only found enough for the rest of the day, but for now, that was a feast.

We walked from the back of the house around, toward our own. Lost smiled, bouncing excitedly with each step. I followed calmly behind her, not wanting to agitate the shackles. Then Lost stopped, and her right ear started to twitch. I skewed mine forward and listened too.

“...nopony around here. Why don’t you ever listen to me?” asked a voice. The PipBuck’s E.F.S. showed three green markers when I looked in the direction of the voice.

Together we peeked around the corner of the building. A frustrated-looking earth pony stood in the center of the broken street with a dark brown unicorn and a massive two-headed brahmin. She looked at the unicorn, who shrugged, then turned to face the brahmin standing behind her. A huge scar ran over her muzzle and just over her right eye, covered partially by her well-brushed brown mane. Her green eyes looked familiar. Both looked like typical wastelanders, and wore trader outfits that covered their cutie marks. The unicorn, a stocky green-maned stallion, had a machine gun strapped to his side.

“Doesn’t matter, I’m not right every time,” the earth pony answered with a shrug.

“Hidden, she’s... Come on,” Lost said. She ran out from behind the building and to the merchant. “Hey wait!”

Just in case, I pulled up the PipBuck and arranged the inventory so the pistol sat on top of the rest of the treasure we’d collected, then followed her. Goddesses, had I missed the PipBuck.

“Wha?” said the earth pony. The stallion hefted his gun with his telekinesis the minute he saw my sister. The merchant caught a look at my sister and motioned for her guard to lower his gun. “S’okay, Clip.” She trotted over and met the two of us halfway. “I was right! I knew ponies lived down here,” her scar twisted as she talked. “How you- Oh. Collars, eh?”

“Just hunting for treasure,” Lost answered. She avoided mentioning the collars.

“Well go get your master or whoever. I got stuff to sell,” she said with a smirk.

I raised a hoof after a moment, just before the merchant could say something more. “We’re not sl-”

Lost snapped her hoof over my mouth to shut me up. “I’ll get her, hold on,” she said and trotted off.

“Right, we’ll wait here,” said the mare. She turned and looked at her bodyguard and said, “Right, Clip. Go stand guard, I’ll handle all this.”

The stallion gave a salute and trotted a ways off. He stood at the corner of one of the houses and looked back and forth between the road away and us.

“So... Hi?” I said in my most awkward voice. I rubbed the back of my neck with my steel hoof, making it clank a few times. I wasn’t quite sure how to pass time with the trader pony while Lost got Xeno. I didn’t know what to say to the merchant, I just wanted my sister to deal with it. After what I’d been through, dealing with ponies in a civil way wasn’t something I could handle. “What brings you around here?”

“Nice spot, nestled away in a forgotten part of the city? Best place to find ponies to trade with,” she answered, matter-of-factly. Motioning to the two-headed brahmin behind her, she continued, “I wanted to stock up with things to sell off next time I go toward Stirrup, and this place wasn’t far out of the way.”

“Oh,” I answered, feeling a bit dumb. The PipBuck on my leg flashed, and I looked down at it. On the map screen, I saw several more markers than I’d seen before. Skirt and U Cig both shone bright, highlighted since we’d been there. Stirrup on the other hoof just had a little dot over it. At least I knew where it was. “Is that where you’re from?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going until L.A. and Xeno got back.

“Nah, meeting up with another trader up there to swap some stuff, and sell off whatever I don’t need,” she answered, looking back at her bodyguard. “Oh, introductions. That’s Clip, my name’s Risk.” She brushed her mane aside to show the scar on her face. “As in, ‘took one too many,’” she announced, and offered the hoof to me.

“Hi, Hidden... Hidden Fortune,” I said to introduce myself. I met her hoof. “Well, she should be back shortly.” I smiled awkwardly. “I’m sure there’s plenty to sell, if you have the caps.” Bartering wasn’t my strong point...

“Looks like we’ll find out,” she said. We both turned to face the rubble of the house Lost and I dug through just moments ago.

Xeno walked out, still wearing the slaver barding, though without the helmet. Her white-and-off-white mohawk swayed with every step, as did the sniper rifle on her back. She looked the part, a little too well. Behind her trotted L.A., her head down, like she was showing servitude.

“So, the owner of these two ponies, eh? Nice to meet you,” Risk said. She waved and pulled the brahmin closer. We all met in the center of the little neighborhood, each of us with bags full near to bursting. “I take it you’re the zebra to speak to about trading. Let’s see what you have.”

“Correct, Iam the zebra to talk to, traderpony. Ihave been looking forward to seeing a pony like you,” Xeno answered, her voice suspiciously like it had been back in Skirt. Time to let her work her magic.

Together the four of us walked over to the nearest flat piece of rubble, and laid out everything we had. Risk wanted to buy, so she kept her products nestled within the brahmin’s bags. Lost and I though, we had plenty to get rid of. Aside from the food and ammo, we laid down every knick-knack and article of clothing, from the patchwork jacket to spoons and scrap metal.

Xeno got to work. They talked fast, with Xeno slipping into her native zebra tongue from time to time. The scarred earth pony didn’t give in right away like Sale Price had so long ago. She bartered back just as tough and stubborn. If nothing else, we earth ponies never gave up. The two went back and forth for several minutes on each piece before finally coming up with a price they could agree upon.

I took a few steps back and moved to stand next to my sister. “Hey, think she had time to rest while we were...?” I couldn’t finish my sentence, but I knew Lost would pick up on what I meant.

“I’m sure she did. Doesn’t mean she’s not happy to be out too,” she said. “Look at that smile.”

I looked over at Xeno, who slammed her hoof down a few times on the rubble, haggling the price of some scrap electronics to something more reasonable. “You donot want these? They will go well to the Monopoly pony! Itis good to have what your rival wants!” she nearly yelled through her wide smile.

“Doesn’t matter if I don’t make a profit off it!” Risk yelled back.

A gurgling rumble filled the air, coming from next to me.

“Mares?” Lost interrupted. “Maybe... Lunch, then we finish?”

Risk and Xeno both looked over at the same time, then each slammed a forehoof down on the scrap electronics bundle sitting between them. “Great idea!” said Risk. Xeno said something in zebra, but I figured it meant about the same thing.

* * *

“Y’know, you’d make a good trader if you ever tried for it,” Risk said through bites of radroach meat. She pointed the remaining chunk at Xeno and bobbed it up and down a few times, splattering whatever juices kept radroaches alive all over. The five of us sat around a makeshift table of rubble, while Risk’s brahmin idly grazed at patches of brown grass beside one of the houses.

“Please stop doing that,” Lost said, grabbing the meat in her telekinesis and holding it steady. She clenched her eyes shut as she did, but didn’t complain or break out in sweat like before.

“Soz, just... Not often you meet a good trader out in this neck of the Wasteland. Not unless it’s one of the big Players like me,” she said with a laugh. “Shit food though,” she said, spitting some of the juices out.

“Iam flattered, but the trade of goods and services is a talent, not a passion,” Xeno explained. She bit down on her piece of meat without so much as a flinch.

I took another bite of my piece, trying not to look at it. I liked meat, sometimes, but radroach meat had the worst aftertaste. On top of that, every bite made the PipBuck click a few times. I didn’t join in the mealtime conversation. Talking with Risk was hard enough, and now that Clip was sitting with us, I feared saying the wrong thing and getting a bullet to the face. I knew it took a lot to down me, especially after what I’d experienced in the past week, but I didn’t want to tempt the Goddesses.

“You think we need more competition, Risk?” asked Clip. He still wore the machine gun across his side, having refused to take it off. I knew how he felt, considering the pistol was still sitting atop my inventory thanks to the PipBuck.

“Look, I specialize in something different than the rest of them. They can fight amongst themselves and figure out what they want to do. I’ve been at this long enough to know my niche,” she said through another bit of radroach. How she managed to speak so clearly with food in her mouth, I didn’t know. I wanted to learn, though. “I learned my lesson about competition, okay?” she asked, pointing to the scar over her face.

“Wait!” I shouted. “I know where I know you from!” I pointed at the scar across her face.

“What are you talking ab- Ohhh! The scar!” Lost said as realization hit. “You sold to our mom!”

“Uhh, nope. I don’t recognize you,” she said. “Should I?”

“No, no. Not us, our mother. Green unicorn, rust-colored mane. Few years back,” Lost explained. “Green Gypsy, that ring any bells?”

“Hmm,” she mused while taking another bite of radroach. “Seriously this tastes terrible. I don’t know! If it’s been years? Clip, how many ponies have we sold things to?”

“More than the number of bullets I’ve shot,” he answered, rolling his eyes.

“Okay that’s a lot then, that gun of his fires bullets like they’re going out of style,” Risk said with a laugh.

“I asked her if she could get me a toy...” I said, mostly to myself. I stared down at the meat in my hooves and sighed.

“Oh! I remember her!” she laughed as she realized. “It’s not often you meet a Wasteland hardened mare looking for toys.” She snapped her head to the side, suddenly looking deadly serious. “Clip, guns.”

I checked the E.F.S. and saw several red markers in the corner of my vision, all moving in the same direction. “I don’t think we can take that many,” I said, looking back and forth to check for more markers. I couldn’t see how many there were, far too many to count.

“Best to lay low and hide,” added L.A.

“You two sure?” asked the dark stallion.

“Trust me,” she answered. “Xeno- I mean Mistress?”

“Yes, wewill go back and stay inside. We can finish trading there, it will be a good afternoon,” said the zebra.

We all collected our things, and Risk led her brahmin somewhere safe. As a group, we moved to one of the abandoned houses. Lost lead the way, despite Xeno ‘owning’ us. With five of us, we managed to move enough of the collapsed awning to get to the front door of one of the houses. Breaking it open, we jumped through to relative safety. Inside, the house looked like every other one in the area; old world architecture and lots of rotten shattered everything inside. The second floor sagged and every window had been blown out long ago.

“That way,” I said, and pointed to the far wall, where the markers had been heading. Whether they were just walking up toward us from that direction, or passing by entirely, I didn’t know.

Clip and Risk took a seat on one of the moldy couches on one side of the room, while my sister and I huddled together waiting on another. Xeno played brave mare and looked out the broken window to see just what the red markers had been. “Itis manticores,” she whispered to the rest of us before slowly backing away from the window. “I see many passing, wewill be here a while.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Better manticores than slavers.

Still, without Persistence or my armor I felt useless. Manticores took a good bit of work to take down, but with five of us that wouldn’t be a big deal. Since we couldn’t leave without tempting our luck, I took the time to look around. I had plenty of it, so I hunted.

While most everything inside was broken beyond use or repair, I found a few gems and stuffed them in my saddlebags. When I looked up, I saw Risk doing the same, while Clip and Lost joined Xeno at the window. We earth ponies dug through, working together to move furniture and check underneath, and find anything of value. What we found we piled up on a cracked table in two little mounds that slowly grew.

“Newspaper here, want it?” asked Risk. She pulled an old newspaper from behind a moldy and sagging couch. Traders didn’t care much for old news, since few buyers cared enough to actually spend caps on it.

“I... I guess I’ll-” I stuttered. Shaking my head hard, I fell to my haunches. A newspaper couldn’t hurt anypony. If I took it, Risk wouldn’t just keel over and die or anything. Me taking the paper didn’t matter in the long run. Either of us could take it and nothing would be different. I looked at it again, the yellow mare holding it in her teeth with a very confused look on her face.

“If you...” I said, clenching my eyes shut. “I. You can.” I took a deep breath and looked over to Lost. If she would just turn around, and see. My brain didn’t make a choice. It was easy, I wanted to look at the paper and read what happened in our little neighborhood before the world ended. But, but my brain just...

“You decide!” I yelled at her.

My forelegs gave out and I slid from my sitting position to lie on the floor completely. Mistress? Fuck you. My head hurt, so I covered my eyes with my flesh hoof. A simple decision, and Lost not around to make it for me.

“Uh, okay. I’ll throw it in the pile,” she said, and tossed it through the air. I still wanted to know how she managed to talk without muffling her words, even when her mouth was full. She looked at me once more and dove back into the rubble, searching again.

Lost ran over and skidded to a stop next to me. She bent down to look at me and asked, “I heard yelling. Are you okay?”

“Fine. Perfectly fine,” I lied. The back of my head throbbed, almost like my brain was on fire. I forced myself up, and hugged my sister tight.

She grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me back. Behind her glasses, she stared at me with furrowed brows. It wasn’t a look I could meet. “Are you okay?” she asked again. I couldn’t tell if her voice changed because of concern, fear, or anger that I’d dodged the question.

“Yes,” I lied again, looking her in the eye. I focused on my own reflection in her glasses, but it looked convincing enough. I hoped. “I’m okay.” I looked to the table and back. “Risk found a newspaper,” I said to change the subject. Wrenching myself from her grip, I stepped away and grabbed it.

The newspaper’s name was printed in thick letters: Blackhoof Gazette, with a little black horseshoe in the upper corner. A tear split the name of the Gazette, where it had been torn from the wall decades ago. I looked at the article title on the yellowed paper.

Government Takeover: The End of Local Business?
The War has affected every pony in Equestria, but today those woes come one step closer to home. Government crews have taken up residence in the newly minted Ministry Circle, and are working to construct several buildings to completely renovate the city skyline. Officials tell us this is routine business, but many locals fear it means the War is coming home to us. Previous articles in this series have shown ponies we’ve known in the city for our whole lives have been affected, sent off to fight in battles that had nothing to do with them, sent to die for our Princesses. Now, this reporter loves Princess Celestia and Princess Luna as much as everypony else, but when they come to tread upon our beautiful city, I cannot help but question just how far is too far.
I spoke with Carriage Bolt, President and C.E.O. of Leathers Skywagons, and learned that she feels her company’s business models will be made obsolete by the encroaching Ministry buildings. I was assured that this is not bad, and only meant that she planned on adapting to new business climates, but when we see staples of business that have been in the community since Blackhoof was a one-pony town only two short generations ago change to focusing their energies on war and murder, well. This reporter disagrees.
On the other hoof, many fresh-faced young mares and stallions have begun to move to the city in an effort to become the first to train at the soon-to-be-opened Royal Equestrian Army Academy, excuse me, the Lunar Army Academy, just outside the city. Once again, locally owned farmland was purchased in bulk to build this Academy, edging out another family that has been here since the founding of the city. Speaking to Golden Crop, I was told the family was offered a generous sum for the land rights and are happy with the sale, but the good of the community should come before profits from fighting.
In the end, this reporter doesn’t know if all of this will help or hurt the city in the long run. This reporter urges all readers to keep informed, and keep opinionated. From this point forward, Letters to the Editor will be included in daily papers, rather than just weekend posts. Please be vocal about the War effort. These are your foals and your family fighting! Never forget that.
-Grapevine

The faded picture of a green and purple pegasus stallion split the article in half, and several of the words had faded with time, making me takes several minutes apiece to decipher the entire page. Lost and I read it together, with her finishing well before me.

“What happened in this town?” I asked her, looking at the mention of Leathers Skywagons.

“War,” she answered. “Risk? Do you know anything more about what happened here?” she asked, looking over at the scarred earth pony.

Risk pulled herself out from behind a fallen grandfather clock and looked at my sister. She smirked. “Information costs extra.”

“We’re stuck here, remember, why not pass the time talking about a world that doesn’t exist anymore?” she asked, sounding rather reasonable.

“I can pull up some old-world music to set the mood,” I offered, clicking the radio on the PipBuck on. Familiar music played through the broadcaster’s speaker, filling the room with nice, distracting music.

“Fine, but only because I like this song,” she muttered. Clip and Xeno stayed on watch, never leaving the window where they could see the manticores. Lost sat on one of the busted couches, and I curled up against her, still feeling outside of my own head at the earlier exchange. Risk took a seat across the table from us in a smaller sofa. “Any particular stories? I only know a few about Blackhoof. I try to only come here once or twice a year, and usually then I only go toward Stirrup.”

“Something about the history of the city, if you know any?” L.A. suggested. She wrapped a hoof around me and pulled me close.

Risk laughed, leaned forward, and took a deep breath. “Alright, since we’re stuck here. I know a rumor, and I’ve no idea if it’s true, so listen close. I’m only going over this one time.” She motioned with her hoof for us to move closer. When we didn’t, she rolled her eyes and continued anyway. “This city’s got a fucked-up past. While cities like Manehatten and Fillydelphia had long histories as cities, Blackhoof was just a farming town before the War started. A few businesses opened here and there, using the natural resources of the mountains to help carve out a niche, but true expansion didn’t happen until the War.”

Lost and I both nodded, surprised to have even learned the name of the city we’d lived in most of our lives. After the past week, this seemed like a whole different world.

“Now, when the War did start, this place built up something fierce. Rumor says Hoofington got razed in the War and was rebuilt bigger and better. Well here, they didn’t need to be burnt to ashes to grow from the ground up. The big earth pony families,” she paused and placed a hoof over her heart, “we knew what needed to be done and set upon it like a bloodwing out of Tartarus.” She smiled and her scar shifted across her face. “Built this place up in a matter of months, before the Ministries came in and took over. Everypony was loyal to the Princesses back then, and the Academy was built as the foundation of the new community.

“Now, not everypony liked that, and it caused some serious backlash,” she said. She reached out and grabbed the newspaper we’d been reading just a few moments ago. “See this? I’ve seen this article before, hanging in Stirrup in The Salt Liqueur. When they got too big, the Ministries decided it was the perfect place to set up shop, even if not everypony agreed with it. Ever see six buildings in a circle a ways from here? Yeah that’s them.” She pointed to the wall, in the direction I remembered seeing that odd set of nearly pristine buildings while trekking to U Cig. “Everything in this city revolved around the War effort from that point forward. They say the biggest thing to come out was the rail cannon.”

“The what now?” I asked, somewhat confused. I understood from what we’d heard about at Leathers and the memory orb Lost had described to me that what Risk said made sense, but I didn’t know enough about the Ministries or the Academy or any of that to actually understand it.

“Rail Cannon,” she repeated, slower than before. “Supposedly, there’s a big fuckoff gun that was designed to move on the rails to give the zebras a hard time.” Risk looked over at Xeno, who still stood with Clip at the window. Neither were listening, so she continued. “Anyway. The Academy got bombed something fierce shortly before the world itself ended, and the radiation there is so bad it could kill you in minutes. Or turn you into a ghoul, depending on how you take to the stuff.” She laughed to herself, then sat back in the seat. “Doesn’t matter now. Point being, this city thrived off mass-producing things to kill others, and tested everything in-house. That was the big one to end it all, but it never got used because of the Academy’s destruction. Turns out Balefire and Megaspells trump ‘really big gun’ in the end.”

“Like Leathers,” Lost said, focusing on the city rather than the weapon. “We’ve been there, saw what it became. I found a memory orb, saw the pony announce them switching from peaceful manufacturing to armor for the War effort.” She looked down at me, and squeezed a little.

I just nodded. I hadn’t seen the memory orb, since I didn’t have any cheater magic to view it, so I couldn’t say much about it. The idea of a gigantic gun meant for railroad tracks though... that had me interested.

“Well, maybe it’s more than just a rumor then,” Risk answered with a shrug. She looked over at Clip. “How goes out there?”

“Finishing up now,” answered the green-maned unicorn buck. He turned from the window and trotted back to us, followed shortly after by Xeno. “We should probably leave. We’ve spent enough time here.”

“You’re right,” she said, standing up. We stood as well, following her example.

“The manticores have passed, itis safe to leave,” Xeno said.

The five of us returned to the front door, stopping only long enough to grab the newspaper clipping and stuff it into my saddlebags. Clip left first, followed by Xeno and Risk, then Lost. I looked at the corner of my vision, wishing I could see the red markers to know for a fact it was safe. I jumped through the opening in the door to ask the others.

“Fuck yeah! Told you we’d find some fresh meat here!” yelled the hoarse voice of a mare.

I landed behind Lost, and looked over her shoulder. Around the four green makers of my sister and the others, were half a dozen red ones. Of course it wasn’t safe. Of course the minute I thought about it, some raiders showed up. “Fuck,” I swore, and we all ran for it in different directions.

Actually, this was perfect. I needed something to vent my frustrations on.

* * *

Bullets flew past my head. I didn’t flinch. Clip yelled something as he returned fire. Xeno and Lost stood behind the rubble, Xeno with her rifle trained on somepony or other. Risk barked orders at her bodyguard, not that I cared what she said. In the chaos of it all, I felt... not a Goddesses’ damned thing. No fear, no worries about who these ponies had been before they went raider, just a cold calmness that came with knowing that I was the murderer, and that they would be murdered.

I grabbed the pistol from my saddlebags with my mouth, and bit down. I charged as I fired. It didn’t feel particularly good to do what I was doing, but it didn’t feel bad. I gunned down the closest raider and changed course. Pistols weren’t my strong suit; in fact, I was pretty terrible with them. It took an entire clip from the pistol before the crazy-looking mare went down.

I tossed the gun and changed course. One down, too many to go. The sound of gunfire filled my ears, but not loud enough to deter me. Bullets hit me, and they hurt, but I didn’t stop. Remembering that I had the PipBuck, I reared at the next raider, an earth pony stallion, and activated S.A.T.S. I never wanted to have the thing off again, not when it could help me end these ponies so easily. With the spell doing the hard work for me, I released the spell, and attacked without a second thought. The stallion fell to my kicks, screaming about how he’d kill and rape me.

CRUNCH!

He didn’t threaten anything else. He wouldn’t, ever again. A bullet tore through my ear, making me scream. Same ear as last time, too. I looked over, and saw another mare with pinprick eyes firing at me. Her aim was terrible, rattling up and down, side to side. For a moment, I wondered if that’s what I had looked like that one time I took Dash... Trying to go the same speed as everything else when you felt like you were running at super speed. Fine corrections in aim got lost in the rush.

I put her out of her misery. I applied a steel hoof to her face, and she went down. These raiders had nothing on the group we’d fought a week ago. But then, they’d been on their home turf. I turned away and watched another raider drop. His back exploded as a half-dozen bullets from Clip’s machine gun tore his body to shreds. What hit the ground couldn’t even be classified as a pony anymore.

I went for the gun from the mare I’d just- The gun wasn’t there. I shifted on my hooves and looked to my side. Apparently I hadn’t killed her. She shot, and it hit me in the shoulder.

“Fuck!” I yelled, dropping to my side. As I fell, I smashed the raider in the face again. Her jaw bent in a way that I could tell wasn’t natural, even as the not-thinky pony.

“Hidden!” yelled Lost, her voice nearly overcome by the din of gunfire. She wasted no time in casting her healing spell. Her horn sparked madly, and she broke out in a sweat. The glow from her horn erupted, a second wave overtaking the first. Still, I could feel the warm familiar sensation of her magic. It felt like no other in the Wasteland.

The bullet in my shoulder slowly worked its way back out. I bit down, it didn’t feel better coming out than it did going in, just slower. Slamming my forehoof into the dirt, I watched as the little hunk of lead popped from the skin and fell to the ground. Cheater magic or not, that was a useful trick.

Without waiting for her to actually heal me, I dove back into the fray. I went for another earth pony, this one with a wicked-looking knife. She wasn’t looking at me, but instead focused on the group holed-up in the rubble and firing back. Xeno and Clip didn’t see her; they were too busy taking out the raiders hiding in cover on the opposite side of the road. Lost couldn’t do anything without her guns, and what magic she had wasn’t strong enough right now to defend herself. Especially not after the spell she’d just used on me.

So I tackled the mare with the knife. We both fell to the ground and rolled a few times. She yelled something I couldn’t understand through the knife she held. We traded kicks and stomps as we rolled around. She sliced at me, and most of her attacks caught flesh. I could feel the blood running down my face and neck. She didn’t get anything vital, and I didn’t have the old emotions in the way to make things feel frantic.

I grabbed the knife in my teeth, cutting into the sides of my mouth, and ripped it free. Her rotten teeth gave way with little resistance. I tossed the knife away and slammed my head into hers. It hurt me, but it hurt her more. She flopped back, finally out.

Time for the next.

I stood and looked around. Only a few left. Clip stopped firing and reloaded, while Xeno stood there with her gun up. If she was out of ammo, at least she could use the long barrel and heavy stock as a club. It worked, in a pinch. Clip finished reloading and unleashed another spray of bullets across the road. A few raiders got caught in his line of fire. Less to worry about.

Steel flashed past my face, and I heard a groan on the other side. The knife I’d thrown away now stuck out of a stallion’s neck. The knife didn’t go deep, and he’d already wrapped his telekinesis around it to pull it free.

I didn’t let him.

I spun on my steel hoof, queued up S.A.T.S. to make sure I’d hit, and bucked hard. The spell dropped. One hoof caught the knife’s handle, and the other his nose. With a crunch and a slide, he dropped down in a heap. I looked down at my legs and saw they were coated in blood. Just like after every fight. I looked to the sky.

Celestia, Luna? How did I always manage to survive this?

One last raider. I ran to her. I wanted this over so I could get back to my sister. Murder to keep her safe. Methods didn’t matter. Just that I got the job done.

“Hidden!” somepony yelled. It sounded like Lost, but with the wind in my ears I couldn’t hear.

“Stop!” the voice yelled again.

I ignored it.

“Miss Fortune, stop now!” yelled the voice I knew for certain was L.A.’s now. I didn’t move another inch, just stood balanced on two hooves.

A bullet jabbed its way into one of my standing legs, and I fell to the shattered pavement. Still I didn’t move. A light yellow haze appeared around the raider’s gun, and wrenched it from her. The mare dropped to her haunches, no longer putting up a fight.

Lost ran to my side and grabbed onto me, her horn sparking from the chip as she tried to cast a spell. Nothing happened. Instead she just nuzzled me. “As soon as we get to the house, I’ll fix this,” she whispered. “And stop when I tell you to.”

“She needs to die so you can be safe,” I answered. The pony in front of us was a raider. She was dangerous. I refused to let my sister be in danger.

“She’s a filly. Leave her be.”

I looked at my E.F.S. Without her gun and no longer fighting, the mare’s marker shone bright green. I looked back up and saw a filly no older than the one Sunbright had burnt to a crisp. I wouldn’t make it hurt like that.

I wouldn’t have made it hurt like that.

“Okay, sis,” I answered.

The fight over, my murderous rampage complete, I simply stood. “I’m going to loot them, let me know if you need me,” I said, and got to work. Let the rest deal with the living.

* * *

Risk waved, then nudged Clip. They both waved and started off. The raider filly went with them, strapped to the back of the brahmin. We’d paid a bit extra for Risk to take her with. Lost insisted, so that I wouldn’t kill her.

I’d been told not to. The filly was safe.

But we couldn’t trust her. And without a way to force her to not give away the location of our home, the best choice was to have Risk and Clip take her somewhere and get her into a city, where she could live an honest life that, hopefully, wouldn’t get her killed by somepony like me. Turned out, the raider group had survived by following the manticores and picking through what remained after the stampede. We’d just been so unlucky as to be in their path.

I sat on a pile of rubble and waved my steel hoof back. I hoped we’d see Risk again before she left the city for another year. When she was out of sight, we went back into our real house.

Spoils from the fight were split down the middle: we got half and Risk got half, though we sold most of our half back to Risk. The Raiders had had some food, which ended up being the main prize.

Once inside, Lost looked me right in the eye. She turned to Xeno and said, “Could you give us a moment?”

“Of course, Iwould ask the same if Iwere to discuss private matters, were my brothers still alive,” Xeno answered, already going back out the door. “Iwill allow you your immolation.” She pulled her head from the doorway and we were alone.

“What was that out there?” Lost asked. She sounded deeply concerned.

“I’m a murderer, Lost, didn’t I tell you?” I asked, not meeting her look. “If I’m going to be a murderer, I’m going to do it to keep you safe.”

“I can handle myself. I’m a big mare,” she chided. “You can’t run off like that. We don’t have the supplies to heal you right now.” She ran a hoof along one of the larger gashes on the side of my face. “And you got shot in the ear, again.” Oh, so she’d picked up on how it happened repeatedly, too.

“I...” I said. Shifting on my hooves, I searched for a word. I could apologize, but I didn’t feel like I needed to. They attacked us. I killed them. Why should I feel bad for that? Even the young one should have been killed, for safety. Not because I wanted to kill her out of bloodlust, but because it was the safest choice. “I did what I needed to,” I said, and sidestepped her.

She grabbed my collar in her fetlock and pulled me back. “If you’re so hung up on what Amble did, and to protect me... Will you accept an order I give you?” she asked, her brows furrowed. I could hear the hesitation in her voice. She had to know what I went through, she had to understand the impact of what I’d told her earlier. L.A. had no right to pull this, she’d done the exact same thing to the raiders between Leathers and Skirt. She was just as guilty as I was of running off on killing sprees.

I bit my tongue, knowing better than to bring that up.

“To the best of my abilities,” I answered, truthfully. I knew how broken I was, and I knew that Mistress Amble’s hooks went deep. Saying I’d do it wasn’t a guarantee that I could.

“Miss Fortune,” Lost said, hesitating. She paused a moment and looked me up and down. Gulping, she ordered, “Don’t kill unless you absolutely have to.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Lost stared at me for a very long while. Finally she took a deep breath and nodded slowly, obviously trying to hold back tears. “Good... Let’s get the collar off you,” she said. With a wave of her hoof to lead me back to the table, she smiled. “Because once I know how, I can take mine off. And right now, it’s digging into my throat.”

“Right, let’s get to that,” I said, then trotted over and hopped onto a stool. I wanted the collar off just as much as she did. That little bit of freedom could change everything. The last remnants of Mistress Amble and her leashes.

“Let me get Xeno, then we’ll start. Then dinner,” L.A. said. She popped her head out the door and yelled something too muffled to hear, then pulled back. She trotted back to me, then grabbed another stool and pulled it around. With the weak haze of her telekinesis, she picked up her screwdriver, and got into position.

Xeno crawled back in through the doorway, over the barricading desk. She joined us at the table, standing next to Lost. Together they got to work.

I couldn’t see what they did, but I could feel the collar move and jostle as they fiddled with it. Now and then, they’d poke me in the neck with the screwdriver, but mostly I just had to sit still and pray to Celestia and Luna that Lost didn’t set the collar off.

Though stuck stationary, I occupied myself by watching the PipBuck and the dirty counter. Lost and Xeno’s markers shifted around at the very edges of the E.F.S., pretty boring. The other side had a long row of little green markers but no indication on what it was for. I hadn’t bothered to look at it before, but made a note to keep an eye on it in the future. Another marker moving around on the...

“Lost?” I asked, looking back.

“Hidden stop- Dammit!” Lost yelled, embedding the screwdriver in our table. “I almost had it!”

“No, youwere off. Itis okay. Given time, wewill get it,” Xeno said. “Patience, Lostpony, thereare many stages. Itis not simple to remove.”

“I just...” I muttered.

“No, hold still. We’re getting these off now,” Lost said. The frustration in her voice hit a fever pitch, before she grabbed the screwdriver in her mouth. Her hooves latched onto the sides of my head and she repositioned me facing forward again.

“But-”

“No bufs. Holf sfkill, Higgn,” Lost snapped at me. The screwdriver dug into my neck, apparently she’d let go of it to snap at me.

“Again, itis this one first. Cut it, and the collar cannot see when we are trampling with it,” Xeno said, jabbing my neck with her hoof.

I went back to being a good little sla- A good little sister, and holding still. The E.F.S. probably just picked up something small wandering around outside. I looked back, to check if it was red or green. But the only markers I saw hung in my vision at the back-ends of the display, Lost and Xeno’s.

After several attempts to unwire the thing, under Xeno’s watchful gaze, we gave up. Twice Lost nearly detonated the collar, but managed to stop just before she hit it. After all that, I felt that keeping the collar for a short while longer was worth it, as long as I got to keep my head as well. Killing both of us and leaving Xeno stranded when she needed help with family definitely didn’t fit into any plan we had.

Instead, we had dinner.

Preserved food beat radroach meat any day. Cans sat in the center of the table, while the three of us sat around it. Lost used what weak magic she could to pass things around. On filthy plates, we split the meal into three parts. The cabinet in the other house didn’t have a lot, but we had enough to last us through the night until tomorrow.

I took another bite of some Wartime canned watermelon, and chewed slowly. The table felt empty, like it should have a dozen others around it in various armor and robes. I looked at the PipBuck, and thought about whether I should call or not. They might have accepted us as part of their family, but if we relied on them any time something happened, we’d lose what mom taught us about survival.

I snapped my thoughts elsewhere, from the ancient device to my sister. “So, what next?” I asked, hefting it up. I clanked my steel hoof down on the table for emphasis.

“We recover,” L.A. answered. She looked up from her food, and stared right into my eyes.

“We’re fine,” I said. “A good night’s sleep, and we’ll be on track. Look at what happened with those raiders.” I shuffled my hooves under the table, praying to the Goddesses she wouldn’t argue.

“We need more time, and you know it,” she said. It wasn’t an order.

“I took out those raiders without any trouble!” I argued. I didn’t mention the fact that I was, again, missing one of my ears and that I had several cuts crisscrossing my face and neck.

“I won’t win this unless I give you a direct order will I?” she asked, deadpanning.

Ow. I lowered my ears and rested my chin on the table. My forehooves curled up against my chest, under the table.

“Then no. We’re not ready to go fighting, we need supplies, and better guns, and time,” she explained, tapping her hoof on the table with each example of what we lacked.

“We can find all those things on the way... Please?” I begged. She kept telling me I was okay and that I needed to be strong and push past it, but when I tried she wasn’t letting me. “Please,” I whispered again.

Xeno looked up from the corn she’d been nibbling and shook her head. “If itis revenge that you seek, itwill not end well,” she said, before taking another bite.

“I really hate to admit it, but Hidden’s right. They hurt us. They’re hurting others,” L.A. said, her ears pinning back. “If it were just us... Revenge would be bad. We need to stop them. For the good of the Wasteland.”

“Skirt then? Then we’re done helping other ponies?” I asked, pushing away the desire to burst into tears. Helping ponies was good, and so was- I thought back to why we started in the first place. Skirt was the last place we’d planned to go...

“No, not done,” she said, thinky pony in full effect. “We start there. This isn’t about Skirt as a place the PipBuck was leading us, this is about ruining things for Amble so other ponies aren’t subjected to her. If we succeed there... We head to the place Spark Light and Cluster were caught, Idle. The ponies there will need help if Amble has her hooves dug in there, too.”

I nodded.

“We go to Skirt, and finish what we started a week ago. We’re there to do good, first and foremost,” she said, a smile creeping across her lips. “Assuming nothing goes wrong with that psychopath alicorn... I want to cripple Amble’s operation for what she did to you, and to me. If we can’t, then we won’t, but I think it’s for the best that we at least try.” She looked over at Xeno. Her eyes scrunched up into a glare. “Revenge or not, we make sure that evil mare can’t hurt other ponies.”

“What about heading back to Pommel Falls and meeting up with Praline and Lamington and the others?” I asked. “Surely they could help?”

“What happens if we fail, Hidden?” Lost asked with a sad voice. “If we get captured, we can get out... We can’t rely on them. The same reason I stopped calling them before. Putting their lives in danger isn’t something I’m okay with.”

I smiled, naturally and without forcing it. Lost planning things helped give me some resolve. She thought of consequences and made tough decisions. I sat up straighter. My shackled hooves felt better. “What about the alicorn?” I asked.

“We’ll think of something, no matter what,” Lost answered.

Just like the Stable pony on the radio, killing slavers and saving ponies. This could be the start of something great. Gunbuck owed us this much, after all we’d been through.

“And my brothers?” Xeno asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“As soon as we finish,” answered Lost. She sounded better too, without the hesitation or anger in her voice. “You’re a priority too. Where do we need to go once we have them?”

“Itis not very far. A long trot past the mountains,” explained the zebra. Past the mountains, where Gunbuck came from. This could work.

“Good. They’ve waited long enough. But...” Lost said, before pausing to take a few bites. With her food swallowed, she continued, “It’s still more important to save ponies, or zebras, or anyone who’s still alive before the dead. They won’t be going anywhere.”

Xeno only nodded. In the silence, we all continued to eat. The sparse meal didn’t last long, but it filled us up enough. After so long on so little food, it didn’t take much to make a filling meal. Still, even after the week of nearly no sleep, I didn’t feel tired.

“So, Skirt, then... We’ll see. Then back to Pommel Falls?” I asked.

“Then to where ever Xeno needs us to be,” Lost answered. She pushed her plate toward the center of the table and stood up. “Excuse me.” She trotted off to the bathroom and left me with Xeno.

“I’m sorry, Xeno...”

“Itis not anything you should worry yourself about, Hiddenpony. I just...” she sighed. Raising her hoof, she brushed her lightly striped mane back and out of her face. “My parents must be informed of what has become of Zahi and Zaki. For too long they have lay in the view of the stars. I donot believe in their evil, but for my brothers, who believed, itis important.” She closed her eyes and sighed again.

“We’ll do it, for our friend,” I said, offering her a hoof.

She didn’t see it, and didn’t react to it. “I... Iam becoming something Iam not sure would be approved of. I feel the call of home, wishing me to return. Ponies have too much influence in my life, Iam now thinking in your language.” She muttered something in zebra, something that sounded particularly sad. “Perhaps theywere correct...”

“Correct? Who?” I asked, shifting forward in my seat.

“Zahi and Zaki knew ponies would come. They saw it in the stars,” she said, choking up slightly. “When the clouds would break, light shone on both of them, but not on me. Perhaps then... My beliefs are not correct. Perhaps my mark is...” Her eyes crept open and she looked past the slaver barding at the hypnotic swirl on her flank. “I donot know what itis telling me anymore.”

I looked down at my own mark, the stylish X plastered over my flank. “I know how you feel...”

* * *

“Last try tonight,” I said. Sitting still like this all day really started to hurt after a while. When neither zebra nor pony responded, I looked back. “Okay?”

“Alright, I’m getting sick of working on it anyway. We’ll get it off in the end, promise,” Lost replied. Satisfied with her answer, she got to work on the collar.

Xeno stood next to her, ready to give instructions. Before we started, she’d washed off the remainder of the blacking she used to disguise her coat, and now looked like the zebra I was familiar with. The slaver barding lay in a pile across the table, ready to be worn as armor once we left to get our revenge.

“Okay, it’s this one right?” Lost asked. “I want to be one hundred percent sure.” She tapped my neck with the screwdriver, presumably where whatever bit she wanted to work on was.

Without waiting for an answer, L.A. started digging between my neck and the metal of the collar. She twisted the tip of the screwdriver back and forth, roughly digging into my neck now and then as she worked. A few minutes into her twisting, she moved over and pressed her face against the back of my ear.

“Yes, thatis the one that we must disavow first,” answered Xeno. She moved closer, and pressed her face against the back of my other ear. I felt her breath on my neck, and shivered.

My coat stood on end, feeling both my sister and friend breathing on me. I didn’t mind Lost being so close, but both of them pressing up against me had me a bit worried. All of us so close to something that could explode with just a wrong breath...

“No, down!” said Xeno.

“I know. Just let me work,” snapped Lost. The screwdriver twisted again.

“No! Not that one,” Xeno snapped back.

“I said I know!”

The collar dug into my throat as Lost pulled on it. I said nothing. The last thing I wanted was to be a distraction.

Xeno muttered something in her native language, but didn’t stop her. She grabbed my head and pushed it down, digging the collar deeper into my neck.

“There. There first,” she yelled, practically in my ear.

“Okay, okay, I just...” Lost cut herself off, and I felt the familiar warmth of her telekinesis on my neck. “Got it!” she shouted, pulling the screwdriver down and digging the metal rod of it into my neck.

“Good, Lostpony, disavow it, wewill move to the next stage,” said Xeno. She placed her hoof on the back of my neck and pushed down again.

I coughed, but didn’t move or talk. They were so close, if she could just get it off...

My sister tugged at the whatever it was and then pulled the screwdriver away.

“Next is this part,” ordered Xeno. She tapped my neck, a few inches to the side of where they’d been working, several times.

“Right,” Lost said. They got back to work, poking and prodding at my neck and the inside of the collar.

I shook and shivered, worried about what they were doing. I didn’t hear or feel a wire or cable or sensor get cut or get pulled out. Unable to see what was going on, I just worried. The bomb could go off with one wrong move. Xeno said they were disabling a tampering sensor, but then why hadn’t she cut anything?

“Lost?” I asked.

“Not now,” she answered.

“You must focus, Lostpony,” chided Xeno, “this step is very important!”

“Look, I understand how important this is,” Lost said, frustration in her voice. The screwdriver dug into my neck, deep enough to make her pull back. “Ahh! Sorry, Hidden,” she said. “This isn’t as easy as it sounds.”

I rolled my eyes. I knew how easy it sounded, and that wasn’t easy at all. My ears pinned back, now that I could move them, and I let my tail droop. This would be how I died. Not protecting my sister or saving the Wasteland, but by a misstep while disarming a bomb strapped to my neck.

“STOP!” yelled Xeno.

“What!?” we both yelled in unison.

“Thisis the wrong spot,” Xeno admitted. She sounded embarrassed, or the closest to embarrassed I’d heard her. “Thereis another step. Here,” she said, as she tapped the the hinge of the collar.

“Goddesses, Xeno! You could have killed us!” yelled L.A.

“Iam sorry, I only happened to learn so much,” she said. “The collar has words written in my language, itis... What is the word for accident and realization in your tongue?” I could feel the blush on her face.

“Fluke? Serendipity?” offered Lost. “Does it matter?” She grabbed my neck and pushed me to the side, then bend down at collar’s hinge. “Where? Which?”

“This, here,” answered the zebra. She grabbed the collar and pulled it back, sticking it to my neck again.

The screwdriver dug into my neck again, and both mares pressed their faces against the back of my head. Lost twisted the tool back and forth, scratching me a few times. Nothing she did managed to top the slashes I’d gotten from the raider earlier.

“Yes, there,” Xeno said. “Lower,” she coached. “Itis... No, there.” She prodded my neck. “Yes, go-”

“You want to do it?” Lost yelled at her. She pulled the screwdriver back and lifted from the back of my neck. Xeno did the same. “You’re distracting me!”

“Iam trying to help, Lostpony. I cannot do it, you must,” she answered.

“Umm, I don’t care who gets it off of me,” I offered.

“Hiddenpony is right, we need to remove it.”

“Don’t you think I- I just. ARG!” Lost yelled, and slammed her face against the back of my head again. She plunged the screwdriver back between my neck and the collar and twisted it sharply.

“No, you mus-”

“Yeah yeah, all at once,” Lost interrupted her. Three snaps sounded through the air.

“Sis?” I asked, turning my head only slightly.

“Done,” she answered. She pushed the collar back up onto my neck. “You can move now.”

I stood up and looked at the collar. I tried to look at the collar, all I actually did was look at my shoulder and spin in a circle twice. Giving up, I looked at the two other mares and shrugged, “Now what?” I asked.

“I haven’t figured that out yet. Anti-tampering is disabled, but I don’t have a clue how to get the lock open,” Lost said.

“Itis true, Amble, Slipstock and Sunbright, they are the only slaverponies that know how to unlock it,” agreed Xeno. She shrugged, an apologetic look on her face.

“Oh...” I said. I ran my hoof along the collar again, not sure how I felt. On the one hoof I wanted it off as soon as possible. On the other hoof, I’d had it a week now, and having it off might feel weird. Now that it couldn’t explode, it was safe, right? I tugged at it. I’d rather have the choice myself.

“Let’s... I’ll get mine disabled, then we can...” L.A. muttered. “I don’t know. Something.”

“Mind if I turn on my music?” I asked. After all that, I needed a distraction.

“That’s fine I guess. Just help me with this,” Lost answered. Her horn glowed and the screwdriver lifted back into the air.

I flicked the PipBuck’s radio program on and turned the volume down. The music played softly through the broadcaster, just loud enough for us to hear it. I took a seat next to my sister at the table and did as she had just a moment ago. I watched as she worked, with Xeno opposite me, giving her directions.

Together we guided her by feel to the same spots she’d been working on my collar. Now that she knew what she was doing, it went faster. Rather than three separate tries, she managed to get the first two stages of the release in just a few minutes.

The sound in the air suddenly changed, as somepony started whistling along with the song. I ignored it, thinking it was Xeno making the noise. She stopped giving instructions, since Lost seemed to manage just fine with her telekinesis and the screwdriver. The song ended, and far further than where Xeno was, echoed a whimper.

“Xeno, since when did you whistle?” I asked.

“Iam not whistling?” she said, looking at me very confused.

I looked at the E.F.S.

Three bars.

“Lost?” I asked.

Snap. Snap. Snap. The collar’s anti-tampering mechanism disabled, she looked up.

“Yeah wha-” Lost started. Her voice changed. She looked over my head, distressed. “Hidden?”

I looked where she was looking. Dear Celestia and Luna, why hadn’t I kept a gun next to me?

A unicorn stallion stood, unmoving, in the kitchen. He looked vaguely familiar, with a pale blue coat and hollow blue eyes. They glowed slightly, and tears fell down his cheeks. He took a lurching step forward, and the three of us collectively took a step back. Xeno made a full retreat, grabbing her rifle and propping it on the table. The stallion had a collar around his neck just like the one I had.

“Mistress Amble found us?” I nearly screamed. I flailed my forelegs a little, before stomping them down in fear. I couldn’t go back. I’d rather die. We just got somewhere safe and finally got the collars to a point where we could actually remove them! I could see freedom, and nearly taste it. I started to cry, shaking. It couldn’t get taken away again.

The stallion followed my every motion, the brightest spot in the center of his eyes moving to follow my leg.

“Where’s my gun?” Lost asked, looking at me.

“I don’t know!” I yelled, nearly choking on my tears.

We both looked, and saw it sitting on the counter across from us. With her horn sparking, she snatched the gun up. Her telekinesis didn’t hold. With a cry, her horn gave one final spark, and the blue glow surrounding it died.

Even as the gun floated into the air and crashed down, the stallion’s hollow eyes never looked away from me. Why did he keep staring at me? Did Mistress send him for me, specifically? I took another step back. Why hadn’t Xeno shot him yet?

“Who are you? What do you want?” Lost demanded. How she managed to keep her cool, I didn’t know.

The collared pony didn’t answer. He took another staggering step forward. The brightest spot in his eyes shifted, looking down, but never away from me.

I looked down at the PipBuck. Quiet music still echoed around the room from the broadcaster attachment. Looking back at the stallion, and how he followed the PipBuck when I moved my leg. I brought it up to my face, his eyes followed. I turned the music up. Sapphire Shores’ voice cut through the tension, singing a song about the sun not hiding forever.

The stallion’s jaw dropped. Suddenly the kitchen erupted in flames, unlike any we’d seen before. Bright green fire flickered as high as the rails that were once the second floor. We all braced ourselves, and I expected to die. The flames looked exactly like I pictured Balefire, horrifyingly lethal this close. They died down a second later, before disappearing entirely and leaving no trace of fire left in the room. In place of the blue unicorn stood something that resembled a pony.

Something that couldn’t be a pony.

The same hollow, glowing blue eyes stared at the PipBuck. Instead of a pale blue coat, the creature had skin that looked more like a radroach’s carapace than anything else. On his back sat a pair of blue-tinted insect-like wings poking through what looked like shiny armor. It had a small curved horn where a unicorn’s would be. Where a mane and tail should be, instead were black... somethings, that looked almost like a real mane and tail. The oddest thing; riddling his legs were a series of random holes.

“Lost, what is this thing doing in our house?” I asked, almost in a whisper.

“I have no idea... but I need something big to hit it with!” she said.

“I don’t think that’ll help...”

The creature moved closer, sinked closer to the ground with each unsteady step. Its torn ears skewed forward and his eyes stayed locked on the PipBuck. None of us moved, but Xeno kept the sniper rifle aimed at it. A shrill series of chirping noises came from his mouth, and he laid down on the floor, staring directly at the broadcaster. Tears still rolled down his black, chitinous cheeks.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Steel Hoof (Rank 1) – Finally putting that cyberpony hoof to good use? When attacking with the metal attachments to your body, you do extra damage equivalent to just how much steel you throw around.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Deadshot – Your penalties for aimed shots are halved.

“Give me that newspaper we found!”
“What? This isn’t canon, it won’t help.”
“But he’s a bug! A really big bug looking thing!”
“I know, but nothing we do here will affect that!”
“Why are you both yelling, sisters?”
“Don’t you see the bug!?”
“Don’t you see the bug?!”
“Itis a Changeling, not a bug.”
“How do you even know that?”
“Tribal Knowledge, remember.”

Author's Notes:

Chapter 11 Synopsis: As promised, here’s what happened in Chapter 11.
After failing to kill a pony when ordered to by Amble and her slavers, Hidden is dismissed back to the pen with the others. As punishment for her failure, Amble decides to instead attack what she loves, in hopes of breaking her spirit. Subsequently, she has Lost beaten nearly to death while Hidden is forced to watch. Afterward, Hidden is given a lecture both on the reasons a pony would give in, to protect their family, and a lecture from Amble on why its more important to know why she’s there than it is for her to simply accept it. Through the remainder of the time, Hidden is kept between Solitary and lectures from Amble, who continues to play tricks on her mind. When she fails a second time to kill a pony, who is once again murdered regardless in a familiar way, Lost is again punished. This time, Lost is put on the auction block and humiliated to scare Hidden into working for Amble. Once more Hidden is placed in Solitary, and begins to hallucinate her sister, mother, and Amble. Her will broken, she accuses Sourbelle of being a mole, before being forced to kill her as her final chance. Regretful about her last words to her friend being an accusation, she’s again put in Solitary. Now resigned to her fate, Amble finally gives in on her promise and gives Lost to Hidden. With the help of Xeno, who had lied her way into U Cig to be a guard, the three escape, but not without killing the slave processor Lead Line and crippling Sunbright in a fight.

Chapter 13: Necessary Actions

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Chapter Thirteen: Necessary Actions
“Sometimes you need to just act.”

Intruder.

An intruder in our home. For years we’d lived here, coming and going as safely as possible. Any time we felt it wasn’t safe to come back, that we might lead dangers home, we stayed elsewhere until it felt safe again. Mom taught us not to trust groups, and she instilled a deep paranoia within us, a paranoia that kept us safe for the longest time. In just one day, a day following a week of torture, but still... we had to deal with a trader who wandered by, a pack of migrating manticores, a group of raiders, and now...

This... thing.

Of course it found us. We’d been careless when returning home. I’d seen the signs and ignored them. We could have... I should have... I couldn’t do a Goddesses-damned thing. The only thing my mind could do was go over the fact that the horrible creature had followed us here, and wore a slave collar identical to mine and Lost’s.

It had to be one of Mistress Amble’s. There wasn’t any other explanation. The slavers had said that the collars were rare and cost extra, so a random... thing, having one made no sense to me!

The thing and I both lay on the floor, facing one another. We looked so similar, both on the ground cowering and crying, almost as if we were mimicking one another.

Why was it crying?

I wiped the tears from my face with my hoof. Slowly, I turned and looked at Xeno and Lost, without moving my steel hoof. If it was here to take me back... My collar shifted against my neck as I moved. I flinched, thinking of all the things Mistress Amble would have planned for when we got back. I opened my mouth to yell to L.A., but never got a word out.

“Kill-” The song ended. “-it!” Lost ordered.

BANG!

Xeno fired the instant the music died, just as a flash of green flame overtook the room. The bullet went wide and put a huge hole in the fridge. The fire died, and the creature was gone. Instead of a bug-thing, or the blue stallion, stood-

Me.

Static blasted over the broadcaster, and the emptiness between songs became the soundtrack to chaos. The other Hidden lept forward, tackling me to the ground. It jumped up, kicking me and leaping toward Xeno.

The zebra chambered another round and fired. She missed. The bullet smashed into the roof and shredded one of the lines we’d jury-rigged for lights.

Half the room went dark.

I heard Lost behind me running for the kitchen. I rolled to my hooves, thoughts of Mistress’ tortures and punishments pushed from my mind. We had to fight. We could beat it. Find out what it knew.

I jumped at it.

The other Hidden sprang away, much faster than me. Could it use those wings even as an earth pony? It really didn’t matter. I just had to catch it. I spun on my hooves, looking for a flash of green or a pony that looked like me.

Xeno reloaded again, her deep blue eyes scanning the room the whole time. She backed away to the far corner, getting the distance she’d need for the sniper rifle to actually be effective. We needed to get her a close-range weapon, I belatedly realized. Xeno pulled the zebra-striped knife out from her bag and held it in one fetlock against the barrel of the gun.

Perfect.

“Where’d it go?” Lost demanded, finally holding her gun in her magic. Her horn sparked and she looked exhausted already, but she still managed to keep the gun in the air.

I looked around frantically. Why hadn’t the radio played another song? Did I mess the frequency up by accident? Would music make it hesitate again? I couldn’t see the thing, so instead I tried to tune the radio back to the music. Now that I’d collected my thoughts, I could tackle it the moment it let its guard down!

The broadcaster crackled with static as I adjusted the radio’s frequency. I didn’t know which one was right, so just kept adjusting until I got something. A stallion’s voice came across the radio, different from DJ Pon3’s. He lectured, “...past, we do not have to live in the shadow of their greed and wickedness. Together, we can raise Equestria back to its former beauty! Together, we can build a new kingdom where all live together in perfect unity!”

Unity? Like the alicorn? I shook my head, I didn’t have time for that! I flicked the dial away again.

Static. More static. THUD!

Xeno hollered something as her sniper rifle clattered to the floor. I looked up from the PipBuck in time to see her stab the other me in the shoulder. She did it so easily, without any hesitation. Venting frustration over her brothers’ deaths? Well, she’d picked the right effigy to stab...

The zebra pulled her knife back out, splattering green blood all over our floor. The other Hidden, not missing a beat, bucked her in the face and knocked her back into the support beam for the second floor. Xeno toppled, groaning and reaching for her back.

The other Hidden didn’t stop at that. She ran across the room, and I ran to intercept her. We smashed together headlong in the middle of the room, forehead to forehead. I pushed back, and kept on pushing, my hooves scraping against the floor. No bug-thing was going to beat me. Pulling back only an inch, I headbutted- nothing! and toppled head over hooves, onto the floor.

Lost fired as I hit the ground, out of the way of her line of fire. Several pink beams lanced across the room, striking close to me but never quite hitting.

I rolled to my side and watched.

She kept firing. A half dozen shots hit the other Hidden, but none slowed her down. Her coat singed black and pink, but whatever natural armor that thing had took the brunt of the magical bolts.

The other me serpentined as she ran, and I ran after, the two of us looking identical as we darted back and forth. She jumped past L.A., who stopped firing only long enough to reload. The other Hidden skidded to the side, pushed off the half-wall that separated the kitchen from the mane room, and spun around behind Lost.

“Stop!” she yelled, grabbing my sister from behind and smashing her to the ground. “Come closer and I kill her.”

Did I really sound like that?

“With what?” I yelled back, grinning. Bug-thing armor or not, it wouldn’t survive a hit from me again.

The other me flashed green fire once more. Lost didn’t seem hurt by it, but struggled to get back up. The flames died once more, leaving the bug-creature with its hollow eyes and the strange holes in its legs. It leaned forward, pressing one hoof against the back of my sister’s neck, while the other slid around the front and pressed against her neck. One of the holes lined up just right, and the edge of it dug into Lost’s throat, deep enough to draw blood.

I didn’t stop. “Kriki!” the bug chirped shrilly at me, but I didn’t understand. Not that I’d have listened anyway.

It didn’t matter if this thing was here to take me back or not. I didn’t care if I was wrong. This thing showed up in my home and thought it could attack my family? I hit it with my steel hoof, right in the face. It cried out in that same shrill chirping and fell back. I followed through, and stomped it once in the chest as it fell. I left my hoof there, holding it down.

It struggled. Fire flashed and it transformed several times. First me. Then Lost Art. Then the stallion again. I pushed harder.

“We need to know why it’s here!” yelled Lost. “Hold it so I can ask, nicely...” Her voice dripped venom. She rose to her hooves, sweating and panting. “I’ll make sure Xeno’s okay, then we’ll handle this.”

The stallion looked up at me with hollow eyes. “If, you’re going to kill me... Can you play one more song before you do?” he asked.

I turned the radio back on, and found the right frequency again.

I could grant a final request. I might be a murderer, but I wasn’t heartless.

* * *

“This is going to hurt, a lot,” I told Xeno. With her nod, I pushed her nose back where it belonged. It snapped into place, and she stifled a scream. “You okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “I will...” she started. With a snort, she blew chunks of blood from her nose through the hole in the counter once occupied by a sink. “...be fine. Time, and a brew, they will fix this.” She snorted a few more bits of blood from her nose and patted me on the back. Trotting away, she grabbed her bag and sat on the couch, presumably to deal with her zebra potions.

I trotted over to Lost, who had the thing tied to the table. “I thought you were going to help Xeno,” I said to her, my lips curled in the smallest of smiles.

“You’re better at setting broken bones,” she answered, and pointed a hoof at the chip in her horn. “I could heal it, if I wasn’t already so exhausted.” Her breathing sounded normal now, so she must not have been too exhausted. “Plus, I get to deal with this,” she added, pointing at the bound bug-pony.

She’d tied it up with some rope from the piles of rubble we pushed into the corner. The rope was as old as the Wasteland, but still held tight. It looped around his legs several times, over his back to hold his wings down, and then wrapped under the table a few times. She’d tied the rope back up around the table legs, through the bugpony’s collar, and around its muzzle. It tried to say something, but only with strange chirping noises, which we couldn’t understand even when its muzzle hadn’t been tied shut. It struggled, but couldn’t get free. I checked the position of the ropes, and smiled at the fact that L.A. hadn’t looped any near the sharp hole along its foreleg.

My smile turned to shudder as I touched my own collar. All too well I remembered being bound by Slipstock and Vice Brand. At least our bindings hadn’t stabbed the bug with anything. I really needed to get all this steel off me.

Lost grabbed her gun in her fetlock and tapped it against the thing’s face. “Turn into something we can understand,” she ordered.

The bright spots in its blue eyes flickered a few times, looking at Lost, then me, then away, before cycling back around again. Green fire flashed and in place of the bug-looking pony lay the unicorn stallion from before. Since he was strapped down, I took the time to give him a good once over. Even as a pony, his eyes looked hollow and dead, with only glowing blue centers to give away exactly where he looked. His coat was a different shade of blue, darker than his eyes, and a strange black cutie mark of two curled lines marked his flanks. In sharp contrast to his blue coat, he sported a red mane, flared back in little spikes, and a tail to match. This form lost the leg-holes, replacing them with well-trimmed fetlocks.

“What’s the cutie mark of?” I asked, tilting my head. I squinted, trying to figure out exactly what they were.

“Dunno, let’s ask,” my sister answered. She undid the ropes around his mouth, while still holding the gun to his head. “So, what’s the cutie mark?” she asked.

“They’re called f-holes,” he answered, then shook his head. “Sound holes,” he added quickly.

Despite the stress, the freakout, and Lost’s attempt to look like a hardened mare who would kill a pony if he didn’t answer right, we both giggled like fillies at the dirty-sounding cutie mark.

“Fine, time for a real question. Are you alone, or are there more?” Lost asked, pushing the gun against his head. She pushed hard enough that he had to rest his face against the table.

“Just me! Only me, I’m the only one,” he answered in a shrill voice. His tail, which wasn’t tied down, snapped back and forth. He struggled against the table bonds.

“How did you find us?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter. I just did,” he answered, defying the gun pressed against his head. Lost twisted it. “If you shoot me! You’ll never know!” he yelled, struggling more.

“I can hurt him without killing him, sis,” I said. I raised my steel hoof and set it on the table in front of his eyes. She ordered me not to kill if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, so I wouldn’t kill him no matter what. But I could make him talk. Somewhere deep in my hooves I felt a mild ache...

He looked at my steel hoof, and at my PipBuck. He didn’t struggle.

“Trade! Let’s make a trade,” he yelled. He tilted his head up, pushing Lost’s gun further and further. With her magic so far gone and holding the gun in her fetlock, he didn’t have much trouble pushing it back up. “I tell you something, I get something in return!”

“Tell me how you found us. Then we might work something out,” she snapped at him. She pulled the gun back and aimed it as his leg. “I don’t have to go for the head first.”

I stared in awe. I knew Lost could be kind of crazy sometimes, especially when she went into the berserk spree like with those raiders, but this? She wasn’t ever this cold. On the other hoof, this was an intruder in our home, right after we’d escaped slavery. It made me think... what had Sunbright done to her? I’d talk to her about it later, but right now, we needed the answers.

“Fine, fine! Okay. I followed you. The Queen gave me an order and I took it, everything was on fire, so it’s not like I wanted to be there!” he answered. With another flash, he disappeared. In his place lay Mistress Amble.

I collapsed backward, feeling tears running down my cheeks before my brain registered that I was crying. I pushed myself backward to the counter and slammed into it hard. She’s here. Right there. On the table. Mistress Amble, ready to punish me. Maybe it had been her all along. She’d tricked us. Any second now she’d order me to do something, and-

Lost slammed the gun into the mare’s head hard, enough to crack her skull against the table.

“Nonono! No. Fuck, no,” I muttered to myself. I covered my ears with my hooves, clanking the steel hoof against my head painfully. I wouldn’t listen. I got away. Lost Art was here, she’d protect me. Everything would be okay. My mind wouldn’t stop making up terrible punishments that Mistress was certain to inflict on me. My breath caught in my throat, as if the collar tightened to suffocate me.

The Mistress who lay on the table groaned, but said nothing to me. She didn’t even look my way. I slowly uncovered my ears. “...find ‘em! Brin’ ‘em back. I’m not losin’ my new pet, not this soon,” she said in the voice I’d come to dread. “Do it now, she’s got my crown. Get it back, or ya all die. Don’t fuckin’ tempt me.”

With a green flash, the stallion returned. “That’s what she said. Exactly what she said,” he finished.

Lost ran over to me as he finished talking, the gun tossed to the floor and her hooves wrapping around me. She squeezed tight, the terrible mare who strapped down the intruder and interrogated him with threats of bodily harm completely gone.

I grabbed and squeezed back, trying to shut my brain out. He wasn’t Mistress. She wasn’t here. We had him strapped to a table and he couldn’t get free. Everything would be okay, it had to be. My sister would take care of me. I buried my face into the remains of her mane, and just cried.

L.A. stayed with me until I calmed down. I hated being like this. I missed the days when I didn’t fear my own thoughts. I missed being able to run down a threat and find exactly what I needed to kill it. I missed thinking that it was a good idea to jump off a third floor onto a monster and fight it on its back. Still holding Lost, I shook and cried. Somehow, someway, I needed to fix the damage the slavers had done to me.

“Are you alright?” Lost asked. She pulled back a bit and looked me in the eyes. When I nodded, she pressed her nose against mine and hugged me. “I won’t let him hurt you,” she whispered.

“I know that,” I answered. “But my brain doesn’t know that...” I let her go and forced myself back up onto my hooves. Everything ached from that little outburst, but with Mistress gone again, I felt I could continue to take part in the interrogation. “Let’s just finish.” I ignored the extra weight of my shackles and collar. I was past that point. I could do this.

My sister nodded and got up with me. Slowly, she walked back over to the stallion and picked the gun up. “Alright, so, that bitch sent you then. What did she mean crown?” Lost demanded. She pressed the gun against his leg again, further up this time, past where the holes would be in his other form.

“Queen. She’s my queen. Lots of us,” he answered, chittering away nervously. “She gives orders, we take them. Simple, really. Keeps us together.” He pulled against the ropes again, twisting his hooves back and forth to try and break or cut through them.

“Queen?” I asked Lost. “Like the one Rough talked about?” I shuffled my hooves at the memory. It felt like a lifetime ago that I met that rage-filled stallion. “You know a stallion named Rough Night? Or a mare called Spade?” I asked, motioning for Lost to press the gun closer.

“What! No. Why would, no,” he said, looking back and forth between the two of us. “He... Wait.” Green fire flashed and another stallion appeared. This one was green with orange eyes and no mane. He didn’t look anything like Rough Night. “This one?”

“No. How do you do that?” I asked him, more curious than angry. Certainly not as angry as Lost was. Not that I didn’t understand why. I just couldn’t muster the energy to be upset about anything, not after everything I’d dealt with.

Sleep couldn’t come soon enough.

“I... Well, I mean,” he stuttered before flashing with green fire and returning to the shape of the stallion with the f-holes on his flanks. “Nothing, forget it!”

“Do you want more holes in your leg?” Lost demanded. “Tell us now.”

“Changeling! I’m a changeling. We transform, it’s easy. Easy! See?” he chattered, shifting through green fire again and again. First he looked like a bug, then he looked like me, then Lost, then Hard Sell, then back to the f-holes stallion. “Easy! I could do it all day.” He looked back and forth a few times between the two of us, the bright spots flicking about.

“What in the Goddesses’ names is a changeling?” L.A. asked. She looked away from the pony on the table and called to Xeno. “Are you okay over there?” A positive sounding grunt answered her. “Do you know what a ‘changeling’ is?” she asked.

“Is bugpony, changes to look like others,” Xeno yelled back.

“Well, we knew that already,” I said, rolling my eyes. I stepped forward and looked at the stallion. I raised my hoof and showed him the PipBuck. “Answer faster and I’ll play a song. Nothing mean, just some good music. I like it just as much as you. Do this for both of us.”

“Last question, then I figure out what to do with you,” Lost said. She lowered the gun. “Did anypony else come with you? Do any others know where we are?”

“Song, song first!” he chattered again. He waited for the music to start, his eyes focused directly on the PipBuck. When neither of us touched it, he looked back and forth between us and sighed. “Fine! Okay. No. I’m alone. The Queen sent me alone. She sai-”

Lost cut him off by pressing the gun to his face, the barrel against his eye. “Transform into her again, and I transform you into a corpse.”

“EEP!” he squeaked. “No stories, got it. I... I can’t!” He struggled against the bonds frantically. “Story, gotta be in character!”

I hit him with my steel hoof, hard. His head snapped to the side and back up exactly where it had been before. “No. Turning. Into. Her!” I screamed, more at myself than at him. I couldn’t take seeing her again.

“Owowowow, okay!” he yelled. He tried to pull one forehoof up, and tilted his head close to it as if to protect himself. They didn’t meet though, and he gave up. “I... I came back, after the auction. Same as always. How she makes a profit. Smart Queen! Best Queen. She grabbed me. New collar. Yelled. I went off, followed the trail. You led me here. No others. I bring you back. Return the crown. Where’s the crown? Can I see it?” As he spoke, his voice got higher and higher pitched, and he talked faster and faster. It reminded me of a Steel Ranger mare I knew...

The only thing we had with us that wasn’t already ours...

“The detonator,” both Lost and I said at the same time.

“Detonator?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Lost set the gun down and trotted off. She ducked around a corner and came back a second later with the detonator. I didn’t even know she’d hidden it! She held it in front of his face in her magic, through the sparking of her horn. She didn’t look worn out by the small show of telekinesis this time, so I had hopes that she might just be getting better.

“The crown!” he shouted. He lunged forward, but the table only scraped across the floor an inch or so. It hung well out of his reach.

“So, I have the crown... Know what that makes me?” L.A. asked him. She waved the detonator back and forth a few times.

The pony’s eyes followed it as she moved it back and forth. “Crown is Queen,” he answered.

“Yes, I am your new Queen. You do as I say. Do you understand?” she asked him.

“New Queen?” he said with a flinch. His eyes closed and he flinched several more times. “New... Others. What about them?”

“We can get them. Music for all,” she told him, motioning her hoof to me and the PipBuck.

I held it up and and waved it a few times in front of his face.

He looked at the PipBuck and the broadcaster, then back at the detonator. His eyes dimmed a bit, before going so bright that I couldn’t see the spots where his view was focused. “New Queen gives music!”

“Hidden, go ahead and turn it on,” Lost said with a smile.

I flicked the radio on, and a beautifully soulful song sounded out of the broadcaster’s speaker and into the air. Collectively, the three of us smiled and listened, each of our ears flicking slightly to pick up every last note.

Lost put the detonator away, leaving us with a new... companion? No, not companion until we could trust him; for now he’d be an acquaintance. At least we had a wonderful song to end this whole fiasco with.

* * *

“No, I don’t want a slave. If he’s not going to try anything, we can have him as a friend, eventually, but I’m not going to become a slaver and hold it over him. I’m already treading too close to that with what I did earlier to you...” Lost said with a sigh. She twiddled her forehooves together a few times, something obviously on her mind. “You two have something in common, you both like music, right?” L.A. asked me. The two of us sat on the second floor, our hooves hanging off the edge as we talked.

Xeno took over the kitchen once we untied the bugpony, and threw us out so she could make some zebra potion or concoction or something. She placed all manner of bits and pieces for cooking up her brews all over the counters. I had no idea where she’d gotten them from. I looked over at her, catching the zebra move between several different vials, a lit cigarette hanging from her lips.

“Friend? Are you sure?” I asked Lost. I yawned. I just wanted to sleep.

“No, I’m not. I can’t trust him yet. If he ordered you to do something as- as Amble,” she said, making me flinch. “Then that could have gone a lot differently. He could be helpful though. Once we get the collars off and I can be sure he won’t go back to U Cig, I'll let him either go on his way or stay with us.”

“So what do we call him?” I asked. “First step toward friendship is knowing names and not calling each other ‘Hay you’ all the time.” I looked back at my bed. It looked more and more comfortable every time I looked at it.

“Mmm, yeah,” she muttered. She tapped her chin with a hoof a few times. “Hay, changeling? Where are you?” she asked, leaning forward to look down at the first floor.

A shrill chirping filled the air, and the changeling ran from the kitchen to sit on the couch below us. He looked up at us from the slashed fabric and switched forms to the blue stallion with a flash of fire. “I’m here my Queen? What do you need?”

“Don’t call me that. What’s your name?” L.A. asked him, sounding much more like my sister than the hate-filled interrogator she’d been only a short while ago.

“The old Queen, she called us all ‘things’ when we were together, but the name the other ponies knew me as was ‘Fine Tune,’” he answered her, chirping happily.

“Alright, Fine Tune it is,” Lost said. “Thank you.”

“Of course!” he shouted.

“Think he fetches, too?” L.A. whispered to me, stifling a laugh. She looked down at him, “You can go back to... Whatever you were doing. No leaving the house, though. You can eat something if you need.”

“I don’t eat food,” he said.

“Then what do you eat?” I asked him, raising an eyebrow.

“I feed on emotions, preferably love. It’s the most pure and delicious! Your love of music tastes better than any I’ve ever had,” he explained with a smile. That actually explained a lot. It freaked me out that there were creatures that ate emotions, but... at least he knew what he liked? For that matter, when had he tasted my ‘love of music?’

I flicked the radio back on, only to find it replaying one of the songs I’d heard earlier. Still, the music was good, I liked it, and he would enjoy the taste of me enjoying the music so, why not? I closed my eyes and listened.

* * *

I snorted. First time in a week where I could sleep when I wanted to, without any interruptions or slavers keeping me up, and I couldn’t sleep. My hooves felt heavy, even as I lay on the bed. The weight of the collar hung more heavily in my mind than on my neck. I looked down at my steel hoof and shackles.

So much had happened since Stable Twelve and Twenty One, I could hardly believe it. Dealing with old world secrets, getting shot and burnt, losing a hoof, making friends with power armor wearing Steel Rangers, finding an alicorn, becoming a slave. Honestly, it was too much. I added another item to my list of favorite things to never do again. Right under having my hoof bitten off, I mentally added ‘get caught by slavers.’ Slavery ranked below losing a hoof only because, well, even with the shackles from Slipstock, I could still at least walk as a slave.

“Bleh...” I muttered, snorting again.

“Everything alright, sis?” L.A. asked from behind the remains of the wall that separated our rooms. She sounded groggy.

“Just, can’t sleep. Are you sure about our plan for the next few days?” I asked her. I wanted to go to sleep, I didn’t want to talk. Why wouldn’t my body let me just relax and sleep?

“No. I’m really not. We need to stay low for, probably forever to be honest,” she answered. Sounds of shuffling about echoed across the wall and she peeked her head out past the rotten wood. “But, we can get some sleep while Xeno and Fine Tune watch-”

“You mean while Xeno watches Fine Tune?” I asked, cutting her off.

“Yes. Even if he does think I’m his queen, he can’t be alone yet. Plus, I don’t even want him to view me as a queen... I don’t like it,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t want to use everypony around me like they’re slaves.” She looked over at me, or past me and stifled a yawn. “We should’ve never taken the PipBuck, and just skipped this whole adventure...”

“I know. But, we’re already here. We get sleep tonight, and we move forward fighting.”

That’s all we could do, now. That or give up...

“Good night,” I said to her, and rolled over.

“Night,” she said, yawning again. I heard shuffling, and then quiet snoring as she drifted off almost right away.

Staring at the wall, I took the chance to really appreciate the fact that nighttime in the Wasteland, at home, with nothing to do, was really, really, fucking, boring. I gnawed on my lower lip a bit, thinking... It’d been a long week, and I could always use Lost’s method of getting to exhaustion.

I rolled over and thought up something fun...

~ ~ ~

Mom crouched down, hiding behind the collapsed wall of a building. She peeked her head up over the ruins, just far enough that her eyes, ears, and horn were past the edge so she could see. “Alright fillies, what do we do when we see a group of ponies?” she asked us.

“Hide,” Lost answered.

“Good, and what else?” Mom asked, looking at me.

“If they find you, don’t tell them you’re from a Stable,” I answered.

“Excellent, you’re both right,” she said, smiling. “I know I tell you this all the time, but ponies can’t be trusted. They look out for their own and prey on outsiders. If they see you as a Stable filly, they’ll think you’re easy prey.” She repeated the same story to us every time. At least this time she wasn’t telling us how she learned that fact.

I scooted closer to the edge of the fallen wall, slowly working my way over the rubble until I could see past. I watched half a dozen ponies walk past, two of them in armored barding and the rest without anything aside from huge metal rings around their necks. I lifted my hoof to my own neck, wondering why I knew exactly what it felt like to have something hang there. One of the armored ponies had a strange rifle that looked incredibly sinister, and both looked rather unhappy. Their cutie marks didn’t give me any comfort to what they were either, one sporting a skull with a hoof-mark on it, and the other a fiery brand.

“Mom, what are those ponies?” Lost asked, peeking up and over the rubble like mom was.

“Those are slavers. They take ponies against their will and sell them,” she answered.

“Why don’t we save them then?” my sister asked. She crouched back and and leaned against the wall.

“Because I’m not putting my foals in harm’s way,” Mom said with a stern voice. The teacher was gone, replaced with a mare who only cared about her family. I had the best mom. “They’re just as likely to turn on us as soon as they’re free. Ponies, especially desperate ones, cannot be trusted. Always watch out for slavers. Raiders might be bad, but at least they’ll eventually kill you. Slavers keep you alive and suffering.”

“Okay, mom,” I said. I moved back to stand with them, to hide until the bad ponies got far enough away that we could make our retreat. I stumbled on a hunk of stone and fell. I hit the rubble hard, and cut my face against the sharp edge of what looked like it might have been a chimney once. “Ow!” I screamed.

Mom looked down at me, a mixture of rage and fear in her face. I shrank back, knowing full well how much I’d just messed up. She looked back at Lost and said, “Go. Take your sister and run. We’ll meet at the usual spot.” Before she finished her sentence, her horn lit and her guns started sliding from her saddlebags.

Lost helped me up, and the two of us ran. We had to get away. If those ponies caught us, I couldn’t even imagine how upset mom would be with me. Or what they might do to me. Three of my hooves started to hurt. I pushed through it. Tears mixed with the blood on my face. Something deep in the back of my mind dug at me, something I couldn’t quite place. Even the Goddesses couldn’t protect me from it.

Every time we stopped somewhere, we set up a hiding spot, a safe place in case things went wrong. Lost and I ran toward it. Every time this happened, Mom promised to teach us to fight, for emergencies, but no matter what happened, that always became ‘next time.’

We ran as fast as our little hooves could take us. I ran out in front, ignoring the blood that slowly coated the side of my face. It wasn’t a deep cut, I’d be fine. I just needed to keep running. I looked back at my sister.

Where was my sister?

I stopped running and turned around. “L-Lost?” I asked the emptiness, in a voice that was probably too loud for safety. I didn’t see her anywhere. Had she gotten ahead of me? I turned around. Why’d everything look so different? Where was I? A different part of the Wasteland?

I backed away, confused as to what was happening. I wanted to collapse and cry. But I had to be strong for Lost and Mom. If they found me.

The ground crumbled beneath my hooves. I tumbled down, sliding along rocks and rubble, bouncing off the loose dirt and over the deep roots of dead trees. My hoof caught on a bit of the ruins that stuck out, and suddenly it disappeared.

I tried to scream, but nothing came.

I hit the ground hard. Groaning, I twisted about on the floor and managed to get a look around. I lay in a cage, bars and darkness surrounding me. Scrambling to my hooves, I looked around. Where was I? Why was I this... I looked down at myself. Was I just a filly a moment ago? Furrowing my brows, I saw the shackles.

No...

I charged the bars and hit them hard. My steel hoof dented one, but I couldn’t get through. I slammed my forehooves into them again and again. Giving up, I turned and bucked them as hard as I could. They wouldn’t budge. Mangled and twisted, they held fast.

Heavy hooffalls echoed through the bars and into my little cage. I got up and turned around, only to see the ornate, etched armor of Star Paladin Lamington trotting toward me. Even with his armor on, I could see the glow of his cybernetic eye through the visor. He stopped a few inches from the bars, just out of reach of where I’d nearly broken them.

“Lamington! I’m so glad to see you, you have to get me out!” I begged. The slavers could show up at any moment. And then. Then they’d...

I collapsed onto the ground, my hooves twisting in unnatural ways to cover my ears. I curled up, the claws in the back of my mind returning with a vengeance to remind me of the punishments and terrible things I’d get.

“I offered once,” he said without a hint of static. “I wanted you to come with, so I could protect you. If you’d said you weren’t interested, I would have understood. You can obviously handle yourself.” The glow of his eye through the visor looked down at me for a moment. He tilted his head up, and walked away.

I curled back up, only the heavy thuds of his armored hooves breaking up the screaming in my own mind.

~ ~ ~

Waking from the nightmare, I looked at the clock on the PipBuck. Nightmares or not, I at least got a full night’s sleep. “I miss when I couldn’t sleep,” I whispered to nothing, only half-serious. My ear twitched, I could hear snoring. Great... More time to kill doing nothing...

* * *

“I thought you said we had to wait until I was better before we’d go anywhere?” I asked my sister. Together we’d spent the morning collecting everything we might need for our trip.

“Fine Tune turning up ruined that idea. Him following us here was sloppy enough, but we have no idea what might have followed him,” she said with a smile. Same song as every other time, something a thinky pony would have memorized by now. She lifted the jacket that I’d found yesterday from the table and floated it over to me with her magic. Straining just a little, she said, “Put this on over your armor. They won’t expect you to be covered hoof to head in steel if you’re wearing this.”

I looked at the jacket and smiled. It really was a good looking jacket, and with her giving it to me, I didn’t need to agonize over who should have it. Setting it off to the side, I started getting the armor on. I pulled each piece on, strapping them into place where I could, with my sister helping to get the things I couldn’t reach. Afterward, I pulled the jacket on overtop, rolled the sleeve up over the PipBuck, and strapped myself into my battle saddle.

“Go look in the mirror, Hidden,” she said, and pointed me toward the bathroom.

I trotted off and squeezed myself through the door. Inside, I looked at the reflection in the mirror. The pony that stared back at me looked a lot closer to the mare I recognized, compared to the night before. Sleep, even restless, nightmare-filled sleep, had done me a world of good. I adjusted the jacket’s collar with my hooves, hiding the slave collar as best I could, and backed myself awkwardly away from the cracked mirror and out into the mane room.

“It fits you,” L.A. said. She walked over and gave me a hug. “Now, let’s see about getting my horn fixed and we can leave,” she said, tapping the chip in it with her hoof. “Xeno, did you manage to get anything brewed up last night?”

“Yes, itis finally cooled enough that we may use it. Come, the bugpony and I are finishing now,” Xeno answered from the kitchen. Between rounds outside, she’d set up a nice little brewing area in the corner of the kitchen, from the collapsed sink to the half-wall that separated it from the mane room.

As we walked in, Fine Tune chittered something at us in his weird changeling language before flashing with green fire to appear as the stallion he usually used as his pony form. “Morning, did you sleep well?” he asked, somewhat slower and less skittish than he’d talked during the interrogation last night. Hopefully this meant he could hold a normal conversation...

“No, not really.” I answered him. “Mistress has managed to work her way into every possible joy I might find, even now that I’ve gotten away from her.” I looked down at my hoof. “A bit sore, too... Anyway! How are you?”

He looked at me for a moment, then to Lost and Xeno, then back again. “Good! Excited for travel and music. Happy to serve the new Queen. I... I want to make her happy,” he said, smiling.

“Do you think you can make your eyes not dead and hollow while we’re out?” I asked him. “It’s a bit of a giveaway that there’s something different about you.” With Xeno in slaver barding, collars on the three of us, and a pony with dead eyes, we’d stand out quite a bit. Anything that we could do to limit our visibility would help.

He nodded. His eyes flashed green and the hollow spots were gone, replaced with pupils like a normal pony. “Like this?” he asked.

“Yes, thanks,” I said, and raised an eyebrow. “How’d you do that, anyway?”

“Well, I can take the form of any pony I’ve seen, but I can mix and match traits!” he explained. “More possibilities when escaping.”

“Oh, well I guess that makes sense... Let’s... go see what Lost and Xeno are talking about,” I said, patting him on the head a few times. First my sister and her cheater magic, then a zebra who could ignore the dangers of the wasteland and make potions for us, and now a shapeshifting magical pony. Goddesses-damned cheater magic. Cheaters, all of them!

“...leave it all here?” Lost asked Xeno. She shuffled on her hooves a few times, looking quite uncomfortable.

“Yes. Itis better here, where it will be safe. Every time I take my tools with me, thereis a chance it will be damaged,” Xeno answered, looking over to me. “With the fights Hiddenpony gets into, Iam worried that Iwill lose something I cannot replace.” She pointed to several of the glass bits and pieces on the counter as she talked, indicating which ones she couldn’t get again if they got broken.

“Alright, if you say so,” L.A. said, shrugging and giving up. She turned and left the kitchen. “Let’s head out now, we’ll discuss plans on the way.”

“Ihave made enough to last for...” Xeno said, trailing off and looking at me. “Iwill... make them last. Lostpony, take this one before we go.” She hooked a vial in her fetlock and tossed it across the room to my sister.

A blue haze wrapped around it in mid-air. Lost hovered it down closer to her face and looked at it. She tilted her head down and looked over the rims of her glasses. “It’s the wrong color,” she said.

Xeno shot Lost a look that even made me shake in my shackles. “I have made this special to help, watch what you say, Lostpony,” she said. “Donot be-” She stopped herself mid-sentence and said something in her native tongue.

L.A. popped the top off the vial and downed the liquid in a single gulp. Retching, she tossed the now-empty vial back with a flick of her magic, and spent the next few seconds coughing.

Fine Tune ran over and stood next to his new Queen, chattering something to her as she coughed.

“Flavor isnot what is important, Lostpony. Itis made to work, not to be pleasant,” Xeno said with a bit of a snap. “Still, it should be able to help. The changeling was very useful in finding the ingredients.” Catching the flying vial, she smiled at the the stallion. “My mother would be proud to learn that I am professing with the skills she taught me.”

“What is it?” I asked her, trotting over to the table to load my saddlebags up with the remainder of our supplies.

“Itis an elixir made by merging several potions and other ingredients, it...” she said, stopping to talk in her zebra language for a few seconds. “It should work much better.” With a sigh, she trotted forward and clopped a hoof over Fine Tune’s back. “We couldnot find a balefire phoenix, or I might have been able to make something far more useful. There is still time, wewill look as we travel.” She nudged my sister. “Come, we must go. My brothers await our success.”

As Xeno and Fine Tune trotted away, I sidled up next to my sister. “What’s the plan?”

She crossed her eyes and her horn began to glow. Sweating and grimacing, she slowly healed her own horn, just a small amount. With a few deep breaths, she looked at me. “We go out there, we hunt along the way to get anything that might be useful, and we hurt Amble’s operation as best we can,” she explained. “If we get into serious trouble, we call in the Steel Rangers from Stable Sixty as our backup plan.”

“Is that why you don’t want to go to them first?” I asked her. We trotted up and out the secret trapdoor on the roof, which ended up being a bit of a squeeze with my armor and the battle saddle on.

“We’re strong enough to do this on our own, especially with a fourth now. We can do it ourselves, and not endanger their lives. If worst happens, we run and call for help,” she said as we trotted away from the house.

* * *

Dirt, ruins, radiation, more dirt, more ruins, and, surprise! More radiation. I hung my head in boredom. I’d given Lost the PipBuck as we left so she could lead our little group without needing to consult me every few steps, but without the little markers in the corner of my vision to keep me busy, everything just started to blend together in one mass of rotten, rusted, wasted pointlessness.

The only bright side to the trip? We took a way that I’d never been before. Every building I could find that wasn’t totally collapsed, I dug through. Over the few hours we walked, I collected a ton of useless trash, broke half-a-dozen bobby pins without managing to open anything, and found a replacement Equestrian Army Today! All in all, it wasn’t a bad haul, and it helped shake the horrible boredom that made every bit of the Wasteland look exactly the same. Were it not for the PipBuck leading us with a map marker, I’d have thought we were walking in circles.

“Hay, sis?” I called to Lost. I pulled my hoof from the trash can I’d dug it into, finding nothing. Oh well, not every spot was a winner. “Do you have a plan for when we get there?”

“I’m thinking up one now,” she answered, not looking back at me.

“Iwas able to find ponies not under the control of your false Goddess,” Xeno chimed in. She wore her slaver barding, the only armor she’d managed across since. Too bad she didn’t want to join the ‘family’ back at Stable Sixty, or she might have something better and less... slaver.

Fine Tune trailed along behind Lost, smiling and watching everything we passed with rapt attention. Whether he wanted to memorize the path to make it back to U Cig like he was conditioned, or just liked the sights, I didn’t know. I just hoped the chitin under his pony form would be enough to protect him in a fight, since he wore no armor. Not that we had any to give him.

“In the tunnels?” I asked. I trotted up close so I could be a part of the conversation. The four of us walked off the mane road, behind the ruined buildings and hopefully where any wandering raiders or other troubled ponies wouldn’t find us.

“Yes, theywere... Helpful. They told me that if Iwere to stay, the Goddesspony would kill me,” the zebra explained. She looked over at me, her deep blue eyes squinting. “Itis the way of your kind.”

“It’s the way of most kinds,” I said. “Even us.”

“She’s not one of our kind, Xeno. She’s a fake, and we’re going to stop her. Whatever reason she might have to kill you, we won’t let it happen,” L.A. said firmly. “And we’re not wandering murderers, we do what we have to to survive, nothing more.” She pointed a hoof off to the side. “Something’s over that way. We’ll come up with a real plan in a sec.” She looked at me and smiled. “Let’s go clear a path.”

Xeno stayed behind to set up with her sniper rifle, while the three of us went down to find out whatever was going on on the PipBuck’s little compass. A short distance away stood a squat steel building that looked particularly well-taken-care-of compared to the rest of the ruins around us.

“Fine Tune, can you check what’s inside?” Lost asked as we approached the back of the building.

The changeling bowed his head. “Of course, Queen,” he chittered, green fire flashing and replacing the unicorn stallion with a pegasus mare dressed in raider scraps. She flitted away, wings flapping at impossible speeds, and disappeared around the corner.

“Think this’ll work?” I asked. Planning for the worst, I checked that Persistence was loaded and rested my mouth on the bit.

“He managed to sneak into the house without either of us knowing, even with the PipBuck. I’m pretty sure he can check out a building and come back to tell us if anything’s inside,” Lost answered, her eyes looking at the ground next to her. Or she might be looking at the PipBuck’s markers, I wasn’t quite sure.

I groaned, not trusting the PipBuck as much as I once had. First Wirepony didn’t have a marker, and then none for Fine Tune. Maybe Praline could fix it? My ear flicked, and I heard the sound of something clanking coming through the wall.

“Here we go,” Lost muttered, pulling out a gun I hadn’t seen before from her saddlebags. She slid it down into the mesh holster attached to her armor’s leg. The grip of the gun read “VB - LS - BS,” with each set of initials carved quite deep, as if somepony had repeated the process several times.

“What’s that?” I asked. I poked the gun with my hoof, more for myself than for her.

“Loyalty.”

“That’s the name you gave the gun?” I asked her. Both my ears skewed forward, listening for anything else past her inside the building.

“That’s the name the PipBuck gave it,” she answered, matter-of-factly.

“I thought you didn’t believe me,” I said, deadpanning. My ear twitched, still listening at the silence behind her.

“Well, no. I don’t really. But it doesn’t matter. Xeno brought it back from U Cig. It looks like a modified plasma pistol. I’m guessing it belonged to Vice Brand? He’s the only pony I can think of that might be trusted with a gun with the initials ‘VB.’ I figured I’d try it out,” she explained, hoisting it up with her magic and pointing to the bits on the front that definitely looked like they didn’t belong.

Before I could get a good look, Fine Tune zipped back out around the side of the building and landed by transforming back into the unicorn stallion. “Emotionless. They’re fighting with a giant radscorpion,” he said, his tail curling up behind him like a radscorpion’s stinger.

“Emotionless?” Lost and I both asked.

“Walking dead ponies. They have no emotions to feed on, we call them Emotionless,” he answered, tilting his head. “What do you call them?”

“They’re called ghouls, or zombies. But, if they’re killing one another, there’s no real need to go in and get hurt,” Lost said, holstering the gun again.

“There’s also a safe in the corner. I didn’t have a chance to unlock it. I’m sorry,” he said. His tail sank back down and hung limply, while his ears pinned back. He looked almost pathetic.

“Wait-a-sec, you can unlock things? Like safes, or our collars?” Lost asked, stomping her forehooves. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“Safe? Safes mean treasure,” I said, not listening to my sister’s rant. Suddenly, I thought a radscorpion might be worth it!

Lost looked back and forth between the two of us, then shook her head. Placing a forehoof on her forehead, she sighed. “Alright, alright, we need the supplies and caps. Let’s go,” she said.

We trotted down along the wall of the building, neither my sister nor I letting off our triggers. Lost seemed to do far better levitating the gun than she’d had doing anything with her magic the day before. Xeno’s little potion must have done wonders.

“Go ahead, Hidden, I’ll follow,” Lost said.

I didn’t need any more encouragement. I turned the corner and charged in through the broken doorframe, past the counter, and into the mane floor of what looked like a shop. The front windows were smashed out, which explained how the massive radscorpion got in. Shelves littered the floor of the building, knocked over from the fighting between the zombies and the giant bug-thing. I saw the safe in the corner, but ignored it. I could try and break into it once everything was dead.

At the far end of the room, four zombies swarmed around a giant radscorpion, their rotten hooves scrambling over the shelves as they tried to overwhelm the huge beast. Brainless husks, they couldn’t eat a radscorpion, especially not one that big. The radscorpion stabbed repeatedly at them, the huge bulky stinger on the end of its tail twitching as it chose a target. Eight legs skittered as its sharp claws snapped forward, working the zombies back. Four on one usually meant the one losing, but with a radscorpion bigger than me and my sister combined... Eugh.

None of the zombies paid any attention to me, all uselessly flailing their hooves and trying to bite at the radscorpion. It’d been a long time since I’d seen one last, and... “Oh Goddesses, you are ugly,” I hollered as soon as I got a look at it.

The zombies turned and looked at me, their attention taken from the radscorpion. One didn’t turn fast enough, and got a stinger through the face, but the other three made a beeline over the fallen shelves toward me. I didn’t give them the chance.

Three shots and five bullets later, one stopped moving. The others kept coming, and I backed toward the door. “Sis!” I screamed, not turning away from the approaching mindless zombies. I really needed to learn how to not fire repeatedly from the same shot!

Lost stepped in next to me and leveled the slaver’s pistol up between us. A horribly loud B-KEW floored me. Both zombies in front practically exploded as a cone of plasma erupted from the front of Lost’s gun and turned both into little puddles of goo.

“Goddesses, this thing is amazing!” Lost yelled. Her tail flicked a few times and she smiled wider than I’d ever seen her smile before. “He’s a bastard, but at least he had a nice gun.”

“Just, don’t use it on the radscorpion... It’ll melt anything we can sell off it,” I said, trying not to chide her. I tapped my ear with my hoof a few times, making sure I wasn’t deaf. Satisfied with my hearing, I pushed myself up and turned on the hideous radscorpion, just in time to see it dislodge the zombie’s corpse and charge us.

I didn’t want to look, but I knew I needed to. Focusing on my sister to my side instead, I bit down and unloaded the remaining bullets with a much quieter BANG! The two shots hit, but it didn’t stop.

Wonderful. We split up and ran in different directions.

The scorpion ran after me. I winced. Worst. Bug. Ever! Radroaches were fine, they’d spook me if they caught me by surprise, but weren’t scary. Radioactive ants were somewhat fascinating as long as they didn’t touch me. Radscorpions though, even regular sized ones? They were ugly and freaky and had way too many little legs and stingers and eyes and eww!

I kicked the reload lever as I ran, sticking to the wall. I kept moving, waiting the agonizing few seconds as another magazine slid into place. Hitting a wall, I turned. I’d faced worse, one radscorpion, even a giant one? Easy! I galloped hard, jumping over an overturned shelf and landing with a crash. Cans and bottle scattered everywhere, tripping me up.

My hooves went out from under me, and I spun a few times. Finally, I came to a stop, facing the skittering, ugly bastard. I didn’t know whether to count myself as lucky or not! I chomped the bit, shifting as best I could on the moving surface to aim.

Seven shots ripped through its face, tearing through the black chitin armor that protected it from the worst the Wasteland threw at it.

Nine bullets to the head did the job. It collapsed in stride, and skidded across the cans and bottles.

“No, no. Stop, please!” I yelled, pushing myself back as fast as I could.

It came to a stop half an inch from my face. I clenched my eyes closed. I hated how these things looked. We already had manticores to fill the ‘giant monster with a stinger and stabby bits on its front whatevers,’ did we really need gigantic radioactive scorpions too?

“Nice job,” Lost said from across the room.

With my eyes still screwed shut, I pushed myself up off the floor and carefully felt my way back over to the entrance. I walked over the shelves back to my sister, only to find Fine Tune already digging through the contents of the safe. He tossed out some bullets, a bag of bits, and a memory orb.

“Hay, how’d you do that?” I asked. If I’d tried picking the lock it might have taken me hours, depending on how tough it was, if I even succeeded in the end at all. “Is there a trick or something?”

“Practice. The old Queen sold me off, I’d break free, return. Good racket. Lots of caps,” he answered, shrugging. “Learned a thing or two!” He smiled wide and passed the bullets to me. “I’m good at sneaking and hiding and breaking into places, can’t do much else.”

“Well, none of us are any good at opening locks, thank you, Fine Tune,” Lost said, patting him on the head with her hoof. She snatched the memory orb up and slid it into her saddlebags. “I’ll check this later, when we’re safe. Let’s get everything we can and go back to Xeno. We’ve been making good time today, we’ll be in Skirt soon enough.”

We broke up and dug through the building, taking every can of food, every bottle of Sparkle~Cola. I even found something I hadn’t come across in a long time, a sealed bottle of Sunrise Sarsaparilla! Happy with our haul of treasure, we ran back to Xeno.

“You didnot need me for the fight?” the zebra asked, sounding almost hurt.

“Sorry, we didn’t know what we were up against until we were down there. Next time?” I offered, trying to make her feel better. She was a part of the team, and since she’d gotten involved in as a friend, rather than a traveling companion, I didn’t want to leave her out.

“Alright, Hiddenpony,” she said, all traces of sadness gone.

We started off toward Skirt again, the boredom and monotony finally gone.

* * *

The music over the PipBuck died down, much to the collective groan of our little group. For the past few hours that’d been the only thing keeping us occupied as we walked. The Wasteland proved to be fairly dull once we resupplied at the store with the giant radscorpion, and Lost felt safe enough to play some music for us all. The DJ’d been quiet, leaving several songs to loop over and over through the afternoon.

Fine Tune enjoyed the trip more than the rest of us, spending the entire time hopping on his hooves. Whether because he fed off our enjoyment of the music, or because he enjoyed it just that much, I didn’t know.

Still, having my mind full of music kept any lingering claws or whispers from the slavers from slipping in. All in all, I’d had worse trips. Whenever we got back to Pommel Falls, I’d be giving Praline a big hug for the gift of the broadcaster.

“Sapphire Shores, everypony, singing songs to soothe our souls for the...” yelled the DJ’s voice across the broadcaster. “Well, I’ve lost count of how many times. Now, I hope all you wastelanders are stayin’ safe out there! I’ve got some news for you all. It seems I’ve messed up some of my facts in the past few weeks. Now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘But DJ Pon3, you always tell the truth, even when it hurts.’ That’s true, and that’s why I report everything I find, even if I have to eat my words and issue a retraction.”

I trotted closer to my sister, hoping to hear something about the hero pony he’d told us all about before. Since I’d been without the radio for a week, I really wanted to catch up on whatever I’d missed. We all stopped and listened, Fine Tune still quietly grumbling about the lack of music.

“A little-known slaver settlement on the eastern edge of the city of Blackhoof went up in flames, and you’ll never guess who's reportedly responsible. Well, not unless you tend to guess headless heroes! That's right my little ponies, the local hero Gunbuck has somehow made an encore performance, back from the grave. Now information is sparse at best here, so we have no idea if this really is the resurrected hero, or his vengeful spirit, a case of mistaken identity, or those Ashen colts just killed the wrong stallion! Whatever the case, somepony is still fighting the good fight out there, and in honor of the occasion, let’s throw on an old favorite: ‘The Dark Days are Over,’ a classic by a mare you all know well by now. Sweetie Belle, take us away!”

I stared at the PipBuck on my sister’s leg, my jaw nearly on the ground. I looked up at Lost, who shared my expression. Both of us, at the same time, turned and stared at Xeno.

The zebra blinked several times and shrugged. “I donot know. This is a pony radio, not zebra. We donot know how he gathers information. Itis what I had to do to save the two ponies I know,” she stammered.

“Well, if the Wasteland thinks there’s a hero alive down here, we should use that to our advantage,” I said, looking back at the PipBuck as it blared out another song from a dead world. “Putting the fear of the Goddesses into slavers might help us. Hopefully they heard the broadcast too. I know he’s dead and buried. But...” I let out a long slow breath, thinking. “That doesn’t mean everypony knew, or heard the initial broadcast.”

“I remember hearing the DJ while we were in Skirt last time,” said L.A. “This could be a mixed blessing. If they heard, they’ll either be preparing for an attack by a ‘hero,’ or they’ll be scrambling and scared.” She said the word ‘hero’ with such disdain, I was taken aback. I thought she wanted to be heroic? Lost looked down at the PipBuck and clicked the radio off. “Whatever rumor went around saying he did it, let them keep the illusion.”

Fine Tune practically deflated, sinking to the floor and staring at the PipBuck. “Can’t we just keep the music playing?” he asked, ignoring the talk we all had about the dead stallion.

“We’re almost there as it is. Let’s get our plan situated, I don’t want anything to happen and get us captured or killed,” Lost said, and hugged me with one foreleg. “Tell me about the tunnels?”

“Thereare many ponies who do not trust the one you called a goddess,” Xeno explained.

“They called her an alicorn,” I added.

“Goddess, alicorn. It doesnot matter. The ponies told me that I would be killed. They tried to protect me, something few ponies have done,” Xeno said with a grimace. She pulled the helmet she’d taken from the slavers down over her eyes, matting her mane down further. “Iam... surprised. Iam not the most hated thing they have seen.”

“I’m more worried about alicorns than zebras, too. You can’t cast a shield that protects you from heavy weapons fire, or regenerate in radiation,” I said, giving her a look. Xeno couldn’t heal in radiation, right? She practically ignored the stuff, but it didn’t heal her, did it?

“The tunnels cross between many buildings. The ponies who donot trust the alicorn live below. Several ponies move between the surface and the tunnels, they bring food, water, news. Itis like a small...” the zebra said, with a pause. She said something in zebra, squinting one eye. “Society? Is this the correct word?”

“Sounds about right,” Lost answered. She sat down and stared at her PipBuck, tapping away at the screen. Her ears twitched back and forth, listening to everything Xeno said.

“I met them too, a stallion named Button and a mare named Willow,” I said. I sat myself down as well, giving my hooves a rest after the day of walking. I slid my saddlebags off and pulled them around, then dug through for some food. If we were going to be going in for an assault, or even sneaking in, then it was best to go in fed and fully prepared. I passed my sister and Xeno each some old-world food and a bottle of Sparkle~Cola. Hideous giant radscorpion or not, that building held a manticore’s share of loot.

Actually, if the radscorpion made its home in that building, that might explain why it hadn’t been looted already. I bit into my snack cake.

“Thank you, Hiddenpony,” Xeno said, taking the snacks. She passed the second one to my sister, who snagged it in her telekinesis. “I met both of those ponies, they told me of a stranger. Iwould like to talk with them again. They should be able to help.”

“Okay, so. We sneak in, find a way underground, and go for ponies we can trust?” Lost asked. She levitated her snack up and took a bite, still tinkering with the PipBuck. “We make a plan from there, then find a way to kill the alicorn, or at least make it so they can’t work as slavers anymore.”

We all nodded. Lost looked up from the PipBuck at us and smiled. “That’s a plan then. We wait until darkness, and then head in.”

Together we all looked at the city in the distance, just close enough that we could see the path through the hills that lead in. I took a deep breath. Sneaking wasn’t my speciality, especially with a clanking metal hoof. But if Lost thought we could do it, I trusted her.

We waited.

* * *

Most residential areas didn’t stand up as well as the reinforced industrial buildings. Nothing I’d seen so far looked as nice as that little ring of buildings when being taken to U Cig, but the spot we’d decided to wait in was the worst so far. We hunkered down behind the single remaining wall of what once was a home. All around us, I saw rusted steel supports and destruction, the remains of houses worn down to nothing but the four corner posts and the occasional cross support. A few chimneys still stood, but for the most part, I found myself surrounded by a forest of twisted steel and broken stucco in nice little squares all around.

“I’m going to go check some closer ruins. Get what I can while we wait,” I said. I kicked a small chunk of concrete with my steel hoof, already bored. Even with the music playing, I couldn’t stand waiting. I needed to get out and do something.

“Don’t go too far Hidden, stay where I can see you, at least on the E.F.S.,” Lost said. She lay on a flat section of a fallen wall, checking over Loyalty. “We’re not going anywhere until sundown, so make sure you’re back before that.”

“Okay. Either of you want to... come...” I asked Xeno and Fine Tune, trailing off. Both lay napping across from my sister. “Well, I suppose that’s what happens when you stay up all night brewing potions and elixirs.” I shrugged. “I’ll be close by.”

“Be safe, sis.”

I nodded to her and trotted off. Stay close and stay safe. I could do both those things. I picked a square of wall supports at random, as I crossed the street, and walked over to it. I sidestepped the still-standing door and walked through the doorway. Whistling at the carnage, I started digging. Unfortunately, nothing was worth keeping. I left through one of the missing walls and tried the next house.

For what felt like hours, I moved from house to house, rifling through everything inside, before moving to the next. The trip ended up being a big circle around where Lost waited with Xeno and Fine Tune. I couldn’t go too far away or else the collar might still go off. With so few houses to look through, there wasn’t much to find, but I made it worth it. Several usable scraps found their way into my bags. The occasional stockpile of ammo for home defense went in too, plus the two pistols I’d found that somepony who died ages ago once kept for emergencies like the end of the world.

Too bad they’d never served their purpose.

I bucked one of the rusted supports a few times to give it a nice recognizable shape. The house had a safe in it, but I figured I’d save my own bobby pins since Lost could ask Fine Tune to crack it much faster than I could. I looked up just in time to get covered in dust. Flinching and coughing, I ducked back behind the safe. So much for staying sa... I looked at the safe in front of me and kicked it with my steel hoof. “Not funny,” I said to it.

“Why am I talking to a safe?” I asked nopony in particular. The dust cloud came from somewhere though. Wiping my face with a hoof, I peeked up and past the safe to see what was going on.

A gigantic blue-coated pony landed a few blocks down in another section of the ruins. She stood still for a moment, her mane waving as she looked back and forth. Wings folding, she sat on her haunches. Next to her horn, at a strange angle, stuck a steel rod. The far end of it stuck out the back of her head, parting her mane.

The alicorn from Skirt.

“Shit!” I swore under my breath. Crouching down, I crawled through the ruins of the building until I got behind the remains of the chimney. If she caught me, I’d be back in Mistress’ clutches. I couldn’t let that happen. I’d rather have the collar go off than go back to her! Swallowing my fear, I curled up on the ground, and pulled my hooves up close. I had to be as small as possible. I needed to hear her, we needed a weakness to exploit. I could do this.

A voice in my head, one I didn’t recognize, began screaming. “Why do they hide from Us-!” it yelled, so loud it would have been deafening if it weren’t in my own mind.

I clamped my hooves over my ears, dropping to the ground.

Ahh! The screaming stopped, and my own voice took over in my mind. Did she know about the ponies in the tunnels? I looked back where my sister and the others waited. I could go back and get her, but the alicorn might leave before that. Maybe she heard that horrible voice? I looked down at my jacket. I blended in now, I wouldn’t stand out like, well, a white pony on a brown Wasteland. Persistence could easily look like a piece of steel or rotten wood if I didn’t move.

I took a deep breath and moved closer, as slow as I could. A sneaky pony I was not, but walking on three hooves, I managed to get within two houses’ distance, and stay low enough that I was out of sight.

“She has not come! We- are in need of guidance!” shouted the alicorn’s voice in my mind. “Why has Our- messenger abandoned Us-” She screamed for help, the stutter whenever she referred to herself jarring my thoughts. At least I was starting to get used to the volume.

I looked at Persistence. Could I just take her out now, without waiting until we got there? Killing her now would save us a ton of trouble.

I shifted and placed my mouth on the bit. One shot through her head. That should kill her. She might be able to survive getting shot through the side and having her wing ruined. Right now though, we were free of any radiation and she couldn’t heal. One shot.

She didn’t see me though. I could get away without killing her. I snapped my tail back and forth a few times, weighing my options. She hurt ponies, enslaved ponies. I didn’t absolutely have to kill her though. I didn’t feel like I was in any immediate danger, aside from some pain in my hooves. Orders...

“We need to know how We can save them,” she said out loud, in a quiet voice. “Our daughters no longer believe in Unity. Rumors taint their thoughts. We cannot find the ones responsible. We need help.” She sounded sad, and almost remorseful.

Save them? She sold me into slavery! I leveled Persistence at her. This was necessary!

“We have been lied to, We know this now,” she said, the stutter completely gone. “But why...”

“We- don’t doubt her! She does the work We- are unable to! We- cannot get this across!” shouted the voice, so loud I thought it would tear through my head. The alicorn stood, her eyes opening wide. She screamed out loud. Her horn glowed, and lightning lanced from it, smashing the ancient support beams of a building across the road. “Why can Our- thoughts no longer reach?” she yelled directly into my brain, thrashing and destroying the remains of a home.

She’d said that before, where she couldn’t contact her Goddess. I crouched lower, worried I might get caught by one of her attacks. She thrashed a few more times, casting her shield and firing off lightning at the ruins, flapping her wings before giving up. Spent, she sat down and hung her head.

“We need guidance. Something’s very wrong. We cannot place it,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. I thanked the Goddesses she’d stopped talking into my head. She scratched at the back of her own head, just below the steel rod.

Persistence shook at my side. No matter what, she was evil and needed to be put down. Protection, slavery, I... I lowered my gun, feeling sick.

“We merely want to protect Our daughters. We do not understand why this is becoming so difficult,” she said, her voice wavering. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked at the damage she’d wrought, then opened her wings and flew away. The sound of sobbing faded to silence.

I closed my eyes, shying away from the cloud of centuries-old dust and dirt. What in the Goddesses’ name was that about? I waited until she disappeared in the distance, then scrambled back to my sister.

“I sha da aricun,” I said breathlessly. Still covered in dust, I hadn’t taken my mouth off my battle saddle’s bit since I saw the pony I’d once seen as a goddess.

“You what?” Lost asked. She set Loyalty aside and looked up at me, her brows furrowed.

I released the bit. “I saw the alicorn,” I answered. “She flew over, said she needed guidance, destroyed some things, and flew away.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” she said. Tilting her head down, she looked over the rims of her glasses. “Did you go past the E.F.S. range?”

I blanched and said nothing. The fact that she sounded worried and not upset stung. I knew I wasn’t the best at being a thinky pony, but... “I... I just lost track of it!” I said, backpedaling. I slumped down and curled up, trying to make myself as small as possible.

With a sigh, Lost stood and walked over to me. “Did she see you?” she asked, placing a hoof on my shoulder. When I shook my head, she hugged me. “Good, then we stick to the plan. We’ll get her.”

I nodded, staying curled up. Before we ‘got her’ I wanted to know exactly how she and Mistress met and worked together. If I wanted my revenge, I needed as much information as I could get. And if she really was an avatar of the Goddess, could we even ‘get her?’ Was she even the villain anymore?

* * *

The sun sank past the clouds, casting long shadows from the forest of steel that surrounded us. Xeno and Fine Tune still lay asleep next to me. Lost had her head against the memory orb taken from the shop. I sat on watch, unable to sleep again. A real rest would be nice, but we needed to act fast, before Mistress could recuperate and start looking for us again.

I picked at my steel hoof, digging out an errant twig from the hinge. The first thing I’d have Praline do when we saw her again was look at it. After Vice Brand almost ripped it off, I knew it needed a going-over. At least it still worked and didn’t hurt. Who knew, maybe she could set me up with some other steel armor to match the hoof. I looked at my shackles...

Maybe not.

Lost groaned and sat up. She turned and looked at me, smiled, and put the memory orb in her saddlebags. “Shorter one, that time. Not bad though,” she said, cracking her neck.

“What’d you see inside?” I asked.

“First day on the job at that store, husband and wife wanted to keep the memory. Some pony named Trust Fund interrupted them,” she answered with a shrug. “Nothing too interesting.” She looked up at the sky, her eyes trailing down toward the sunset. “Almost time.”

“Yeah, do you think we can sneak in the same way as before? By sneaking up into one of the buildings and break down a false wall,” I said. I didn’t know if we could make that trek without being detected.

“Depends on which way’s easiest. Let’s wake up Xeno and ask her how she got in.”

“Right.”

L.A. stood up and walked over to the two of them, both still nicely asleep and looking quite peaceful. It seemed Fine Tune knew how to keep his little disguise up even while unconscious. My sister prodded Xeno with a hoof until she started to rouse. “C’mon, wake up,” she said, barely above a whisper.

Xeno answered with something in her native tongue, swatting the offending hoof away and rolled back over.

“Well, I never thought of her as wanting five more minutes,” Lost mused. She clicked the PipBuck and placed it between the two of them, letting music play quietly. Her horn glowed, and I heard a click. The music got a bit louder. She turned the volume up a few more times, before Xeno finally woke up.

The zebra flailed her forehoof a bit, trying to find the source of the noise. After a moment, she gave up and sat up on her haunches. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Time to get ready,” my sister answered. She nudged Fine Tune, causing him to make a few quiet chirps in his sleep. He woke up after a few more nudges, and we all sat in a circle.

“So, plan?” I asked. I folded my forehooves in front of me and rested my chin on them.

“Well, I need to know exactly how to get to these tunnels you two saw, so we can get in without alerting the alicorn,” L.A. said. She sat back and stared at the PipBuck. “I’ve got a map, but it only zooms in so close.”

“I only know about the way I found in. Through the wall in the apartment building,” I said. All I could do was shrug, I didn’t really know anything else. “I couldn’t even tell where I was, there weren’t any lights inside.”

“Thatis on purpose, they donot want others to find it,” Xeno said. She grabbed the slaver helmet and put it over her mohawk, flattening it over one side of her face. “Thereare several openings. I donot know if we can get into them, the ponies had a week. They might have closed them after what happened.” She shrugged.

“Well, that’s still our best bet,” Lost said. She stood and collected he r things with her magic. She didn’t start to breathe heavily or break out in sweats. Maybe she finally got over whatever Sunbright did to her... Even the chip in her horn looked almost completely gone.

I looked over at the setting sun as it began slipping behind the mountains. The first step to toppling Mistress’ empire of slaves started now. I placed my hoof against the collar. She’d pay, oh how she’d pay. “Lead the way, sis.”

We fell into line behind Lost. Xeno stood next to her, giving little hints on where to go to stay out of sight. We followed silently, not wanting the alicorn to spot us. I didn’t know if she even needed to sleep, but we couldn’t take any chances.

The trip took us around the actual entrance, past it and over one of the smaller ridges. Hiking up it proved difficult, but with the help of Fine Tune and his wings, we managed to get over and down the other side. Once in town, Xeno took lead. She snuck us through the outskirts, far beyond the mane road and the radiation, tucked nice and close to the ridges that shot up to the mountains. If we got caught, we’d have nowhere to go.

“Itis here, follow quietly,” Xeno said, crouching down and moving from our hiding spot to the nearest building.

When I finally died and met the Goddesses, I’d have to find whoever thought it was a good idea to build this close to the mountains, and thank them personally. I’d have to thank them for not making those little claws in my mind come back so much, either. I worried, somewhere deep down, that they’d rear their ugly... claws? Then again, knowing this town's secrets probably kept them at bay.

I looked up, only to see the same building I’d found the entrance in before. That made sense, at least. I followed Xeno, staying as low as I could while still balancing the battle saddle on my back. With the sun so far down below the mountains behind us, I had trouble following her. Idly, I wondered if Lamington’s new eye had a night-vision mode.

Xeno stopped at the back entrance and looked around. The rest of us did the same, getting close and watching all around for anypony who might wander back and get us killed.

“Not seeing anything on the E.F.S.,” Lost said. “Are you sure this is the right place?” She looked down, back and forth, at the corners of her eyes. Facehoofing herself, she lit her horn up and gave us just the smallest amount of light to see by. “Sorry, forgot I could do that.”

We all laughed, just a little. It didn’t last long, as anypony could walk by at any second. Even with the E.F.S., that’d only be a warning. Xeno slammed her hoof on the wall a few times.

We waited.

“Where are they?” I asked after what seemed like an hour. I shuffled my hooves, feeling particularly antsy. What if Mistress decided that tonight would be her night to show up to collect more? If she or Slipstock found me...

“As I said, they have moved. The door is known, they are secretive ponies. We must find another way in,” Xeno answered. She stood and looked away. This wouldn’t be good.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

“Well, I have one...” Lost offered. “We’ll try the innkeeper. He was ‘busy’ last time, and that might have been from dealing with the tunnel ponies. Best place to start Plan B.”

We darted across the alleyways and to the inn. The process actually seemed kind of funny, since everypony in town was asleep, or at least not out and about. We’d snuck in for no reason. I wanted to laugh, but safety first...

Fine Tune entered the apartment building first, and I followed him. The counter sat exactly where it’d been before, with the stool behind it set right in place for the tiny unicorn stallion. With nopony inside, I kicked the door once and let Xeno and my sister in. “What now?”

“Now we break in.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. I hopped over the counter, knocking the stool down, and started digging through the keys just like last time. “Xeno, did they get you in our room at all, or did they take you elsewhere?” I asked her, still digging about for the same room key. Which room was it?

“I awoke in their care,” she answered.

“Wonderful, okay,” I said, pulling a set of keys out with my teeth. I set them on the counter. “Second floor, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard a stallion after they got you. I checked, I... Hold, hold on,” I said, wracking my brain. I knew this. Far too much had happened to me in the past week. It was all jumbled in my head, and I needed a minute to think. Something to jar my memory of exactly what happened while I searched for Lost.

Right... Second floor. Okay. I grabbed all the keys that I could, and laid them out. We could search all of them if we had to. Two sets of each. There were three before. There might be guests. “Okay, I checked back first just in case, after you both went missing. Figured you might have run back in case you forgot something. While I was up there, I heard a stallion walking around, and he disappeared.” I nodded a few times, looking back and forth between each of them. I moved one set of keys to each of them.

“Do you have a plan, Hidden?” my sister asked. She snatched up the sets of keys before I could answer.

“No, just an idea. You make the plans, mine are... Never good. Just,” I said, my words falling flat. My decisions got ponies killed. I could let L.A. plan this. She knew me well enough and could finish my thoughts.

“Check each room?” Lost finished for me.

“If that’s what you think is best,” I answered with a smile.

She motioned for me to jump over the counter again, and we started upstairs.

The second floor looked exactly like I remembered it. Down the hallway were four doors, two on each side. I let my hooves take me where they’d been before. Even with the shackles digging in, everything felt exactly the same, and I stepped right in front of the door to the room we’d stayed in.

“Can’t be this one,” I said, more of myself thinking out loud.

“Let’s check this one first then,” Lost said, motioning to the door across the hall. She tossed a key to Fine Tune. “Will you open it?” she asked.

Fine Tune caught the key in his teeth, and did as his queen asked. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. No screams or accusations of an intruder came from inside the door. We all trotted in and looked around, except for me. I didn’t have time for it. I wanted to know how to get down there, now. I reared up and smashed my forehooves into the wall.

“So much for being quiet,” Lost muttered.

Nothing. I moved over and did it again, and again, while my sister, Xeno, and Fine Tune watched.

Sometimes, the best way to get what I wanted was to be rough.

Slamming the wall again, my steel hoof pushed through the wall and got stuck. Close enough. I twisted my leg and pulled the panel away. Just as I expected, there was a hallway behind the fake wall. I looked at the edge, lined up with the stripes in the wall. “Found it.”

* * *

Xeno took point and led us down the twisting path through the buildings walls and down into the ground underneath. With Lost to keep the hallway lit with her cheater magic, the tunnels weren’t anywhere near as unsettling as before. The thudding of our hooves on the rock floor masked the quiet murmur and distant chatter of voices I now knew were friendly ponies.

“Are we close?” I asked, dodging to keep from scraping Persistence against the walls. They really needed to widen these.

“Compared to where we started, very,” the zebra answered. Without looking back, she took a turn and disappeared completely.

Lost trotted forward and turned the corner as well, leaving Fine Tune and me to follow the dim glow of her light spell as it slowly faded down the other hallway.

I took a deep breath. Everything down here felt colder, but I liked it. The fear I’d had last time, hearing the sound of chains as I wandered the darkness, didn’t get to me. My sister and friends were here, and Xeno seemed to trust whoever might be down here.

“Itis this way,” Xeno called back to us, her voice echoing around the walls.

Minutes seemed to stretch to hours as we walked, before Xeno finally held up short and yelled back, “Stop.” She pushed a small door open and crouched down. “Itis here,” she said, and disappeared through it.

L.A. followed her, dropping down and squeezing through. Fine Tune went through next, then I crawled myself, having to shift back and forth a few times to get Persistence to fit.

“Okay so, now wha-” I said, the words getting caught in my throat.

A dim light flickered in the corner, illuminating three ponies standing across from us. One mare with silver eyes that looked so very familiar, and two stallions. Both stallions held small caliber guns in their mouths.

Fuck.

“H-how’d you find us, Slaver?” asked the mare. Her voice cracked, barely able to keep up. I knew this mare: Willowwisp. She and... I looked at the two stallions. To the left, a gaudy blue and green earth pony who looked far too tired to be on guard duty. To the right, a shorter earth pony with a coat the same color as the red wine I’d seen Lost drinking once. I couldn’t see anything else about them, or their cutie marks.

“We aren’t slavers,” L.A. said. She tapped the collar around her neck a few times for emphasis.

The short stallion spit the gun from his mouth into his hoof and took an awkward step forward. “You look like it, especially the one with the white mane,” he said, pointing the gun-holding hoof at Xeno.

She blinked a few times, then laughed. “You do not recognize me,” she said, still laughing. “Itis just barding.” She took the slaver helmet from her head, letting her white and off-white mane stand up in a mohawk again. “Iam Xeno, do you not remember, Willowpony?”

The mare seemed to relax, but didn’t motion for the other pony to put his weapon down. “Why are you dressed like that? You’ll lead her here!” she yelled, her voice hoarse as she tried to keep the volume down. Her eyes passed over the group of us, before finally falling on me. “You! B-Button told you if you led Rebar here he’d kill you! Sour Punch!” she yelled, pointing at me.

The big blue stallion didn’t hesitate. He canted his head and fired a shot at me.

I didn’t even hear the gun go off, but I felt it. The bullet slammed into my steel hoof and ricocheted off, sending a horrible rattle up my leg. “Fuck!” I yelled, pulling my leg up and stepping back a few times.

Willowwisp gasped, taken aback. “That was supposed to be-”

“-a warning shot?” Lost’s horn lit up beside me, and one of the plasma pistols taken from the slavers slid from her saddlebag, though not the modified one from Vice Brand. She squinted her eyes and fired. Three loud B-KEWs echoed as the shots went off one after another. With the targeting assistance of S.A.T.S., all three hit their mark, splashing the stallion’s coat with green and black explosions.

The pony’s forelegs melted past the knees, turning into a sickening green goop. Blood poured from the open wounds, mixing with the mush beneath. He collapsed to the side, screaming.

“There’s mine,” Lost said over the screams. She turned the gun on the other stallion. “Now that I have your attention, I repeat: We’re not slavers. We came here to kill the alicorn, not sell you out to her! You’ve no idea what we’ve been through thanks to that bitch and her mob.” She rapped her collar again. “Now, put your fucking guns down so we can talk. Or I’ll kill every last one of you for hurting my sister.”

But I wasn’t hurt. I looked down at my steel hoof, and marveled at Praline’s work. There wasn’t even a dent. Just what happened to Lost to make her jump to violence so quickly? It wasn’t how we operated. It wasn’t how Lost operated.

“Fine!” Willowwisp screamed, waving frantically to the other stallion to lower his gun. “Just...” She dropped down next to Sour. “How do I fix this?!”

“Xeno, toss him a potion. Sign of goodwill,” Lost ordered.

“What happened to you, sis?” I asked her, taking a few steps back.

“A week with Sunbright taught me how to deal with ponies threatening somepony you love. Sometimes you need to just act,” she answered.

* * *

“Didn’t I tell you we’d kill you if you came back?” Button yelled. The unicorn stallion kicked a nightstand over with his forehoof, and glared at me. The dim light made his dark coat almost blend into the background. If it weren’t for the piercing red eyes or the brown tangled mop of his mane, I’d be hard-pressed to think there was actually a pony there. “You’ve made quite the argument against survival already, nearly killing one of my friends.”

Lost, Xeno, Fine and I all stood against the wall of another room in their little tunnel system, with the stallion standing in front of a bed, carefully pushed against the far wall. Willowwisp and the unharmed stallion we’d seen when we first came in surrounded him, acting as a guard. The toppled nightstand lay against the opposite wall.

“If you had plans to kill us, they’re laughably inefficient,” Lost said, her voice venomous. “And besides, have you seen the alicorn since we’ve been down here? Obviously not. We were careful.”

“Mmm,” Button said, scowling at us. He looked at Xeno. “These two have collars. As does that one.” The buck indicated Fine Tune. “In fact, you’ve brought quite a few slaves back. If you’re planning on taking us too...”

My sister glared right back. “If I wanted to fuck you over, she’d be here already,” she said, pulling the stallion’s attention from Xeno back to her. “Now shut the fuck up. We’re here to give you all a shot at killing the alicorn-”

“Rebar?” Button asked, cutting her off. “You came back... To kill the giant pony that looks like a goddess. Who has somehow managed to persuade and secret away dozens of our mares over the past few months.” He placed his hoof to his face, and laughed. “The pony who can create a shield that stops bullets, shoots lightning from her horn, and not only survives radiation, but regenerates in it?!” he yelled, causing the other ponies in the room to cower.

“Yes,” my sister answered, matter-of-factly.

Xeno and Fine Tune kept silent, not doing anything to get between the angry stallion and my sister. Button’s stallion didn’t make a move either, though he still held his gun. Without provocation, they simply stood there and watched apprehensively.

“This town and the fake goddess who leads it sold us to the slavers. Doesn’t matter if it wasn’t you who personally made the sale. You didn’t do shit to stop it,” Lost’s eyes narrowed. “I came here to give you a chance, a chance to be free from hiding in your little holes and tunnels. You call this living? We escaped from the place this bastard town sold us to, and burned U Cig to the ground in the process. We came here to work together. If you won’t help us, then you’re no better than the alicorn for not standing up to her,” she said. Her hoof clanked against the collar again. She slid the detonator away. “If you’re so terrified of the alicorn, Rebar? That her name?”

“That’s what we call her,” Willowwisp answered.

“Rebar, then. Why don’t you just kill her? Shield and healing notwithstanding, she can’t be immortal,” Lost continued. “Or are you just too comfortable, hiding in cellars, safe and sound, while others get sold off?” She pointed at the unicorn mare across from us. “Your cutie mark, a gilded cage. Same as a collar. It might as well be a gilded hole in the ground, full of sniveling, backstabbing cowards.”

The tunnel ponies turned to look at Willowwisps’ cutie mark, realization slowly dawning. She looked at it herself, then turned back to us. The scared, almost sad look in her eye disappeared. Instead I saw resolve. “I got it hiding from that monster,” snapped the mare. She stomped, hard enough to make herself wince. “Surviving!”

Lost looked down at the PipBuck, then over to me and smiled. “Surviving by hiding and lettings others be sold off! You’re just as bad as she is,” she yelled, pointing an accusing hoof at the tunnel ponies. “Ever hear the name Gunbuck mentioned on the radio? The now ‘legendary’ hero who took down a slaver city the other day? Are you going to stand in the way of that, or help make this town a better place?”

“This is how we survive,” snapped Button. “It’s better here, with our freedom, than it is joining whatever unity she offers or being killed by her or the slavers for non-compliance!”

“If you’re not interested in being free, fine! When we burn this shithole of a town to the ground, you can burn with her!” Lost snapped. “Either you help us, or you’re not worth saving.” She grabbed her collar with her magic and shook it a few times. “We already broke free once. Would you rather rot down here, or fight for freedom?”

“Freedom?” Button asked, his voice dripping acid. “I see a zebra we took pity on and tried to save, wearing the barding of the slavers, and you want me to accept that you broke free? I’m not a foal!”

Obviously not; even foals had more common sense than he did.

Button turned, flicking his tail at us. “We stay down here for a reason. And we don’t like slavers anywhere near our home.”

“Iam no slaver,” said Xeno, before Lost could start again. She tossed the slaver helmet down in protest.

“What if they’re telling the truth, Button?” asked Willowwisp. The small mare looked back and forth between us, particularly at Xeno. “She seemed nice when we saved her from Rebar. We should give them a chance. If we can kill Rebar, we could go back to living up top.”

I sighed. This could end horribly. Unless we got them to trust us, on just our word, we’d have to fight our way out. I couldn’t let them kill me, or L.A., or any of my friends. If they came at us again... My ears folded down, and I took a deep breath.

No killing unless I had to. That was the rule. Lost had this under control.

“We survive by staying away from them, by only interacting when we need to. I’ve told you this, time and time again Willow,” Button said to her. That message sounded awfully familiar, even down to the tone of his voice...

“Just like mom,” I whispered. I looked over at Lost, catching her with a dazed look on her face. I nudged her with a hoof.

“Yeah,” she whispered back. She closed her eyes and sighed. “Okay, so are we going to work together, or are you going to cower down here while we handle this?” she asked, stepping forward.

The guard stallion seemed to wake up, his eyes opening wide, gun rising and trailing on my sister. I raised Persistence at him. He took a step back, looked to Button and Willowwisp, and waited.

For several long moments nopony said a word.

I looked at my sister, hoping she had a plan. With Xeno and Fine Tune defaulting to whatever her decision was, we didn’t have a lot going for us. It was all up to Lost, now.

“What do we do now?” I asked in a whisper.

She looked back and me, and shrugged. “Pray that Celestia and Luna watch over us,” she answered.

Finally, Button turned to us. He ran his hoof over his mane, pushing the erratic tangles back. “Coming back here was either brilliant, or completely idiotic. Willow thinks we shouldn’t off you right away, and the firefight would probably kill us all.” He stared right at me. “She’s the one that made me spare you in the first place, and I’m inclined to trust her on this.”

“Come now, ponies,” Xeno said. “I have come to repay the debt for saving me. It has taken time because I needed to save the sisters, here.” Xeno waved her hoof at the two of us. The armor fell to the floor, and she stepped forward. “You see, ponies, the way I look, coat or barding, itis not what makes me who I am. To work together would help us all.”

“This is all a farce,” said my sister. Her horn lit up, now fully healed and glowing a bright blue. Her glasses lifted from her nose and she moved them away to inspect the lenses. “You call us slaves? How many slaves do you know who hold their own key?” Setting her glasses back on her nose, she lifted the detonator from her saddlebags.

Fine Tune stared at it, unblinking. “The crown,” he whispered.

Lost tucked the detonator back into her bags. “I’m done waiting around. What’s your choice?”

Willowwisp opened her mouth to say something, but Button cut her off.

“Look, you can go take on Rebar, but none of us can risk it,” he answered. “She doesn’t know how many of us live down here, and we risk exposing ourselves if we fail.” He looked back at the shorter mare and forced a thin smile. “Even a life in hiding is better than death.”

“But...” Willowwisp said.

“Go,” the stallion said. “Do what you have to, but I have too many lives depending on me. I can’t risk just throwing everything away because you think you have a chance.” Button sighed and sat down, not looking Lost in the eye. “We won’t stand in the way, and if you kill her, we’ll do what we can to make this place better, and keep the slavers away. Willow, lead them out.” He looked us over, his red eyes catching the light in an almost frightening way. “The back way.”

L.A. picked up Xeno’s helmet in her magic, and passed it back to the zebra. “One last thing. Are there any big magnets in the area?” she asked.

Almost in unison, all of us raised eyebrows at my sister, a general look of confusion washing over everypony in the room’s face.

“I... have no idea,” answered Willowwisp.

“Hmm. Have to make a new plan then. Let’s go,” Lost said. She started toward the door that lead to the common room we’d entered through. “They can hide. We have slavers to kill.”

* * *

“What in the Goddesses’ names was that, Lost Art?” I asked, barely able to keep my voice to a whisper.

We stood outside the entrance we’d tried to go through first. Once again, Xeno and Fine Tune stayed out of our argument, both standing off to the sides and watching for any ponies that might pass by and overhear us.

“They tried to hurt you, I’m not going to let ponies who stood by and allowed us to be captured and put through that torture get away with it,” she answered, not quite looking at me. She pointed to the shackle on my foreleg.

I looked down at it, my anger somewhat sated.

“Besides, what matters is that we get this done, not who we have help us.”

“Help us? You mean like how we could have gone and asked Lamington and Praline and Crème Brûlée? You said we could do it ourselves!” I whispered to her, seething. “We’re big ponies and this is for us to do and we only call for help in an emergency!” I reared up, flailing my forehooves. When gravity decided to take me back down, I stomped as hard as I could. She had to see my point in this!

“Hidden, this isn’t about that,” she argued.

“Yes it is! You said you were worried that they’d be captured along with us if we failed,” I lectured her. “But you don’t care about those ponies, even before you knew how terrible they were? They saved Xeno from death, and you go at them like that?” I snorted and stepped forward. I knew what this was about. I just needed her to admit it.

I already knew the real reason she stopped. If she knew I’d eavesdropped and learned exactly what happened...

“Hidden they shot you!” she cried. “I did what I needed to to protect you!”

I lifted my leg, looking at the spot where the bullet hit. I wasn’t hurt, there wasn’t any damage. Even the polish looked perfect still.

“No, I mean why’d we go ask them for help if you’re afraid of other ponies getting sold out if we fail?” I asked her. I snapped my tail back and forth behind me in frustration.

Lost stared at me, and blinked. “Because I-”

“Stop,” I cut her off. “Give me the real reason you’re so bent on keeping the Steel Rangers, who have power armor and better weapons than even Persistence here,” I motioned to the gun at my side, “safe from attack.” I took another step closer and pressed my nose against my older sister’s. Better than me at nearly everything or not, I needed to get her to break on this one.

Lost stared at me for a long time, looking me over. “Heh...” she laughed. “And here I thought you were done playing the hero.”

My jaw nearly fell to the ground. That had nothing to do with anything! I threw my hooves in the air, balancing on my hind legs. “What!” I demanded.

“Look at you,” she said, raising her hoof up and down at me a few times. “You care about them, even though they’ve shot you, tossed you back to the alicorn, and watched in the shadows as we were taken and tortured. And yet, you still give a shit about them.”

“They’re ponies, Lost! Not slavers or raiders. They’re like us,” I yelled, my voice cracking. “They were just like us. The kind of ponies mom made us. Paranoid and afraid of outsiders, on our own against the entire Equestrian Wasteland.” I rubbed the side of my head. This took too much energy, and I hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep last night. “They just want to survive. And stop changing the subject!”

“Surviving in a hole like that isn’t the right thing. Mom was right to teach us to be cautious, always aware of what’s going on,” Lost said, glaring up at me. Sometimes it paid to be the taller sister. “That doesn’t mean standing by and letting others suffer!”

“Then why didn’t we just get help in the first place and do this right?”

“Because I will not let your recklessness endanger the only family we have left! They took us in, after we ruined their lives, and I am not going to throw that away!” she yelled at me. “I will not lose her!”

I stepped back and took a good look at my sister, her eyes full of rage held back only by her glasses, her cheeks flushed and her breathing ragged.

“Her?” I asked. “Crème Br-”

“This discussion is over, Hidden Fortune,” Lost snapped. She turned tail, flicking it in my face, and stomped off. “Let’s just fucking kill Rebar and get the fuck away from this shithole of a town.”

* * *

I stared at my sister’s flanks as she walked away, the little gear and paintbrush taunting me. I wanted to hit her. She deserved it. Pulling this stunt over a mare! I wanted to scream and tackle her and beat it into her head just how important stopping Rebar was, and that we needed all the help we could get. If Lamington could take the bitch alicorn out from across town with a missile, then that was exactly what we needed!

But no, because Lost went and got herself fucked one time, she got to dictate who and what we could use to our advantage? That wasn’t fair! They would have helped, and we’d all work together. And just like last time, we’d come out on top.

Only, this time... We wouldn’t lose anypony.

I looked over at Xeno, and then to Fine Tune. Friends, allies, acquaintances... Family?

I hated being wrong. After what happened with Zahi and Zaki, after what happened with Éclair, and who knows how many other changelings were hurt in the fire. Could we really risk bringing down more? I didn’t feel bad about it, I couldn’t. I wanted to feel bad, to hurt, but the bottom of my heart just felt dull and heavy.

I laughed to myself, as quietly as I could. After the outburst earlier, we couldn’t risk being too loud and waking up ponies. Still, it made sense now. A week with slavers, a week of torture. Mistress and Slipstock taught me what it meant to kill without remorse. Sunbright taught Lost to do whatever she needed to do to win.

Lessons we probably needed, to keep us from making the same mistakes over and over again, to keep from getting bogged down by our minds. We needed to work together again.

I trotted up and hugged my sister, as tightly as I could. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

She looked back at me, past the rims of her glasses, and half-smiled at me. “It’s fine. Just... Let’s see if we can’t save Rebar’s ‘daughters’ before they can get sold off, and worry about how to kill her,” she said. Shrugging me off, she looked over, through the alleyway, to the Town Hall on the hill. “Think we can find a giant magnet anywhere?”

“Lostpony, that is the second time you have mentioned a magnet,” Xeno said. She adjusted her helmet and looked past her pushed-down mohawk at the building we both stared at. “Whatis this plan you have?”

“Well, she has a steel rod through her brain. The easy way to kill her would be to rip it straight out,” she answered with a shrug. “That’d tear her brain up pretty bad.”

“What’s a Rebar anyway?” asked Fine Tune.

“Do you know what an alicorn is?” L.A. asked him.

He shook his head, chirping a little.

“They’re... Big ponies, horns and wings,” I explained.

Fine Tune tilted his head. He flared up a bit of green fire and returned to the natural changeling shape. His wings fluttered and he took to the air, hovering a few hooves above us. The bright spots of his eyes crossed and he looked up at the chitinous horn on top of his head. With a little nod, he turned and looked at the insect-like wings on his back. “Krii?” he chirped, his noise sounding like a question. He landed and spread his wings out, showing them off.

“No, not... You’ll figure it out,” Lost said. She started walking again.

We wound around the back alleys of the safe side of town, ducking between streets. I stopped mid-way, right at the spot where Slipstock and I fought. The hoofprints and mess we’d made were long gone. It must have rained here since the fight.

“Should’ve killed her,” I muttered. No time to look at the past. We had ponies to save.

Trotting from the safety of the alleyways, we moved to the Town Hall, one at a time. Fine Tune ran across first, in the form of a pony again. Xeno followed, muttering something about her luck as she went. My sister and I ran across one after the other, sprinting so we wouldn’t be split up and caught off our hooves.

As I ran, I looked back at the store where Sale Price worked. It’d been a long, long time since I’d had any Buck... If we had to fight the alicorn, maybe that could help. “Only if it comes to that,” I whispered to myself.

“What was that, Hiddenpony?” Xeno asked.

“Nothing. It’s this way,” I said, taking point. So far we’d been lucky, and knowing Xeno, that luck would run out the minute we got into the Town Hall. I led everypony... Everypony? We had more than just ponies now. I led them to the door to the tunnels underneath the building.

“Okay, Hidden and I will go down and take a look, see if we can’t convince the ponies down there to come with us and escape. We have plenty of examples of what’ll happen to them,” Lost ordered. She pointed to my shackles for emphasis. “Xeno, same place you were when you fired that shot that tore apart Rebar’s wing. Fine Tune, can you wait here, on watch? Let us know if anypony comes up so we can get out in time.” She smiled at the two. Giving orders or not, her voice didn’t have the same edge it did when yelling at the ponies down below or yelling at me.

We broke and each member of our little party went their own way, guns and hooves clattering as they moved. I looked at Lost and pushed the door open.

“There’s two doors, a pen for slaves, and a luxury room for her ‘daughters,’” I explained as I went down the stone stairs. My steel hoof clanked loudly. “Shit...” I lifted it up and continued down on three legs. I really needed to get a cover or something to keep it from being so noisy.

We stopped at the base of the stairs and looked down the hallway. At the far end was the deceptively innocent-looking closed door that the ‘daughters’ had stayed behind. Beside us I could hear the muffled voices of ponies and the quiet rattle of cages.

“Okay, I’ll talk to the caged ponies and see what I can do about a key or something. I’ll get Fine Tune if I can’t get them open any other way. Go check the other door,” L.A. ordered. She nudged me, smiled, and pulled the door open with her magic. The instant the doors open, the rattle and voices rose to a fever pitch, as ponies saw it open and got louder in response. At least the noise they made meant nopony was watching them this time.

I ran off down the hall, hobbling along as fast as I could on three legs. I prayed to the Goddesses, please Luna, please Celestia, don’t let them do that ‘talk in unison’ thing again. Standing next to the door, I braced myself for the worst. I placed my hoof on it, and gently pushed on the door. My ears skewed forward, listening to the subtle sounds echoing around me.

The door didn’t so much as creak as it opened. I stopped at an inch, wanting to see exactly what hid inside before I barged in. I was not repeating my mistake from last time. Instead of the laughter, I heard a single voice.

Rebar’s voice.

“No, only to protect you. That is why We do what We must,” said the alicorn.

I did as I had when eavesdropping on Lost back at Stable Sixty, and pressed myself as close as I could without actually touching the door. A tiny crack she might not notice, but pushing it any further open could alert her to my presence. After last time, I didn’t think myself prepared.

But, would she attack if it meant potentially harming the ponies she thought of as her daughters?

I backed up a step and turned to face Lost. She looked down the hall at me from the door with the captive ponies. I waved her away, hoping she’d understand what I meant without the need for words. I turned back to the door and scooted close enough to listen through the small crack.

“We are unable to reach The Goddess, for reasons We cannot discern. A mare has shown herself. She will be taking you, all of you, to meet with The Goddess in my place,” she explained to the mares.

“Why can’t you take us, Mother?” asked a voice.

“Because, We are needed here. There is something... We cannot place Our hoof on it, but We must protect you. That is all that We desire,” Rebar said, her soft voice reminding me of my mother. “Unity will protect you, Unity will make you stronger. Strong enough to survive without Us watching over you.”

“How long until we leave?” asked another voice.

“We do not know. The ponies of this town speak in hushed voices, they tell of a slaver town that burnt down,” said Rebar, her voice wavering. “We worry the dangers of the Wasteland will hold Our contact up.”

“S-slaver? You’re not sending us with a s-s-slaver are you?” asked the first voice. She sounded terrified, and with reason. Given how she stuttered at slaver, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d escaped being a slave once before...

“No, Our daughter. We would never do that, We view you as precious. We wish only for your safety. The safety of Unity will save you in this world.”

Rebar didn’t know that Mistress Amble was the slaver?!

“O-okay...” answered the same voice, practically whimpering.

“We- We- wish to introduce you, but We- cannot...” she said, her stutter suddenly returning. It dawned on me she hadn’t stuttered the entire time.

I wondered about the steel rod in her head. Could she be reasoned with? If she saw the error of her ways, maybe she’d start to handle it herself. Whatever this Unity was, maybe she could just take the ponies she thought of as her daughters herself, and skip the slaver part. Then it wouldn’t be absolutely necessary to kill her.

My hooves began to ache, memories of the pain from the shackles returning. I remembered the order given. I was a murderer, but I wasn’t allowed to kill unless it was absolutely necessary. Ache or not, I’d rather follow orders given by my sister, to protect her, than Mistress.

“We- will try and contact her soon, you must go to Unity as quickly as possible. The Goddess will explain more, We- don’t have time,” she said, her tone now frantic and rushed. “Sleep, daughters, We- will seek better ways to send you all to Unity soon, should Our- … Our- friend, not arrive.”

“Alright,” said several voices. “Love you, mother...” They sounded dejected, as if she were abandoning them.

For what seemed like forever, Rebar didn’t respond. I moved away and looked at the door. Were there two personalities in there, or was she just that messed up from the steel rod. I needed to talk to my sister.

My ear flicked.

“And...” said Rebar, her voice cautious and low. “And We you."
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Piercing Hoof – Armor? Against the steel you can throw around? It doesn't stand a chance! With this perk, you gain the ability to hit where it hurts, ignoring 10 points of your opponent's armor.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Expert Spells – You are now able to learn far more powerful spells and spell types of the schools you know. In addition to this, you are now capable of casting the most powerful version of spells you already know. You are also able to learn a wider variety of spells, though the majority of new ones must remain in schools you already know.

“Okay, so... This has been a weird chapter.”
“Yeah, new companion, character revelations.”
“And a Goddesses damned gigantic scorpion!”
“It’s just a bug...”
“Not when it’s half an inch from your face!”
“Well, we have a bugpony in our group now, does he bother you?”
“I... No, he’s kinda cute, actually.”

Chapter 14: Choices

View Online

Chapter Fourteen: Choices
“Do the ends ever justify the means? That depends on the timeframe.”

You?

I mean, me? I mean. Whatever! I pulled back from the doorway and tiptoed away as quietly as I could. Was the alicorn talking to me, or the mares in the room? I’d heard her talk in my head before, but could she read my mind, too?

It didn’t matter. I needed to tell Lost Art that she was here, and we needed to get the captives free and come up with a new plan. I really should have considered the alicorn might have been down there with the mares. I cleared the door, and felt far enough away to safely start running. My hooves carried me away and to the door with the caged ponies. I looked inside, but saw only a hoofful of dejected ponies rattling their cages. I needed my sister. With a heavy heart, I ran up the stairs past them.

Somewhere in the logical part of my brain, I wondered if Rebar could hear the loud clanking of my steel hoof. Wait, if she could read my mind... Oh Goddesses, what if she heard all of this?

How could she not know Mistress Amble was a slaver? Especially after she’d stood next to the slaver as she declared Lost and I her property? Just how many of the ponies in this town actually helped her? Or how many were hiding things from her. Too many possibilities raced through my mind. I wasn’t a thinky pony! I didn’t know how to figure this kind of shit out.

I slammed the door at the top of the stairs open and looked around. Nopony. Where in the Goddesses’ names was Lost? She couldn’t be far; I’d only been a minute or two behind her, probably less. She could figure this out. We could get through this without a bloodbath! We just... We just needed. Just. I didn’t know. Something. I jumped on my hooves as I thought, tapping the tips on the ground frantically.

Xeno might know. I stomped down on my steel hoof and springboarded forward, momentarily forgetting that any loud noise might alert Rebar to my presence. I scrambled up the stairs and around the corner. The zebra would be in the same spot where she’d sniped the alicorn from last time. I pushed through the door and ran outside.

Xeno stood at the edge of the balcony, her forelegs propped up on the railing and the rifle next to her. A cigarette hung from her lips, the smoke trailing lazily through the air on the windless night. Her ear flicked back toward me as I came to a halt. “Yes, Hiddenpony?” she said in a quiet voice. “We are safe, there are none of your kind wandering the streets this night.”

“Where’s Lost?” I asked her, trying my hardest not to start dancing on my hooves again.

“Lostpony is with the bugpony. They are below, out front,” she answered. She pointed down with a hoof and flicked it a few times in the direction I guessed Lost was. “What has happened?”

“The alicorn is in the tunnels below. And, and there’s ponies that need saving. And I don’t think Rebar knows that the ponies who take her ‘daughters’ are really slavers,” I answered, my voice speeding up with every word. I blinked and took a deep breath. I needed to be calm.

Xeno shrugged at me. She took a deep breath, finishing off the cigarette. With a sigh, she blew a long stream of smoke into the night air.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her. I didn’t really have time for this sort of thing, but she was my friend. Rebar could walk up at any moment and find us, or find my sister and the changeling, and then everything would be proper fucked.

“Iam homesick, thatis all.”

I trotted forward and hopped up to prop my forelegs on the balcony like Xeno. “We’ll go back soon, but right now we have to worry about getting out alive,” I responded. “But right now...” I repeated, leaning over the balcony and looking for my sister and Fine Tune. When I found them, I yelled over the edge, “Lost! Meet me inside!” I pulled back, cringing at the echo of my voice, then nudged Xeno. “We’ll get there soon, but we have ponies to save.” For a zebra who’d said she had nothing and needed to start a new life after the unpleasantness in Pommel Falls, she sure seemed locked on going back to her old life...

I turned and ran inside. I needed to tell Lost exactly what was going on and get her to figure out a plan.

“Always ponies...” Xeno muttered in a very quiet voice.

I didn’t take the time to stop and ask her about it.

Lost stood at the bottom of the stairs with Fine Tune, back in his changeling form, waiting for me. He let out a shrill chirp as I jumped down the last few steps. Lost turned and looked at me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her horn already glowing. Loyalty floated out and hovered next to her head.

“Alicorn. Downstairs,” I said, huffing. Used to running or not, going up and down flights of stairs like that quickly took the wind out of me. I pointed a hoof at the open door to the basement tunnels.

“Down there? Good. We can take her by surprise still,” Lost replied. She looked over at the magical energy weapon and smiled. “She won’t be able to regenerate or escape, either. I wonder if alicorns are immune to being turned to goo...” She turned and walked toward the doorway down.

“Wait!” I said, raising a hoof to stop her. “What about the other captives?”

“What about them? We won’t get a better chance than this,” she said, looking back at me and raising an eyebrow.

Fine Tune just followed her motions. He chirped a few times whenever she said something.

I grimaced. “She doesn’t know Mistress-”

“Amble,” Lost interrupted.

“-Amble’s a slaver,” I finished. I didn’t have the luxury of time to be tactful, or to call my sister out for rudely interrupting. Any minute the alicorn could walk up here.

“What? Bullshit!” Lost shouted, making me cringe.

“Ahh! Hey!” I whispered, trying not to yell. “She might hear you!”

She completely ignored my warning. Instead, she raised her hoof to the collar and gave it a heavy shake. “If she didn’t realize what Amble meant, when they were yelling right in front of her about selling you off to a brothel, then she’s either a moron, or she’s a colossal liar.” Lost looked down, and tugged at the collar a few times. “Collars...” Frowning, she turned to the changeling. “Fine Tune, can you take these off?”

“Criki ki,” he chirped. His hooves moved and did something behind his neck too fast for me to see. In what seemed like an instant, the collar fell to the floor with a heavy clang.

I winced when the collar landed on the floor, caught between relief and terror.

My sister, on the other hoof, seemed elated. Her face lit up, and her eyes brightened visibly as Fine Tune’s collar slipped off. She smiled wide and patted the changeling on the head. “Excellent. Alright, onto the next.” She looked back at me, my complaints and worries finally getting through. “Hidden, are you alright?”

Fine Tune chirped and collected his collar from the ground. He had no saddlebags of his own, so he passed it to my sister. She put it into her own bag before turning back to me. The changeling flitted into the air behind her and began working on her collar.

I looked at the door and waited, listening, letting my ears twitch and flick on their own in case the alicorn might come up the stairs. I wanted Fine Tune to get my collar off too, as soon as he could. But I could stand wearing it for a few more minutes if it kept the alicorn from hearing us.

Lost trotted over to me, Fine Tune in tow behind her. With a concerned look on her face, she placed a hoof on my forehead. “You’ve been freaking out, stomping and yelling, since I came up to get Fine Tune. You need to calm down.”

“I’m fine, just... I am calm, okay? But, listen,” I started. “I overheard her talking. She said she wanted to protect the ‘daughters’ and make sure they got to whatever ‘unity’ is.”

“Yeah, we already knew about that part,” Lost said, finally lowering her hoof. She looked at her gun again and then at the door.

“I know, but that’s what they were talking about,” I said. “Then she told them to sleep. And they said they love her.” I struggled to stay calm as I explained, focusing on what actually happened, and not thinking about what could happen if a fight started. Not much in the Wasteland got to me. I didn’t like giant bugs because they looked ugly as anything, but they didn’t scare me. Manticores or feral ghouls in big packs could be frightening, but I knew how to play smart and could down one if I had to. But the alicorn I’d seen shoot lightning bolts from her horn, and heal from being shot through the side? Especially one I knew was worse off than me in her head? I did not want her finding us when we weren’t prepared.

And if she could read my mind...

“Love her?”

“Yes. And I thought to myself that I needed to come talk to you. And then she said ‘and I you,’ and I don’t know if she meant she loves them back, or if she read my mind or something, and was talking to me!” I answered her as quick as I could.

“Why didn’t you shoot her?” my sister asked, either missing or ignoring my point. She looked at me over the rims of her glasses. “If you got her in the head, we might not have this problem right now. That bitch gave us to slavers on a silver platter! Whether she knew she was doing it or not.”

“You ordered me not to kill unless it was absolutely necessary...” I answered. I felt a dull ache somewhere too far away to care about. I heard Mistress’ voice somewhere off in the distance whisper the word ‘murderer.’ “And she sounded like mom... Like she really did care about them.”

“You can’t keep using the ‘somepony sounds like mom’ excuse as a reason to go easy on them,” Lost chided. She sighed and looked back at the door. “What mom taught us wasn’t uncommon. Lots of ponies know to keep away from strangers, because new ponies or zebras or changelings can be dangerous. Look at how many we’ve met lately that could have killed us in an instant if we’d walked up without caution.”

“They usually start shooting before we get close enough to,” I countered.

For a moment my sister mulled that over, then nodded. “True, I guess,” she admitted. “But priorities. If we know she’s down there we need to get the captive ponies out first. There’s only a few, so I think Fine Tune and I can handle it.” She looked back at the changeling, whose eyes brightened when she did. “Save ponies first, then we kill Rebar.” She looked back at Fine Tune. “And hurry it up.”

“Even if she doesn’t fight back?” I asked, my insides still twisting at the conflicting thoughts. Murder and necessity...

“Whether she knows it or not, she’s sending the ponies she captures, both the ones in the cages and her ‘daughters,’ to a slaver. They aren’t going to join her unity, and they aren’t going to be safe at all,” L.A. answered. “We’re going to do whatever we can to stop ponies from dealing with the same fate we dealt with.”

“She seemed like a completely different pony though. There... What if there’s more going on?” I asked. “She didn’t stutter when I saw her earlier. She seemed... conflicted. I think maybe that steel rod through her brain is giving her a split personality.” I didn’t really know why I was fighting so hard to keep from killing this creature. After what she’d done, she deserved whatever we gave her.

Something just felt... Wrong.

Lost’s collar slammed to the floor, and my sister cracked her neck back and forth. “Finally! O-oh, that feels good. Thank you,” she said to the changeling, who chirped happily. Then she turned back and glared at me through her glasses. “This is the last time I’m going to say this. We’re putting an end to her, because she abducted me, nearly killed me in radiation, and gave us to slavers. She can’t care about those she calls her ‘daughters,’ not if she’s getting them locked in the exact same cages as you and me at U Cig!”

“We’re doing what?” asked a voice.

All three of us stopped. My sister’s eyes went wide. Fine Tune dropped to the ground, his wings pinning to his back. The bright spots in his eyes expanded, and he bit down on the collar in his mouth.

The air behind my sister began to shimmer, as if the dim lights above us were beginning to go out. The blue alicorn I’d thought was still in the tunnels slowly faded into view behind my sister. I’d forgotten she could turn invisible. “Our daughters are... not going to Unity?”

"Fuck," I hissed under my breath.

* * *

I didn't remember much about growing up in the Stable, or about my father. Everything I knew about that place, and about him, I’d learned from Lost Art. I remembered trusting my mom's judgement when she said we had to leave, even if that ended up taking the father I barely knew away from me. The Wasteland was a totally new way of life. The comforts and safety of the Stable were meaningless, and had left us less than prepared for the harshness we would experience. Were it not for our mother keeping watch over us for years, we'd have died within a week to raiders, or feral ghouls, or the claws of any of the various monsters that the radiation created.

I liked to think that we were lucky.

We had a family until we were old enough to care for ourselves, and we still had each other. Mom taught us dozens of life lessons about survival, and how to get around without being seen. No, I wasn't good at sneaking around, but I knew that if I stayed out of sight and didn't move too much, bad ponies would eventually leave. Or we could run. Being an earth pony, I was good at that. I could get away and keep going for ages if I absolutely had to. Survival was something we got good at, even after mom died.

Naïve... That was a good way to describe our outlook. We thought we knew what we were doing, but I didn't think anypony knew exactly how to do more than just ‘get by’ in the Wasteland. Eventually the Wasteland won and ponies died, no exceptions. There were no survivors. As Lost and I wandered, we’d seen corpses, ranging in age and size from foals that had taken a wrong turn, to ancient mares and stallions who’d weathered the worst the Wastes could throw at them for decades. They still died.

I treated it like a game, moreso than my sister, and let fantasy keep me ignorant of the real truths. Truths like traders being greedy, willing to lie to make a sale. Truths like the ‘treasure’ we always hunted wasn’t real; it was just bits of garbage we pretended were worth something. Sometimes we’d even thrown away real treasures, things that could have helped us survive and get ahead, in favor of useless junk that struck our fancy.

Gunbuck changed things. Breaking Mom's cardinal rule had changed a lot of things. I liked to think they changed it for the better. We’d met new ponies, and even made friends with a zebra and a changeling. We made friends. We got better at hunting for treasure, and the game became a bit more fun, because there was more to find and collect, now that we saw just how valuable every little thing could be.

The experiences weren't all good. Wirepony nearly killed me, twice. We got exploited and thrown into an irradiated mine, and eventually caught by slavers. Even with the few good things, like finding ponies that wanted us to be a part of their family...

We learned a lot from all those experiences, every good one and every bad one.

Unfortunately, none of those lessons had prepared me for how to handle a gigantic pony that seemed to have all the powers of the Goddesses. She caught me totally off guard, and the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me I was about to die by her hooves. The last thing I’d expected in the whole wide shithole of a world we lived in was this: a pissed off alicorn who had no idea just how badly she'd been used and abused. Especially one who only learned it because we accidentally said it right in front of her.

Once again, I blamed cheater magic. Why in the Goddesses' names was this monster allowed to have a spell that could render her completely invisible even when she stood directly in front of me?

I braced myself for death.

Instead I heard a thud. The alicorn dropped to her haunches, her eyes wide with disbelief.

“We... We are sending Our daughters to slavery? They are not going to Unity?” she asked, her slit pupils sliding back and forth between Lost, Fine Tune, and me. Every part of her seemed dejected, her wings hung limp, no longer pinned to her sides. Her ears drooped to the sides of her head, and even the massive mane atop her head seemed to hang flat.

None of us said anything. Lost gasped and backed away a step, then looked to the gun in her telekinetic grasp. She looked directly at Rebar, the resolve back in her eyes. She fired and an earsplitting B-KEW nearly deafened me. The burst of magical plasma hit the air and stopped short, dispersing into a green haze. The moment’s hesitation had given the alicorn just enough time to raise her impenetrable shield.

“Dammit!” Lost snapped, and turned toward me. She pointed a hoof at the dour-looking alicorn and glared at me. “This is what I meant,” she seethed. “If you’d just killed her when you had the chance, we wouldn’t be dealing with a shield we can’t shoot through!”

“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered, looking down. I prayed to the Goddesses the alicorn didn’t hear that last bit.

Lost holstered her pistol, and we both stared at Rebar.

She still sat unmoving, looking around the room and breathing in short, ragged gasps. “What have We done?” she asked, looking directly at the two of us. Louder, she asked again, “What have We done?” She stood up and flared her wings outward, suddenly looking several times larger. Her eyes started to glow as she reared up.

We all backed away a few steps. I didn’t know how to handle this, and I couldn’t imagine Lost Art or Fine Tune did either. An alicorn encased in a shield that could stop bullets, raising her hooves. Did she intend to smash us to death?

What an ironic way for me to die.

The gigantic pony slammed her hooves on the stone floor, sending chips in several directions. Still surrounded by the shield, she began pacing the very short hallway. “...cannot be,” she muttered. “We have done every...”

I looked over at my sister, who watched the alicorn, never even blinking. Without a word, she pointed at Fine Tune, then the doorway to the tunnels below. The changeling nodded and saluted. He put Lost’s collar in her saddlebags and flitted away down the stairs.

“There, one problem taken care of,” L.A. grumbled. She turned and looked at the alicorn, who’d just reached the far wall and turned again. “One to go...”

“What do we do?” I asked her. I shifted on my hooves, and moved back toward the wall, closer to my sister.

“Well, given the shield, we try your new way. We give her a chance,” Lost whispered. She nudged the pistol on her leg with a hoof, shifting it so it barely sat in the holster, ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice. Leaning in close, she continued, “but if we get a chance and she's going to keep hurting ponies, we kill her.” It was a plan. Not a great one, but a plan. Too bad I could still see her legs shaking.

I nodded “Even if she’s not-”

“You two!” boomed the alicorn. “We removed you, after you proved a threat to Our plans! How, why have you returned?”

“Removed? You gave us to slavers!” I countered. “We came to stop you from sending more ponies, your daughters, to slavers.”

“We have not sent ponies to slavery!” she yelled. “We- exiled you, sent you where you could do no harm. Our daughters’ path to Unity will save them, they will be safe from ponies like you. They will be strong with Us! We- did what We- had to-” I heard her inside my head, screaming so loud I thought my skull my shatter. Showing considerable confidence, she dropped her shield and folded her wings back to her sides. The pseudo-goddess leaned down and pressed her muzzle to mine, jamming the steel rod in her head against my ear. “-to protect them.”

“Protect them? You’re giving them to slavers. They stood right in front of you and said so!” I yelled back. How could... I just... “You were right. There!” Inside my head I screamed, unable to understand how she couldn’t know. “You held and tortured my sister in your magic, and Mistress said not to damage her property. Are you that ignorant? Did you forget?”

Beside me, Lost raised her gun.

I waved a hoof at her. I’d seen just how big Loyalty’s blast radius was, and didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire. On top of that, if the alicorn really wasn’t aware that Mistress had her wrapped around a hoof, could we really do this with a clean conscience?

Fucking Wasteland. Why can’t you ever be easy?

“Where do you think she takes the ponies you give to her?” asked my sister. “Did you think she just dropped them off outside? What would stop them from coming right back?”

The alicorn pulled back, a conflicted look crossing her face. “We...” she started, but stopped to shudder. “We- do what We- must! All dangers must be dealt with to keep Our- daughters safe. Dangerous ponies must be sent away!” She stood tall again and once more flared her wings. “All that We- do is for Unity! For The Goddess!”

I clamped my hooves over my ears in a vain attempt to block the screaming from my mind. “The Goddess you can’t contact?” I asked, remembering how she’d fled last time. Maybe, if I moved just right, I could get her in the head with Persistence before she could pull that shield up.

But she wasn’t attacking. If she did, Lost would take her out first anyway.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

One of the captive ponies, a stallion, ran up the stairs. He slammed into my sister, and both toppled to the ground with a yelp.

I spun around, mouth already on the battle saddle’s bit.

“You!” Rebar shouted behind me. “We- imprisoned you! Why are you free?” She sounded furious, and advanced on the tangle of ponies before us. “Our- ally has not returned yet to take you!”

The stallion shied away, no doubt hearing the same rage assaulting the inside of his head.

Another series of thuds resounded as another pony charged up the stairs. This time, a unicorn mare emerged from the door, but she managed to spot my sister and the stallion in time, and jumped over them. Srambling on her hooves, she turned and bolted for the door, not paying the rest of us any attention.

“Run, just run!” she screamed, her horn glowing and opening the door to the outside.

“Yes, run! Leave and never return to shadow Our- city with your lies!” boomed Rebar’s voice inside my skull. She lifted the stallion and my sister with her magic and separated them. “All of you!” The magic haze around them both dissipated, and they fell to the floor with a paired thump. She lowered her head and pointed her horn at us. Snorting, she scraped her hoof across the floor.

I stood my ground, and so did my sister. The stallion took her advice and fled. Wherever the two of them went, I hoped they were safe.

“No, we’re not leaving. You need to be stopped,” I yelled back. I couldn’t give up on this. If we just ran, nothing would change, and ponies would just get trapped again.

“We- do not care about your petty complaints. Unity is meant for those willing to join Our- cause, in the loving embrace of The Goddess,” the alicorn snapped at me. The look in her eyes softened, and she said out loud, “We have a deal. It’s to help, to rebuild. To thrive. We only want to protect Our daughters.”

“You’re not sending anypony to unity, you monster. You’re sending them to brothels and death pits,” Lost said. “To gangers and a lifetime of servitude, with explosive collars around their necks.” She jabbed a hoof at the collar around my neck. “You aren’t helping or protecting anypony.”

Rage returned to the alicorn’s face. She stared at my sister, and her horn began to glow. I saw hesitation though, a quiver of her lips that betrayed her. I prayed to the true Goddesses that she believed us.

“They’re being broken and beaten, killed for kicks if they aren’t worth their food,” Lost continued. She stomped a hoof, and stepped forward. Her tail flicked agitatedly behind her. By the look of it, it took every ounce of her willpower to not pull her gun and start shooting. “I watched it happen!”

“Lies, those are lies,” she said, sounding defeated again. “We are helping ponies, sending them somewhere they can be safe.”

“Safe? Where we went was anything but safe!” I yelled at her. “Look at what they did to me.” I lifted my left foreleg to show her the shackle. Looking at it myself, I realized my legs were shaking. Please, Celestia, Luna? Let us get out of this alive. If I said one thing wrong, and the alicorn’s confusion turned to rage...

I didn’t want to think what might happen to my sister or me.

She looked at me, down at the shackle around my foreleg. A look of confusion crossed her face. “What exactly is that? Where did it come from?” Slowly, she raised a wing and pointed it at me.

“Slavers. Mistress’ bodyguard did this to me, as revenge. Torture,” I explained. I turned and lifting a rear leg to show her the shackles there. “Three of them, stabbed into me. They make it hurt to walk.”

“That cannot be,” she begged. Lifting her head again, her slit pupils darted to my sister. She trotted over, and around her once. “See, you don’t have them. We cannot believe your lies...”

“No, instead they beat me close to death and made her watch!” Lost yelled, pointing a shaking hoof to me as she stared down the alicorn.

“Do you think we would come back just to lie to you?” I asked her.

She ignored my question, and instead started to pace again. “No, We- have agreements in place. Everything has been set proper.” She turned and began walking the other direction. “Being sent to Fillydelphia, that’s a blessing, to meet Red Eye and be sent to The Goddess.” Her wings flared and she spun around again. “We don’t...” She thrashed to the side, digging her horn into the wall and pulled it back out. The rebar tore a second gouge in the wall, but she didn’t seem to notice. “The plans are important. We- should talk with the mare, she will explain.” Thrashing again, she stomped her hooves hard enough to dent the floor. “The plan is flawless! Our- daughters join Unity! Our- Our- enemies, they are put to work!” With every word I felt my head pound, as if they were slamming into my brain directly. She looked over at the two of us, bared her teeth. “We send them to build, to fix this world. We do what is right.” With a shudder, she turned away from us. “We do what We are supposed to.”

I looked over at Lost, and she just shrugged. Was the alicorn really arguing with herself?

Thudding echoed through the door to the tunnels. A third pony raced up. The floor shook as a larger mare passed by. Like the one before her, she didn’t bother to stop and see what was going on, she just charged through the door and out into the night.

I mouthed to Lost, ‘how many left?’ and hoped she understood.

She kicked the floor three times with a rear hoof.

How long would Fine Tune take to rescue another three ponies? It could be seconds, minutes... Could it take hours to pick a lock? I knew I gave up after so many tries, but picking a lock for some ammo or food, maybe a record of something from the world before it ended? That didn’t come close to picking a lock to save a life. I prayed to Celestia and Luna above that he could get them out soon.

“There’s no reason to trust Mistress Amble. What you think is happening, isn’t,” I told her. “You think they’re going to Fillydelphia. That only happens if they can’t bring a profit. She’s lied to you, she’s using you.” I bit my lip. Just maybe... “I saw them.” I wracked my brain, needing names. “Allegro, Battu... collared like me.”

That stumped the alicorn. Once more she sat down on her haunches, held a hoof to her head, just below the steel rod jutting through her skull, and began to sob.

“They were chained with me, kept in pens. We were starved, tortured... Collared and broken.”

Did it finally sink in, exactly what she’d done?

“We came back to save the ponies you’ve been sending to the slavers. So that nothing like what happened to me,” I held my hoof up, showing her the shackle again, “ever happens to another pony.” I lowered it, and hoped what I’d said got through.

She silently nodded.

“The dangerous pony you want removed from this town, to save your daughters,” Lost said, “is you. You’re the one who needs to be stopped, to protect everypony. Without you here, Amble won’t have a reason to come back. The townsponies can fight back against her.”

“We have... What has happened to Our daughters since... where are they now?” the alicorn asked me. She stared me right in the eyes, her own glowing with an intensity that made me shrink back a few steps.

“Sold, I don’t know where,” I answered honestly.

“They’re gone...” she whispered, tears sliding down her face.

“You thought a slaver wouldn’t take advantage of you?” Lost chided her. “She takes ponies against their will. What kind of pony did you think she was?” Her tail snapped again, and she looked at the stairway down. “Worse, what kind of pony are you?” Her legs had stopped shaking, her voice had hardened. Was the fear she’d been hiding finally gone, now that it looked like we weren’t in mortal danger?

Fuck. This was the absolute worst time for Lost to lose her temper. We almost had her...

And where were the rest of those captives? We didn’t have time for this. I looked at my sister and nodded to the door to the tunnel. ‘What’s taking him?’ I mouthed to my sister.

“Fine Tune!” Lost yelled through the door.

“Crii!” the changeling shouted back, his chittery voice echoing eerily against the stairway walls. He sounded stressed.

I looked at my sister, and she met my gaze. I nodded. She understood, and ran down to help him.

“You’ve been duped, haven’t you?” I asked Rebar. I moved closer. I knew I was tempting death, but if I could make myself seem friendlier...

“We- had arrangements,” she answered telepathically. Once more she stood. She looked around, her brows furrowing. “We didn’t... We thought...” Looking back and forth between the door downstairs and me, she hung her head. “It wasn’t meant to be this way... Our daughters, Our daughters are supposed to be safe with Us.” She looked back up at me, her voice wavering slightly. “We are supposed to help rebuild.”

“There’s a chance the ponies you care about got to Fillydelphia, if they weren’t sold first. She told me that’s where I’d go if I didn’t shape up.”

“Why are you here, then?” she asked. Her wings flared to her sides again, the erratic movement in complete opposition to her calm voice.

“To stop you. To save ponies. We escaped, and we don’t want any others to go through what we did.” I placed a hoof on her shoulder, hoping to calm her a little. Given I wasn’t the tallest pony, reaching her shoulder was a bit of a stretch. Trying to be tactful, I used the hoof without the shackle, even if that was less... personal.

“We wanted to save them,” she whispered.

“Then why don’t you?” I asked. “Leave. Let the ponies here live on their own. Leave, find your daughters. Save them from where you sent them.”

I didn’t quite buy that myself. I knew just how bad depression could hit. It hit me especially hard after mom died. You realize just how bad things are and don’t want to do anything at all.

“It’s too late. We- knew the best way to help. Were We so wrong?” she asked, looking at me. The shift in her voice, the emphasis... Was there even a right answer? She wiped the tears from her eyes.

“My mother told me to never trust others, because they only watch out for themselves,” I explained. I fought the urge to facehoof, as I realize that I’d basically just told her to not trust me, either. Instead, I lowered my hoof and sat across from her. My legs weren’t shaking anymore, and she seemed to finally be past wanting to kill me on the spot.

I knew this could end without a bloodbath.

“Mistress is out for her own gain, and she’ll exploit anything to get it,” I said. “You shouldn’t be collecting mares as daughters... We have to live our own lives.”

“We wanted to help them. We care about them. Unity is a blessing like no other,” she said, looking down at me. She smiled wide. “We are never alone, with Unity. We are powerful and learn from one another.” The smile vanished. “But... We have been alone for a long time...”

“But you’ve been collecting ponies, how are you alone?” I asked. I looked at the steel rod through her head. Should I mention that? I decided against it. I didn’t know what she meant about being alone. She’d been inside my head, but maybe she wasn’t getting anything back. She didn’t mention me being in the tunnels.

She hadn’t read my mind, which meant she really did love those mares.

“We cannot explain without you being a part of Unity. You would not be able to understand without first experiencing what We have experienced.”

“You can’t keep capturing mares and calling them daughters, no matter how much you care for them.”

She wiped the tears from her muzzle with a hoof and shook her head. “We don’t capture them... They are with Us by choice, because they love Us, because We love them. We have to, We-”

Well that changed things. I had a whole speech prepared on how to deal with her if she was taking them by force, but now I didn’t know what to say.

“No. You don’t have to anything. You can protect ponies without capturing others, without holding them or sending them away. There are so many better ways to help,” I corrected her, choosing to focus on the parts I was prepared for. I thought back to the good I’d done in the Wasteland, killing Wirepony at Leathers and freeing the gang ponies from the mines. “I’ve killed monsters before, I’ve helped ponies. I did it without them needing to stay with me.”

“You abandoned them?” she asked. Her brows furrowed again and she leaned down to glare at me.

“It’s not my place to force them to stay with me. They’re capable ponies, they can care for themselves!” I said, scooting back across the floor a few inches.

“We must right what has gone wrong,” she announced, standing. “We- will spread Unity, and as you say, use better ways.” She paced away, her tail flicking in the air behind her. “Where did you say Our daughters have gone?”

I gulped. Slowly I stood, trying to look less than threatening. I shifted my weight, aiming Persistence at her. Seven bullets to the head would do the job, if she couldn’t understand that she didn’t need to resort to violence. “I don’t know. They could be anywhere.”

I just needed her to keep talking.

“Then We- shall find them.”

“Find them?” I asked her. I looked at the battle saddle’s bit. Could I get every shot off before she got her shield up? Would Lost make it in time to back me up?

“Yes. We shall collect Our daughters, wherever they may be,” she said, glaring. The sadness and tears were gone. Her voice resonated with resolve. Maybe letting her do this would be a good thing. It’d hurt Mistress’ slavery ring, and make it so we didn’t have to find them ourselves.

But could I trust her to do this?

“And do what with them?”

“That is no concern of yours,” she snapped. “We- are capable. We- are above your questioning.”

Once again I clamped my hooves over my ears, even knowing it wouldn’t help. “And the daughters you have here?” I asked, wondering just how many mares she might have collected in a week.

“They will accompany Us- in Our- rescue,” she boomed. She gave me a look as if daring me to question her.

“What about me and my sister?” I asked. I looked down at the bit, then back at her.

Necessity.

“We- advise you to stay out of Our- way, and We- will stay out of yours.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank you, Celestia and Luna.

“You will tell the ponies of this town that We are leaving,” she said, turning toward the door to the tunnels below. “They may do as they wish, there are more important things for Us to deal with. If you interfere...”

I just nodded. Secretly, I felt relieved that Lost had missed all this. She’d probably object to the idea, but I couldn’t beat Rebar on my own, and I didn’t want to lose my sister in a firefight. If the alicorn really wanted to do good, and save the mares she cared about, should I stop her?

She walked off down the stairs, leaving me alone on the first floor.

I slumped down onto my haunches and finally inhaled. I didn’t even realize I’d stopped breathing.

* * *

“What’s taking so long?” Lost asked. I assumed she was talking to Fine Tune. She sounded agitated.

This could go very badly.

I looked down the hall at the second doorway. Rebar had already disappeared, and the door looked closed tight. I walked around the corner and looked inside the closer room. Fine Tune sat in front of one of the cages on the floor, digging at it and making annoyed chirping sounds. Lost stood behind him, holding several bobby pins in her telekinesis.

Past them, there were several cages, all but three now empty. The pony on whose cage Fine Tune worked waited patiently, pawing the ground at odd intervals. The other two ponies had shrunk back as far as possible, their eyes wide with fear as they stared, unblinking, at the changeling. All of them were so filthy that I couldn’t make out their true colors or their cutie marks.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to be in that form right now?” I asked, as I walked in. I didn’t look at my sister, fearing the reaction. Yeah, not a thinky pony, let the big monster alicorn escape.

“Ki cri,” he chirped back, without looking at me. In one hoof he held the lock on the cage, while the other he bent in an unnatural looking way to hook one of the edges of his leg-holes in. So he had... a knife on the right foreleg, and a lockpick tool on the left? That was... convenient.

“Well?” asked my sister. She didn’t look at me.

“I didn’t kill her,” I answered. I looked away as well, off to one of the empty cages.

“I know,” she snapped.

Right, no gunshots. Even if she hadn’t seen the alicorn walk by because she was busy, the lack of gunfire...

I sighed and walked up over to her. I dropped to my haunches and leaned against her. “She’s... intimidating. To say the least. But I convinced her to leave, so there’s no need to worry about this town being a slaver haven anymore. We can convince the tunnel ponies to come out and put a stop to Mistress’ plans.”

“You know, things were simpler when you just shot at the dangerous things and left the thinking to me,” Lost said, still not looking at me. “Try this.” One of the bobby pins floated over to Fine Tune, but he waved it away. Returning the bobby pins to her saddlebags, she turned and looked at me. Finally. “You may have been reckless, but you certainly got things done.”

“I know,” I admitted. “It was... easier to just run headlong into a fight, not worrying about whether I could actually win or not. Now, I...” I grimaced. “Now I’m terrified as a filly all the time. I feel like I’m fighting my own thoughts more than our actual enemies...” I looked at the floor. This was coming out all wrong.

At least my legs weren’t aching.

Lost put a hoof on my shoulder. “I’m not going to say it’s okay. It’s not. You’re going to get us in trouble, trouble I can’t dig us out of. How can we fix this?”

“I don’t think-”

A whistle cut me off. Fine Tune tossed aside the lock he’d been working on, and pulled the cage open. The stallion inside bolted without hesitation, darting around my sister and I, and scrambled up the stairs. The echoing hoofbeats from the hallway faded into silence.

“Me next!” yelled one of the caged mares.

“No me!” shouted the other.

They started to bicker, yelling at one another over who should be the first to be let out.

The room flashed green as fire erupted around the changeling. When it faded, the familiar light blue stallion remained. He stepped up to the two and looked back and forth between them. “I need to concentrate!” he shouted, then transformed back into a changeling with another burst of flame. Chirruping grumpily, he got to work on the closer of the two cages, twisting the lock picking ‘tool’ on his leg into the lock.

I looked down at my steel hoof. I wished I had as much utility built in naturally. Even the cybernetics didn’t give me any advantages. They’d just replaced what I’d lost. I sighed and looked at my sister. We had more pressing issues to worry about. “Rebar’s going to go hunt for the ‘daughters’ that got sold off.”

“She’s what?” Lost yelled. She took a step back, and I nearly fell over. She caught me in her telekinesis and lifted me back up before I could hit the ground. “She’s going... She’s...!” Lost sputtered. “You let her...! Hidden!”

“It’s better than being here. She can free slaves. We were going to do that anyway,” I tried to explain. “I think it makes sense! She’s got the same goals as us, and the city would get safer much quicker!”

“Why couldn’t you have just shot her, sis?” Lost asked. She looked over at the ponies in the cages, then down at Fine Tune. “Did Amble and Slipstock really get into your head that bad?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know the answer anyway. And here I thought I’d done the right thing...

“When you were reckless and running off without me... You at least learned from your mistakes. Every time you did something stupid, you learned to not do it again,” she said. Raising a hoof, she rubbed her forehead a few times, and adjusted her glasses. “...mostly. But now, you go off and do things like this. I don’t know what to do with you, Hidden. You’re... not exactly stellar when it comes to making plans.”

I shrunk back on my hooves.

From the hallway echoed the sound of several ponies walking, their hooffalls overlapping.

Fine Tune stopped his work, and we all turned to look at the open door. Even the ponies in the cages stared in rapt attention.

Four mares trotted by, all with bright smiles and clean coats. Their hooves landed lightly, the sound only coming from the repeated echoing. They didn’t look at us as they passed, focusing instead on the path in front of them.

Their echoing hooffalls slowly faded as they disappeared past, up the stairs. None of us in the room moved, all waiting. Either Rebar was invisible and following them, or she hadn’t passed by yet.

Lost levitated Loyalty out. Following her lead, I readied myself to fire Persistence.

Without a sound, the alicorn passed by the door. She stopped for only a moment, and looked across the little room without focusing on any one of us. Without moving her head, she simply walked off. A smile crossed her muzzle.

Confident bitch.

Lost didn’t fire on her, so I didn’t either. We let her walk off, with four innocent mares we should have rescued.

In the back of my mind, I heard Mistress’ voice whisper the word ‘murderer,’ and the felt the distant clawing at the back of my mind. I had a feeling that this wouldn’t be the last time we heard about the alicorn.

I just prayed the next time we did, it would be good news.

Celestia, Luna? Please don’t make me regret this.

Please?

* * *

“Pommel Falls,” I repeated.

I stood on the walkway that led back to town from the Town Hall. Fine Tune stood next to me, watching the two mares we’d just freed as they exchanged looks. Lost had gone upstairs to get Xeno.

“Ya sure that’s a good place?” asked the mare, a mint-colored unicorn with a nasally voice. She looked back over at her companion and grimaced. Though we’d helped her clean the filth from the cage off, she still had splotches of darker green all over her, which at least matched her mane. I couldn’t quite place her cutie mark though, which looked almost like my own X, if it had an extra line crossed over. From the end of each stick hung strings, that looked like they should attach to something.

“Yeah, there’s some Steel Rangers we know there. They’re making sure it’s a safe place,” I answered.

“What? No! Lighthoof, don’t tell me we’re actually gonna go there!” the second mare shouted. She shook her head repeatedly, making her shaggy white mane fall down over her eyes.

I rolled my eyes, not wanting to deal with this sort of thing. I’d had a very long night.

“I hate Steel Rangers, and you know why,” she pleaded. Apparently the two’d had a lot of time to get to know one another while in the cages.

“It’s only a day or two’s walk from here. We can give you directions, and it’s safe. They have clean water, and the Steel Rangers there aren’t anything like the ones you might know,” I explained. I wished Lost had decided to see these ponies off herself, and let me meet up with Xeno instead. She would have been better at explaining this sort of thing.

Lighthoof walked over to me and lowered her head close to my ear. “Clinker used to live with some Rangers,” she whispered. “She left on something she calls a ‘rum springer,’ and doesn’t want to go back.” Together we looked at the pastel-pink mare.

She had a cutie mark of a book with a large gear on its cover. Did... Had she grown up as a scribe for Scifresh’s lot?

“Clinker, who was your Elder?” I asked, not wanting to drag this on. I needed a nap far too badly to deal with panicky mares.

What little color the mare had in her coat drained away, leaving her entire body looking exactly like her white mane. She shot Lighthoof a look and took a few steps back. “Nopony. I w-wasn’t a Steel Ranger. They, umm, they!” she stammered.

Rolling my eyes, I turned to Fine Tune. “Turn into an old mare, off-white coat, red and yellow mane. Can you do that?”

“Sure,” he offered, “but I’ll need a minute.” He closed his eyes and stood silent for a moment, then peeked one open to look at me. “Eyes?”

Oh, right. Eye color... She looked like Jazz, only a decade or three older, and I’d never forget the rage in those bright green eyes as the Star Paladin called us savages and Xeno ‘the enemy,’ just for being a zebra.

“Green. Bright green.”

Clinker shivered, hiding behind Lighthoof. She looked caught between wanting to run for her life, and being paralyzed by fear. I knew the feeling all too well.

With a flash, the blue stallion disappeared, replaced by a mare that looked ancient. Even with a different mane style, I recognized Elder Scifresh anywhere. Fine Tune turned around, and looked at the two mares. Even with a smile, the intensity of those green eyes felt like he was boring a hole through me. Going by the look on the pastel mare’s face, I knew she felt the same.

“Enough!” she shouted, shrinking down and hiding behind Lighthoof.

The door slammed open, and my sister walked out with Xeno a half-step behind her. A thin wisp of smoke trailed through the air, only to fade and disappear as the zebra dropped the cigarette from her lips.

“You!” she shouted, pointing a hoof accusingly.

Lost stopped in her tracks, and all the rest of us turned to look at her. “Scifresh...” she growled. With an eruption of blue, Loyalty sprung from her leg holster and into the air.

“Wait!” shouted a voice I didn’t recognize. Fine Tune erupted in fire and the green-eyed mare disappeared. The flash of flame faded, leaving the music-loving stallion back in front of her.

For a whole minute my sister didn’t lower the gun. Xeno didn’t lower hers either, though I didn’t remember seeing her grab it. “Never. Do. That. Again,” Lost snapped. She slammed the magical energy weapon down into its holster, and let loose a long, slow sigh.

“Bugponies...” Xeno scoffed. She slung the rifle back over her side.

“Anyway... Pommel Falls is safe, the Steel Rangers there are from Stable 60, under Leathers,” I explained to Clinker and Lighthoof. “They’re not affiliated with Scifresh or Jazz, I promise.”

The promise seemed to do the trick, as Clinker’s color slowly returned. She gulped, but nodded. “Alright, but if I see either of those two mares, or any of their loyalist soldiers, I’m going to find a gun, and find you two,” she said, pointing a hoof at me, then Fine Tune. Apparently, my sister and Xeno got off without a death threat, since they hadn’t been part of the fiasco.

Xeno trotted up to me, flicking her tail as she did. Another cigarette hung from her lips, leaving a trail of smoke that made me cough. “Itis good to see you not use death as the first choice. Maybe there is hope for ponies after all,” she said quietly. “I saw how you did, and Iam glad I didnot have to intercourse.” The zebra mare walked off toward the town.

Lost followed, shrugging as she passed. She tilted her head at Xeno and frowned, but followed.

I smiled. Xeno might be in a slump since we weren’t heading straight to her home, but at least she kept watch over me. I turned to Clinker. “Lemon Tart is with them,” I said. I held up my steel hoof. “She helped with the surgery for my hoof.”

“Oh, Celestia... Her,” Clinker whined.

“Who?” asked Lighthoof.

“If you’re coming too, I’ll tell you on the way,” answered the earth pony. She waved a hoof, and the two followed my sister and Xeno as they walked away.

I shrugged as well, looking at Fine Tune. When he shrugged back, we both turned and followed.

Were it not for the six of us walking through the center of the city, just past where the invisible wall of radiation lay, I’d have sworn the place was abandoned. Everything was perfectly still, without a single pony or sound outside aside from us.

Sale Price's shop was the only building with a light on. He’d be the only pony we could tell about Rebar’s departure without waking the whole town. Xeno had intimidated him pretty severely last time we’d been here, and talking to him meant we could sell off all the useless loot we picked up getting here, get the word out that Rebar was gone, and I could snag that weird syringe of Buck.

Wait, was that why my legs were hurting? Was I going through some sort of withdrawal?

No, couldn’t be. I hadn’t had any in a week.

I shrugged, then trotted forward. “So are you going to go?” I asked the two mares. “If you are, can you deliver a message for me?” I hadn’t heard from Lamington all day, like Praline promised I would, and I wanted to make sure that they’d know we were coming, no matter what.

“I guess, I don’t have anywhere else to go,” said Lighthoof.

“Me either, and friendly Steel Rangers are better than raiders or bandits,” Clinker agreed. She stood up on her rear hooves and shrugged.

Seriously, how did some ponies do that so easily?

“Just tell Lamington and Praline that we’re coming back, and soon, please?” I asked, hoping they wouldn’t refuse the favor.

“Sure...” Neither sounded particularly enthusiastic.

“We’ll go now,” said Lighthoof. “The less time we’re in this terrible place, the better. But... Thank you.”

“A lot,” Clinker added.

“Yeah, a lot,” the unicorn mare agreed. “I don’t want to know what would have happened if we’d stayed stuck in those cages.” She grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a quick hug, then looked to Clinker. With a nod, the two ran off.

I whinnied. They were big mares. They could take care of themselves. “Thanks,” I whispered. As the two ran out of sight, I turned to my sister and friend. “Sis!” I shouted, and trotted closer.

Fine Tune followed close behind, smiling wide but saying nothing.

“Resupply, then the next stop?” I asked her. We’d done good, without help, and without having to murder anypony. I proved there, that I could do it. Mistress was wrong, I wasn’t just a murderer. I could be a thinky pony who dealt with problems with words instead of just bullets and brass hooves. Apparently it just took a leap of faith to teach me. That and being up against a pony that could kill me at any distance with a shield that could stop my bullets in mid-air.

Sigh...

That I’d managed to do it without killing her was a personal victory against all the training and everything Mistress Amble had drilled into my head.

“Yeah, but maybe... Let’s just go to Pommel Falls,” Lost said, giving me a sad look. The bags under her eyes were back, looking worse than ever. Even though we’d gotten a good sleep last night, and managed to do something good, she looked more exhausted than ever.

“Tired?” I asked.

Xeno gave me a look, as did Fine Tune. Xeno’s face showed nothing but concern, while Fine Tune’s muzzle scrunched up with a cross-eyed glance of confusion.

“Planning around your newfound... ‘skill set’ is taking a lot of work,” she answered, rolling her eyes. “I’ve had a lot to process lately. Maybe we just, go back, and rest for a while. We can go to Idle later.” She looked past me, at the shop with the lights on. “Resupply, yes, that’s a good idea.” Turning to Xeno, she smiled. “Ready to do some more shopping?”

The zebra’s frown spun around into a smile so fast, I swore the cigarette in her mouth would actually switch sides. We all laughed, and turned to the shop.

“You go ahead, I’ll be right in,” I said, turning to look out at the city. “Need a minute of fresh air,” I lied. Waving the rest of them off, I sat myself down right where I stood and looked up at the cloud-cover. It seemed darker than normal, though I couldn’t tell if that was from the lack of a sun above the clouds, or if rain was coming.

Probably rain. It always rained at the worst times.

I wanted to feel happy, about helping get rid of the alicorn. I wanted to feel happy about her little mission. I couldn’t, because something nagged at the back of my mind. The little diggy claws weren’t back. This just felt like I’d missed something.

Would she lead those mares through irradiated ruins to their deaths, not realizing where she went? She was immune to it, but they weren’t. Would she liberate the ponies she thought were her daughters through force, or through words? For that matter, what if I’d just sent out a death squad for ponies who didn’t keep them as slaves, and just wanted another pony to help on a burgeoning farm? Too many possibilities raced each other through my mind.

Rebar seemed to have two personalities, and one was far more ruthless than the other. I might have just unleashed a psychopathic killer.

Why hadn’t I sent her to U Cig and have her kill off Mistress Amble and her lackies?!

I slammed my steel hoof so hard into my head I nearly blacked out. I could have ended the trouble with Mistress in one fell swoop, and not had to worry about it. That would have solved a major slaver problem with ease. There was no way Mistress would have expected the super-powerful but easily duped alicorn to turn on her. And she couldn’t have stopped her, either, as Rebar was effectively immortal, could turn invisible... Argh! Dammit. That’s what a thinky pony would have done...

Best case, they would have killed one another, and both problems would have been taken care of. Better yet, I could have suggested that the Red Eye character they kept talking about was actually the one exploiting her, and fixed an even bigger problem. Just what went on in Filly, anyway?

I felt like such a small pony in a big world. The Wasteland must be so vast, so full of heroes running around saving ponies, DJs that could see and report on things no matter where they were, and evils like slavers, and alicorns trying to collect everypony for something called Unity.

I looked back up at the sky. If only I knew more about the Wasteland, and could see the bigger picture. I needed to hear more about what was happening outside Blackhoof, and from more sources than just DJ Pon3. What if that other voice I’d heard when we first met Fine Tune knew something I didn’t? After we left, I’d try and find that station again.

A droplet of water hit me on the tip of my muzzle.

Totally called it. I stood up, pulled my jacket tight around me, and turned toward the store. It was the only place open this late, or early. What time was it? I trotted out of the rain before it could get heavier, and into Sale Price’s shop.

* * *

I trotted inside to encounter Xeno making small talk with the blue earth pony stallion behind the counter.

“...ponies out in the Wasteland who would rather kill than pay for your wares, Salepony,” Xeno explained to Sale Price. “Itis... What is the word in your pony language?” She paused a moment and said something in zebra. “No matter! Why do you hide?”

Sale Price stood staring at her, his jaw wide open and his red eyes wide. “N-n-no...” he stuttered, not answering her question.

I walked up to Lost and leaned in close. “Is she intimidating the ‘salepony’ again?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she answered with an over exaggerated roll of her eyes. “C’mon, let’s find something to spend our caps on while she robs him blind,” she whispered back. Together we started browsing the shop.

“How many caps do we have?” I asked. Now really wasn’t the time to come up short.

“Depends. Go drop all the little treasures you found, and have Xeno sell it all off.”

I trotted past Fine Tune, who stood speechless at Xeno’s assault on the shop-keeper’s sense of pricing. As I passed, I waved a hoof before his eyes, but got no reaction. That was some intense shock.

“Xeno, can you sell all this for me?” I asked as I pulled my saddlebags off my back. The weight of them nearly ripped my teeth out as I hefted the bags over the counter, and started digging things out. In the short time it took us to get to Skirt, I’d managed to collect a few valuable treasures, and a ton of useless junk. True, it might be mostly junk, but even junk had its price in caps.

The best part was that Xeno would get a far better deal from Sale Price than she’d gotten from Risk just the other day. The zebra nodded. “Of course, Hiddenpony. Salepony! Let us talk price.” She snatched up the first item, a pile of electrical parts that looked more like they belonged inside my hoof than sitting on somepony’s shelf, and pushed them at the merchant.

“Thank you,” I said, grabbing my saddlebags. Maybe the mark on her flanks really signified the downward spiral of sanity she sent most ponies into. Snickering to myself, I trotted back to my sister and started browsing.

Really, I wasn’t looking at anything on the shelf. I had only one goal. I just didn’t want to make it look too obvious. Moving from thing to thing, only half-caring what they were, I bent myself behind the shelf and looked for the little stock of Mint-als and Buck I’d pushed into the far corner.

The door opened, making a little bell ring. I didn’t care; I’d found what I was looking for. Pushed back behind a bundle of surgical tubing and rusted eating utensils sat my prize.

“Hey... Oh,” said a mare’s voice I didn’t recognize. “Din’t think there were any of y’all in these parts.” Under her breath, I heard her add, “Fuckin’ zebra.”

Xeno didn’t answer, though I could hear her voice and the trader’s still bargaining back and forth.

I ignored the new mare. I had drugs to collect. Scooping up the bottle of Buck, the tin of Mint-als, and the strange little syringe of Buck, I went back to browsing. The last thing I needed was Lost giving me a hard time about drugs, but... Godddesses. We’d lost damn near everything, so I had to restock for emergencies.

“Y’all? What do you mean?” asked Lost, peeking over the shelf.

“Huh? Ah meant... Nothin’. Hey,” said the voice again.

“Singe, we need to hurry,” muttered another pony.

“Ah know, Ah know. Shut up. They can wait outside,” snapped the mare. “Ah’m making a friend, she looks familiar, and Ah dunno from where.”

I didn’t stand, not wanting anypony to see the collar I still had on. Why hadn’t I got Fine Tune to take it off already?

“Well, we’ve only been in town for the night,” answered Lost. “I don’t know where I’d have seen you before.” She stood there, only her eyes and horn past the edge of the shelf. I could see her legs shaking again.

“Don’t matter none. Ah’m just here to reload Ol’ Kicker here,” said the voice. A metallic clang echoed past the shelf.

I just kept browsing, snagging odds and ends that seemed useful. Everything I took, I stuffed into my bag, to pay for once the rude-sounding mare left.

“You, zebra! Bugger off. Ah need to talk to this sorry sod of a trader,” the mare snapped. Heavy hooves trod across the floor as she walked to the counter.

Lost leaned down next to me. She pulled her glasses off, wiped her forehead, and put them back on, then gave me a worried look. “Ashen,” she whispered. “The one who tried to buy me...”

I began to think that Celestia and Luna really enjoyed fucking us over. One set of sisters royally screwing another set. I looked down at Persistence, then over at Loyalty strapped to Lost’s leg. Might as well bend over and let them have us.

“So. How do we handle it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. We-”

Fine Tune interrupted by trotting over. He crouched next to us, his face stricken with the same look as Lost’s. His blue coat seemed even paler than normal, making me wonder just how complete the transformation from bugpony to unicorn was. “Singe is here,” he squeaked. “She’s the worst...”

“Worst what?” I asked.

“She’s the worst of The Ashen. They buy us changelings all the time. The scars they give disrupt our ability to transform.” he said, shivering. “This is a new form, so she didn’t recognize me. But i-if she...”

“I won’t let that happen,” Lost said, some of the confidence back in her voice.

Fine Tune smiled weakly. “Thank yo-”

“What the fuck do you mean, you don’t have any ammo for me?” yelled Singe. “Ah walked all the way here, and you ain’t got shit? I swear if I have to find that wanderer Mono, I will... I’ll!” She slammed something down, shaking the whole building. Must be an earth pony.

I grinned.

“Lost, go right, I’ll go left,” I whispered. Mistress wanted me to be a murderer? I could kill a member of The Ashen, easy.

Another thud shook the building.

“Back off ya fuckin’ zebra piece-a-shit!” shouted Singe.

For a second, nopony said anything. Lost and I went opposite one another around the shelf. As I rounded the corner, I saw them.

Xeno stared down a big yellow earth pony mare that I assumed was Singe. She stared right back at Xeno, her teeth bared. As Lost said, she was definitely one of The Ashen. Both her forelegs were covered in plasma-green rings. I remembered her from the auction; she had the same giant gun strapped to her back, and the same scraggly-looking green mane. Her cutie mark looked like a bullet hitting a wall, with a huge, colored backblast where it hit.

Next to her stood a smaller unicorn mare with a pistol strapped to her leg. She glared at Xeno as well, but without any of the ferocity. Going by the single pink band around her purple leg, she must have been fairly new.

Xeno took a step forward, her dark blue eyes flashing with defiance. She snapped something in her zebra language.

“Umm, ladies? Please, take it outside,” Sale Price whimpered.

Both Singe and Xeno shot him a look, then glared back at one another. “Ah said, back off, ya striped motherfucker,” the ganger pony growled again. She pulled her head back, suddenly not baring her teeth anymore. “Wait a second... Yer a fuckin’ slaver!” She raised an eyebrow. “Ah never seen a zeb- Nah, nah, wait. There was that weird lookin’ one at the auction... Ya think you dirty fucks’d be against that sorta thing.” She laughed, clopping a hoof over the shoulder of the other Ashen mare.

“Leave her alone, you bully,” I said, leveling Persistence at the unicorn ganger. I saw Lost’s horn glowing, behind the two mares.

“Ya gonna make me? Ah don’t think so,” she answered, reached up with a hoof and grabbing her rifle with her fetlock. She swung the gun around hard, and propped herself up on her hind legs.

That fucking cheat! How’d she manage to do that without toppling over?

I didn’t take the time to find out, or time to deal with a bullshit standoff. I bit down, firing Persistence. She fired her gun at the same time, with her hooves.

Sale Price paled. He held his hooves up, yelling, “No sto-!”

Three deafening booms rattled the room, two from Persistence and one from the ganger mare. My two rounds slammed into the purple unicorn with Singe, taking the mare completely off-guard. Her head exploded in a shower of gore, painting Sale Price and his counter red with her blood. I smirked, knowing Lost would handle Singe.

Singe’s shot missed me, barely, but it passed so close that the shockwave knocked me off my hooves and into the far wall. “Shit!” I yelled as I tumbled, glad that the bullet tore a huge hole in the wall instead of in my torso. Slabs and slivers of rotten wood from the destroyed wall collapsed onto me.

I groaned and rubbed my head as I got up to look around. Sale Price didn’t say anything. He simply stood there, jaw agape, covered in blood. Lost smirked, standing behind Singe with Loyalty to the ganger’s head and one of our unlocked collars securely fastened around her neck. Even Xeno looked pleased, despite having just been in my line of fire.

Thank the Goddesses for freaky zebra luck. There was no way I should have made that shot. Then again, the kink in my back said my hind legs might be paralyzed...

“Out! Get out!” shouted the trader stallion. He raised a shaky hoof and pointed to the door that now hung from a single hinge.

“Fuck you,” snapped Singe. She dropped down onto all four legs and slung the gun back over her shoulder. “And don’t think Ah can’t kill ya before you can kill me,” she said to Lost, giving her a glare.

Lost just pushed the gun closer to her head with her magic. “I think we should listen to the trader,” she said, then looked at me. “You okay Hidden?”

I just waved a hoof and pulled myself from the wall. Right back leg? Check. Left back leg? Check. Still mobile. No paralysis. I really wanted a gun like that! “I’m fine, but grab her gun for me.”

Lost nodded and wretched the rifle away. She slid it into her bags and away from the Ashen mare.

“Keep the wares, for the mess,” Xeno said with a smile. She leaned in closer and whispered something in her native tongue to Sale Price, then pulled back.

The stallion just nodded as we packed up our things and walked out.

“Ya know Ah ain’t the only membera The Ashen ‘round here, don’tcha?” asked the big yellow mare. “Ah got a dozen friends right outside.”

“I’ve got more collars. Fine Tune, take Hidden’s off, will you?” L.A. asked the changeling. She turned to Singe, and just smiled. “We need it off so we can blow Singe’s head to pieces if she follows us without killing Hidden too.”

“Ah got a key.”

“I won’t give you the time to use it,” my sister snapped. “And don't tempt me to set it off early!”

Fine Tune came up behind me, and undid the collar in what felt like an instant. A weight slipped from my neck and my heart as the heavy metal ring fell to the floor. Mistress might still be in my mind, but at least her hold had some cracks now. Fine Tune dropped the collar in my sister’s saddlebags.

We left the store, without any new caps from the treasure we’d hawked. I still had the Buck and Mint-als that I’d stashed before the shootout began, so I counted it as a win. For emergencies and all.

We walked out into déjà vu... Rain, and an army of fully-armed ponies.

Outside stood several of The Ashen, just like Singe threatened, all decked in various types of raider armor, and holding magic-powered energy weapons. The majority raised their weapons, though one had a strange-looking lance with a gem in the tip. He bit it and jabbed at us a few times.

“Whoa, calm down,” Lost ordered them, pointing at the collar around Singe’s neck. “Or I kill her. Now look; we’re going to leave. And if you follow, I’m going to kill her. If you take a pot shot at us, I'm going to kill her. If you spy on us, I'm going to kill her. And if you come after us for revenge? I'm going to shoot all of you first, and then kill her.” She tapped the collar a few times.

Xeno glanced back at the sniper rifle across her back, and I bit down on the bit for my battle saddle. We were outnumbered, but we had the hostage. I didn’t know if the rain would help, or hurt. My mane hung down over one of my eyes, but they were in the same situation, stuck in the freezing water with low visibility.

Lost shoved Singe into the group, who let out several yells and grumbles. “Stand down, ya idiots,” shouted Singe. She twisted around, and whispered something into the ear of another member of her gang, a short stallion with rings on both forelegs. “Yer lucky Ah only had one shot. Ah’m gonna get Seethe to come out here and find ya. Ah’ll have him bring our sister, too, and we’ll fuck ya up proper. Y’know that, right?” she snarled.

“Seethe?” Lost asked. Loyalty sagged in the air, and she whimpered. I felt like doing the same.

“Know ‘im? Yeah, ya seem like his type,” she said, laughing. “Ah’ll go get ‘im for ya if ya let me go... Even if ya are a fuckin’ idiot.”

I shot her in the leg with Persistence. A single bullet to her knee.

“Ow! Fuck!”

Every gun snapped up to point right at me.

Lightning cracked the sky, louder than I’d ever heard it. This storm would be bad, once it finally got going.

“Stop it, now,” said my sister, in the calmest voice I’d heard her use in a long time. Even talking quietly, her voice cut through the thunder like magic. She walked away, waving her tail side to side, as if she didn’t have a care in the Wasteland. “C’mon, we’re leaving. Fine Tune, I need you to do something for your Queen.” Loyalty sank into the holster around her leg, though her horn continued to glow blue. The flap of her saddlebag opened, and she pulled out the detonator. She turned back to the gangers. “One pony sets hoof outta town while I can still see and she blows.”

Instantly Fine Tune flew to her side, ready to serve however she asked.

Xeno and I followed, with me walking backward. I didn’t take my mouth off the battle saddle’s bit. Even with the detonator floating in the air next to my sister, ready to go off at a moment’s notice, I didn’t trust The Ashen. We’d run away from them back when this first started, fleeing through the Wasteland without a single bullet for our defense, chased through dead trees by a psychopath with a flamer...

I could almost feel the weight of the severed head in my bags again.

A flash of green fire erupted behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. The eerie reflection of green off every droplet of water in the air made me think of how mom had described the balefire bombs that made the Wasteland. I shuddered, hoping I’d never have to see what that actually looked like. I had enough problems already, first and foremost being the gang of ponies in front of me.

“A fuckin’ changeling?” yelled one of the stallions with Singe. “Oh, that cunt!”

I didn’t hear the rest. I’d finally gotten far enough away. We turned and ran. I didn’t hear anyone chasing after us.

The shape of a pony cut through the rain above me. Fine Tune, now a pegasus, dove through the air with her hooves in front of her. Given her ability to mix and match attributes, I found it weird she’d switch entirely... I didn’t take the time to see what she was doing, though. I just kept moving. Just kept following my sister through the downpour.

We ran beneath the outcropping that marked the entrance to the town. “Which way?” I yelled.

“Away from anywhere we think is safe!” yelled Lost back. Lightning struck again, followed by a deafening thunderclap. “Once we lose them, we can get back to safety!”

Xeno grumbled, but followed. Our hooves squished in the mud. We didn’t have time to stop and ask the weather to change.

“What about Skirt?” I asked, yelling above the wind in my ears. Water hit me in the face, but I could make out my sister’s white coat through the darkness. She’d be the beacon I followed.

“Told Sale Price … happened, he’ll spr...he word... Important things ...ht now, Hidden!” she yelled to me. I lost half her words to the storm.

Fine Tune flew back across. She landed and galloped along with us. “They’re in place!” she shouted, looking at my sister.

L.A. nodded back.

Everything turned to fire as my sister pressed the detonator button. The two collars she’d had in her bag exploded, sending a torrent of dirt into the air and past us. For bomb collars, those things had one fuck-off bang in them! The horrible memory of Spark Light’s death forced its way into my mind. His collar hadn’t had anywhere near that big an explosion. I shuddered, wondering exactly what Mistress Amble had expected of us.

Xeno and I both yelped, speeding up to keep pace with my sister and the changeling. That would be the end of Singe, and one problem done. An explosion that big would definitely keep them from following us. It wasn’t worth it to find out though.

We turned away from the road to Leathers and Pommel Falls. We ran to new territory. Another of mom’s lessons, one I’d been reminded of only recently. Don’t lead enemies home. Better safe than sorry.

So we ran to Idle. The siren song of rest and relaxation called to me, but we had work to do.

Nothing was worth chancing the only family we had waiting for us.

* * *

I changed the PipBuck display to green. Again.

A little marker in the corner of my vision gave me reference to where Idle was, and which way we should walk. In the rain, it ended up being the only thing I could navigate by. The thunder and lightning slacked off a long while after we’d gotten away from Skirt, but the lack of lightning only meant that I couldn’t see anything through the downpour.

It made for a less-than-fun trip. The jacket I wore stuck to me, and were it not for the armor underneath, I felt sure I’d be getting sick. Every step we took ended with squishing through the Wasteland mud, and none of it felt good. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if any mud would get into my steel hoof. I still didn’t know the proper way to take it apart for cleaning.

For that matter, I wanted to have Praline to look at it. After what Vice Brand and Slipstock did, I needed the peace of mind.

But, because of more bullshit with raiders and gangers, we once again had to go in the opposite direction, to keep those we cared about safe.

I checked the corners of my vision, but didn’t see any little red markers floating about. Rain sucked, but it kept most thinky ponies, and the more thinky animals, from staying out where they could get soaked. Lost Art might be a thinky pony, and I knew Xeno and Fine Tune were both plenty smart, but stopping to rest wasn’t a luxury we had. With the rain still coming down, I didn’t bother even turning on the radio. I did however, thank the Goddesses for the technological advances of Equestria during the War. Nothing, including the water, seemed to faze the little arcano-tech device around my fetlock.

The only soundtrack to our walking was the howl of the wind, the squish of our hooves, and the occasional click of radiation.

I looked down at, well, I didn’t look at my hoof. But I thought about it. I needed to get back to ponies who cared about us. We should have just left with Lighthoof and Clinker and gone straight back to Pommel Falls, dealt with Hydro being a massive bitch, and seen our family. I wished I could buck myself.

On top of that, I hadn’t gotten any word from Lamington, like Praline had promised. Given the static in his armor, maybe he had a busted broadcaster, or whatever version of the equipment power armor had. I didn’t know why, but the lack of communication hurt in a way I couldn’t quite put my hoof on. Something deep inside me twinged in a very strange way.

I ignored that part. I needed to talk to them for peace of mind, and I wanted a chance to get real sleep, without strange memory-like dreams about my mom and my childhood, or horrible nightmares about the ponies I’d killed or ‘abandoned.’ Was it so much to ask to just get a good night’s sleep?

Given what I went through for a week, yes, probably. I just needed to have faith in the Goddesses that eventually, I’d be given time to just rest my eyes, kick up my hooves, and stop worrying about the world for a few days. Maybe a nice conversation with Praline about the cybernetics, and some time alone with Lamington.

Maybe I’d even be able to see him out of his armor again!

Squishing my hoof in the mud, I sulked. That seemed unlikely...

Tall apartment buildings surrounded us, threatening to touch the clouds themselves. Even through the darkness, I could see they were in just as terrible condition as every other building I’d seen. There were so many of them to weave through, it felt like a totally new city. Really, just how big was Blackhoof?

Dotted between the skyscrapers lay small houses and stores, ones whose silhouettes looked visibly older, even taking into consideration that everything looked like a bombed-out... well, Wasteland.

“How much further?” Lost Art yelled over the rainfall.

“I don’t know! Just keep going straight!” I yelled back. Looking up at the sky, I asked myself if we really, really needed this. Weren’t the pegasi supposed to be weatherponies, and keep this sort of thing from happening?

Wait, mom told us the Pegasi had closed the sky, and stopped caring about what happened to us ‘dirt ponies’ on the surface. I grumbled, hating that term. It felt like a personal affront. I guessed they just had their own things to deal with, and didn’t think of us as important enough. So much for ponies working together. Though, I supposed the Wasteland might not be a blasted, poisoned desert anymore if we all pitched in to fix it.

After what seemed like hours, the rain finally began to slack off. Even without the rain itself, we still had the mud to deal with, and... I looked at the PipBuck’s map. We still had a long trip ahead of us. We might not even make it there until morning.

“Any idea where we are?” L.A. asked. She stopped and waited for me to catch up. Together, the four of us converged in the fading drizzle.

I flicked an ear and snapped my tail back and forth, trying to flick some of the wetness away. Everyone looked miserable.

“Do we normally run like that?” asked Fine Tune, still transformed to look like a pegasus. She stamped her hooves, looking agitated. “Queens don’t run,” she muttered.

“That wasn’t running, it was a tactical retreat,” L.A. responded. “Hidden’s gun is flighty, and mine is only good at short range.” L.A. answered. She sounded quite analytical. Her horn began to glow and she lifted her glasses from her muzzle. “The sniper rifle wouldn’t work at close range, and a knife has the same problem as Loyalty.” She flicked the water from the lenses and rested them back on her nose.

“Iam using the weapon you gave me, sisters,” Xeno snapped. She lifted her hoof, and placed a cigarette in her mouth.

“Look, we made do with what we have. Do you have a preference?” Lost asked. Instead of analytical, she sounded agitated. “You’re a part of the group, you can ask for a weapon if you prefer that type. We gave you the rifle because you said your brothers taught you to use it.”

I looked back at Xeno, waiting for a retort. Instead, she took a drag of a cigarette.

“I have my knife, the gun works fine,” she sighed. “Which way isit?” She looked at me, and I pointed. “Last stop, then my brothers. Correct, Lostpony?” I could feel the smoldering anger in her voice, rather than hear it.

Was this what slavery did? Turned us all against one another. I couldn’t tell with Fine Tune, since we didn’t know him before, but things were just so... Different now.

“Can we stop?” I asked, shifting on my hooves. “Xeno, I’m sorry. We’ll take care of things with you and your brothers as soon as we can. I promise.” I shot Lost a look, daring her to argue priorities. “Lost, you’re right... what you said earlier, about the old me. I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to get what happened out of my head. I’ve got a voice screaming at me, telling me I’m a murderer.”

Xeno nodded, looking placated for the moment. Lost, she shrunk back and sighed. Fine Tune just looked between the three of us, and cocked his head to the side. His wings opened and fluttered, in a way only a changeling could move.

“The worst part... I don’t mind it,” I admitted. “She drilled the remorse out of me. The only thing keeping me from going off like I did on those raiders is what you told me... And that voice screams in my head too. So... I’m sorry. I’m just trying to find solutions that don’t prove Mistress right. And maybe that makes me hesitate. I’ll try and get better.” I stepped forward and hugged her, burying my face into her soaked mane.

Getting all that off my chest helped. Just like removing the collar lifted a weight from both my neck and my mind, telling her made the weight over my heart slack some.

“I know, sis,” she whispered. “I’ll help.”

The tension lifted somewhat, and both my sister and Xeno smiled at one another. “Sorry,” she said to the zebra.

Xeno only nodded.

“So, treasure hunt on our way?” I asked hopefully. Xeno and Fine Tune might not share our love of the hunt, but at least it would keep us busy. We had plenty of buildings and lots of stores to search through. With the drizzle still coming down, getting indoors might lift all of our spirits. Plus, four sets of hooves digging would make everything go faster.

“Sounds like a plan,” said L.A.

“Iam... okay with this,” Xeno agreed.

“Tre- treasure Hunt?” Fine Tune asked. She blinked a few times and raised an eyebrow. In total confusion, even her ears drooped back.

“You’ll see,” I answered, patting her on the shoulder with a hoof.

* * *

The radiation might have been a little too much. The clicking of the PipBuck’s little radiation counter wouldn’t stop. The second Fine Tune and I entered the shop, the radiation spiked. Skirt’s radiation had sent the little clicker going faster, but this was... Close.

I looked around, taking stock of what kind of store we’d stepped into. The windows lay shattered just inside, letters cracked and jumbled in random order. Luckily, whoever built the lights inside did an amazing job, two hundred years later and they still worked perfectly. The shelves... I started moving, fast. Waving for Fine Tune to follow, I went down an aisle.

Electronics, lots of them. Perfect!

“Alright, treasure hunting is simple. We go in, we grab what we can carry, and we get out,” I told Fine Tune, who was now back in his unicorn form. “Priority goes to the stuff that looks valuable, useful, or generally cooler than the rest.”

“Okay?” He looked at the shelves and grimaced.

I started grabbing scraps off the shelf. Most parts were useless, destroyed by two hundred years of exposure and whatever terrible thing the balefire blasts had done. But they could be repurposed, sold, or used in new parts for me or the PipBuck.

Wait, did I really just think about using scrap as parts? For me?

Hmm, electronics shop and PipBucks? Maybe they had one. I stopped grabbing scrap metal and bits of electrical wire. “Collect everything that’s not nailed down, okay?” I said to the changeling. I ran off down the aisle, looking. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glow, somewhere between green and blue and somewhat out of this world.

Changelings had cheater magic too? Argh!

“Alright, but most of this is...” he trailed off as I ran off. “But this is just!” He sighed, loudly. “Rather be with my Queen...”

“Everything! It might be useful somewhere else, and I think Xeno can just intimidate anypony into buying what we have to sell,” I told him. I had a goal and not a lot of time. I turned the corner, and kept looking. If they just had one...

Down another aisle. Nothing. The PipBuck clicked faster. I ran to the back of the store, jumping over a toppled cart and the skeleton of a pony caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe in the corner? I spun on my hoof as I ended the aisle and turned.

“Scraps too? Toasters?” he shouted above the aisle.

“Yes, everything!” I shouted back. Jackpot! Sitting along the wall, in a beautiful display case, were two PipBucks. They looked pristine, with screens that shone like mirrors. One had a gorgeous matte finish and a blue screen, the other somewhat reflective, the buttons all lighting up in a series.

“Fine Tune, come here!” I shouted. This was perfect. Now we wouldn’t have to switch PipBucks all the time. I looked back at my cutie mark, my little X across the flanks. With a smirk, I shattered the case. Steel hoof versus glass? No contest. Grabbing the matte one, I held it in my fetlock and compared it to mine.

“What?” he asked. “Oh, coming!”

None of the buttons were on, but the screen had the same little overlay of a pony from the side staring at me. I pushed a button with my nose.

Nothing happened.

Fine Tune stopped next to me, holding several bundles of wire and little panels of metal and terminal parts in the air with telekinesis. “What?” he asked, before floating the various parts he’d found into my saddlebags.

“PipBucks!” I shouted, happy with my find. Maybe they just needed- The quickening click of Gunbuck’s PipBuck reminded me that we shouldn’t waste time. The radiation inside was bad, and getting worse... I grabbed the other one with my teeth and pulled it from the display case. “Lesh gu.”

“Everything not nailed down, right?” he asked me, his head tilted. I could see his eyes moving from side to side, taking in the ruined stock.

“Yesh,” I said with a nod.

We left, and he grabbed damn near everything from the shelves with the strange blue-green haze of his magic as we did. No sense leaving something that might be useful later. Spark cells to conductors, pilot lights to paperweights with the store’s logo, we stuffed all of it into my saddlebags. He even stuffed a broken toaster into one. The clicking reminder of radiation slowed more the closer we got to the entrance.

“Everything not nailed down,” he announced proudly. Fucking cheater magic. All I could carry was the PipBuck in my mouth and the one in my fetlock, yet he managed to grab almost everything. Were it not for the radiation inside, I’d have stayed and picked through myself.

The rain still poured outside, just enough to be annoying. The best part about being back in a city center was the roads. They might be harder on the hooves than dirt, but at least we weren’t walking through mud anymore.

My sister and Xeno guarded the entrance, talking quietly to one another while standing on the driest patches of the shattered road. Lost held Loyalty in the air beside her head, and looked to the side every so often. Both turned to look at us as we walked out, and I held up my prizes!

A blue haze wrapped around the one in my mouth, and Lost snatched it from me. “Wow, where’d you get these?” she asked.

“Display on the back wall. They were in a case. They’re perfect.”

“It... It says that itis a, umm” Xeno said, tilting her head. She rolled her eyes and said something in her native tongue, then twisted her cigarette to the far side of her mouth. “The words are ‘display model.’ What does that mean?” She pointed to a spot above the screen with her hoof.

Lost spun the device around and looked where Xeno pointed. Raising an eyebrow, she tore the screen completely off! Holding it up, she waved the screen a few times. “Sticker,” she announced. The haze of her magic shifted a bit, and the sticker put itself back on in perfect position. “We can keep them anyway, we’ll find a use.” She wrapped her telekinesis around the other one I held and put both into her saddlebags.

I slumped down, defeated. The PipBuck on my leg clicked once. Dammit.

“What’s wrong?” asked the changeling.

“Nothing,” I lied. “We found lots of parts. Lets try the next store. I just hope it doesn’t have the same radiation problem.”

“What do you mean?” asked my sister. She moved to my side and dug through my saddlebags, which now bulged from all the things inside them.

“Well, look,” I said, holding up the PipBuck. It clicked once. “Nothing out here right? Little radiation, not much that will hurt us.”

“It’s worse inside,” Fine Tune said, beaming at his Queen. “I got everything!”

“Oh, hmm...” L.A. mused. She pulled a paperweight from the bag with her magic, and looked at it. “Relays and Retrofittings; Authorized Stable-Tec retailer,” she read. “Yeah, you got everything. Good job.” She stuffed the paperweight back in my saddlebags, and we went to the next one.

“So where to next?” I asked, looking at the stores that dotted the street between the skyscrapers. We had several options, a clinic, a coffee shop, and a store labeled ‘Kitchen Supplies.’ I had a hunch that the next place would be just as irradiated, so I pulled out a RadAway and forced down the contents. I passed a second one to Fine Tune.

“Clinic first, I think. It’s the best bet for us to get worthwhile supplies,” Lost answered.

Xeno pointed at the clinic in question. “Moment,” she said.

“What?” L.A. and I asked in unison. We both looked in the direction she pointed.

Red markers moved on my E.F.S. “Oh, movement,” I corrected. We moved out of the line of sight from the building and crouched against one of the taller skyscraper walls. I moved to the front, since I had the PipBuck, and peeked out beyond.

Two ghouls walked out, both decked in the same kind of mismatched armor as other raiders we’d killed before. They stopped in front of the store and started to argue. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but going by the... disgusting way their faces shifted, they looked angry. One pointed a hoof at the other, who instantly recoiled.

“Since when were there raider ghouls?” I asked, more to myself than anypony else.

“Raider ghouls?” L.A. asked. She poked her head beside me. “Oh Goddesses, they are...” Her horn lit up again as she slid one of the normal plasma pistols from her saddlebags. She checked the spark battery in it, and smiled at me. “You take right, I’ll take left?”

“Sounds like a plan,” I answered. I grabbed by saddle’s bit, and activated S.A.T.S. For once, I expected the horrible time freezing sensation, and focused on my target. I selected the ghoul’s chest; no sense wasting bullets. The spell worked its magic, and I fired. The bullets through the raider’s chest. Even with the raider armor, he dropped to the ground in a pool of his own ichor.

Lost fired at the same time. Three bursts of plasma erupted from the gun, with the familiar B-KEW sound. Two green magical bursts of energy slammed into the pony’s legs, then one into his chest. The undead stallion didn’t turn into a pile of glowing goop, but he did collapse to the ground at the same time as his partner.

I looked over to my sister as she looked at me. It felt good to work together. I didn’t need to worry about the distinction between necessity or murder when it came to raiders. I knew just how bad these ponies were. We turned back to our companions.

I looked up at the sky and yawned. Battle victories or not, I just wanted to get to the next town and sleep.

A raindrop hit me in the eye.

“It’s clear. Let’s get in, get what we need, and get on our way,” Lost said, sliding the plasma pistol back into her bags.

“Yeah, let’s get out of the rain,” I agreed. Seeing no more red markers on the E.F.S., I trotted over to the corpses, since they were on the way, and started digging through the pockets on their armor. “Y’know, Xeno, ponies are going to keep thinking you’re a slaver if you’re wearing that armor. Even without our bomb collars, that might get us into trouble.”

Lost followed, doing the same bit of treasure hunting. She rifled through the pockets of her kill, using her telekinesis. I supposed living for a week without it hadn’t taught her the true pleasure of digging for treasure with your own two hooves.

“Itis something I have thought about, Hiddenpony,” she said as she watched me dig through the pockets of the dead stallion. Snuffing her cigarette out, she looked at the armor of the ghouls lying before us. “I donot think raider armor would be any better a thing to wear.” She added something in her native language, and laughed.

We all laughed as well. The idea of trotting around with raider armor had come up before, with the bandits, oh-so-long ago. She was right, though. Going around in raider armor was asking for trouble.

I idly wondered if these two stallions had actually been raiders, or just wearing the outfits. Well, zombies didn’t stand around and argue, did they? And the E.F.S. said they were red, so... Oh well. I dug out several caps, some small-caliber bullets, and a pistol. He had a hoofball and gum on him as well, so into the saddlebags they went.

Lost found much the same stuff as I did. Several caps went directly into her saddlebags, along with a bottle of Sunrise Sarsaparilla and a BB gun. Wow, the two had almost nothing worthwhile on them. For ghouls, they’d sure wasted their two centuries doing something other than picking up decent gear.

“Alright, in we go,” I said, and headed that direction.

Xeno slid her knife from... wherever she kept it, and put the blade’s handle into her mouth. She stepped in first, and L.A. followed. I went third, while our changeling brought up the rear. Just like the last store, the lights all worked, giving us a wonderful view of the interior. If only everything in Equestria had been built so well.

The building we’d walked into ended up being more than just a simple clinic. One half of the room had a tall counter, and a hallway leading further into the building. The other half of the building housed row after row of shelves, covered in all manner of goods. One toppled shelf must have once held the makeup and mane brushes which now littered the floor. A sign above announced that side of the room as ‘pharmacy’ and the other as ‘clinic.’

As I passed the threshold, the PipBuck’s radiation detector went through the roof. Even within the lobby, the clicking rocketed to a maddening pace. I saw in the corner of my vision that the rads per second had hit the highest levels I’d ever seen. Not waiting for anypony to suggest it, I dug out what little RadSafe we had left from those horrible mines, and passed it out. “The price of finding good treasure,” I said with a laugh. A roof and good loot was plenty worth it to deal with some radiation.

Xeno spit her knife from her mouth into a fetlock. “Iam still wary of your pony drugs... Itis not bothering me, Iwill be fine,” she said, refusing the offer. She waved her hoof dismissively and put the knife back between her teeth. Such a strange zebra. Whatever potions or brews she’d been given as a parting gift must have worked wonders to allow her to completely ignore the massive radiation inside.

With several ‘thank yous,’ Fine Tune and Lost downed plenty. I took the remainder, leaving one for emergencies. We needed to find some to restock, and fast, and this was the perfect place to do it. The radiation inside, at this rate, would probably turn us into-

A shot shattered the glass door behind us. We all dove for cover, not knowing exactly where it came from. A raspy voice yelled something, but I couldn’t hear what. Rather than cower as sitting targets, the four of us moved in and branched out, each ducking behind a checkout line. I checked the E.F.S. and saw red markers in every direction. What luck, a raider den in the middle of an irradiated pharmacy.

Celestia, Luna...

Thank you.

I grinned and kicked my reload lever to top Persistence off. “There’s lots in here,” I said to my group. “Be on your guard.”

“Emotionless,” whispered Fine Tune, looking over the counter. He looked side to side several times, stopping now and then. “They’re different...” he whispered, and looked over to the rest of us with a very confused look.

“Where’d ya go, with your pretty manes?” yelled a deep, rasping voice. It sounded much closer. The thudding of running hooves echoed from the high ceiling above us. I could feel my pulse pounding in my ears. Despite the radiation and the threat of death, this was starting to get fun.

“Doesn’t matter. They’re raiders. Raiders kill, rape, and desecrate. They’re kill-on-sight,” Lost said, pulling both the plasma pistol from her saddlebags and Loyalty from her leg holster. She looked over at me and smiled. “No need to worry now, right Hidden?”

“Nope,” I answered, smiling.

Lost smiled back. “Go get ‘em.”

I didn’t need more of an invitation. I leapt up onto the checkout counter and dropped myself into the recently-recharged S.A.T.S. Frozen in time and free from imminent danger, I looked around from my new vantage point. One aisle looked filled with half-eaten food and the remains of somepony unlucky enough to die surrounded by raiders. Another aisle looked to be in perfect shape, as if somepony had put everything on the shelf just before we’d walked in. It was funny what strange things I noticed when locked in the frozen targeting bliss of S.A.T.S.

The magic of the PipBuck highlighted half a dozen targets, most of them standing on the tops of shelves, all lit by green and red circles of haze. More markers hovered in the corners of my vision, but they weren’t close enough or weren’t in sight for the spell to lock onto. I targetted one, and fired. My gun spat thunder and fire as I blasted the legs out from under the mare.

Another loud BANG cut through the room as Xeno fired the sniper rifle we’d given her. The shot missed the raider’s head, but it tore through one of his hind legs and toppled him from the shelf to the ground. Plasma flew through the air, followed by a B-KEW sound.

They could pick their targets. I had ponies to kill.

The air filled with the bangs and booms of gunfire as the raider ghouls fired at me. Standing on top of the counter all by myself made for an inviting target apparently. I winced and yelled as shots tore through my legs and flanks. Really needed to get some armor for there.

I jumped from the counter onto the shelf and ran along it, ignoring the ever-increasing clicking of the PipBuck. If I was fast enough, the radiation wouldn’t matter. I used plenty of RadSafe though, so I ignored the sound.

I had ponies to kill. Radiation poisoning could wait. I tackled the raider Xeno had shot, and landed with a thud atop him. The milky, dead eyes of a unicorn ghoul stared up at me. The hole in his leg slowly disappeared.

“Oh, still got all yer skin. I like that in a mare!” he taunted, his voice grating me like sandpaper. His horn glowed and a pistol hovered next to my head. He kicked as well, his leg missing the hole that sent him to the floor.

I headbutted his face as fast as I could, smashing his rotten nose in. I did not want to get shot in the face. My steel hoof finished him, leaving nothing but a twice-dead corpse. Shots from my sides dug into my flanks and struck my jacket. With the armor underneath, they did little more than piss me off. I liked this jacket. Now I’d have to find some way to repair it.

The PipBuck clicked faster. It refused to let me forget the radiation.

More echoing B-KEWs and BANGS filled the air as my sister and friend tore the shelf-perched ponies apart. The death screams and splatters made for quite the soundtrack to my attack. I charged the nearest raider, slipping into S.A.T.S. the moment it alerted me that it had fully recharged. I stopped mid-gallop, and queued up three shots. By the time the spell activated and all four hooves hit the ground, I’d already fired all three off, and crippled the mare in front of me. I knocked her down for good with a sideways kick from a shackled hoof.

That. Fucking. Hurt. I made a note to not use the shackles as a weapon again, no matter how much that slaver doctor had ‘healed’ them. It wasn’t enough to make me limp, so I could still fight.

The B-KEW sounds stopped entirely, making me pause. Had one hurt Lost? All of Xeno’s sniper BANGS had ceased too.

I made a beeline for the front of the pharmacy, going for red markers. I needed to thin out the ghoulified raiders on my way back. Best to do two things at once. They needed to focus on me, not move in on my sister or friends. I dodged and weaved around the fallen goods on the store floor, looking for something to aim at. One stallion shouted something lewd about me in his grating voice. Perfect target. My last shot from Persistence shut him up.

Actually it made him scream in pain, but it curtailed any further dirty comments about my looks. I kicked the reload lever, and sped up. The battle saddle clicked loudly, filling a new magazine with bullets for my prized gun. But that took a few seconds that I wasn’t willing to waste. I whirled and speared the stallion with the barrel of the gun like a lance, then slammed him into the ground, within reach of my hooves.

I scraped him from my gun onto the ground, pushed down, and didn’t let off until I heard his skull crunch.

Maybe having one hoof made of nearly indestructible metal wasn’t a bad thing. I thanked the Goddesses above for Praline’s skill in crafting it. Then cursed them for making Wirepony out of the same stuff. If he’d been easier to kill, I- Well, I was in a fight, and didn’t have time for memories.

I rounded the corner, and took several shots to the chest and neck from an earth pony mare with flaking skin and dead eyes. One shredded through my ear, once more tearing it to pieces. I grunted and fired back, missing twice but still getting a good shot in right through her eye. I was either getting better at shooting while running, or that was some crazy fluke of zebra luck. Still, the blood draining down my neck and pooling in the armor reminded me I’d need to heal as best I could as soon as I got a moment.

I finally made it back to the front of the store, and scrambled around the counters to find my sister lying on the ground, bleeding from the eyes. Xeno stood above her, pulling a knife from the corpse of a raider. Fine Tune was nowhere to be seen.

“You okay sis?” I asked, crouching down next to her. If I’d had the time, I’d have facehoofed at how stupid a question that was.

She coughed, and spat up blood. “Ugh,” she whimpered, breathing heavily. Even her coat looked whiter than normal. “Perfectly fine. You?” she asked.

A burst of bullets interrupted us, coming from the clinic side of the building. Several raiders poured from the hallway to join the fight. A loud BANG tore through the air as Xeno returned fire.

“Oh shut up!” I screamed at the ghouls. “Yeah, Lost, the radiation getting to you. Take this.” Without waiting for her to protest, I started digging through my saddlebags for some RadAway. I knew we had to have some left over somewhere. I’d made sure to hunt through every single house, ruin, store, and safe I could get my hooves on while on our way to Skirt. Using the PipBuck’s organizer spell I pulled one from the tops of my saddlebags. “Here. Drink. I’ll finish them off.”

“Thanks,” she whispered, taking the RadAway from my fetlock. I barely heard her over the screaming and gunfire above our heads. I snagged a healing potion while I had the time, and downed it to keep me going.

The PipBuck clicked several more times and I noticed a flashing warning. Apparently I had ‘minor’ radiation poisoning. Really, radiation poisoning being minor? I ignored the feeling that I needed to vomit, and the taste of blood. I had to finish off the remaining raiders, fast. I patted my sister on the back, gave her another pouch of RadAway, then turned back to the raiders. Three more markers waited my attacks. One mare stood atop the shelves, defiantly firing at Xeno to keep her pinned down.

Celestia, Luna. Please let us find a way to teach Xeno to be a better ranged fighter.

I activated S.A.T.S. and aimed for the raider ghoul’s head. The clicking of the PipBuck reminded me I couldn’t half-ass this. I unloaded everything the spell would let me. Two bullets dug into her head. The third splattered skull fragments and ichor out the back. She collapsed. The spell had enough juice for another few shots, so I galloped toward the next target on the clinic side of the building.

A large earth pony mare slammed into me, hard. Somehow I hadn’t seen her, or noticed her marker on the E.F.S. Together we toppled to the side, her screaming something in my ear that sounded like a hoof on a chalkboard. She kicked me hard, and I slammed into the shelf. Over it went, taking me with it.

“Ow, ow. Fuck!”

I ended up on my back, stuck between two of the shelf pieces. The mare jumped atop me, and just smiled. I shuddered, half her teeth were gone and most of her mouth had rotted away. It was a less-than-attractive look for any pony. She’d made the mistake of standing atop me, though.

By the time she’d hit me twice in the face, I got my hooves up under her. “Xeno! Aim high!” I screamed as loud as I could, over the rasping mare and over the clicking of my PipBuck. With everything I had, I kicked her up.

I might not have magic like Lost. I might not be able to levitate things. But I was strong.

The mare flew into the air a few feet, just enough to clear the top of the still standing shelves.

BAM!

A sniper bullet ripped through her chest. The raider toppled, flying through the air several feet before hitting the ground. She skidded across the room and smashed into the clinic’s counter with a wet squelching sound.

Stuck in my spot, I had a second to think. This would have been the perfect time to have some Buck. A wonderful little fight where somepony else could have worried about the constant fucking clicking of the PipBuck!

Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick.

“I know!” I shouted at the damn thing. Kicking in frustration, I managed to squirm myself loose and get up. Cheater magic would have been really useful to just lift myself out of the spot.

One raider left.

B-KEW!

Zero raiders left.

I ripped into the RadAway from the top of my saddlebags, and drank deep. I felt the blood drip down the corners of my mouth, and I could feel pain in places I didn’t know I had. The back of my head throbbed, making me feel worse than the claws or the whispering voices ever did. Lost took worse to the radiation than I did, but Goddesses-damn, it still ate at me.

With all the raiders dead, we regrouped and fled the clinic to get out of the radiation. Fine Tune reappeared somewhere along the line, and Xeno left only after we managed to convince her she could treasure hunt with me once we got the radiation situation under control.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and flopped down next to the newly-dead undead raiders. That... That radiation was something powerful. “Fine Tune, where’d you disappear to?” I asked, eyeing the changeling as I rested.

“I-I’m. Well I’m not a fighter, really,” he admitted. “I hide and pick locks! Not run around bashing ponies apart.” He stared at me wide eyed, his pupils gone and only the bright spots in his eyes to show that he was looking directly at me.

“You managered to hurt me easily enough, bugpony,” Xeno said, wiggling a hoof at her own nose.

“I don’t have a gun, though! I was... Was just running then, doing my best,” he said, frowning. “The only weapon I have is the blade I sharpened into my leg.” He lifted the leg he’d threatened my sister with.

“Don’t care,” Lost interrupted. “Rest now, argue later.” She looked far better now that we stood outside, away from invisible killer of radiation. From her mouth hung the pouch of RadAway, which she sipped every few seconds. Luckily, the bleeding from her eyes stopped, and most of the color had returned to her coat.

“I’m going back in,” I said. I dug through my bag and pulled out one last dose of RadSafe. “Xeno, you come with me. We’ll hunt together.” Getting a positive sounding grunt from the zebra, I smiled and moved closer to her. “It’ll be fun. Lost, you rest here.” I pulled a gun from my saddlebags, one of the pistols I never used. “This good for protection, Fine?”

The green-blue haze of his magic taking it from my fetlock answered that question.

“You keep chugging down that RadAway,” I said to Lost, passing her another pouch from my saddlebags. I hugged her, gave her a kiss behind her ear, then turned to the store. “We’ve got a whole clinic and pharmacy all to ourselves now. I’ll get everything we need. Back as soon as possible.”

“Stay safe, sis,” Lost wheezed.

* * *

Xeno downed one of her homemade potions, and slid the vial into her bag. “Itis bad here. Your machine will not shut up,” she said, nickering. She grabbed a bottle from a counter and stared at it. With a ‘hmph’ noise, she tossed it into her bag.

“Yeah, how do you ignore all this radiation, anyway?” I asked. Deep in the back of my throat I tasted the familiar coppery taste of blood. Even with the RadSafe and being careful where I walked, I knew I’d be too far gone soon. I checked the PipBuck, and pulled one of the RadAway pouches out. We only had a few left, so this would be my last until we found more.

Always keep emergency supplies, I reminded myself. In case somepony gets shot in the throat again.

“We need to hurry,” I said, more to myself than the zebra. The E.F.S. didn’t show any more red markers, but I checked twice anyway. Given the twisted hallway, there was no telling what might still be hiding around the corners.

I trotted to the pharmacy side of the clinic, and jumped over one of the shelves. Once in the aisle, I started looking. Tongue depressors, a lighter. What was a lighter doing in a pharmacy? Did Xeno need a lighter, what with her cigarettes? I ground my teeth, but gave up. No sense trying to understand. Shuffling through the fallen goods, I dug around for the corpses of those ghoul raiders. That got me too; since when did two-century old ghouls decide to go raider? Most either lost their minds, or managed to hold it together just enough to remember when Equestria wasn’t a Wasteland, and what it meant to be a real pony.

I moved down the medicine aisle, ignoring the trade goods for the more important items. Wartime society and paranoia about the end of the world left little, but it was enough. I snagged a box full of RadAway that had been pushed to the back of a shelf behind several empty cases, and I pulled bottle after bottle of RadSafe from the shelves. I didn’t care if I found what I needed, because the Goddesses were watching out for me, or just because I was good at finding what I needed. I smiled. This was enough to serve us for a long while. In my haste, I knocked one of the bottles to the floor, I accidentally kicked it away while trying to pick it up.

“Shit! I needed that,” I cursed as I ran after it. Stupid bottle. I caught up to it and grabbed it from the floor with my teeth. What else did we need now? I put the bottle in my saddlebags and let the PipBuck auto-sort it.

Clickclickclick!

“I know I know,” I snapped at it. I’d ended up near the back of the store, on the clinic side. They had plenty of medicine stocked on the shelves, but would the rooms in the back have any for emergency use? Shrugging, I trotted in and checked inside ‘Examination Room 1’.

Well, at least this room wasn’t decorated in pony remains like the last raider den we’d found. Maybe after two centuries, the ‘viscera and gore’ look got old and they cleaned up?

Sure enough, though, a first aid box hung on the wall... and was locked. Given my utter failure at the previous store, I needed some of Xeno’s magical zebra luck. I dug out a bobby pin and a screwdriver from the bags, thankful they hadn’t been confiscated by Mistress Amble and her slavers. Several minutes and what felt like hundreds of clicks later, I managed to get it open.

I lost count of how many bobby pins I used or how much radiation I’d been exposed to.

The trial was worth it though. I managed to get two spare healing potions, another sorely-needed bottle of RadSafe, and a roll of healing bandages! I hadn’t seen those in ages. I scooted across to ‘Examination Room 2’ and found an unlocked box. That one must have been looted by the raiders.

Clickclickclick!

“Fine,” I said, trotting out. I’d been far too lax with paying attention to the radiation. Maybe I’d just gotten cocky, trying to prove I could withstand as much as Xeno could. “Xeno, did you find whatever you needed?” I yelled across the store. I swallowed, wanting that coppery taste gone from my throat. I could feel my brain trying to escape my skull, pounding away behind my ears.

“Yes, letus go,” she yelled back. I heard her hooffalls across the tiled floor as she left, and followed.

Head held low, I ignored the vomit I knew was coming. I just needed to get out of the store. Then I needed to find out how Xeno ignored radiation so easily. I passed one of the corpses. A few more seconds couldn’t hurt. Digging through the mare’s raider armor, I pulled some ammo and an old gun. Worthless. I let it drop, and trudged out.

Another corpse. Too many raiders. Sick in my throat. It hit before I could move. Ghoul covered in bloody vomit was a disgusting sight. No treasure was worth that. I stepped over him and left. Needed a faster way to purge radiation. Stupid clicking. I trudged past another body.

But it wasn’t looted yet. Could have something good. I turned around and grabbed the armor with my teeth. I could treasure hunt outside, I reminded myself. I dragged the dead pony out.

Clickclickclickclick.

“Why?” it asked.

I ignored it. Dead ponies didn’t talk. Even dead undead ponies. Radiation apparently caused hallucinations. Good to know. I kept dragging.

“We were friends,” it said, voice raspy and quiet. The pony looked at me with the hollow eyes. Just like a changeling’s.

“You’re dead,” I answered, then bit down on the armor again. I didn’t need to taste ghoul flesh, that one time was enough. Almost to the door.

“Not yet,” it whispered. The rasping didn’t help my headache. In fact, it made it worse.

Clickclickclickclick!

“Shut u-” I threw up again. I was polite enough to aim away from the corpse. It might not like being covered in blood. I looked at the slowly-closing bullet holes.

More blood.

“Yeh a aidr. Sesh!” I ordered. I pulled the body through the door into the lobby. I nearly fell into the drizzle that smattered onto my mane and across my flanks. I shivered.

Click.

Just one click. Relative safety. I dropped the corpse. Warnings flashed in my vision. How long had those been there? How long had the red marker been there?

The ghoul shifted, rolling over to try and push himself up.

It was alive?

His head exploded in a shower of brain and bone. The red marker disappeared.

“Hidden, what’s wrong?” asked a voice over the ringing in my ears. Lost grabbed onto my neck and pulled me close. She stared me in the eyes, hers looking far better than they had a bit ago. In the reflection of her glasses, I saw my face, covered in blood.

Fun.

“Nothing. Except the raider corpse talking to me,” I answered. “You look better.” I forced a smile, and felt the warm sticky feeling of blood tugging at my coat. Ew. “Err, can you fix me?” My legs gave out from under me and I slid from her grasp.

She sighed loudly. With her telekinesis she pulled some of the RadAway from my saddlebags and stuck it in my mouth. “When I said I missed you acting recklessly, I didn’t mean like this,” she said, hugging me tight.

“Sorry. More loot though,” I whispered, sucking down the foul-tasting RadAway from the corner of my mouth.

Several minutes later, I felt much better. Lost dug the bullets out of me with her magic, then patched me up with the wonderful knitting feeling of her healing spell. Afterward, she spent the time I needed to recover digging through the corpse I’d dragged out. Fine Tune seemed content to rest against the building with his eyes closed, looking exhausted. Xeno dug through her bags.

Clickclick. Radiation again? Didn’t I just get through with that?

“Picking on foals?” asked a raspy, echoing voice. The ghoul lying on the ground, the one I’d pulled from the building didn’t move.

I checked the E.F.S. No red markers. Guess he finally bit it. But then?

Clickclickclickclickclick.

I spun around.

Standing with her head tilted was another ghoul, glowing bright green, wearing an equally bright yellow sun-dress. She motioned with a flaking hoof at the corpse Lost stood over, and raised an eyebrow. The sight of her muscle shifting with no skin made me feel sick to my stomach again. The ghoul was a unicorn, from the cracked remains of her horn, and wore a blank-screened PipBuck on her left foreleg. Saddlebags and a holstered pistol hung from her sides over the dress. I shielded my eyes from the sickening glow around her.

E.F.S. showed her as green.

“Foals?” L.A. asked, finally done with the treasure hunting. She took her glasses off and cleaned them, looking bewildered. “And what are you?”

The ghoul laughed, her reverberating voice echoing between my ears. We all cringed, even Xeno. “Sorry, those ones are new, its a bit of humor you see. Keeps my brain going, well, one of the things,” she explained. Every time she opened her mouth, the glow brightened, as if it came from inside her and tried to escape from her throat. Even though the cloud curtain hid the stars, and it was still dark, she lit the place up as if the sun were up and the cloud cover didn’t exist. Well, if it weren’t for the fact that her glow reminded me of balefire.

The PipBuck clicking broke the stare I didn’t realize I’d been giving her.

“New?” I asked. Standing, I trotted over and sat next to my sister. Something felt off, and I couldn’t tell whether it was the radiation or something else. The clicking slowed slightly. Xeno and Fine Tune both moved away as well. Xeno drew her knife.

She rolled her eyes. “Its dangerous here, little pony. That raider, he isn’t from my time,” she answered. “Well, I have places to be.” She trotted off without another word. The clicking finally stopped.

What in the Goddesses’ names?

* * *

“‘Kitchen Supplies’ and a coffee shop. Two more stores, then we run for Idle,” Lost instructed. She pointed at the coffee shop, built into the corner of one of the skyscrapers. Her hoof waved across the street and she pointed to a small store a few blocks away. “Take your pick.”

I yawned. Lack of sleep, and everything else I’d been through, was really starting to get to me. I’d even managed to somehow lose track of a brilliantly glowing ghoul. “I’ll take the coffee shop, s’closer,” I slurred. Digging through my bags, I pulled out the Sunrise Sarsaparilla and downed it. Having something in my stomach besides Rad-Away, even if it was just sugar, did wonders. “You three go raid the store. I’ll be here.”

Despite Lost’s concerned look, I waved her away with my steel hoof. I just needed a minute or two.

“Alright, we’ll meet you back here when we finish,” she said. She flashed green, so did Xeno and Fine Tune.

What?

“Looks like you have a call,” my sister said, pressing her hoof to my nose.

I scrunched my muzzle and looked down at the PipBuck. Maybe it was Praline! Or... Or maybe it was Lamington. My heart froze. “Okay, I’ll take this and then take care of the coffee shop.” I waved her away a few more times and dug out the earbloom. Trying to pull out the piece with hooves was less than easy, but I didn’t want anypony else to hear this.

“Hey, you got to talk to them last time,” Lost said, not leaving.

“Who always drinks my share of the Sparkle~Cola?” I asked, raising both eyebrows. “I’ll get you if it’s for you.”

“Fine,” she said. She shot me a look, then turned and left.

Plugging the earbloom into my ear, I waved to the others as they walked off. With only a little hesitation, I answered.

“Hello?”

Static filled my ear. I winced, but the voice that cut through made it worth it. “Hello, Miss Fortune. It’s delightful to hear your voice again,” said the deep static-filled voice of Star Paladin Lamington.

I went rigid and started to shake. Somewhere deep down where I couldn’t focus, something ached. “H-h-hi,” I muttered. I waited for the orders.

“Knight Praline told me you wished to speak with me. I apologize that it took so long to repair and augment my armor,” he continued, apparently not picking up on my stuttering. “So, tell me how you’ve been.”

“Yes, sir,” I whispered. I nodded a few times to nopony, knowing full well he couldn’t see me. “I’ve been okay the past day or two. Things have been hectic. Being captured by slavers though, tha-”

“What?” he bellowed through the earbloom. “Captured by slavers? Where are you? I will speak with the Elder, and send out a rescue party at dawn!”

I shook my head, snapping out of the stupor. “No, no! We got out. We’re safe,” I lied. Somewhat lied. It was half-true. “We’re just tying up some loose ends, then we’ll be visiting.”

“Nonsense,” he countered. “Whether I agree with it or not, the Elder considers the two of you sisters, as well as your zebra companion, to be as close as family.” He paused at random intervals, right as the static flared up. “Remember, steel breeds steel. We don’t abandon our own.”

My heart beat through my chest while my insides twisted. The feeling eased some of the aching in the pit of my stomach. It still felt awkward, but the new feeling didn’t make me near as worried. “It’s okay, Lamington. We’re safe. Lost and I are out hunting for treasure right now. We just... I wanted to talk to you is all.”

“Speak with me?” he asked, sounding surprised. His voice echoed slightly, a tinny reverberation from the armor. I guessed that even in the wee hours of the morning, he wore his armor. A stallion dedicated to his cause, reliable. “I’m honored, if surprised. After the departure we had. You seemed quite steadfast in your path.”

“I know, and that was probably stupid of me,” I admitted. Not wanting to venture into the building while distracted, I sat down against the wall, and scooted as far under the eaves as I could to get out of the drizzle. “I talked to Praline. She says you’re doing well over at Pommel Falls, and with the Stables?” I needed to change the subject, fast.

“Yes, she did mention you two had had a conversation,” the Star Paladin answered, “and she was very excited to get the two of us talking again.” I heard a steel tap through the earbloom, followed by another burst of static. “Then again, my sister seems to find a reason to be excited about any endeavor she starts. I suggest taking her enthusiasm with a grain of salt.”

The pounding in my chest slacked. He seemed almost... disinterested? Was it wrong to tell him that I wanted to talk, or was I just picking the wrong subject? For a moment I thought about ripping the broadcaster from the PipBuck and throwing it to the Wasteland. I really wasn’t a thinky pony.

“Tell me, will you be visiting us at this new settlement soon?” he asked.

I really wished I could see him, out of the armor, so I could gauge just what he meant. Between how he’d asked us to travel with him before, and his disinterest now, I was getting mixed signals. I probably read too much into it.

“Yes, probably in a day or two. I need Praline to look at my hoof and I know Lost wants to visit with Crème Brûlée too,” I answered, fidgeting with my free hoof. I looked around, moved the mic away, and sighed. This was going badly.

“Yes...” he said quietly. “My sisters.”

“So, how’s your eye?” I asked, changing the subject once more.

“It healed well. I am both surprised and pleased by the results. Considering the circumstances, it could have been much worse,” he answered. “My vision has completely returned, and have acquired additional functionality in the eye. My sister, as you know, did a wonderful job. Despite her silly demeanor, she has proven to be quite capable. I presume the replacement hoof she made for you is holding up well?”

“Yes, it is,” I answered. “Not even a dent in it.”

He stayed silent for a long moment. The pause worried me enough that I tapped the PipBuck a few times to make sure the broadcaster hadn’t cut out on me. The static on the other end was the only sign that he was still on the line.

“...hello?”

“Yes, I’m still here,” he answered through a burst of static. The line went silent again.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“That’s quite all right. Her craftsponyship is second to none. While my eye and your hoof seem to be working as remarkable replacements, I would never wish for anypony, you or your sister especially, to ever endure what I did,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was sad or not. If he was, he hid it well.

My heart sank. Lamington had done a lot for us, in getting us out of the mines and helping with Scifresh’s group of Steel Rangers. And here I was, upsetting him in the middle of the night by talking about his sisters. Unless... Wait.

He didn’t think Praline and I were a thing, did he?

She was cute and all, and a good pony who did a lot for me. But... I felt heat on my cheeks. Why was I blushing?

“I think we need to talk in person,” I said in my calmest voice. “But for now, umm... what have you been doing at the new Stables?” I gulped, hoping he’d take the bait. I didn’t know how to handle situations like this. If he... Or if she... Wait, did Praline? Gah! I was hopeless. All I knew how to do was smash things and follow orders.

“Being the eldest son, and by far the largest of us, I am mostly in charge of the movement of machinery,” he answered. His pride resounded through the static. Even being the pony in charge of heavy lifting ended up being something to be proud of for him. I liked that. No matter what he did, he must put his whole heart into it.

“Sounds like me and my sister. She might be able to move more with her cheater magic, but I’ve got the stronger back,” I said with a laugh. Something more we had in common.

“Cheater magic?” he asked. Through the earbloom I heard a hearty laugh. For once, the static didn’t interrupt. His laugh was wonderful. It cut through the gloom, and warmed my heart despite the worry and the rain. “I’d never thought of it like that before,” he said, “but then again, I didn’t grow up with a unicorn nearby. I suppose you are right. Seeing some of the things Scribe Lemon Tart is capable of, I begin to wonder why we didn’t have more of her kind in the Stable. I do believe I’ll tell her that one later.”

I laughed too, awkwardly. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him talking to Lemon Tart, and I had no idea why. “Grr.”

“Something wrong, Miss Fortune?” he asked.

My eyes went wide. I didn’t want him to know what I was thinking. But he asked. I had to... “Yes,” I answered.

“Do you wish to talk about it?”

“No,” I answered honestly. Honestly I didn’t know what was wrong, just that something was bothering me. I looked over to the store that L.A. and the others had gone to. They’d be back soon, given the radiation, and probably mad that I hadn’t checked the coffee shop like I’d promised. I’d deal with it. This call was too important.

“We’ll be back in a few days, Star Paladin.” I tried to be formal. “We will be able to discuss matters of business and uh, and other stuff.” I was not good at being formal. “I need to go, uh, my sister needs me to, um, take care of the thing with the things.”

I swallowed, listening to the silence on the other end.

“Understood. Stay safe Miss Fortune,” he finally said, and laughed again. “That’s an order, now.”

I wanted to cringe, but the way he said it... His laugh.

“Stay Safe. Yes sir,” I answered. I saluted with my free hoof, not caring that he couldn’t see. The minute the static faded, I fell face first into the ground. Ugh. The ground was a fine place for my face to belong. And so it rested for several minutes.

“Well now, there’s a familiar face,” rasped a voice beside me.

I looked up from my place, spat out some dirt, and waved halfheartedly. Judging by the brilliant green glow and the constant clickclickclick from the PipBuck, the voice belonged to the same ghoul I’d met after coming out of the clinic.

“What did you mean earlier, when you called that ghoul a foal?” I asked. I pushed myself up and scooted a bit away to get clear of her radioactive glow. The last thing I needed right now was another fit of vomiting or bleeding from places I shouldn’t.

“I suppose that did come out of nowhere, didn’t it?” she asked, sitting down several feet away. The PipBuck emitted a single click, and stopped. She raised her own PipBuck and laughed, once again giving me the ‘hoof on chalkboard’ feeling. “I don’t normally glow this bright, but inside the buildings here the radiation is particularly bad. For you. I love it.” She stretched, lifting her forelegs and giving off an even brighter glow. “Anyway. The ‘foals’ comment. I’m from before the War. The raiders you killed? I’ve seen their kind before. They wandered into the building looking for food, or somepony to kill. You wander in with a pulse, and wander back out without one.” She stared, raising her eyebrow once more.

I nearly vomited. I knew I’d never get used to seeing muscles move without flesh covering them. I didn’t like seeing my own living muscles move without flesh, let alone rotting ghoul muscles. Wait, they went in and never left? The radiation was bad enough to ghoulify a pony before they could leave?

I shuddered, wondering just how close I’d been to becoming one of them. A quick pat-down of my sides revealed no rotting flesh, and I didn’t feel like I’d died. I breathed a long, slow sigh of relief.

“I’d say you dodged a bullet there, but you don’t look like the type that does much dodging,” she said, stifling another raspy laugh.

“So, who are you anyway?” I asked her. I’d never met a ghoul this talkative. The few I had encountered that still had some wits about them just wanted to be left alone. Whether because the end of the world had done a number on them that took more than two centuries to get over, or because they didn’t like ponies like me with a full, rot-free coat.

“Just a pony visiting an old friend. I had to pick some things up for her, and since she’s currently stuck at her home, I offered to bring her what she needed,” she explained. “Nothing like a good radiation bath to perk up the old joints.” The ancient ghoul sat back on her haunches, lifted her forehooves, and cracked them back and forth a few times. The green glow radiating from her pulsed and twisted in weird ways, lighting the walls and the street with the creepiest glow I’d ever seen. “I’m heading toward Idle, how about you?” She smiled and looked at me with milky, hollow eyes. At one point they must have been a brilliant rose color, but now they just looked hazy.

“Heading toward Idle, too. We’ve got a slave trade to stop,” I explained. It was a noble goal, and she didn’t seem like a slaver. Then again, if she sold us out, I’d consider that to fall within Lost’s definition of ‘necessity.’

Mistress Amble whispered into my ear. “Murderer.”

“Interesting,” she said. “How’d you like to make a few caps doing a favor for an ancient mare?”

The PipBuck clicked a few times, reminding me that no matter how nice she acted, she was a walking source of magical radiation.

I raised an eyebrow, one with flesh still over the muscles. Caps would be nice, and this mare hadn’t done anything to make me mistrust her yet. If we were going in the same direction anyway, who cared? “I’ll ask my sister when she gets back,” I answered. A thinky pony would know. We shouldn’t trust others, but given how well it had worked out with Xeno, and with Fine Tune... Did having another traveling partner really hurt that much? “I’d love to continue chatting, but I’m supposed to be hunting through that coffee shop for anything valuable.” I stood and shook off, steeling myself.

“There’s nothing in there worth getting. I already took care of it,” the undead mare said. She rattled her saddlebag. It sounded quite full. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m old, you can probably tell.” She passed a hoof over her face. “All this right here, rotting away as the decades pass by. I need a strong back to carry some things. That’s all. You pass what I give you back to me when we get to the town, and we’re all done.”

“Well, since that’s taken care of, let’s go ask my sister.” I trotted away, staying far enough away to keep the PipBuck quiet. The glow behind me moved, making my shadow trail along the ground and up the walls like a looming monster. Together we walked to the store where my sister and friends were.

I checked the PipBuck before sticking my head in the door. There weren’t any red markers, just the three that I recognized as belonging to my sister and friends. Idle’s marker wasn’t too far away, so we could probably make it by morning. Satisfied, I poked my head in. “Lost? You finished?”

The PipBuck gave a few clicks. Clickclick. Bad, but not terrible.

“Almost! What’d you find in the coffee shop?” she yelled back. Several hooffalls fell, echoing through the walls of the building from places I couldn’t figure out.

“Nothing. Somepony beat us there,” I yelled to her. “Come out here, I need to talk to you.”

She didn’t answer. After what felt like ages, but was probably only a few seconds, I yelled in again, “Lost!”

“I’m right here,” she said, walking around a corner and into sight. She looked fine, aside from the bit of blood draining from the corners of her mouth. “It takes time to walk back, you need to give me a minute.” Her horn lit up and she pulled a pouch of RadAway from her bags. Hanging it from the side of her mouth she trotted outside. “Oh, her again?” she asked as soon as she saw the nameless ghoul mare.

I made a point to ask about her name later.

“She’s heading to Idle too, asked if I could carry some things for her.”

The ghoul waved.

L.A. stared blankly at me. For a moment, I thought she might bop me upside the head, but instead she just sighed and stepped out from the radiation-filled building. “Why?”

“She’s offering to pay. We’re going there anyway,” I said, shrugging. It didn’t matter either way to me, but I couldn’t think of any reason not to make a few caps, since we were heading there anyway. As long as we stayed far enough away from her to not get any radiation poisoning, we’d be fine. “Plus, we could ask about the city?”

“Alright, that’s fine then,” she agreed. “Let me get the others.”

“We’re good,” I told the ghoul. I grabbed the latch of my saddlebags with my teeth, and pulled the bag open.

“Much appreciated,” she said, running a hoof through the wispy remains of her mane. She trotted over, sending my PipBuck’s slow clicking into a roar. Her horn sparked and discharged, the shattered base glowing a pale pink. She lifted her bags from her side and poured everything in them into my own saddlebags.

“Oof,” I gasped. “That’s a lot.” I checked the PipBuck’s inventory screen. Drugs. Lots of them. Everything ranging from my beloved Buck, to Mint-als, Dash, and Rage. What was Rage anyway? I hadn’t run into that one before, but given the name...

“Thanks again. So, what was that about the city?” she asked, her mouth twisting into a rotten smile.

“Like... we met a trader who told us about the Academy and this one giant cannon they were testing or building, or something, there,” I explained. “If you’re from Equestria, before the end of the world, you might have similar stories.”

Lost walked from the building with Xeno and Fine Tune. She nickered, still holding the pouch of RadAway in her mouth and slurping on it. After each slurp she grimaced, and given the taste of RadAway, I didn’t blame her one bit.

“Find anything good?” I asked.

“Yes, Hiddenpony. Iwas able to replace the supplies I left at your home,” Xeno answered. She patted Fine Tune on the head. “Iam once again able to craft the brews and elixirs my mother taught me while we travel, assuring I can find the supplies.” She looked at Fine Tune and smiled. A winged pony did make finding things easier.

“It’s a haul,” announced Lost. She pranced a bit on her hooves, and turned toward Idle. “Let’s go!”

I’d missed seeing my sister happy. It was good to see her back to her old self.

We started off without fanfare. The PipBuck said we still had a long way to go. The ghoul led the way, staying several yards in front to keep the worst of the radiation away from us. Her glow cut through the drizzle like a lantern. It was nice to be able to see, but if we could see, so could anypony else around. I couldn’t tell if it was a blessing or a curse.

“I moved to the city shortly after Princess Luna took over for Princess Celestia,” explained the ghoul. “My husband, at the time, managed to snag a job at the Ministry of Wartime Technology, and he was transferred to their Research and Development department over at what they call The Cinch.”

“So, that’s what The Cinch is?” I asked.

“Yes, they were... well, I guess they still are...” she mused. “Those six buildings made up the government influence here, under Princess Luna.” That answered one mystery that had been bothering me. “Most major cities had a ‘Ministry Walk,’ similar to the one in Canterlot. The Cinch was the nickname for Blackhoof’s, due to its shape.”

“Six perfect buildings in a ring?”

“Ayup, that’s the one,” she rasped. The idea that I’d seen them several times already came as a bit of a shock. “I worked as an accountant back in the day, for the Ministry of Arcane Sciences.” She laughed, loud enough I had to fold my ears down. “Things changed during the war. I was just a filly when it started, and I remember...” She sighed, raising a hoof to her face. “I remember when it was peaceful. When the biggest threats were easily handled by the Princess’ prized student and her friends.”

“Prized student?” Lost asked. She looked so jealous I thought her coat might turn as green as the ghoul’s glow. I vaguely remembered dad reading me a book about the Princesses and their students.

“Right, Princess Celestia relied on Twilight Sparkle to protect Equestria when I was a filly. She and her friends took down some of the worst that Equestria had to offer... before it became a wasteland. They were placed in charge of the Ministries when Princess Celestia abdicated and Princess Luna took over,” she explained. She paused and looked back. “I assume you weren’t taught that?” She laughed, gasping a little and then coughing into her hoof. “Sorry, throat’s a bit dry. And rotten.”

“No, not really,” I admitted. Fine Tune simply shrugged, but I supposed that was normal for a changeling. Lost nodded in agreement.

“Iam aware. The stories my mother would tell, of the day the world ended, and how it had been foretold that the Stars would bring it to happen,” Xeno said. She blinked, looking at our stares. “My mother is very superstitious.”

“Anyway,” the ghoul muttered, “we all made choices, and the world ended. I got to see past it.” She didn’t bother to look at us, just shrugged. “We went from a city that ran like clockwork, a city that trained soldiers and created wonders, to a festering shithole.” She stopped and turned around. Waving a hoof she pointed at several buildings. “Do you see this? This is what my beloved city has become! I loved it when I moved here. There were beautiful shops, a flourishing economy. Do you know what we have now?”

None of us answered. I stepped back a few times, worrying that she might have dropped off the deep end.

“Misery.”

Ponies killing one another. Slavers. Raiders. Monsters...

“That sums it up perfectly,” L.A. announced, finishing my thought for me.

“I remember when ponies worked together, before we needed a unified evil to rally against,” she said, turning back around and walking off. Her glow dimmed slightly. “I remember love, hope, friendship... I remember all of it. The choices we made, things we thought were the best option at the time... I made mistakes, Spandrel made mistakes. Rosie made mistakes too... The Ministry Mares, they all made mistakes. And where did it get us?”

“Here?” I asked.

“Blackhoof was beautiful once... I can only imagine how it was before The Cinch opened, before they built the Academy,” she whispered. “I wish I could see it all again. You know what they say, right, about ends and means?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I wonder... Do the ends ever justify the means?” She laughed. “That depends on the timeframe.”

I stopped walking and looked at my sister. She wore the same confused look I did. Finally, I turned back to the ghoul. “Just who are you?”

“Nopony special,” she answered.

“Can you at least tell us your name?” Lost asked.

“I left my name in Equestria, two centuries ago..."
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Steel Hoof (Rank 2) – Finally putting that cyberpony hoof to good use? When attacking with the metal attachments to your body, you do extra damage equivalent to just how much steel you throw around.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Team Player – You work best in groups and when surrounded by ponies you care about. Whether driven to protect them or just boosted by espirit de corps, you gain bonuses to all skills when you’re in the presence of others.

“So, another new party member?”
“Do we have the stats for this many companions?”
“I dunno, let me check my character sheet.”
“You can see yours!?”
“Yeah, here, look.”
“I need how much experience to get to the next level?”
“At least you get to see your perks, sisters. Mine are a mystery even to me.”
“Cri kiki! Ki!”

Chapter 15: A Look In The Mirror

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Chapter Fifteen: A Look In the Mirror
“I don’t have a problem. I’m in complete control.”

History.

I never paid much attention to history before. All I knew were the basics, from things that mom had told me about Stables, the lessons from when she was a filly, and survival techniques. I didn’t know much about mom’s past either. History really didn’t seem to matter when we were busy fighting to live another day.

I knew about the War that created the Wasteland, and all the ‘big’ details, the things that anypony who dug around as much as my family did knew. The Princesses ruled over Equestria in the centuries before the War. I knew that ponies and zebras fought over resources. I knew about the Goddess Luna taking over, and how the Ministries effectively took over the government. A few big names got stuck in with those lessons. Aside from the Goddesses, I picked up the names of the Ministry Mares, and maybe some of their close relatives. They held a special place in the history of Equestria and the Wasteland, after all.

I’d never taken the time to care about that, though. I prayed that the Goddesses would watch out for us, and kept on living as best I could. Not once did I stop and try to make sense of all the little pieces that fell together to end the world. With the way society had fallen apart, I didn’t think anypony knew the whole story. Things like the how and why didn’t matter. Equestria had been destroyed by balefire and whatever else the zebras threw at our kind, and the civilized world ended.

This was the first time I’d ever actually paid attention to exactly how history had happened. It might have been the fact that I couldn’t ignore the hollow echo inside my head as the glowing ghoul talked, but she made history seem to come alive. In the few hours we’d traveled together, she’d told us little bits and details about how Blackhoof worked, bringing it to life in ways that no newspaper clipping ever could.

“But why would they do that?” Lost asked. “It seems entirely counterproductive!” She reared up, flailing her forehooves in the air.

“Nopony said they did it on purpose,” answered the undead mare. “Look. My own husband worked for the Ministry of Wartime Technology. Half the time, he couldn’t tell me about what went on when he was at work. The Ministries did work together sometimes, especially for big projects, but things were classified. And even the companies the Ministry backed financially, or contracted ideas out to, didn’t have all the details.”

“Sounds like Celestia should have stayed in charge,” I muttered. That wasn’t actually fair. I blamed the lack of sleep. The sun hanging in the tiny gap between the horizon and the clouds nearly blinded me, which did nothing for my mood. For once, I wished it would just rise above the cloud cover and stay there. Between the brightness of the sunlight and the glow from the ghoul, I had a hard time seeing anything.

“Probably, but she had her reasons,” answered the undead pony. She shrugged and kept walking. “Like I said, we all made choices. Sometimes they weren’t the right ones. Those lucky enough got to see through to the other side.” She stopped and looked down at the ground, scuffing it with a rotten hoof. “A few of us are still trying to make up for the mistakes,” she whispered, almost too quietly to hear.

I almost didn’t catch it, since I was too busy holding back vomit from watching a skinless spot slide over her leg muscles. I never wanted to know what the inside of a pony looked like again, especially not one covered in dark spots where her blood had pooled.

Then again, I’d seen the insides of several after I’d shot them. Maybe it just freaked me out to see them still moving?

“Nopony can fix the Wasteland all on their own,” said Lost. She trotted a few steps closer and nudged me. She seemed to be in a much better mood, and I smiled. Maybe, just maybe, she understood why I hadn’t killed the alicorn. I hoped it wouldn’t come around to bite me in the flanks. If it did, I would wait until then to stress about it. For now, I enjoyed my sister’s smile.

“Itis not something that ponies will do, itis something we must all do,” Xeno added.

Fine Tune smirked. “Anything for my Queen,” he said. “Changelings would like the old ways back too. I’ve heard whispers of a land full of love. So full that other hives tried to invade to get to it.” He grimaced and placed a hoof over his stomach. “Speaking of which...”

Before I could ask what he meant, the sound of a tuba cut me off. A little bobbing robot hovered around the corner, identical to the one Wirepony had eaten forever ago. It blasted the obnoxious music from its speaker, far too loudly for comfort.

“Wonderful,” rasped the ghoul. “A sprite-bot.” She kept walking, talking over the music. “The whole thing with the Ministries was a case of the left hoof not knowing what the right hoof was doing. Spandrel told me they were trying to do the right thing. Rosie said the same thing. They never told me what the right thing was, but-”

The music stopped.

All of us, the ghoul included, stopped and looked at the sprite-bot. It bobbed in the air, twisting to look from me to my sister, then past Xeno and Fine Tune over to face the glowing ghoul.

“What in Celestia’s name?” she rasped.

“What in the...” whispered my sister.

Even Xeno looked confused, and her hoof slid toward her knife.

With a loud tinny pop, the music started again. Heavy tuba over annoying polka filled the air once more, and the sprite-bot continued to bob in the air.

“Well, I haven’t seen that before. What about you four?” asked the undead mare. For the first time since we’d started following her, she actually turned around to look at us. Her glowing eyes looked almost afraid.

“No.”

“Nope.”

“Ihave not.”

Fine Tune just grumbled, holding the hoof over his stomach. “Silence is better than that horrid music.” Maybe he wasn’t a fan of that kind? I knew I prefered the DJ’s music instead. To each their own, I supposed.

The sprite-bot turned and bobbed away, going in the same direction as the town in front of us. We waited, traveling a safe distance behind it, where the music wasn’t quite so obnoxious.

“I always hated March of the Parasprites. Anyway, where was I?” the ghoul asked. “Right. Left hoof, right hoof. Sorry if I’m rambling; I haven’t had anypony to talk to about much since, well...” She looked up at the sky and counted with her hoof, kicking it in the air with each step. “Since the first one.”

“First what?” I asked.

“Since the first one of my friends died,” she answered nonchalantly.

“I’m sorry,” both my sister and I said in unison. I looked down at the PipBuck, wondering. Would Gunbuck have been our friend? He was the first one to die by my hooves, too.

“His own failure. I found a replacement,” she said with a cold and hollow laugh. “Something I’ll have to do again soon, actually.”

“You speak in riddles worse than my mother,” said Xeno. She lifted a hoof to block the slowly disappearing sunlight from her eyes. “Isit much further?”

I checked the PipBuck’s map screen. “PipBuck says it’s close. Shouldn’t be more than another hour?” I guessed. Assuming we didn’t run into any more distractions like ghoul raiders, or sprite-bots acting peculiar. Which we would, of course, because the Wasteland enjoyed kicking a pony when she was down. Either that or Xeno’s crazy zebra luck would get me right when I felt relaxed.

I yawned.

Might as well be prepared. I kicked the battle saddle to make sure Persistence was completely loaded. The last thing I needed was to run into a fight with no ammun- I froze. According to the PipBuck, I had two bullets left for my rifle. Really? Had I used that much ammo when fighting the ghouls? I flicked through the organizer spell built into the little arcano-tech device, and put one of the pistols on top of my saddlebags as backup.

As if to remind me just how dangerous this little portion of the city was, the PipBuck gave a definitive click.

I started paying attention again, just in time to hear the ghoul finish her explanation.

“...friends in lots of places. When you live for two centuries, you get around,” she said. “Occasionally I ask for favors, like I did with you.” She flicked the wispy remains of her tail back and pointed them in my direction. Favors, like transporting drugs… Oh well, at least she wasn’t murdering or enslaving others like Mistress Amble.

“Wait, what?” I asked, trying to pick the conversation back up. I thought we’d been talking about the Ministries. Oh right, interruptions by rogue sprite-bots.

“I said I have friends in many places, helping me. An old sack of bones like myself needs lots of help, lest I slip away,” she explained with a laugh. The echoey chuckle bounced around in my skull, as if I could feel it moving across my brain. “After what happened with the Ministries, and the world falling apart, I wanted to make sure I always had ponies, and others, that I could count on. That’s what keeps somepony like me from slipping into darkness, like the ghoul raiders you so callously murdered earlier.” The glow inside her brightened, making her into a shining beacon in the slowly encroaching shadow of the clouds. “The radiation helps keep me together, too.”

“Callously murdered?” I asked, more than a little miffed. “They were mindless, and trying to kill us.”

“I was teasing,” the ghoul answered.

“Is friendship really that integral to keeping sane?” asked Lost. She looked over at me, then to the two others with us. Lost and I had always had one another, and now we had friends. Fine Tune, well, he was a wildcard. He seemed okay so far though. Xeno had proven herself loyal to the point of throwing herself at slavers on our behalf. No matter what else she did, I’d always consider her a friend.

“Honey... friendship is magic. It’s what ties everything together,” rasped the glowing mare. “It gives you a goal to work for, to strive to be better, to help one another. If we’d considered it as important as winning the War, we’d have beaten the zebras with both forehooves tied behind our backs.”

Maybe it was just exhaustion, but the amount of sense that made hurt.

* * *

I got shot in the flank. Again. Zebra luck should not be a thing. Or I should just accept the fact that the Wasteland sucks and stop blaming random things for our bad encounters, or thanking it for when we get a boon. I could probably stop blaming cheater magic for my own faults, but I didn’t think that would ever go away. I also didn’t think that sprite-bot would go away, or stop blaring the terrible music.

I fired my pistol across the street at the raiders, then crouched behind the overturned skywagon. The tiny gun sounded more like a popgun than a real weapon, and its range didn’t compare to Persistence. Without my hunting rifle, we were screwed. They’d taken to hiding in a building and I doubted the pistol would make a big difference from so far away. Lost had the plasma pistol, which was nice, but Loyalty outshined its power tenfold, if she was close enough. And Xeno…

“Ugh, this isn’t working,” groaned L.A. She crouched down behind our makeshift cover and closed her eyes. “They've got us trapped and we've only got one gun that'll-” She rolled her hooves against her temples while the rest of us kept shooting. “Got it!”

“Got what?” I asked her between shots.

“We need to swap guns,” she answered. “You’re the best shot and you’ve got S.A.T.S..” She looked over at Xeno.

“Xeno, can you give Hidden your sniper rifle,” L.A. shouted over the gunfire and polka music. She didn’t sound angry or demanding, but the damnable music made it so hard to hear the wood of the skywagon wasn’t going to hold.

“But itwas a gift!” Xeno shouted back, holding the weapon close. She looked at the gun and then at me. “As long as she doesnot break it.”

Between the loud B-KEWs of Lost’s pistol, she yelled at us both, “She’ll be careful. She’s only borrowing it.”

A shot tore completely through the battered cover, splintering wood all over the five of us. Having a glowing ghoul in our little group did not help for fights or getting through places unnoticed. She stood with her pistol out, taking potshots at the windows of the building to keep raider ponies down. But with the hole in her side, I didn’t know how long she’d make it.

The ghoul in the clinic healed in radiation, and the glowing mare here practically created it. She’d be fine.

“Xeno! Rifle?” I shouted, fighting the cacophony of noise.

She passed it to me hesitantly. Grabbing it with my flesh forehoof, I punched a hole through the rotten wood we were using as cover. The steel made short work of it and gave me a nice little opening to slide the barrel of the gun through. No time to put it on my battle saddle.

“Here goes nothing,” I said to myself. I looked through the scope and propped myself up, using the gun to keep my balance. I’d never fired like a zebra before, but if Xeno could do it, so could I. I slid my hooves into the wide grooves and took aim.

“It’s just like normal,” I said to myself. I found a pony and slid into S.A.T.S. Choosing the head of the raider, I took the shot. The gun nearly kicked me off my hooves, but the bullet did what it needed to. The inside of the room the raider had been hiding became a red mess.

Gunfire paused. Were they regrouping? It didn’t matter. I spun the rifle around, looking for another target.

“Grenade!” yelled Lost. She ducked.

A little apple-shaped grenade bounced onto the skywagon and over to our side of the cover. Fine Tune snatched it up with the blue-green haze of his magic. With a flick, he arced it back over the wooden vehicle and away. It blew up in the air, harmlessly.

“Alright, tactics... Xeno, watch for anypony trying to sneak up on us. Hidden, umm... you,” she said, pointing at the glowing ghoul, “and you, keep doing what you’re doing. Fine. Transform to something and sneak over there, see if you can’t slit some throats maybe?” She turned and fired another burst of plasma at our attackers. I could tell she was looking for something for each of us to do, to make sure we all helped.

“I- but- I’m not good at that!” he squeaked. In the blue-green haze of his magic he held the pistol. I realized he hadn’t fired a single shot. Was he afraid of fighting if it wasn’t necessary to survive? “Sneak and unlock. I survive! Not a fighter.”

“Learn?” I asked him. We didn’t have time- I saw a pony. Firing the sniper rifle, a bang cut through the air and the bullet tore the mare’s foreleg off at the shoulder. It wasn’t the headshot I wanted, but with three legs she’d be out of the fight.

“But what if I-”

“You have a knife as a part of your body. You threatened my life with it. How are you not a fighter!” Lost yelled the question at him, her voice calm but cold.

I fired again, before she could say something else. Speeches didn’t matter. Another raider died and we survived a few seconds longer. There weren’t many left, assuming they threw everything they had at us. So far the undead pony had done more damage than any of us. If only I had two hundred years to practice shooting.

“I can sabotage, but I’m terrible at actual fighting,” he stammered.

I fired another shot, but missed entirely. They’d come out of the building, the next shot would be easy. I pulled the trigger once more.

Click.

The gun had one bullet left! Why had...? I peeked over the sight and saw the problem. “Lost, the gun jammed!” I yelled, dragging her from trying to figure out what to do with Fine. I couldn’t get the bullet out with my hooves. The space between breech and barrel wasn’t large enough.

“Toss it to me,” she yelled after firing another burst of magical plasma.

I did as she asked.

“Why did you break my rifle, Hiddenpony?” asked Xeno. She looked almost hurt.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” I apologized. It really wasn’t. But Lost could fix it. She had a knack for getting anything mechanical to work right.

Several more gunshots sounded behind me. “I think that was all of them,” said the ghoul. I really needed to learn her name. The pink haze around her gun slipped away as she put it into the holster at her side.

“Good,” answered my sister. “What’s the E.F.S. say?”

“I believe that the glowing one is correct,” agreed Xeno, looking past the edge of our cover. I made a point to keep using that term until I learned her actual name.

Lost ignored her. She sat against the skywagon and did something with the gun, moving little parts around inside with quiet clicks using her magic. The jammed bullet ejected, and she tossed the gun to Xeno. “No offense, but I trust the PipBuck.”

I looked out across the road at the building. I couldn’t see any ponies in the windows and the only markers in the corner of my vision came from my companions, all green. “Looks good,” I said.

“Alright, good,” L.A. said with a sigh of relief. She peeked past the edge of the skywagon and looked around. “Let’s just get the fuck to town...”

* * *

A billboard pony waved slowly from the sign beside the road, her hoof caught in the wind. She smiled down at us, through the muck splattered across her face and mane. A little speech bubble built into the sign said ‘Welcome to Idle!’ in faded green letters. Two giant holes through the center of the phrase had ripped some of the letters off. Somepony really hadn’t liked the name of the town. I liked the new name, ‘idle,’ which meant to me ‘restful,’ and rest was the one thing I needed right now.

Past the sign, I saw the beginnings of real civilization, if I could call it that. The road we walked on looked like every other one in the Wasteland I’d ever seen, but its condition wasn’t quite as bad. Boarded-up houses dotted the side of the road, which didn’t seem to be as radioactive as the city center we’d left a few miles back. Every building I saw called to me like a savior, as if the Goddesses themselves had put them there for me and me alone. They all looked boarded-up and safe, like the perfect place to take a nice long nap. Actually they looked terrible but anything with a partial roof looked great right now.

“Almost there,” I said to myself. My hooves felt lighter all of a sudden, like I could make it. We’d find an inn. We’d rest for a few hours. I’d find a little shop and talk to the trader for a cold bottle of Sparkle~Cola. Then I’d pass out for several more hours. It would be perfect. “Here, Lost, take the PipBuck,” I said, offering my hoof up. “I’m going to sleep the minute we trot into town, and I want nothing to keep me from it. You lead.”

“Alright, once we find somewhere safe. I think we’ve all earned a nap,” Lost answered. Her blue haze of telekinesis wrapped around my leg and the PipBuck, the latter detaching with a quiet click. She floated it over and clicked it onto her leg, much to the amusement of The Glowing One.

“Fancy trick that,” she said, lifting her own. “You know a lot about them? I could use a pony to fix Spandrel’s. It broke a few decades back.”

“Well, I can take a look, but I don’t know if I can fix it without knowing why it broke,” Lost answered, blinking. The little flashes of light from the E.F.S. activating glowed for just a second before fading away.

“Ain’t that a shame, oh well,” The Glowing One rasped. She turned tail and kept on toward Idle.

Fine Tune groaned, a chirp slipping through his disguise.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“Hungry.”

Right. He sounded exactly like I felt. We needed to stop and collapse, before something bad happened. Stopping, I reached back and dug out one of the snack cakes. “Here, this work?” I asked.

“Changeling, remember?” he said, waving the cake away. “Need love.”

I looked ahead. Lost and Xeno were still following The Glowing One. She’d probably get mad at me for this... “What do I need to do?” I asked him. We couldn’t be down a team member.

“I don’t think you could stand to lose any right now,” he said, grimacing. I could see him fighting it, but he still opened his mouth and moved closer. Actions speak louder than words, changeling.

“I’m tougher than I look. I can stand to lose a little right now,” I argued. “I have enough love of music and love for my sister to go around. I can spare some. I’ll be fine. Promise.” I could take it. I’d always been a tough pony. It would take more than a little feeding off my emotions to take me down. After everything Mistress Amble did to destroy my guilt, I knew what it was like to survive without some feeling for a while. This would be different. This was for a good cause.

“I... I shouldn’t,” he whispered. Already the fire rose from around his hooves, sickeningly green and close enough to burn me, had it been real flame. It faded, and the changeling took a step closer, his horn glowing the same color as the fire from his transformation.

Everything in my vision glowed green as something passed over my eyes. I felt a crushing tightness deep inside my chest, around my heart. It felt as if somepony were both crushing and stabbing me from every angle, inside and out. It hurt worse than being burnt alive, worse than losing my hoof.

I couldn’t breathe.

Through the shroud across my vision, I could only see the glowing blue eyes of the changeling. I stepped forward, drawn to it. Something touched my forehead, something cold and hard. His horn. Everything felt wrong. The air left my lungs. My heart stopped beating. My legs felt cold. They almost felt like something was... grabbing them, holding tight and not letting me move. I tried to back up. This wasn’t right. He could kill me like this. I didn’t want to feed him.

Not like this.

Not if it meant losing-

The world rushed back. I gasped, the air catching in my throat several times. My heart pounded in my chest, so high into my throat I thought it might be what blocked the air. The pain began to dissipate, slowly. I still felt it inside, as if it were in my heart, still stabbing at me. I fell forward onto the shattered road. My hooves curled up against me all on my own. For what seemed like ages, I just lay there and shivered.

“Are you okay?” asked the stallion, his voice full of life again. Even with the concerned look he had, Fine Tune smiled, standing taller. Even his coat looking brighter. He nudged me with the tip of his horn.

I jumped into the air, moving away as fast as I could. I did not want that thing to touch me again. There was cheater magic, yes, but that was... I couldn’t. I didn’t want to think about it ever again. Instead I galloped away. I didn’t care if he caught up. I didn’t stop until I reached my sister. When I did, I latched onto her so tightly that the two of us toppled to the ground.

“I love you, Lost Art,” I said, repeating the phrase over and over under my breath. I don’t know whether I just wanted her to know that I cared about her as my sister, or if I was trying to convince myself that he hadn’t sucked away all the love I had in me. In a way, it was worse than what Mistress Amble did.

With her I had one thing: certainty.

“Whoa!” she yelled as I grabbed onto her. “What’s wrong, Hidden?” she asked, wrapping a forehoof around me. “I love you too, sis.” She squeezed my shoulders tight.

“I’m fine, I just... I just needed that,” I explained, unlatching myself from her. “Let’s just hurry into town.” I trotted off, tail between my legs, until I’d made some distance from the group. I heard the questions about what happened behind me, but I paid no mind. I followed the road to the town, as if it were the only one left in the Wasteland, not paying attention to anything else and trying not to think any more than I absolutely had to.

I slowed to a stroll as I passed what looked like the proper entrance into the town. It looked... bad. Where even the slaver town of U Cig had been rebuilt somewhat, this place was in shambles. Most buildings looked completely shattered and uninhabitable. A few stood in stark contrast, with roofs above and even several windows still intact. Boarded-up or not, this didn’t look quite as much a safe haven as I’d originally thought. I could hear the groaning and murmur of ponies talking in the distance, their voices sounding distressed and tired.

I knew how they felt.

This was a town that sold ponies to slavers? What in the Goddesses’ names went on in this shithole?

A grungy orange pony walked around the corner, down the street, wobbling on his hooves. He took one look at me and forced himself into a trot. His eyes didn’t focus on me, and didn’t look quite like they could focus on anything. He stared straight forward, his whole head bobbing side to side as he trotted over.

I took a step back, just in case.

“Spare a cap?” he asked, hiccuping. He stopped a bit too close to me for comfort, one hoof in the air and shaking worse than anything I’d seen. He kept leaning forward on three hooves until he finally toppled forward. “Whoops. S’ry ‘bout dat. Anyway. Spare a cap for a down on ‘is luck stallion?” he asked again.

“Sure, just go away,” I pleaded, digging out a few caps from my saddlebags.

The stallion’s eyes lit up to the point where they almost glowed. “Thanks babe, dunno what I’d do wit’outcha. Just needed a cap to turn everything around. One more and it’ll be my last,” he rambled, pulling the outstretched hoof back and holding it over his heart. It shook there a moment before he fell on his haunches and raised both forehooves out to beg. “Just need a little boost and I’ll be good.”

“Boost of...” I started to ask, but thought better of it. The less I knew the better. I dropped a hoofful of caps into his waiting hooves and took another step back. Reaching back, I pulled one more cap out. “One more for some information,” I offered.

“Anything!” he shouted, waving a shaking orange hoof at me. Every time he waved the hoof more dust fell from his coat. I sincerely hoped the other ponies in the town weren’t like this.

“Where’s the pony in charge?” I asked, holding the cap away from him.

“In the bar, like everypony else!” yelled the beggar. He snatched at the cap, throwing himself off balance and dropping to the street once more. Caps fell from his hooves, bounced and rolled away, scattering all across the street.

That did it. Ponies emerged from every alleyway, like radroaches. Dirt-covered mares and filth-encrusted stallions dove into the street, hooves and magic all grabbing for the rolling, bouncing caps. They shouted and argued with each other, yelling about their need for a fix.

I threw the one I was holding down, and backed away. The bar. Good enough. I turned tail, reared, and ran from the town and the scrambling ponies. It was a lead, if nothing else. Lost might be able to find it on the map, if The Glowing One didn’t already know where it was. I just had to tell her.

* * *

“The Restless Mare,” explained The Glowing One. “This is where I get off.”

“Where you what?” questioned my sister, her lips twitching as she tried not to smile.

The ghoul laughed. “No, I mean where we part ways. Trade me my goods and I’ll give you your caps,” she explained. The stub of her horn began to glow its pale pink, and the flap of my saddlebag opened. Several bottles, vials, tins, and syringes of various drugs that I’d been carrying floated out. She counted with her hoof as each one floated from my saddlebags to hers, a twisted smile crossing her rotting lips.

“Itis the beginning of the day, what pony would be in a bar at this hour?” asked Xeno, her eyes watching the chems as they floated between our saddlebags. “I still find it strange that ponies donot brew their own.”

“Some ponies like to get started early, I guess,” said Lost. “We don’t all carry booze around all the time. Either way, I could use something to drink.” She looked over at Fine Tune, who hadn’t said a word since we’d regrouped. He looked much better, aside from the guilty way he stared at the ground. Neither of us had mentioned in any detail what had happened. “What about you? Do bugponies drink?”

“No, I’m full anyway,” he said without looking up. “Should have waited...” he muttered under his breath.

I skewed both ears over in his direction. “Let’s hurry inside, there might be somepony who can send us in the right direction,” I said, trotting forward to end what could have become an awkward conversation.

“So, will you tell us your name?” asked my sister. She stared down The Glowing One, who casually closed her saddlebags. The PipBuck on her leg clicked repeatedly.

The ghoul just smiled.

“Itis not important Lostpony. She is a Glowpony, one of the dead from your old world. Her business is her own,” Xeno said, trotting past. She looked at the ghoul and gave her the once over. “Itis time that we finish, and not worry about their pasts. Thereis work to do in our future. My brothers.” She stepped past me and pushed her way through the door to The Restless Mare.

“It looks like you all have far more important things to be worrying about,” she said, pausing to shrug, “I’m just a mare trying to make the best of a bad situation. I’ve got important business to attend to myself. ” She brushed past my sister, roughly bumping into her shoulder. “Rosie’s going to be waiting for me, and I wouldn’t want to make a very special somepony wait. Would you?” Her glowing eyes shifted, staring at my sister with a smirk.

L.A. didn’t falter. She only nodded slowly. “No,” she said, and walked past me into the bar.

I looked over to Fine Tune, and gulped. The look on his face matched the one I could have sworn I had. I pushed the door open. “After you.”

The unicorn stallion trotted past me and I followed him inside.

“...take kindly to your type!” shouted a mare.

I blinked several times, trying to get used to the light. The bar was much darker than the light outside, even with the cloud cover blocking the sun. I saw several tables, all with ponies sitting around them, and a bar with only a single stool open. Most of the ponies sitting inside looked just as bad as the ones outside, except the barkeep and one older mare running her hoof through her mane and slamming shots with her telekinesis.

I’d never seen a real bar before. Were they always this crowded?

A bottle smashed into the wall next to my head, and I jumped back, instinctively biting down on the battle saddle’s bit. Luckily for the patrons, I was out of ammo.

“Get! Y’hear!” yelled another pony. Several others yelled similar things, even some curses more colorful than I’d thought possible. A few got up, knocking chairs over. None of them looked happy. Fortunately, I didn’t see that any of them were armed.

“Iam not-”

The bottle smashed into the helmet Xeno wore, knocking it aside. Luckily, she wasn’t hurt. If they hurt her I’d... I stomped my steel hoof on the wooden floor, hard.

“Not a slaver!” the zebra managed to shout.

“What’s going on?” I asked. I needed context, and I needed it now. Was it necessary to really hurt these ponies, or were we somehow in the wrong?

“I swear to Celestia, if you drunken idgits don’t fuckin’ knock it off...!” snapped the barkeep, a dark-coated unicorn with a short red mane. She slammed a hoof on the counter and glared at the rowdy patrons. “I am not havin’ this shit in my bar!”

“You’ll what? Lookit what her kind did here! You think we want this shit in our town?” asked the stallion who’d done most of the yelling so far. He pointed a hoof at one of the ponies who hadn’t stood, a mare barely able to keep her head off the table.

“Ihave told you, Iam not a slaver, itis merely the barding,” Xeno explained.

“She’s with us,” said Lost. “Leave her alone.” She stepped between our friend and the stallion.

“She’s a fuckin’ striped bitch is what she is,” yelled a mare from the back of the room.

“This is your last warnin’!” shouted the barkeep.

“What’s wrong with zebras?” I asked as I released the bit of my battle saddle. If I had two seconds, I could get at the pistol in my saddlebags.

Another bottle flew through the air, only to stop halfway through the room. A purple haze whipped it back where it came from, and it smashed into a mare’s face. She screamed and dropped to the floor.

“Get. Outta. My. Bar. Now!” shouted the pony behind the counter, a gigantic shotgun appearing as if from nowhere. She waved it a few times.

“Aww, fuck,” whined one mare. “Chaser’s gotta be a pissy bitch again.” She looked at the barkeep and scoffed. “You know we’re right! Don’t you deny it. Her kind are a plague-”

The shotgun belched fire and smoke, with a loud boom echoing in the room. The mare jumped into the air, her flank peppered with dozens of small buckshot pellets. “Don’t think cause I fucked you once that I’ll go easy!” the barkeep shouted. “All of you! Out!”

Chaos broke loose out as ponies started running for the exits. Tables flipped as they scrambled to get away, chairs toppled, and the blood-splatter from the shotgun blast soaked the floor. Several ponies slipped on the blood as they ran, while others hobbled away as fast as their addled hooves would take them. Yells and screams accompanied the hectic escape. They jumped over one another, not caring about each other.

Hadn’t we just been told this morning that friendship was magic? Did any of these ponies care about anypony but themselves?

“What just happened?” I yelled over the sound of running hooves at my sister. I dove out of the way of a herd of charging ponies.

Fine Tune answered instead. “Xenophobia.”

The last few ponies cleared out, leaving only the barkeep, the older drinker, and the four of us inside. The bar looked no worse for wear. Tables could be set back up, blood could be mopped. I didn’t really want to think about it. I just wanted to get a soda and go to sleep.

“Fuckin’ bitches startin’ a fight first thing in the mornin’,” muttered the charcoal unicorn. “I’m too old for this shit.”

“Quite a scheen,” slurred the one remaining mare. She had an orange coat and dark green eyes, but she didn’t look up at us. Instead she mussed her purple mane again.

The barkeep slid her shotgun away and tucked it under the counter. “Yeah, just what I didn’t need first thing in the morning,” agreed Chaser. She looked over at us and waved a hoof. “Alright, sit at the bar. Let’s talk about the trouble you’re causin’ in my bar first thing in the mornin’.”

“What’ll I do... What’ll I do...” muttered the disheveled-looking mare with a hiccup. She slammed back another shot and laid her head on the bartop.

We trotted further in, the wooden floor creaking with nearly every step. Fine Tune trotted away and started to pick the tables and chairs up. I trotted over and helped instead of sitting down. I knew that the minute I put my hooves up, I’d pass out. I wanted to be awake to hear what was going on, so I twisted an ear back and listened while righting a table.

Thinky ponies listened. Thinky ponies learned.

Lost and Xeno hopped into seats at the bar, ignoring the drunken pony slamming shots, and faced the bartender.

“Alright my fine,” Chaser said, dragging the word on, “mares! What can I get for you?” She tossed two cups onto the counter with her telekinesis and smiled like a showpony. “We’ve got, well... We’ve got awful swill in several vaguely-different flavors.” Her voice sounded completely different than how she’d talked to the ponies who needed a shot in the ass. Where she’d been gruff and forceful before, now she sounded almost soft.

“Information,” my sister answered. “And an explanation for why they hated my zebra friend here so much.” She pushed the glass away with her hoof.

“Now now, we can talk over a drink,” chided the bartender. “Look, the town’s in a bad way. They don’t like ‘her kind’ because she’s a zebra, and somepony went around spreadin’ the rumor that the drugs they love to hate so much come from the zebra lands.” She lifted a bottle of something without a label and poured the two glasses full. Pausing a moment, she floated the bottle to the side and refilled the muttering mare’s glass as well.

“The drugs come from the zebras? News to me,” L.A. mused.

“Itis true, Lostpony. Zebra have a long tradition of creating brews. Itis how I learned,” Xeno said with a shrug. She grabbed the newly-filled glass and lifted it up. For a moment she inspected the brown liquid, before throwing her head back and downing the booze. Seconds after swallowing, she coughed. “Itis strong...”

Wait, zebras were the cause of the drugs, like the Buck I’d taken such a liking to? If that meant I could get more out of her when I ran out- but I had plenty still. I hadn’t needed to use it for a fight at all lately. I filed the little revelation in the back of my mind, where the orders from Mistress Amble and the little digging claws waited.

“Fine Tune, help me with this one?” I asked, hefting one of the larger tables back up.

He set the chair he had in his hooves down, and walked over to help.

“Well, that’s still news to me,” Lost admitted. She dragged the glass back and lifted it with her magic. “Alright, how much for the rest of the information?” She tilted the glass and drank it in one solid gulp. With a loud sigh, she smiled and set the glass back down. “And how much for another?”

“You don’t have to buy information off me,” answered the barkeep. “I like talkin’. Something you sort of have to like when you get into this business. Or you just really like the sauce.” She winked at my sister, and poured another shot.

“Lostpony, weare here on business. I wish to finish as quick as we can,” Xeno said, giving my sister a glare as she downed the second shot. Chaser filled the glass up as Xeno set it down.

“Business, what kind?” asked Chaser. Before Lost even set the glass down she already had another pour started.

“Slavery,” I answered for them. I tipped the last chair up and trotted over to join my sister and friend at the bar. “Somepony said that they’d gotten into trouble at a bar in this town and been sold. We need to know who did it.” If this was the bar, I wouldn’t hesitate to jump the counter and pummel her into the ground. I propped my shackled hoof up, not-so-subtly slamming it onto the counter.

Chips, stab marks, and not-so-pleasant graffiti already marred the surface. I didn’t think one more dent would matter.

“Slavers, eh?” asked the charcoal mare. She lifted another glass from behind the counter and filled it to the brim for me. “Sounds like a problem. Why, ya accusin’ me then?” She flashed a shit-eating grin.

“Well, this is the only, err, real bar I’ve seen so far,” I answered, staring at her. “And if there’s anything like that going on, sending ponies off to get tortured like I was, well, somepony will have to answer to me.” I tried to sound as tough as possible. I knew I couldn’t outright murder them without putting my own life in jeopardy, though. Damn orders.

“And you think I’m your mare, without lookin’ anywhere else first?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Barge in, start some shit, tell me I’m in the wrong? Checked for other bars yet?”

“Is there more than one?” I asked.

“And does it have whiskey as good as yours?” my sister asked immediately after. She lifted the glass and set it down upside down.

“Now now, I can’t be sellin’ out my competition,” said the mare, waving her hoof at the three of us. “Maybe if the pony in charge says its okay, that’d be different.” She slid the bottle away and collected the glass from my sister.

“You donot wish to ruin another who steals your customers?” asked Xeno.

The bartender laughed and shook her head. “Not how we do things ‘round here.”

Frustrated, I drank the shot. It burned the entire way down, but not as badly as I’d expected. Either she’d watered it down, or I was getting used to the taste. I hiccuped once, and felt the fiery burn all over again. Maybe not, eugh. Not wanting another, I set the glass upside down on the counter.

“So, who’s in charge?”

Chaser pointed to the mare with her head on the counter, who still muttered to herself. She ran her hooves through her mane repeatedly, messing it up even worse than it had been.

Lost moved to sit next to the pony ‘in charge.’ She put a hoof on the unicorn’s shoulder and leaned toward her. “She says you’re in charge? What’s your name?” she asked.

“Ah dun much like tha name me dam gave meh. S’abituva mouthful,” she explained, her face still pressed against the wooden counter. “I much ‘refer meh mouth bein’ fulla shum good ol’ Wile Pegasurs,” she said, giggling and waving the almost empty bottle in the air. “Mos’ jus’ call meh Relly now-a-days. S’better ‘at way..." She tried to pour herself another glass, and ended up spilling much of it across the bar. “Cause I'm usu’ly Relly Drunk!” As if finally noticing us, she lifted her head and lifted the full glass. “Howdy, new ponies. Niceter meetcha.” She downed the shot and looked us over.

“The mayor is also the town drunk,” Chaser explained. “But she’s still in charge. Now, why don’t you all have a nice chat with her while I sit back and just watch.” She moved her eyes across the group of us, lingering longer than she should have on each of us, before trotting back. “Hay! Careful with that, it’s an heirloom!” she snapped at Fine Tune.

The changeling stopped tapping the picture hanging on the wall and walked over to us. “Sorry,” he whispered. His eyes seemed to light up when he got closer to the barkeep. They glowed the same as when he’d drained me, but nopony else seemed to notice.

“So, whatcha need?” Relly slurred. “Nip! Gimme ‘nother, woudcha?” She asked, holding the now empty bottle up and waving it in the air. The green haze of her magic dropped from the bottle and it bounced off the counter.

“Yeah, but pay up, ya silly drunk,” Chaser answered, laughing. “Last one. You been here all night.”

The exchange was telling. How bad were things if the mayor was a drunk, and she’d been drinking the entire night away?

“Just what’s going on here?” asked my sister.

“S’drugs. S’booze,” the orange unicorn mare answered. I looked down at her cutie mark; two bottles, one empty and lying on its side. Why would a filly get that as a cutie mark, and why would she be in charge? But if addiction and slavery were problems in this town, maybe that just passed for normal here. “I dunno where I went wrong!” She hiccuped. “Had schuch big plans, ‘n they all wentta sheet. Hol’ on.” She lifted a set of saddlebags from the floor and dug out several caps. “‘Ere ya go Nip. Gimme ‘nother. Las’ un. Promise.”

This conversation was taking far too long. I just wanted to sleep and get a drink… “Got any soda, a Sparkle~Cola maybe?” I asked the pony behind the counter.

“Yeah yeah,” she answered, collecting the caps. “You all gotta pay up as well. I ain’t no charity.” She lifted a bottle without even looking away from us and popped the cap off. It went into her pile. She passed the bottle to me.

“Thanks,” I said, and chugged the entire thing in one go. It got rid of the burning, a little. Better than nothing. I tossed a small pile of caps onto the counter and watched her take as many as she needed. I pushed the remainder back into my saddlebags.

Lost sat, looking thoughtful, and placed a hoof on Xeno’s shoulder. “We need to do the right thing,” she said. Good, she wasn’t being bitter about everything that happened. Deep down, my sister still wanted to do good, even if she might argue the opposite sometimes. It reminded me of the conversation in Stable Sixty, where she’d refused to let me give up. I thanked the Goddesses I had that Lost back.

“Isit part of the friendship the Glowpony spoke of?” Xeno asked.

“Somewhat. Hidden knows what I’m talking about,” Lost answered. She pointed down to the PipBuck on her leg. “Something we started before we met you.” She turned to the frazzle-maned unicorn. “Where do we start? We’ll fix both problems.”

Fine Tune tilted his head and looked at my sister. “But, my Queen, isn’t our job here to free the ones sold like I was?” He stepped side to side on his hooves, looking a bit uneasy. “I’d like to get back on the road soon…” He shuddered. Either he had something he didn’t want to mention here, or being stuck in one form too long was starting to get to him. I’d noticed that whenever it was just us, he tended to revert back to his changeling shape, rather than keep up the illusion of being a pony. I’d ask him later.

“We will, and fast. We’ve only just gotten here. Let’s do what we can to destroy everything Amble could use to her advantage here,” L.A. affirmed. She looked back at the unicorn sitting at the counter, hunched over the empty glass.

“Betta ta ashk meh assistant. Bubble knows all da little detailsss,” answered Relly. She hiccuped again and looked at the glass in front of her. Resting a hoof on it, she tilted it back and forth. “S’nother bar yah. I know that much.”

The door opened, and a mare trotted in. She looked different than the others, clean pink coat and without the bloodshot neediness in her eyes. Her mane was a darker shade of pink, and curled just a bit at the very ends, while her long tail trailed just above the floor behind her. With aquamarine eyes, she scanned over us before stopping at the bartender.

“Morning shipment,” she announced in a sweet voice. Something in the back of my mind clicked, an old digging sensation that lasted only a second. The mare’s eyes darted back and forth over us once more before coming to rest on me. She swallowed then took a step back. “It’s around back like normal. I’ll pick up the caps later!” She turned and left.

I knew I’d heard that voice somewhere before. I just didn’t know where. Something about it...

* * *

Drinks finished and hooves rested, my sister suggested we make our next move.

“I can’t stay up like you can, Lost,” I muttered, my head on the counter. I just needed a few weeks of sleep, and I’d be okay. Restful sleep with no annoying dreams keeping me awake and reminding me of all the times I’d fucked up, or that I’d never be as good as mom. If she were still alive...

“The sooner we finish here, the sooner we can go back to visit the Steel Rangers and get a good meal and a good night’s sleep,” she offered. “And the sooner we finish there the sooner we can go to Xeno’s home and put her brothers to rest.” She smiled over to the zebra and placed a hoof on her shoulder. “You’re tough, Hidden. You can go another hour or two.”

“I can, but I don’t want to,” I countered. If it were an order, I’d have jumped at it. I thanked Celestia and Luna twice each that she’d just requested it, and hadn’t made it an order.

Maybe another soda, maybe some Buck, and I could handle it without complaint. Something to put the little pony to rest and let somepony stronger take over. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. She was right. I was tough and I’d made it through worse. A week of not sleeping when being broken by slavers was one thing. An extra few hours I could handle. Opening my eyes, I nodded. “I can do it.”

“It’ll be easy. Ask a few ponies around town if they know anything. Xeno and I will go talk to Relly’s assistant,” she said, reaching over to brush my mane down. “I believe in you.”

I nuzzled the hoof and stood up. That’s what I needed, some faith. The Goddesses would look after me. They had so far. I stretched all four of my legs, and even wiggled the steel hoof to make sure it worked. The hinge felt a little stiff, but I’d get that looked at when we met up with Praline again. It still needed a good going-over after what Slipstock and Vice Brand had done to it.

“Alright,” I said. “I can talk to ponies. I can do that much.” I hugged her. I waved to Fine Tune, and headed for the door.

L.A. turned to the changeling. “Fine Tune, watch after my sister while I’m gone.”

“My Queen,” said the changeling with a salute. Chaser only raised her eyebrow at the exchange, but he paid her no mind. With his orders given, he trotted after me.

The five of us walked out of the bar, with L.A. and Xeno trotting behind Relly. The drunken mayor wobbled as she walked, barely able to keep on all four hooves. We waved to one another before finally splitting off. My sister and friend went one way, while Fine Tune and I trotted the other direction.

“We’ll meet here when we’re done,” Lost yelled over her shoulder.

Outside didn’t feel any better. Actually, I felt worse. On one level, I wanted to be mad at Lost for not letting me have even a moment to relax, no matter how right she was. No sleep could beat the sleep of a nice warm bed, safe and protected by friends and family. Any sleep I got here wouldn’t compare to that in any way. Still, she’d stuck me with Fine Tune, and I was still terrified from the feeding. I looked over at him and waved a hoof, pointing to one of the buildings. “We’ll go that way first,” I said in the kindest voice I could muster.

“I’m sorry.”

“For?” I asked. I didn’t want him to think I held a grudge. Good ponies didn’t hold grudges, and thinky ponies knew how powerful forgiveness was. The Glowing One said that friendship was important, and forgiving had to be a part of that.

“Normally feeding isn’t like that,” he said. He trotted past me in the direction I pointed, his eyes downcast. “Normally I can do it without a pony feeling, and it only takes an instant. If there’s enough love around, it’s almost like... I can just open my mouth and inhale and it just gathers. I don’t know how I can explain it to a pony who eats food.” He shrugged. “But when I’m starving like that, well, it can get ugly. Stress, the running, all those transformations in a short time. It’s taxing.”

That was an understatement.

“So, I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you,” I answered.

Fine Tune forced a smile, but didn’t look up from the street.

I trotted past him, down the street. “Let’s just get started talking to ponies and get what we can.” I wished I had Persistence loaded. Or that I still the PipBuck, so I could use the E.F.S. I regretted giving it to my sister. Nothing to be done about it now. I walked over to the nearest pony I could see.

A mare sat on the stoop of a building, her head lying on crossed forehooves underneath her. She stared at the clouds above without a care. She looked at me with a twisted smile and waved a hoof. Pointing at my nose, she announced, “Pony.”

I didn’t want to know what drugs she might be on, that made her so oblivious. I crouched down next to her. “Do you know all the bars in town?” I asked. If there was another bar, and that one had something to do with the slaves, I needed to make that my top priority.

“Restless Mare’s a good one,” she answered, not quite looking at me. “Good times at the other though, s’round back of town.” She waved a hoof in the opposite direction from where I’d approached her. “Got a funny name.” She giggled. “The Goddesses’ Bed.”

“Ever been?” I asked. This might just be my lucky day! If I could get the answers I needed right off then I could get a nap while I waited for Lost to get back. With a name like that, it had to stand out.

“Nah, it s ’spensive,” she said with an over-exaggerated shake of her head. Her ears swiveled forward and she pushed herself up. “Got a cap or five? Or a Mint-al? I got a haze in my head... I-If I had some in me, I’d help more!”

I placed a hoof on her chest and shook my head. I didn’t need to help her addiction. If all went as planned, we could clean up that problem while fixing our own plan for revenge. But I needed to be fast.

She slumped back down and looked up at the clouds again. “Just like a cloud, except in my head...” Breathing out long and slow, she closed her eyes. “A little cloud...”

“C’mon,” I said waving to the changeling. “You go ask ponies over there, and I’ll keep on this side, okay?”

“Sure thing,” he answered. He saluted just like he’d done to my sister and trotted across the broken street. It wasn’t too far across, but it’d still be faster if we worked separately.

I moved to the next pony. “Know where The Goddesses’ Bed is?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I tried something else. “Know a pink pony that’s not covered in grime?” I didn’t get an answer for that either. “Hay, you in there?” I finally asked, nudging him hard.

“Ah!” he snapped, going rigid. “Pink one! Yes, she’s great. Gives exactly what ya need. You looking for something? I got something.” He tilted his head to the side and rummaged around him, before eventually finding an empty syringe. “Oh,” he whispered, looking at it.

I rolled my eyes and trotted off, ignoring his calls for me to come back. I didn’t have time for that. The Goddesses’ Bed sounded like the perfect place for me. I’d love to get a chance to sleep where the Goddesses did. It was probably the most comfortable bed ever.

I faceplanted into the street.

“I’m up!” I shouted to nopony. Fine Tune shot me a look from across the street, but I waved him off. Pushing myself up, I moved to the next pony.

Most of the answers I got were all the same. Cryptic bits and pieces, but nothing concrete. The pink pony always seemed to show up when a pony really needed her. She had something for everypony. The more desperate ponies I questioned just asked me if I knew where she was, instead of giving answers. I ended up trotting down three different streets and a half-dozen alleyways before I finally got some answers.

“They get the best shit,” explained a large blue mare sitting on a building’s stoop.. She scratched her coat several times, particularly her left foreleg. “I don’t think I could stand the collar though.” She shivered.

“Collar? What kind?” I asked, pushing for answers. I wondered what had its hooks in her. Something with a needle, going by how she scratched her leg. Did I have any Med-X to spare? The mare, sitting, was nearly twice the size of me. If I could get her on my good side...

“The kind that hurt, everything hurts,” she muttered. “They make you numb, y’hear? That bitch.” She scratched again. “Won’t share, she gets a better share. You got some caps?” She looked at my saddlebags.

“No, I-”

She lunged at me, and tackled me to the ground. I didn’t expect a mare her size to move so fast, and landed under her with an ‘oof.’ She stood on me with one giant forehoof on my chest. She dropped her haunch onto my legs, holding me down. The other hoof smacked my saddlebags, knocking several of my things on to the ground. Bullets, grenades, and food spilled everywhere. Caps rolled away into the alley.

“Get off of me!” I shouted, kicking her stomach with my rear hooves. For my effort I got grunts and groans, but not enough to get her off me. I was a strong pony and I knew it, but even I wasn’t strong enough to force her off without any leverage.

In the back of my mind, an old fear showed its ugly face. I started to sweat. Being pinned down was bad. She was a mare though, and she couldn’t do a-anything like that.

“Liar,” she muttered, casting a glassy-eyed look at me. She stepped on me with her other forehoof, then scratched at it. She shifted and put all her weight on my haunches, pinning me completely.

Ponies all around perked up. Heads popped out of the shattered windows, their hazy unfocused eyes watching. A pony trotted from the cross-street and sat down, just watching. She stared at the two of us, making little motions toward my belongings before pulling back.

With all the blue mare’s weight on me, I couldn’t help but scream in pain. I wasn’t the biggest pony by a long shot, and this mare weighed a ton. I found it hard to breathe with that nagging fear creeping up in the back of my mind. I pounded on her with forehooves, refusing to give up. I tried in vain to push the huge pony off me. Where in the Goddesses name was that fucking changeling?

“Fine!” I shouted as the mare smashed open the other saddlebag. She moved around Persistence and leaned in close to dig around in my saddlebag with her mouth. The ponies all around seemed intent to watch what happened but not move closer. I could see their eyes darting back and forth between me and the scattered belongings. One stallion sat counting the caps rolling around with his hoof.

“Ahha,” she said in a muffled voice, with her muzzle dug into my saddlebag. She pulled her face from it with a syringe of Med-X clasped between her teeth. It was one of the ones we’d taken from the clinic back the night before. “Good enough,” she said, dropping the syringe into her hoof. She popped the top off the needle with her teeth.

“Get off me!” I shouted again, kicking her several more times. If I could just twist my- “Ow!” I tried to inhale but couldn’t draw breath.

Something dug into my mind. I could hear Mistress Amble saying I should kill her. I needed to to survive. The little claws became her hooves, pushing me, directing me. It wouldn’t be a big deal. She wasn’t important, just some druggie wasted out of her mind. If I wanted to survive, I had to kill her. All I had to do was get my hooves in the right spot. I struggled harder.

The blue mare jabbed herself in the leg with the syringe. With dexterity I’d never expected of such a lumbering earth pony, she injected herself. With a heavy sigh she let off me and slumped back. The needle just hung from her leg as a passive expression overtook her face. Was one shot really enough for her to just…

‘Murderer...’ whispered a voice in my mind. I just needed one hit in the right spot, steel would beat flesh every time.

She fell over, face first onto the ground. I heard glass shatter, as the needle cracked somewhere underneath her.

The changeling floated behind her, his wings beating so fast I couldn’t see them. He chirped at me several times, “Kiki, crii.” With a flash, a pegasus mare appeared in his place. “Sorry,” she said in a sweet voice. “Couldn’t get away from a talkative unicorn stallion. Found her because of, well, she smelled like a good meal.”

“You drained her?” I asked, gasping. “Wait! Is that permanent?” The arrival of the changeling had spooked the onlookers. By the time I managed to catch my breath they were all gone, with none of my belongings stolen. Changeling fire might just be close enough to balefire to really scare a pony that wasn’t thinking straight.

“I tried, but she had nothing left to take!” she squeaked, her voice cracking. “But, I got good news...” She dropped to the ground and offered a hoof to help me up.

I grabbed on and pulled myself from the ground. I could feel gravel and chips from the highway dug into my flanks. At least the armor and my jacket kept it from hurting my back. I patted the armor down to check it for dents and dings, but didn’t find any major damage. Together, the two of us collected my things and put them back in their place in my saddlebags.

I looked at the mare lying there. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed. Was that what happened when a changeling took what little was left of a pony’s emotions? I couldn’t help but shudder. I needed sleep. This was far too many risks to take.

“We should head back and tell the Queen everything. I think I know what’s going on,” she offered, flapping her wings and floating up into the air again.

“Or you could tell me,” I offered. “All I got out of them is that there’s a place called The Goddesses’ Bed, that’s the other bar.” Putting on the proverbial thinky-pony hat, I tried to piece it all together, from what I knew. “Well, and that the pink pony I saw before gives the best fix, and that collared ponies get the best... so...”

“They use the drugs to keep them behaving,” Fine finished for me. “It’s not marked either, the pony who runs it keeps a different sign on the building. I couldn’t find out which one though, nopony would share.” She shrugged and flew higher, looking past the battered rooftops.

Good, now we had a reason to handle both the problems of the town. If we got rid of that pink pony and her drugs, it’d be easier to handle any ponies that were kept in slavery.

“Let’s go tell Lost.”

* * *

“Do you really think that?” I asked the changeling, now back in his unicorn form.

He nodded. “I don’t see why not. I’ve seen dozens of ways ponies keep their slaves in line,” he said. “Some like Queen Amble use force,” he shuddered, “others fear and coercion. You get used to it...”

The two of us rounded a corner.

“Being this free is wonderful though!” he announced happily. “The new Queen hasn’t threatened me or anything. She asks and suggests. No beatings and no collar.” He chirped through his disguise, prancing about on his hooves. “Hehe, anyway. A slaver using drugs makes sense.”

“And if the pink pony I recognize is part of it...” I added. I looked down the street. Fewer ponies leaned against the buildings, as if this part were barren. “Ugh. Where do I know her from?”

“You recognize her?” asked the changeling.

“I remember the voice, but not the pony. It might have been a slaver, or another slave? I don’t know. It’s on the tip of my brain, and I can’t place it,” I answered. I knew that voice from somewhere, but where? If I didn’t get an answer soon...

Then the mare trotted into the street. Pretty, light pink without a speck of dirt on her. Mane perfectly brushed and bright aquamarine eyes. She was out of place, like those perfect-looking buildings surrounded by rubble. Casually, she looked one way then the other. When she saw me, she backed away and turned tail.

If I caught up to her, I could get my answers from the source. Nopony would know exactly what was going on better than her. I galloped after her, spinning on my steel hoof and running down the same road she’d gone down. If I could do this quickly enough.

I needed sleep, bad. I just needed to ask a question or two. It wasn’t like I’d kill her or anything.

Yet.

Fine Tune chased after me, yelling something I couldn’t hear over the wind in my ears. He could catch up, we had a meeting place.

The mare ran faster than I did. She was taller than me, and skinnier too. Those long legs meant she’d be a good runner, but I could keep up. Pushing myself, I pounded my hooves across the cracked asphalt after her. She had a good lead, but I’d catch up in time. I could outrun any unicorn.

She dove around another corner.

I spun around it seconds later, just in time to catch her tail around the right corner. With that pink flutter of hair, I knew where to go. I charged after. It hurt to breathe. I needed something to help, but I didn’t have time to stop. I just needed to keep going.

When I reached the intersection I checked left, just to make sure no other ponies might be waiting in ambush. A pink blur, but no guns pointed at me. I turned right.

Wait.

Turning around, I cocked my head to the side. She couldn’t. I ran left instead. She’d turned left, I’d been imagining that. That had to be it. I was just seeing things...

I shook the thought away and galloped faster. I jumped over trash strewn through the road, around a mare sitting slumped against the wall, and stopped at the dead end. Left this time.

I turned and ran down that way. The city seemed like a maze. Every street and alley looked the same: a massive grid that I’d only walked a part of once. Ruins blended together on both sides. Without a point of reference I was already lost. I just needed to find that mare.

Stopping at the next intersection, I looked down every possible path, even behind me. I didn’t see a thing. Then the mare darted across the street, several blocks ahead. How’d she beaten me there?

I pushed myself after her. The ground hurt my hooves, but I kept on. She couldn’t outrun me. I dodged past a toppled building, jumping across the fallen mortar and wood. Just another block.

I turned down the road she’d run down. She was still in front of me. Good. I could do this. I wasn’t out yet, and I could get her before I finally passed out from exhaustion.

She turned and looked at me. The mare stood nearly still, her ears pinned back, the only movement the swishing of her tail. Then, almost as if taunting me, she jumped behind a fallen skywagon and out of sight.

“Wait! I just want to talk!” I yelled. I was lying, of course. I didn’t need her to know that. Ponies looked up, watching me run with little interest. I followed, trampling discarded inhalers and syringes. My steel hoof crushed them underneath, but I couldn’t feel it. I got behind the skywagon to see...

Nothing.

I spun around several times. Where’d she gone? The building in front of me had every window blocked by either rubble or fallen furniture.

I closed my eyes. My hearing wasn’t super-sensitive by any means, but just maybe...

Somewhere I heard the canter of hooves, clacking loudly against the asphalt. I let my ears find it, swiveling them back and forth. I could barely hear it. The sound was faint.

I ran in the direction I thought it was.

“Miss Hidden! Stop!” yelled Fine from above, once again the pegasus mare. She dove over the skywagon and landed atop it. “Listen, she’s not-”

“Shut up. I got this,” I yelled. I could do it without help. I didn’t need cheater magic or cheating wings. I was just as good with my hooves as any of them. I didn’t need help. I just needed to catch her! Sleep or not, I’d get her. It just... took a little push.

“But-”

I didn’t hear the rest. I’d already taken off in the direction I hoped was the right one. Jumping over a sleeping stallion I twisted, hooking a leg on a bent light pole and spinning around it for a tighter turn.

Paydirt! The mare galloped several blocks away, but I could catch her. I just had to push.

She looked back and gasped. She skittered on the pavement and dove into an alleyway. Alleyway, good. I could do that. Just one hoof in front of the other, I’d run until my heart gave out. I rounded the-

Another pink blur flew by, barely in the corner of my eye. I spun around, hoping I’d just been hallucinating in my sleep deprivation. The mare darted down the street, going the direction we’d just come from..

“What in the Goddesses’ names!” I shouted as I doubled back. We were running the opposite direction, back toward where I’d seen Fine Tune. I didn’t know what trickery or bit of cheating she managed to use, but I would catch her. The change in direction closed much of the gap. If I just... If I just...

I lunged at her. I missed completely. The pink pony somehow managed to dodge me. I slammed face-first onto the street, and slid several hooves on cracked asphalt. It hurt. Nowhere near as bad as some of the things I’d been through, but it still hurt. Especially on my face. And my pride.

I felt a tiny crumb of rock in my eye. Just great. I pushed myself to my hooves and sat on my haunches. My breathing was ragged, and I was so exhausted that I couldn’t help but yawn. If only I... I opened my saddlebags. Without the sorting spell from the PipBuck, I had to dig, but I found it quickly enough. Wrapping my fetlock around the bottle, I dug it out.

“Hello my old friend,” I whispered to the bottle of Buck. Stronger and faster. I’d let another pony be tired. It might not work like the Dash had that one time, but I liked this better anyway. With this, I could get her on the ground. I’d win. “Promise not to tell Lost, okay?” I whispered to it. I popped the cap open and poured one little tablet into my mouth. I capped the bottle and stuffed it away, saving the rest for later.

I started to gallop again. It would kick in soon enough. I had to make up the lost time to catch that tricky bitch. My hooves hurt less. My head even felt clearer. I ran faster. I felt much faster. Another pony could deal with being tired for a while. Another pony could deal with the aches and pains in my legs. All I could feel was the power in my hooves and the pounding of my heart behind my eyes.

Time slipped away. All I could do was run. Pounding hooves on the ground, pounding heartbeat in my ears. The ponies watching seemed to blur away, grungy colors and staring eyes passed without thought. I didn’t care that I couldn’t tell where I was anymore. Another pony could deal with that once I caught the bitch. I’d run my legs out from under me if it meant I could get her.

The mare turned around a corner again, but this time I chose a different tactic. Charging down the closest alley, I shoved a pony out of the way and barreled over more wreckage. It didn’t matter if I didn’t know where I was. I just needed to find that fucking mare and pummel her until she talked.

I leapt into the street past the alley, and turned to wait. I stood there, tensed, my hooves digging into the road. She’d come out any second. She had to. Then I’d get her. I’d smash her, break her legs so she couldn’t run.

No more legs. No drugs. Answer questions. Simple.

The mare didn’t show up. She didn’t come from the road she’d taken. I’d made sure she’d take the road she’d taken. Frustrated, I turned into the alley, just in time to see her turn tail and run.

She had fear in her eyes now.

“Miss Hidden! There you are!” yelled Fine Tune, fluttering down to the ground in front of me. “Stop for a second, please,” she pleaded.

Skidding to a stop, I stared at the pegasus and snorted, “No.” This mare was mine. “I can catch her. No tricky unicorn can get away. I’ll find her. I’ll get answers.” I shoved Fine away, hard. I ran. I smashed my way through wooden boards littering the ground. I’d get that fucking mare.

I realized absently that I was repeating my threats. I didn’t really care. It’d been far too long since I’d felt that wonderful Buck in my veins. I needed to get the most out of it while I could. I saw the pink mare’s tail flit around the corner again. Did she really think that doubling-back trick would work again?

I barreled out onto the mane road and planted all four hooves on the ground. Left. Right. There! I charged.

“Miss Hidden Fortune!” yelled the faint voice of Fine Tune. “There’s more than one!”

Just like a cheater unicorn. I chased her anyway. Heavy hooffalls on the road. Kicked up dust behind me. Snorting and panting. I could only see her, that blur of her pink tail. The tail I’d tear off and rip up with my hooves. She’d get what was coming. I’d make sure of it.

The little pony in pain inside me yelled, drowned out by the overwhelming power of the drug coursing through me. She screamed to stop, to just rest. She told me she needed just five minutes and we could continue. Five minutes was too long. Five minutes fell on deaf ears.

In five minutes that mare might be gone. In five...

My hooves suddenly felt heavy. Like I was trying to lift a tank. The shackles weighed a ton each. I could lift it. Just chase the pony, I yelled inside my head.

She kept stopping and staring at me, darting away whenever I got close.

I ran slower. It felt like the street had melted around me, and I had to slog through it rather than run on top of it. Everything got hazy, red and hazy. If I could just catch her. She’d tell me. Multiple ponies. Tricking me.

Realization hit me hard. Multiple meant more than one. I couldn’t think, because of the Buck, I couldn’t piece it together. I just had to run, but, it didn’t matter. If there was more than one, which was the right one? How did I know how many there were?

Was I losing my mind? I was? I wasn’t? I couldn’t even think like this.

Every time she rounded a corner, and ran somewhere else. Every time I lost sight of her, only to see her running down a different street a second later. It wasn’t my sleep-addled mind mixing everything up. She just knew how to be in more than one place at a time. I’d never outrun her, no matter how hard I tried. With everything I had. Drugs, strength, and endurance, even the attitude to not give up when my legs just wanted to break under the strain.

I’d never catch her. Ever.

I slowed to a trot. Cheater magic. Like Lost’s. Like mom’s. Like Xeno’s luck and Fine Tune’s transformations. A trick to gain an edge. Something I could never catch up to.

I fell to my haunches and stared up at the clouds. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, blocking out everything else. I didn’t feel like catching her anymore. I didn’t want to smash anything. Sleep was the only thing I wanted. And to cry.

They all had something to make it easier. Warmth on my cheeks. Somepony else’s tears? I looked up at the pegasus mare floating down toward me. Other ponies stared, hooves pointed.

Pegasi weren’t common at all, I realized somewhere in the back of my mind. Funny the things I noticed when I wasn’t running my flanks off in a drug-induced haze. Fine Tune had put himself- herself? Did it matter? Fine Tune went through personal risk to tell me. To keep me from running to death. I latched on to the changeling and just, cried.

After a few minutes of tear-soaked release of tension, I sat back, caught my breath, and looked at Fine Tune. “We should get out of sight before I manage to draw any more attention to us...”

The changeling turned pegasus helped me to my hooves with an affirmative chirp. Limping, and leaning on Fine Tune for support we made our way to a ruined building that appeared to be a store at some point.

“More than one of the same pony? Are you sure?” I asked, closing the door behind me. The fewer ponies that knew this part, the better.

“Yes,” she answered, standing next to the splintered counter. “I got enough of a look to take her form.” With another flash of green fire, the pink unicorn mare stood in front of me.

I fought the urge to hit her as hard as I could. The only thing stopping me was the knowledge of how useless it would be. That and not wanting to hurt my newest friend. The ache deep in my legs was a deterrent, too. I couldn’t breathe through my nose yet, after all the sobbing I’d done. I never wanted to show my face in this city again, even if they were just a bunch of drug-addicted wastelanders. I had some pride, dammit.

“I just need to get close and work my way in. If they have any way to talk to one another without speaking, they might notice there’s something wrong,” she said, in that same voice I couldn’t quite put my hoof on. “And I can’t use magic.” To demonstrate, she lifted a perfectly white coffee cup off from beside the register. Her magic had the same blue-green haze as the unicorn stallion Fine Tune favored. It wasn’t exactly the same color as the pink mare’s magic, but it might just be close enough to throw the doubles off.

“What else can we do?” I asked, watching that cup bob around in the air within Fine’s telekinesis. It looked perfectly-preserved. I wondered if an earth pony had made it. That’d explain why my steel hoof- I shook my head to get back on task. “I need to go back. I can’t.”

Everything hurt. Coming down off the Buck made it all worse, too. I felt like I was back in U Cig in Vice Brand’s office, with the gigantic stallion trying to break all four of my legs. I still wanted to go to sleep. Maybe, just maybe, I could sleep while Fine Tune kept looking around. A snooze on a bar floor seemed like paradise right now.

“I’m sorry,” she said, dropping the cup on the counter. “I never thought I’d have this type of opportunity, and my Queen seems to have a good idea of what to do. I’m sure if my hive knew what was going on, they’d be helping too.”

“Please, just... That voice,” I groaned. My head hurt worse than my legs, hearing that voice but not being able to place where I knew it from. I wanted to stop worrying about it, and let the frustration just go away. “If the slaves they have here are changelings, will you be able to tell?” I changed the subject, hoping that it might lead her closer with less time wasted.

“I’d already know if they were. We can, well, sense one another. It’s hard to describe. I could hear their voices if they were from my hive and they were close enough,” she explained. “Ever notice how I never use ‘words’ while I’m not transformed into a pony?” she asked.

I had noticed that, but I thought it was just a weird quirk.

“We don’t need spoken language, we only use it when talking to ponies, or any other species that needs verbal words,” she said. She trotted around the counter and started to dig for things. “Everything not nailed down, right?”

I couldn’t help but smile. We had the time, might as well make good use of it. I snorted though, trying to clear my nose.

I hated crying.

“Right. But finish the story, it’s taking my mind off the pain,” I answered. Anything that kept me occupied and not thinking about my legs was a good thing. Plus, making my brain work kept me from falling asleep and hitting the pavement face-first. Again.

“Okay, well. There’s not much else to say. We talk within our own heads, and every other changeling nearby can hear it as long as they’re from the same hive. The Queen can talk to all of us, and it overpowers the ambient voices, because the Queen is much stronger than us,” she explained, tossing bits up onto the counter from the cash register.

“Does that mean Mistress Amble is a changeling?” I asked her. If she was, I knew just how to get my revenge. I trudged through the aisles of the store. This one had slim pickings: empty cans, spent bullet casings, and a lot of junk. There wasn’t anything worth selling even. Merchants bought a lot of stuff, but I couldn’t think of anypony who wanted a bent can and a fork with no stabby bits.

“No. She’s a surrogate,” the changeling admitted. She sounded sad, even with the fake voice she was using. “We lost our Queen when she captured us. Any that try to take the position are killed. She kept us all so starved that I’d have to eat on my way back.”

“Why’d you return?” I asked her.

“Why do you do the things she trained you to do?” she countered.

I understood all too well. I trotted back to the counter and collected the old world bits and the coffee cup. The locals had probably long ago cleaned the store of everything they deemed useful.

“Thank you.” I hugged the bugpony, as tight as I could. In retrospect, it was probably good that my legs were weak at the moment, and that Fine’s chitin was tough.

She smiled. A flash lit up the room and the mare suddenly looked like my sister. “Watch after my sister while I’m gone,” she repeated Lost’s words. Orders, exactly. Maybe I couldn’t call this strange new creature a friend just yet. The same problems I had in my own head must course through hers. Another flash of green fire erupted, leaving just the pink unicorn standing with me.

I shuddered. I hated that quirk. Did he really need to change form to repeat what others said?

We trotted outside, onto another street I didn’t recognize. Rubble from a collapsed building covered half the street, and few ponies seemed interested in this particular corner of the city. I didn’t care, really. Not after all that had happened.

“Be safe?” I offered.

“I will be. Meet at the bar when I find something out,” she answered. Her voice still got on my nerves. “Go that way.” She pointed down the street.

We parted ways, and I walked in the direction she’d pointed me. Given that she’d had wings at one point and could say where it was from a higher vantage point, I trusted her judgement.

I didn’t look at the ponies as I walked. I didn’t think I could face them. After tearing through the streets back and forth, criss-crossing around after a pony I’d never have been able to catch, my pride wouldn’t allow it. Instead, I hung my head and stared at the cracked street below me. One step after another, each one pulling at muscles that shouldn’t still hurt. I could take a Med-X to get rid of it, if it got too bad. I didn’t want to resort to that, not with the reminders of what happened to ponies who abused it all around me.

I stole glances at a few ponies walking along the street corner talking to one another, hoping none would notice me. I couldn’t hear what they were saying and I didn’t want to, especially if it was about the crazy mare with the steel hoof tearing through the town. The quiet murmur of life was more than enough noise for my ears, especially after the pounding I’d dealt with earlier as my heartbeat tried to blow my eardrums out. This was what happened to ponies who let addiction get a hold of them. I didn’t want to end up like them, lost in a ruined city that once meant so much to ponykind. It was a place that ponies had once fought and died to protect, but now all it stood for was the reminder of the worst we had in us.

I could be like these ponies. All it would take was one wrong turn. Maybe I should be thankful to Mistress Amble, for giving me a week to recover from my near-addiction. “I don’t have a problem,” I told myself. “I’m in complete control.” I could even be introspective. Like a thinky pony.

I kept walking on my dead hooves, around a corner and onto the next street. Ignore the ponies, just keep walking. That’s all I had to do. All I wanted or could do. I stared at the road.

* * *

Xeno waved to me from the entrance of the bar. I’d finally made it back. Without the clock on the PipBuck, I had no idea how long It had taken me to wander back. Several wrong turns made it take far longer than I expected. What should have been a short walk turned into what felt like a trek halfway across the Wasteland. Even through the cloud cover, I could tell it was getting later. We’d arrived first thing in the morning, and already it must have been early afternoon.

Had I really spent the whole morning running myself to... I looked down at my hooves. The left one looked chipped. Had I really run myself to this? I waved back at Xeno shakily. Standing on three hooves wasn’t something I felt I could do at the moment. I still needed a nap. Just something quick. Bar floor. Under a table. In the shade. Nap.

“I donot think it would be wise to enter, Hiddenpony,” Xeno said as I trotted up to her. She stuck her hoof out and pressed against my shoulder. “Itis not something you should see.” She stared at me, her dark blue eyes saying I should listen.

“I appreciate it, but I really need to tell Lost I need to sleep,” I said, as forcefully as I could. It wasn’t much. My voice cracked and I sniffled. Stupid crying.

She cocked her head to the side, then shook it several times. “Itis best that you do not. Iam aware that we are not the same, the ponies here have reminded me of this much,” she said, muttering the last part. “But, I think that you should trust me.”

“I do trust you, but just, please,” I pleaded. “Please understand?” I sat down on my haunches and lifted my forehooves up and pressed them together. I begged her.

“Donot say I didnot warn you, Miss Fortune,” she ordered. The last two words came as if she were spitting poison. Every part of her seemed to rebel, but she said it anyway.

I cringed, but nodded. “You warned me,” I agreed as if I had a choice in the matter. I pushed open the door.

The bar looked the same as it had the last time, minus the drunk Relly sitting at the corner of the counter. Instead my sister and the bartender stood at the far end talking... and drinking. Chaser looked all smiles, constantly tipping my sister’s glass until it was straight up. She laughed and giggled as they talked.

My sister looked positively smashed. She was drunker than she’d been after I’d lost my hoof so long ago. She wobbled on her rear hooves and kept catching herself against the bar whenever she bent too far. The blue haze around her glass looked weak, and every so often it would slosh to the side and spill some of the clear booze over, until the bartender pushed it up again.

Chaser leaned forward, nuzzling at my sister’s cheek. Lost moved the wrong way, bumping their muzzles together. She giggled and kissed the mare’s nose, blushing. She hiccuped.

The two laughed and kissed again.

I twitched.

If I’d had the power of the Goddesses, both of them would have been dust! Sister or not, I couldn’t forgive that behavior. The pain in my legs suddenly felt like a distant memory, and my heart pounded as if I were on Buck once more. I stormed up to the bar and smacked the glass out of Lost’s telekinesis. The glass shattered under a table.

Slowly, Lost looked over, her eyes drifting from the bar to me and finally to the shattered glass. She pinned her ears back and glared through her glasses. “Hidden!” she yelled, closing one eye and wincing. “Shhh...” She put a hoof before her mouth. “Not sho loud.”

I fought back the urge to hit her. I wanted to. A good smack with the hunk of steel at the end of my leg might set her straight. Assuming it didn’t break her jaw. I hooked my fetlock around her back and pulled instead.

“Hol’ on,” she argued, turning to the bartender. “I gotsta go now, Chasey…” She kissed the bottom of her hoof and waved it in the air at the bartender, missing entirely.

Chaser took the hint and pressed their hooves together. “Take care, sweetlips,” she answered, kissing the bottom of her own hoof. She shot me a look as I dragged my sister to the door.

The minute we got outside, I slammed the door closed and glared at Lost.

Xeno shook her head. “Donot say I didnot warn you, Hiddenpony,” she said. “Iwill not get involved, itis between sisters.” She took a few steps back and pulled the slaver helmet down further, smashing her mohawk further over her eye and obscuring her face.

“Heyyyy Hidden,” my sister slurred. She took her glasses off with her telekinesis and looked at me through them. “They’re blurry,” she explained. “You okay, Hidden? Where’s Fine, Fine... the bugpony?”

I hit her. It wasn’t the same as the hit I’d given her back at Leathers. And it wasn’t as hard as I wanted to hit her. Instead I slapped her with the side of my hoof, and I made sure to use the flesh one.

She wobbled to the side, barely managing to stay upright. For what seemed like forever she stood trying to keep her balance, a determined look in her eye as she fought against gravity to stay on her hooves. Her face twisted up, slow and forced as she processed what just happened. She won out in the end, and looked up at me. With watering eyes, she opened her mouth several times before finally managing to get words out. “What was that for?” she asked.

“What the absolute fuck are you doing?” I yelled at her. Know what? Fuck the addiction. A few seconds on Buck to take away any guilt at beating the shit out of my sister would be welcome. Too bad Mistress didn’t drill that out of me too. I glared at her, trying to burn a hole through her head.

“You ‘ere takin’ forevar,” she answered, her face still contorted to the side. She didn’t cry, but the water in the corners of her eyes didn’t disappear either. “Nip Chaser wanted to talk.” She fell back, landing hard on her haunches. The force made her hiccup. “And then I had a drink...” She rolled her head to the side, looking over at the bar longingly.

“You made me go off, when I’d had no sleep, and made me ask ponies about everything, while you sat here and drank!” I screamed at her. It wasn’t a question. I didn’t need her to answer, just to understand how livid I was.

“Well, see... Bubble gave me a bunch of info, and I had time,” she said, digging one of her hooves against the pavement. “And I had to come back, so I didn’t think a drink could hurt? And then Chaser gave me this li’l pill, and it made everything so clear!” She looked up at me, the tears gone and a big fake smile across her lips. “I worked it out, it only took a minute. Map of town and how long it would be fo' you to come back.” She pointed at it a few times. Raising both hooves seemed to be too much for her. She wobbled back and forth, sticking both forelegs out to try and keep her balance.

“You what.”

“Its called a Mint-al,” she said with a hiccup.

I ground my teeth. “The stuff you told me to put back when we were in Skirt the first time?” I asked. She’d gotten on my case about the Buck usage before, but it was okay for her to use Mint-als? “What’s wrong with you?”

“No, no!” she said, waving a hoof at me. She slowly worked her way to her hooves. Already she looked steadier. “It’s good schtuff. I knew exactly how long I had. And a drink was fine. Chaser told me, she said the town was big.” She hiccuped again, and started to giggle. “Chasey’s not bad.” She licked her lips and took another wobbly step forward, then fell against me.

“Lost!” I snapped at her. I fell back under the combined weight. “What’s in the Goddesses’ names?”

“They fucked,” said Xeno.

“They what?!” I screamed, throwing her off of me.

She tried to nuzzle me in midair, but lost her balance and fell back onto her rump again. Squeaking, she burped. “Uh huh,” she muttered, not looking at me. “Sche made a good point, and with the, oh Goddesses. Hidden!” She jumped up and wrapped her hooves around my neck. “I could feel everything so well,” she slurred. “It’s like, my brain opened. So clear!” She stared right into my eyes and kissed my nose. I smelt the stink of alcohol on her, with just a hint of mint on her breath, along with something... else.

I shuddered. Not helping, Lost.

I shoved her back and held her at length with my hoof. What about Crčme Brűlée? Should I tell her that I knew about it? My mind raced, between rage and regret. I doubted even a thinky pony would know how to handle this situation.

“Aww, but Hidden,” she whined. “It was amazing. Even with the booze, it was like the sky opened and I could see everything so vividly.” She caught my stare and rubbed the back of her mane with her hoof. “S’wrong? I had time. What’s a mare ‘tween sischters?”

“What about Crčme Brűlée, Lost Art?” I asked before I could stop myself. “What about her?”

She looked at me for a minute, then down at the PipBuck. “I tried to call her...”

She didn’t question how I knew. “What? What?” I fell back onto my own haunches, blinking rapidly. What had just happened?

“I know you know. It’s easy to work out. You wouldn’t be so mad otherwise,” she explained, swaying side to side as she talked. “I couldn’t get a hold of her. I tried first thing, but I didn’t know how to work the broadcaster.” She poked at it once, then fell forward. Catching herself at the last second, she lay on her side and stared up at me. Her hooves curled a little, she smiled. “It’s just sex, Hidden.”

The thought of something being ‘just sex’ sent a shiver up my spine. As if it were just sex. I couldn’t even begin to think about something like that. Not after... and then- Ugh. I screamed internally, once again wanting to lash out at her.

“Crčme and I aren’t a couple Hidden. We’re just friends, we agreed on it,” she said, staring up at me with one eye. “I could die tomorrow. I don’t want to die lonely. I want to feel... I want to experience things.”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I just sat there dumbfounded. I couldn’t think. It felt like I’d taken another tablet of Buck, or like somepony had stuck some Med-X directly into my brain. The connections just didn’t come. My sister; a sex fiend? Did things like that matter so little?

“I want to feel while I can,” she finished. She reached back and dug around in the saddlebags she had on her back. Somewhere in my mind I wondered if they’d had sex with her wearing her armor.

Or had I really taken that long to get back?

She pulled out a little tin and flicked it open with her magic. A tiny pill floated out and to her mouth. She bit down on it and swallowed. Her eyes widened and she sat upright, perfectly straight. “Hidden, are you okay?” she asked, looking me up and down. “You look like shit.”

“I’m fine,” I lied. I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to forget this entire thing happened. I stood up and went to sit next to Xeno. She might be upset we were taking so long, but at least I knew how to feel about her. I needed time.

“Hidden?” she asked. The fear in her voice was heartbreaking.

“Let’s talk about it later. We need to finish here so we can bring Xeno’s brothers to their home.”

Xeno smiled at that answer. It was a small smile, mostly hidden by the flopped-over mane, but I saw it.

“Okay...” she said, looking at the ground.

* * *

“Ahh! I’m awake!” I yelped, startling myself.

Xeno gave me a look, one eyebrow raised. She patted me on the shoulder and shook her head. “That was a short nap, Hiddenpony.”

Wiping my eyes with my flesh hoof, I looked around. The cloud cover still hid the sun. Lost sat on the opposite side of Xeno, still swaying gently in the afterglow of what happened. Xeno patted me again and took the slaver helmet off, letting her mane springing back up into its normal mohawk.

“How long was I out?” I asked, still trying to see straight. Everything just looked too bright, and I felt worse than before. The back of my head pounded, as if Wirepony had been stomping on it.

“Seven minutes,” Lost answered, looking at the PipBuck’s screen.

“That’s it?” I asked. It didn’t feel that long. I’d only just closed my eyes when I woke back up. It couldn’t... I looked up at the sky.

Celestia. Luna. One hour, that’s all I asked.

A bright pink pony with a brighter pink mane trotted up. The same pretty unicorn with aquamarine eyes. A cutie mark of a two overlapped pony silhouettes adorned her flank, one overlapping the other as if the second were just a shadow. The same mare I’d spent hours chasing. If that wasn’t Fine Tune, I was gonna blow her fucking head off.

The minute the mare saw us, her ears perked up and a baleful green flame erupted. With a shrill chirp, the black-carapaced changeling fluttered over and landed right in front of our little group. He chirped excitedly, pointing a holed hoof about before finally clopping a hoof to his head. Another flash of fire and the blue unicorn with the f-holes replaced the bugpony. “Found it!” he yelled happily.

“If youhad come back, we couldhave told you where it was,” said Xeno. She looked more than a little agitated.

“Things got in the way,” I snapped, more at the situation than the mare herself. “It worked out though, didn’t it?” I asked, letting the words drip with venom. “Gave my sister enough time to rut.”

Lost didn’t respond. She swayed once more, looking at the ground. Good. I wanted her to feel bad about it. I’d been run to death and she’d been sitting pretty, letting me do all the hard work. Yeah, I knew everything about what our little dynamic meant. Lost did the tech stuff and the plans, I did the heavy lifting and the shooting. It worked well, but Goddesses’ dammit, I needed a break sometimes!

“It’s on the far end of town, hidden under the sign of another building,” Fine Tune explained, he waved his hooves. With another flash, he transformed back into the mare. In the sickeningly familiar voice he repeated, “Go around back, through the service building. Did you not get the news or are you just from ages ago? Jeez!”

A shiver ran up my spine, and ended with a digging sensation in the back of my mind. Every time Fine Tune did that, I remembered the time he transformed into Mistress and I nearly killed him. I couldn’t chance another one of those. Instead I looked at the ground.

“The name of the fake sign?” Lost asked.

“I can’t read it,” Fine Tune explained, lighting aflame once more and transforming back into his standard unicorn form. “It’s something in zebra writing, I think.”

Xeno tilted her head to the side and stood up. She squinted at the changeling, and whispered something to herself in her native tongue. I didn’t hear the words, not that I could have understood them even if I had. “Show me,” she said.

After a quick double-check of our gear, we headed out. I hadn’t been able to find anything resembling ammunition for Persistence, but I had the little popgun. And my steel hoof. If the unicorn mare spent her time running rather than facing me, well, I hoped it was because she was weak, and not just to fuck with me. The brothel, or bar, or whatever it was called would have a bodyguard probably, especially if drugged out ponies would try to get in.

A thinky pony would have plans set up just in case. And that’s what we needed. Emergency plans. Lost could figure out something in a flash if she still somehow had the ‘clarity’ she did earlier. Xeno had luck on her side, and with the grace of the Goddesses it’d stay on the same good streak it’d been on lately. Fine Tune knew how to go about being unseen, so I didn’t have to worry about him.

I just had to make sure I could handle myself. I had grenades, guns, and a steel hoof. I’d be fine.

We trotted in relative silence after Fine Tune, who returned to the form of the pink mare. Xeno kept her knife out, slid into a hastily-made shoulder-slit in her armor, while Lost kept Loyalty and the other plasma pistol she’d been using on the holsters attached to her legs. I looked the least-prepared, with an empty gun and my armor covered by a tattered jacket.

How silly we must have looked, walking into the lion’s den.

The further into the town we got, the worse everything looked. Buildings seemed more and more destroyed, as if we were getting closer to the center of whatever destroyed Blackhoof. The ponies looked worse and worse too, going from dirty ponies keeping to themselves, to ponies actively attacking one another over used syringes and inhalers.

I actually missed the run-down part of town we’d entered. At least the houses had roofs there. Occasionally I noticed a pony or piece of ruins that I recognized, and rage boiled inside. Memories of the chase. My insides twisted about, anger and self-loathing twisting my stomach into knots. I wanted to be mad at that mare, but deep down, I just felt more angry with myself.

I laughed.

“What’s wrong?” asked my sister. Everypony stared at me, pony, changeling, and zebra.

“Nothing,” I said sheepishly. Suddenly it dawned on me, exactly how much of a crutch I used the phrase ‘cheater magic.’ Every time I’d felt like I wasn’t good enough, or like I’d done something wrong. Honestly, it felt good, but funny at the same time. Maybe I could just accept who I was and push to be a better me instead of blaming everything else.

Ponies couldn’t change their cutie marks, though.

The trot took a lot longer than I wanted. It gave me too much time to think.

Finally, Fine Tune stopped at a run-down building with a new roof lying slanted atop it. The whole place looked terrible. If somepony thought it was a good idea to get laid here, and actually pay for it, they were either crazy or desperate. Or the inside looked a lot better than the outside.

Above the mane entryway hung two signs that looked hopelessly mismatched. Both originally said ‘SHELTER,’ but had been ripped from their places and moved above the door. Both had also been defaced repeatedly, with graffiti that looked more fitting for a raider den sprayed over the words. Now, it labeled the building as ‘HELTER SKELTER.’

“Here we are,” announced Fine Tune.

“Thatis not zebra writing. Itis gibberish,” Xeno spat, glaring at the changeling. She muttered something in her native tongue, rolling her eyes and looking at my sister and I.

Lost shook her head. “Let’s just get this over with. Where’s this service building?” she asked.

* * *

I stared at the front door. I had a bone to pick with the mare that’d given me the runaround, and using a subtle approach through the back was not something I felt like doing. Instead, I pushed my way in through the front entrance. As I stepped through, I pulled the pistol from my saddlebags with my teeth.

The inside looked wonderful. I’d expected something run-down and barely serviceable, a place nopony really wanted to go for a mare or stallion, but a place they ended up going to because it happened to be the only one around they knew they could get some. Unlike Chaser’s bar, this place had some class. It looked like the kind of place Lost could kick her hooves up and relax with a moderately priced whore.

A moldy blue carpet ran from the entrance in past the bar. Around the edges of the room were several booths with tilted tables between them, and an open bench along the far right wall with a small table, where a filthy stallion sat, chatting up a depressed-looking mare. The bar had several nice-looking stools and a polished counter than reflected the room’s dim light, making it look almost like a mirror. Behind the bar was an actual mirror, with several half-full bottles of whiskey and other assorted drinks lined up for the guests’ choosing. A staircase went up to the next floor, which only existed as a walkway to give access to several doors. I couldn’t see how many, due to a gigantic glass chandelier hanging in the way. In the corner, past the glimmering glass, I could see the corner of a piano, one being played by a rather talented pony who I couldn’t see. Between two of the booths in the back was a service door that must have led to the service building.

The door shut behind me, followed by a loud chime.

In response, a light-green earth pony mare peeked up from behind the bar. She slammed her hoof on it a few times and yelled, “Customer!” Her scream got the attention of the two in the corner, but they went back to talking a second later.

From the back door emerged the pink mare. She looked over at the bar the minute she entered, rather than at me. “I’ve got it Blossom, you just stay right there doin’ the sa- Oh, shit.”

I shot her in the head before she could get away. I missed having ammo for Persistence, but the little popgun of a pistol did a good enough job. The dead body dropped with a wet thud, and blood poured from the hole in her skull onto the dirty wooden floor.

The pony behind the counter screamed, and ducked back underneath the counter. The stallion who’d been chatting with the mare inside instead got up and ran. He dodged behind me and ducked out the door with speed I didn’t think possible. The door chimed again when it slammed shut.

I spit the gun from my teeth into my hoof. “Dammit, I needed to ask her questions first,” I thought out loud. Oh well. I’d find another version of her to get answers from.

The fact that I’d shot without hesitation didn’t really bother me like it should have. I’d killed her. The fact that I didn’t care got to me, but only a little. Just like with the raiders so long ago, I wanted to feel remorse, but I couldn’t. I caught myself smiling. Whatever Mistress Amble had done inside my head, well... at least it came with some blessings. I probably needed help. To talk to somepony about it, and see if I couldn’t get better, and learn to feel sadness about taking the life of another again.

I walked over to the corpse. She looked serene, almost, without running away from me and ducking between alleyways.

The door slammed open, making it chime again. I turned around to see Lost Art and our friends standing in the doorway, Lost floating Loyalty beside her. She looked at the corpse in front of me and gasped.

I turned away from her, just in time to catch the corpse fading away. It startled me, to see her body darken from pink to black, and then finally just melt away into nothingness.

“Well, that’s a buzzkill,” I muttered. She took away my prize. Wait. Real ponies left corpses. Did that mean she wasn’t really multiple ponies that all looked the same? She actually managed to make copies of herself? I liked that, a lot. I felt my lips curl into a wicked little smile. Just like with raiders, I didn’t need to worry about the morality.

“W-what did you do?” screamed my sister after a long pause.

“I killed her,” I answered. “Well, I thought I did. Turns out she wasn’t really... real. I’m gonna go find the rest and kill them.” I stuffed the gun back into my mouth, and turned to run. If she’d come from the back room, that was probably where I would find the rest. The building looked pretty big on the outside, so there had to be multiple rooms. Plenty of places for me to find her.

Lost yelled something at me as I left the room, but I didn’t care. I had ponies to kill.

I pushed through the door and looked around. In front of me was a large room with several counters and a two stoves opposite it. The kitchen, great. If it was a bar turned into a brothel, that only made sense. Several ponies inside ran to and fro in the chaos. One of them happened to be the pretty pink mare with the nice clean coat I’d been looking for.

I fired at her, repeatedly. I wasn’t as good with the pistol as I was with Persistence or a big gun on my battle saddle, and the first few bullets missed. It took four shots before one finally hit. She faltered and went down when the shot went through her side. The mess of blood on the other side looked absolutely beautiful. I put another bullet into the side of her head and turned.

Another pony ran away, but I didn’t care. She wasn’t the one I needed. Letting her flee, I checked the next room, which was a small storage closet. Plenty of food inside, but no pink mare. I left it to collect later. They wouldn’t miss it, not after I finished with them. Inside the freezer, which didn’t work, I found another of the pink mares.

She cowered in the corner, and by the look in her eye, she knew I’d trapped her. Too bad, wrong spot, wrong time. I fired two shots and several clicks. What a great time to run out of ammo. Tossing the popgun, I charged her.

She tried to dart around me, but it didn’t work. I slammed into her with everything I had and pinned her to the wall.

“No, please don-”

She stopped yelling when I crushed her throat. She wheezed, her eyes bugging out as she choked on her own blood, trying to whimper something, until I smashed her head completely. Steel hoof beat flesh and bone every time. My legs burned from exhaustion, and probably withdrawal from the Buck earlier, but it didn’t matter. I kept hitting her until nothing remained. Then I ran.

There had to be more. I could kill a bunch of them! I know I’d seen plenty running. Lost could stop them if they tried to get out. I knew she’d be able to get at least one before I got them all.

Outside the freezer, I caught sight of a pink blur fleeing the same way I’d come in. I gave chase. She made it through the door back into the mane room, but I tackled her to the ground before she got more than a few hooves.

CRUNCH!

Her skull shattered, and she went limp.

“No, that isn’t how we do things!” yelled my sister.

“Itis a faster way, we can return to handle my brothers this way!” Xeno yelled back.

Fine Tune sat on his haunches between them, waving his hooves at the two in a vain attempt to keep the two of them from arguing.

I looked at them and just laughed, loud enough to make all three look my way.

Lost glared at me over the rims of her glasses. “Hidden, we can not-”

The chandelier smashed into the ground right in front of me, shattering into a million pieces and flinging glass everywhere. The sound scared me more than the fact I’d nearly just died, as the sound of hundreds of pieces of polished glass hitting the ground echoed between my ears worse than The Glowing One’s laughter.

“Fuck!” screamed my sister. Fine Tune chirped in fear at the same time. Xeno yelled something in zebra.

I groaned as the sensation of glass in my skin finally caught up with me. I’d been hit by the shrapnel, but none got me in any vital spots. I could feel something in my eyes though. I’d deal with it later.

“So close,” yelled the voice of the pink mare.

The four of us all looked up simultaneously, only to see two of the mares standing on the next floor’s walkway. The piano kept playing, without an actual pony sitting at the keys. Seeing the rage I felt at nearly being crushed, they ran.

“Alright, let her,” L.A. snapped at Xeno. “If you can guard the front door. Fine Tune, transform into Hidden and just… I don’t know. Guard the back so they don’t sneak out, please?” Her voice sounded frantic, as she issued the requests to them.

Not waiting for them to agree to the plan, I got up and made for the stairs. Shouts echoed from upstairs, their tone ranging from angry to terrified. Behind me, I could hear the pounding of hooves on the wooden floor as my companions took their places. As I ran up to the second floor, an aquamarine-hazed chair flew through the air right at me.

“Hidden! Look out!” yelled my sister from behind me.

I smashed the chair away with my steel hoof and looked back. Lost was following me up. Alright, time to keep going.

The splintered pieces of chair floated in the air, held by the unicorn’s telekinesis. The aquamarine haze disappeared as my sister took over the pieces and flung them in the opposite direction.

They might have outnumbered me, but I had better backup! Another chair flew through the air, but between my sister slowing it down and me batting it away, it didn’t come close. Halfway up the stairs I saw something terrifying. The edge of the piano appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Lost!” I yelled, my bloodlust forgotten for the moment. I was strong, stronger than most, but I didn’t think even I could bash my way through a full-sized piano.

“Jump!” she shouted back at me.

That probably wouldn’t- I didn’t have a choice! The piano slid down the top half of the stairs at me, and I did exactly like she said. I leaped up into the air, feeling the familiar sensation of my sister’s magic around my legs. I couldn’t grip it, but it kept me in the air just long enough to grab onto the top half of the piano with my hooves.

“Shitshitshit-”

I pulled myself onto it and jumped forward off of it. Landing at the top of the stairs, I turned around to make sure she’d gotten out okay. Rather than follow my lead, she’d used her magic to slow the falling of the instrument and jumped out of the way. Thankfully she’d been close enough to the bottom to jump and land okay.

SMASH!

The piano hit the landing at the bottom and tipped on its side completely, with enough force to splinter it into pieces. The music slowed to a stop and died away with a jangle of broken strings and a horrible screeching noise. Well, there went my fight music. At least Lost was safe.

I turned toward the walkway, just in time for a glass bottle to smash into my face from below. I screamed; the alcohol burned. Clenching one eye shut tight, I charged down the walkway and at the mare who’d flung the booze at me. Behind me, and to the side, I could hear several more bottles smashing against the wall and in the air. I caught a glance of Lost intercepting them by hurling bottles of her own.

I leapt off the staircase and landed on the mare. She squealed, until I crushed her throat. Really, being able to actually grab her neck would have been nice, but I made do with what I had. Hooves were good for stomping. Or kicking. I stepped behind her neck with one hoof and kicked her head with the other, and was rewarded with a satisfying SNAP.

Looking up, I saw the three doors, the closest of which still hung open. Past it was a hallway lined with more doorways. Behind another, I could hear the sounds of a ponies moving frantically. Pushing myself up from the dead mare, I bolted past the open door.

Stopping at the first room in the hallway, I bucked the door open. Inside was an empty room; no ponies, only a filthy bed and a rotting desk. Cursing, I moved to the next and found the same furniture, instead of emptiness though, the pink mare huddled behind another mare, an earth pony with a fuchsia coat. Her red and pink mane hung over one of her eyes and she looked almost like she didn’t quite know what was going on. The tear stains down her face gave me pause, but I recognized her.

“Battu,” I whispered. She’d been one of the mares from Skirt, who’d been in the pen with me. I ran in and grabbed her with my forehooves. Throwing her to the side, I grabbed the pink unicorn and slammed my forehead into hers. Battu didn’t seem fazed when I threw her, aside from a quiet groan, she crumpled to the floor.

The unicorn met my headbutt halfway, showing far more resistance than the rest had so far. I hit her with my steel hoof as hard as I could. I had something special in store for her. I threw her down to the opposite side of the room, then jumped down on top of her, landing on her chest and pinning her down. She struggled, hitting me with her hooves and throwing trash from the desk. I ignored it and pulled one of the grenades from my saddlebag. I’d never been good with the little apple-shaped explosives, but I didn’t need to be good for this.

I stomped on her and she gasped. The second she opened her mouth I slammed the grenade in. This would be absolutely wonderful. I kicked her once more and made for the exit. I stopped just long enough to grab the dazed Battu, and drag her out of the room with me. I threw her down the hallway toward the door and screamed, “Run!”

She hobbled away down the hallway, and I jumped away from the doorway.

An ear-splitting boom followed me. Gore and fire erupted from the doorway.

I flew through the air and slammed into the far wall, as did Battu across from me. I’d expected something smaller, after what happened with Wirepony. Without any armor to muffle the explosion, it was much bigger. And louder. If it weren’t for the horrific ringing in my ears, I’d have expected to be deaf. The room burned, flames slowly spreading into the hallway.

As the ringing quieted, I could hear muffled screams. The door next to me opened and two ponies ran out. I recognized one as another one of the mares from Skirt, but in the post-explosion haze, I couldn’t think of her name. A stallion ran out with her, still covered in sweat from... I shuddered. Both were covered in blood and bits of wood from where the wall exploded.

I looked at myself to check the damage. A shard of wood stuck through my back leg, just above my ankle. Twisting, I reached down and pulled it out with my teeth, grinding them against the wood to deal with the pain. I tossed it away and dug a syringe of Med-X out of my saddlebags. Pulling myself away from the slowly spreading flames, I stabbed myself with it and groaned happily. I gave it a second to work, then pushed myself back onto my hooves.

Two hallways left. I ran as fast as I could down the hall, spun, and moved to the next one. As I pushed the door open, I saw a single room at the far end, and galloped toward it. The door was locked, but I smashed the handle with my steel hoof until the door shattered and let me in. Inside I found a beautifully-decorated room, with an actual clean bed, with real sheets, and a lamp on a nightstand next to it. On the other side of the room sat a dresser that looked completely unused. No pink mares. I turned and ran.

The final hallway looked like a mirror version of the first, with three doors on the far side. The closest door lurched with a thunk, somepony on the far side was pounding a hoof against it and sobbing. I bucked the door with both rear hooves and let them out. Fouetté stared at me, her two-toned mane a complete mess and tears running from her bright eyes.

“Go,” I ordered, pointing my hoof to the door. That made three of the mares from Skirt that I’d seen, which left only one I’d know. The rest of the room was empty aside from the same furniture. I thanked the Goddesses that I hadn’t seen any collars on the mares.

The next door held another of the pink ponies alone in the room. She had a revolver held in the haze of her magic. Before I could move, she unloaded all six bullets at me. One tore through my ear, again. Another hit me in the neck, two slammed into my armor. The other two missed.

I yelped in pain and fell back. She’d die for that one. Well, she was going to die anyway. But still. I forced myself back up on my hooves, thankful for the Med-X dulling everything. It didn’t work as well as Buck would. With Buck I’d let somepony else deal, while I felt stronger. Med-X just held the agony off enough that I could move. Still, even without the drug coursing through my veins, all I wanted to do was smash this mare’s pretty little face into pulp.

Not bothering to reload the gun, she turned to run. The wall behind her gave her nowhere to go. I just tackled her as hard as I could. With all my weight behind me, I heard a snap as her ribs gave. Really, I liked not having ammo. It was so much more satisfying to kill ponies with my bare hooves.

I grabbed her flailing body with my teeth and dragged her to the ground. With a good stomp to the face, I ended the struggling. She’d screamed something, but I wasn’t listening. I didn’t care what they had to say. They weren’t real anyway. One last spot to check...

I could hear hooves still, the frantic pacing of somepony inside. It didn’t sound like the slaves, not like the ones I’d heard earlier. No sobbing either. This pony sounded mad. I kicked the door open and backed away.

She squeaked and bolted. Not seeing me, she ran from the room. Before she got out, I backed myself into the room I’d just left.

The pink mare ran past, down the hallways and out into the chandelier room.

The moment she passed, I spun and gave chase. This had to be the last one. The one I could question. The one I could torture until she told me what I wanted to know. Somewhere deep down, I wondered if fake ponies felt real pain?

No matter. I chased her.

She scrambled down the stairs, and I followed. I could see Lost and Xeno standing with the slave mares, Lost’s horn glowing as she patched up Battu’s wounds from the grenade. Neither saw the pink unicorn run down the stairs, nor me following her.

I didn’t bother yelling a warning. I wanted this to be personal.

She made it to the bottom and jumped over the wreckage of the piano that’d fallen. She made for the door. I jumped too, I wouldn’t let her get away. No, I was having far too much fun to let it end.

The door chimed as she ripped it open with her magic and ran through. I made it to the door a step and a half behind her. The bright day greeted me. The perfect sort of day for interrogation and murder. I tackled her to the ground.

With a scream she fell on her side and looked back at me. She begged, “No, don’t I’m not-”

“I don’t care,” I said, standing on her hind leg to keep her down. “Just tell me every little thing you-”

The bang of a gunshot cut the air.

Blood drained from the hole in her head, onto the street.

The Glowing One waved to me, sliding her gun into its holster. “Looked like you were having some trouble.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Progress: 50%

Lost Art:
Quest Perk: Pony Sutra – You are experienced in the art of giving and receiving physical pleasure. You are more likely to have sexual encounters with specific characters.

“What? We didn’t do enough to get a new level?”
“Well, it said we needed a ton more for the next level. Looks like I got a Quest Perk though!”
“I know, that’s not fair! I worked my flanks off this chapter trying to get everything done. What’d you do to earn one?”
“About the same thing, actually.”
“AH! Don’t tell me that!”
“Would you like me to get a rulebook for you, Hiddenpony?”
“This isn’t a game Xeno, it’s our lives!”
“You have a character sheet, how is this not a game?”
“ARGH!”

Chapter 16: Group Dynamics

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Chapter Sixteen: Group Dynamics
“Every soldier has a place on the battlefield. Infantry, support, medics, artillery, commanders. Work together and you just might survive.”

“Welcome.”

I watched the corpse of the fake pony slowly fade beneath me. She slowly turned from pink to black and then just melted into nothingness. Was that what I had done to all those mares in there? She hadn’t even left a bloodstain...

Realization hit me. What in the Goddesses’ names had I just done? My vision blurred, and the stinging from the glass slivers in my eyes suddenly became a million times worse as I started to cry. Unable to help myself, I threw up on the street.

“I said ‘you’re welcome,’” rasped the echoing voice of The Glowing One. She trotted over and looked at the mess I’d made on the asphalt. “And here I thought you were some Wasteland-hardened veteran, after what you did to those ghouls last night. You’d have fit right in back during the War, you know.”

I waved a hoof at her, hoping it would shut her up. I didn’t need a lecture right now. I just- I just needed to- I threw up again. It tasted worse the second time. My mind might not have any problem with gleefully running down the halls of a brothel and slaughtering ponies, but my body sure seemed to. I wiped my lips with my steel hoof, and forced myself up.

“Does it matter? I thought you had business to attend to,” I said to The Glowing One, cutting off whatever speech she might have prepared for me. I turned away from the sick I’d left, and headed for the door.

She laughed, once more, making that horrible noise bounce between my ears. Despite how damaged one of them was. I flicked the remaining one a few times, trying to get the noise out. “Honey, it’s been hours since we split up,” she said. “I saw Rosie already, she’s been having a rough day.” She looked me up and down once, then to the street. “Maybe not as bad as yours, though.”

I walked past her, not wanting to deal with the comments at the moment. Slowly, I pushed open the door and walked back inside the ‘Helter Skelter,’ remembering that somepony, somewhere, had called it ‘The Goddesses’ Bed’ instead. I didn’t have time for mysteries.

The door chimed as it closed behind me. Lost stood next to the bench where the filthy stallion had been before my rampage. Battu and the other Unity mares all sat on the bench in a row, in various states of focus. Lost’s horn glowed bright blue, as did Fouetté’s forehooves. The mare looked happy, and was by far the most lucid of the group, watching her glowing hooves as Lost healed her.

Fine Tune flitted from place to place, making quiet chirping noises as he inspected the room. I didn’t know what Lost had him looking for, but I guessed I’d find out eventually. Xeno sat at the bar, her deep blue eyes intently watching Blossom, the light-green mare. She had her knife in one hoof, twisting it into the polished surface of the counter. A cigarette hung from her mouth, gripped in her teeth and trailing smoke. Her lips were pulled back in a grimace, but I couldn’t tell if she was angry, or bored. Not that her mood mattered right now.

Almost in a daze, I walked through the room, stopping only for a half-second to look at the spot where the first pink mare had fallen to my gun. The wooden floor showed no hint that a pony had died there. Even the blood that had leaked from her head was gone, faded into nothing, just like her body. Were it not for the bullet hole in the far side of the room, I’d have never guessed something horrific happened here. I walked past the spot and into the back room where the kitchen was.

Along the back wall were several more bullet holes, one for each time I’d missed the mare I’d tried to kill. I looked at each one, and I felt my heart sink. “Dammit, I should feel bad about this!” I shouted to myself. Turning sharply, I slammed my head against the wall. I hit it with my face as many times as I could. Mistress Amble had done something to my head, and I did not like it. I wanted to feel bad for the rampage. I needed to feel guilt for what I did. It hurt that I felt worse about not feeling anything than I did about the murders.

I remembered it, from before. I’d felt so bad about killing Gunbuck, when he shot my sister, that I’d carried his severed head in my saddlebags and gave him a proper burial. So why couldn’t I feel that anymore?

No. They deserved this. These mares... this mare? Had done horrible things and needed to be put down. They’d helped to keep slaves under another’s control, and that was... beyond terrible. “I’m right,” I whispered to myself. I slammed my face against the wall one last time.

The rotten wood caved and I stumbled forward.

I twitched. Fucking zebra luck.

I could feel the distant burning of alcohol in my eyes, and in the cuts in my face. I stood there, head in the wall, and broke down. I sobbed, glad my face was hidden from the world. I should feel bad, even if they deserved it. Murder was horrific; it didn’t solve anything. And if it had become my go-to for solving a problem, then I wasn’t any better than the raiders who’d attacked us before we got to town, or the ghoul raiders who’d kept trying to murder us, even after losing their lives.

Something clicked in my mind, a little stabbing sensation from those long-annoying claws. This one felt different. This one had a feminine touch, and I could swear it felt like the purple hoof of a mare I never wanted to see again.

“Murderer,” it whispered. “I told you.” She’d been right. “Sneaking into pony’s homes and murdering them.” We’d wandered into their home, without a care in the world, and gunned all of them down. The voice in my head laughed wickedly, teasing me. I should have known better, after the first two trotted out. “Murderer,” she repeated, her voice dripping venom.

“No!” I screamed. I pulled myself from the wall, and turned to the kitchen. Pots and pans sat along the counter and the stovetops, unused but perfect for my frustrations. I grabbed them, one at a time, and threw them across the room. Something needed to feel my wrath, and I didn’t trust myself to not turn on my sister or friends if I dared leave the room. “I’m not a fucking murderer!”

Bucking and thrashing, I broke the stove’s doors and bent everything I could get my hooves on, until the strength left my sore legs, and I collapsed. I curled up on the floor amid the products of my pain and cried.

The Med-X wore off as I lay there shivering and twitching uncomfortably. Everything hurt, deep down to my bones. With every little flinch, I could feel the shackles digging at my bones, and my muscles screaming to be left alone. I didn’t want to move, or even breathe. For once in my life, I just wanted to lay there and stop existing.

I couldn’t kill myself, though. Suicide was against orders. It wasn’t necessary. But if I’d been reduced to the same mindlessness and self-destruction that drove raiders to attack a pony on sight, well, what more did I deserve than a swift death like the-

“No!” I screamed as loud as I could. I didn’t know who I was trying to convince, or if I just needed to keep telling myself until it became true. My throat felt scratchy, worn down by the sobbing and panting. “Fuck you,” I shouted, kicking at the trash on the floor all around me. I forced myself up and looked around the room.

None of them had come for me. I still stood alone. I took a deep breath and cleared my mind. I wasn’t one of those ponies. I still had something to keep me going. It wasn’t much, but I had the gall to not give the fuck up. I’d found ways to go on before.

Finding things was my Goddesses-damned special fucking talent.

No two-bit piece-of-shit slaver was going to take that away from me. I’d find a way through this if it killed me. I’d die trying, if it just meant proving that Mistress Amb-

No. She wasn’t a Mistress, she didn’t deserve the title. Amble. That cunt. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t win.

I’d found a way to put those poor feral ghouls out of their misery. I’d found a way to finish Gunbuck’s work. I’d found the Stable. My sister and I, working together, had found a way to destroy a cannibalistic monstrosity of a steel-clad pony. We’d found amazing friends. And we would find ways to fix ourselves, and become stronger for whatever lay ahead of us.

I was right, doing what I’d done. Those weren’t real ponies. And whoever they’d worked for, whoever the original pony was. The real pink mare. She deserved to have whatever doubles or clones or copies she had be destroyed for what they were doing to ponykind. I’d saved ponies I’d watched get tortured and beaten right next to me. And even if I wasn’t a shining example of a Wasteland hero like the one on the radio, I was still better than a raider who’d decided that random destruction was the best way to live their life. I’d find a way to stop the pink bitch, either with a bullet to the head, or talking her down like I had Rebar.

“I’m stronger than Amble,” I told myself, refusing to give her the honor of a title. If a monster like Wirepony could only take a hoof from me, I could beat a single mare without a scratch. All she’d done was give me the power to not feel bad when I knew a pony got what they had coming to them.

I’d made mistakes in the Wasteland, and I knew I’d make more. But, dammit, I’d get better, and I’d do better each and every time.

I stormed out of the kitchen, glancing at the freezer where I’d splattered another copy’s head in. I didn’t feel bad about it, and I didn’t need to. She wasn’t real, and she’d deserved what she’d gotten. I raised a hoof to stop my sister from saying anything to me when I returned to the main room. I needed a few more minutes. I needed to remember this feeling. I needed to see every murder I’d just committed.

I turned, and trotted up the stairs, down memory lane.

* * *

I hopped over the wreckage of the piano at the bottom of the stairs, and walked over to my sister and the Unity mares. I moved past Xeno and The Glowing One at the bar, both sitting in silence as they watched the pony behind the counter. Fine Tune was nowhere to be seen.

Lost Art worked on another of the Unity mares, one I didn’t know the name of. All four of them looked pretty terrible, though two looked like they were in better shape after L.A. healed the obvious wounds. I didn’t say anything, instead waiting for her to finish. I knew a long talk was coming, but trying to put it off as long as possible would be the least of the mistakes I’d made today.

Lost looked back at me, but said nothing. She just squinted and went back to work. Her horn’s glow finally faded, and she smiled. “Alright, Arabesque,” she said calmly. “You’re done.” She looked at the pale blue unicorn mare, who’d been sitting with the filthy stallion when I’d first walked in. “Let me work on my sister, and then I’ll take care of you Renversé. It’ll only be a few minutes more.”

The mare nodded, and looked over at the other three. All of them looked utterly defeated, and I could see the... ugh... sticky leftovers of... I shuddered. I didn’t need to think about that. They weren’t going to be held captive by this place anymore. It was a small victory. I only wished we had gotten here sooner.

Lost grabbed me in her telekinesis, her pale blue glow wrapping around my neck. She trotted away from the group and pulled me along in her magic.

I couldn’t help but follow, barely touching the ground a half-step behind her until we reached the entryway. The haze around my neck faded and I stopped. A hundred different things to say flew through my mind, but not a single one of them felt right. Instead I waited, watching as my sister’s face twisted up. Somewhere deep down, I knew she felt the exact same way I did, unable to find the right words to say.

As if unwilling to wait a second longer, I finally blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” she said at the exact same second.

We stared at one another in another moment of silence, before it finally clicked that we’d both apologized at exactly the same time.

“What for?” I asked her. I shifted uneasily on my hooves, knowing she didn’t have anything she actually needed to apologize for.

Lost Art sighed. “Rushing?” she asked. “Letting us get to the point where all you could do was run off and...” She looked at the room, her eyes trailing from the door to the kitchen, over the staircase and piano’s wreckage, and up to the second floor. “Well, for all of this.” She waved a hoof at it all.

“You didn’t do that. Amble did,” I answered as coldly as possible. I wanted to make sure she noticed the part I’d left out.

“Right. Amble. There’s more to it than that, Hidden,” she corrected me. “It just worries me... When you think the best course of action is to go off and kill all of them?”

“I didn’t kill anypony. They weren’t real,” I said. I still felt my actions were justified.

“So? You ran through a building, and obliterated everything in your path. I’m honestly surprised the ponies who got out actually survived. Half the time you were running around like that, I thought you were just killing whomever you got your hooves on,” she said, her eyes wide behind her glasses.

“I didn’t. That’s not what I was doing, and you should know me better than that,” I said, trying not to spit the words at her. “You gave me an order, remember? No killing unless it’s necessary. What I did wasn’t killing.” I looked down at her, hoping she couldn’t see me barely holding back a breakdown.

“She’d have fit in, during the War,” said The Glowing One from the bar. “A mentality like that went a long way. You get a pony willing to sacrifice everything they held dear? Those were the ones they really wanted.” She laughed. The laugh was different from her others. It was a laugh with no happiness in it. It felt more like she was trying to hold back tears than showing actual joy.

“We’re not soldiers, we’re treasure hunters,” Lost snapped. “We’re just... in a bad way lately.” She stepped close and hugged me as tight as she could. Her grip wasn’t anywhere near as strong as mine could be, but it still hurt every part of me. I must’ve been more run-down than I thought I was. All of the sudden I really wished I had some more Med-X in me.

I wrapped my hooves around her, and hugged back.

“I’m still impressed,” rasped the ghoul. “Running a pony like her down and taking out that many, whew! That’s something.” She rapped a hoof on the counter, mimicking applause.

“Wait, you got here after I finished... Just how exactly do you know what I did?” I asked. I released my sister and turned to the ghoul mare. Something felt... off, but I couldn’t put my hoof on it. Slowly, I trotted over, staring her right into her glowing eyes.

“Word travels fast,” she answered, the muscles under her skin pulling back and parting her rotten lips in a shit-eating grin. The sight of her insides shifting over one another almost made me lose my resolve, but I managed to keep control. She reached out and tapped my nose with her forehoof, and winked.

I nearly threw up again. Her hoof was rough, and dried out, but I could feel the mush behind it where her insides had rotted away. I faltered, dry-heaving, and took several steps back. When everypony in the room looked at me, I just waved them away.

Xeno went back to watching the mare behind the counter, who still looked too terrified to say a word. Lost took a step closer, but I held my hoof up.

“Finish with them,” I said, pointing to the Unity mares.

“Hidden, we’re not done talking yet,” Lost argued. She looked over to the mares sitting and waiting on her to finish healing them, but shook her head and turned back to me.

“I know. We’ll finish afterward,” I reassured her. I didn’t want to finish the conversation. I didn’t really have a choice, though. “I just need a minute.”

For a moment, L.A. looked as if she wanted to argue. She snorted and turned away, her horn lighting up as she headed back to the mares.

“If itis any consultation, Hiddenpony, I think you did well,” Xeno chimed in. She spit her cigarette out into a hoof, and smashed it into the counter. “Let us move swiftly to the next part.” She sat forward and reached across the counter. She hooked her hoof into the green mare’s mane, and twisted it around her fetlock. The mare yelped as Xeno pulled her up and onto the counter. “I recognize this mare. Shewas one at the slaver town.”

“No I wasn’t! What are you talking about? I never leave the city!” she argued, whimpering between sentences. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her polished hooves dug against the counter as she pulled back, trying to get away from the zebra and her knife.

“Really? So the reason you have two ponies I recognize from when I was being tortured by slavers is...?” I asked, trailing off to let it sink in.

The color drained from her face almost instantly. She looked back and forth between me and the four mares sitting on the other end of the room. “Tortured?” she asked, chewing on her bottom lip.

Xeno let her go, and she pulled herself back behind the counter. She crouched down so that only her eyes and ears were above the counter itself. “She... umm... said they weren’t broken in like that,” she whispered. Her ears flattened back, and tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

I trotted closer and crawled up onto the countertop. “Look at my legs,” I said, lifting my left forehoof. “See this?” I looked from her eyes to the shackle just above my fetlock.

She followed my gaze.

“This has spikes on the inside,” I explained to her. “Deep ones. It hurts to walk.”

She looked over all four of my legs, her eyes widening as she noticed each one. “But...”

“Those ponies over there?” I pointed to the Unity mares. “They came from the same place. The same ponies who did this to me.” I waved the shackle in her face. “Those same monsters worked the four of us over. Two of them shared a pen with me. So. Tell me. Is my friend here telling the truth, or is she lying to me?”

Xeno sunk her knife into the countertop, as if to emphasize my point.

“I’m sorry!” she shouted. “I... I just needed ponies to make a living, okay? There’s nothing in this town, and leaving isn’t an option!”

“We all make mistakes,” rasped The Glowing One.

I glared. She wasn’t helping. “This isn’t forgivable,” I said, cutting her off. “Not after what we’ve been through.” I looked at the mare. “Blossom, wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

I hopped from the counter, and sat down on the remaining empty barstool. “Alright, Blossom. Why can’t you leave? What about this town is special? What made you think that owning another living, breathing, thinking creature was okay? Did you think you couldn’t afford to leave? Because you certainly managed to afford purchasing the lives of these mares!”

I remembered the auction, and exactly how expensive they’d been. “Did you get the collars too? Cause I remember hearing about ponies in town talking about them here. Huh?”

She shrunk back from every question I asked, not answering a word. At my last question, she burst into tears and hid behind the counter. She just laid there and sobbed, just like I had back in the kitchen.

I needed to calm down. I could feel the anger rising in my gut, and I didn’t need that. I needed a break. I looked back at Xeno. “Can you just keep watching her?” I asked. “Lost can get better answers than me...”

“Yes, Hiddenpony. But we must hurry,” she answered, stabbing her knife into the bar top again. “The delays are starting to tire me.” She leaned in close, and pressed her muzzle against mine. “Wewill go to my brothers next, yes?”

“As soon as we leave town, I promise.”

“Then I will watch this Blossompony,” she answered.

I looked over at the ghoul, suddenly worrying about just how much radiation I might be soaking up from her. “You’re not coming with us, are you?” I asked. I glanced over at Xeno to get her opinion on it.

Xeno had already lit another cigarette, and ignored me. Her ears were skewed forward, listening to the mare behind the counter, her eyes staring at herself in the mirror.

“You’re an interesting little group, but I know more about you than I’m comfortable with already. I’ll be keeping my distance,” the Glowing One answered. She raised a hoof and brushed the thin remains of her mane away, before hopping down to the ground. “Keep yourself out of trouble, or we’ll be seeing each other again.” She looked over at my sister, then back at me. “One question before I go?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“What’s with the hoof?” she asked, pointing at my steel forehoof. “More trouble with slavers?”

“No. A Wire-monstrosity bit it off,” I answered. I tried not to think about the details. “This is a replacement.”

She raised both eyebrows, and her eyes lit up, glowing bright enough that I could see the outline of her skull through her skin. “Well, that’s... very interesting,” she said, blinking a few times. “Stay safe out there, and remember: friendship.” She turned tail and trotted out.

I turned to my sister as the glowing mare left.

Lost had finished with the last of the mares and was digging through her saddlebags for something.
I dropped to the ground and sighed. “Thank you, Xeno,” I said.

“For what, Hiddenpony?” she asked.

“Being there,” I answered. “Friendship matters, right? So... thanks for not leaving.”

“Itis funny, you speak as if I have some place to go to,” she answered dryly, looking back at herself in the mirror. And she said her mother spoke in riddles. She wanted to go home so badly, yet said she had nowhere to go back to. I’d never understand zebras.

I walked across the large room to Lost. “How’re they doing? All good?”

“Let’s just say that I don’t think I’ll be taking another Mint-al for a while. Headaches be damned,” she answered, tapping her forehead gingerly. She winced at even the slight contact. “But they’ll be okay.” She turned to the Unity mares. “Right, fillies?”

The mares each grumbled something affirmative, but none would look her in the eye.

“Good enough. How about you?” she asked, turning away from the tattered-looking Unity mares.

“Everything hurts and I’m exhausted. Another shot of Med-X or some Buck and I’ll be fine,” I assured her. Seeing the look she gave me over her glasses, I corrected myself. “Maybe just a nap, once things settle down.” I could always limp myself along with a healing potion, but that wouldn’t give me the jolt Buck would, or the relief a good sleep would.

“This is why I wanted to stay at home, and have some time for recovery,” L.A. snapped.

“I’m fine. I promise.”

“The rampage you went on says otherwise,” she countered.

“Are we really back on that again? We went over it already. It’s in the past,” I retorted defensively. “I did what I needed to. We’re fine.”

“It’s not over,” she corrected me. “First of all, we have absolutely none of the answers we could have gotten if we’d kept one of them around-”

“I planned to leave one alive,” I interrupted. “But the ghoul shot her in the head before I could ask any questions.”

“Mmm, only after you slaughtered the rest,” she said, shuffling a hoof. “The second problem is that we don’t know just how fragile you- we both are, after what happened.” She looked away, at the floor between us.

“I told you what happened to me. It’s not my fault you didn’t see fit to tell me what Sunbright did to you,” I shouted at her. “We have too much shit to do. I don’t have time for a fucking lecture!” I pressed my forehead against hers. “You have no idea what I went through, watching you get beaten, without so much as being able to raise a hoof in your defense! I’m your damn sister, for fuck’s sake! It’s what we’ve done our entire lives! Protect each other!” I pushed her back, her hooves sliding against the floor. “And you didn’t get more metal bits stuck in your body! I wish I had the magic to make you feel what I felt!”

“She chained me down and tried to kill me, and worked me until my very last spell. Until I collapsed,” Lost said calmly. The look in her eyes was exactly the same as the one she’d had when we were trotted through the furnace room at Leathers. Given what Sunbright had done to that filly, I could only imagine which spell she used against my sister.

“She taunted me,” Lost continued, “teaching me how to cast that arcane blast, and daring me to use it against her, knowing full well she could easily dodge any attempt I made. She worked me non-stop, until I couldn’t even cast, until I was totally burnt out. She questioned everything I said, and when she realized I was lying to protect you...” She shuddered, her whole body shaking violently. “I... I don’t want to talk about it.” Tears rolled down her cheeks as she leaned against me. I could feel her shivers in my own bones. Whatever she couldn’t say... I knew it was worse, and it hurt me too.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was the only thing I could say.

“We both went through a lot,” she admitted, still not looking at me.

“We’ll get better,” I said, trying out my most reassuring voice.

“You know I can’t let you out of my sight anymore, right?” she asked. “Not after what you did here.”

“I’m a grown mare,” I argued. “I can handle myself.”

“Hidden...”

“Don’t you trust me?” I asked. I took a step back and stared her right in the eyes. “I need to know.”

She didn’t say yes. She just looked away and took a step back.

That was all the answer I needed. I turned and ran. I dodged past Fine Tune as he walked back into the building, making him chirp and jump out of the way. I ran into the streets.

I ran until I couldn’t hear Lost calling after me.

* * *

How dare she?

I slowed myself from a full gallop to a trot, feeling the weight of the world finally falling from my back. I wanted to put the entire Wasteland between my sister and me. For the first time since I could remember, I wanted to be completely alone. She’d always been there to back me up and save my flanks when I needed it.

But now?

She didn’t even trust me to be out of her sight. How could we be a team if she couldn’t expect me to have her back like I knew she’d have mine. We were sisters for Celestia’s sake! I laughed. Celestia’s sake... Wasn’t she the older of two sisters, too? The old stories that mom had told us as fillies... how back before the Wasteland, when Equestria real, that there’d been Celestia and Luna. She’d told us the story of Nightmare Moon and Luna’s banishment, of her return.

I felt like that mare now. I could understand exactly why she’d been gripped by darkness, and fought against her older sister. I wanted to do that right now myself. Lost had always been better than me, smarter, more talented. And now she didn’t even trust me.

I didn’t need her. I could be the bigger mare. The stronger one, the one who saved everypony.

I looked around at the buildings I no longer recognized. I watched the filthy, ragged ponies, looking out from alleyways and buildings with blown-out windows and doors. I’d saved them, hadn’t I? None of them paid me any mind as I walked by, as if they didn’t know I’d just been fighting to stop whatever pony had them underhoof by their addictions. I’d run my legs off to-

“Ow.”

My legs actually really hurt. I groaned, and trotted to the side of the unused road, then leaned against a crumbling wall. A few minutes of rest, and I’d be okay. A few minutes surrounded by ponies who would appreciate me for what I did, rather than tell me they couldn’t trust me or accuse me of going on rampages, would do me good. “She wasn’t even a real pony,” I muttered to myself under my breath.

I dug through my saddlebags, idly wishing I’d brought the PipBuck with me instead of leaving it with my sister. It’d be so much easier to find what I needed with that little cheater-y magic device. I pulled a full bottle from the saddlebag, and popped it open. Better late than never.

I took out one of the little pills of Buck and looked at it. I put the top back on the bottle, and thought about all the little wonders medicine like this had done for me. “You’re a great little thing, you know that?” I told the pill. “You give me the strength to smash whatever I need to, and the power to ignore the pains when I need to block them out. Sure, you’re not as good at numbing as mister Med-X is, but you’re sure a better use of my time.”

“It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?” said a voice, the owner of which ended up being a short unicorn mare with a cherry red mane.

“Huh? Who’re you?” I asked.

“Fire Bomb,” she answered. She sat down across from me, and propped herself up against a lamp post. She tried looking me in the eyes, but I could see her glancing distractedly at the Buck in my hoof, and at the bottle. I sighed, and passed her the little pill. “This stuff’ll do whatever ya need, eh?” she asked before chomping obnoxiously on the pill and making a big show of swallowing it. She lurched afterward, then let out a sigh.

“Yeah, it’s pretty awesome,” I agreed, pulling out another for myself. I just needed something to take the ache out of my legs, but a conversation partner couldn’t hurt, right? I tossed the second pill into my mouth, and swallowed. After a moment, the pain subsided, and I felt better. Somewhere deep inside, a little version of myself argued that I needed to stop taking the pill. I quashed the voice, and grinned, feeling the power in my legs. If only I had something I could smash. “Do you think a pony who helps others is a hero?” I asked her, fighting against the desire to reach across and put my steel hoof through her face.

She took a deep breath and threw her head back. Her eyes opened wide, both bloodshot and her pupils small as pinheads. She bared her teeth and screamed, “Fuck, yes!” The mare smashed both forehooves into the ground a few times, breathing heavily.

She snorted several times to calm herself down. “I used to run with a bad crowd, I don’t think I can answer that sort of question,” she answered. She had a razor-thin band of pink around her leg, so faint it was almost invisible. Were it not for the sharp contrast against her dark coat, I wouldn’t have been able to see it at all. “But, well... This shit’s a lot better, and it only costs a little...” She laid herself down and stared up at the bottle in my hoof. As calm as she looked, I could still see her grinding her teeth, and the little spark in her eye that I knew all too well.

“I’ll give you another, if you give me a real answer,” I offered. What was one pill for some validation, after all?

She perked up, her ears swiveling forward and a smile forming. “Sure, sure. Look. A hero’s a good pony, right?” She tensed her legs, hooves curling and flexing ever so slightly.

I nodded. I felt my own legs doing the same, as if my body were trying to start something without me getting into it. I fought against it, wanting to keep in control, to not destroy everything around me. She was right there. I didn’t need to kill her. I could just rough her up a little. It’d be so easy...

“You think you did good?”

“I think I did great. I stopped a pony who was abusing others, and I set those mares free,” I answered. “I fucking know it’s a good thing.” The same little pony in my mind crossed her forehooves and argued that I should think whether or not I was kidding myself. Without the drug involved, I could practically see the red blood of ponies killed with so very little effort.

“Sounds like a hero to me, then!” Fire Bomb practically shouted. She crawled slowly closer, her eyes never leaving the bottle I held, her tail twitching back and forth, and her ears skewing side to side. I could see a hunger in her eyes, and I couldn’t tell whether it was for the drug, or for killing me.

“Alright, fine. You’ve earned it I guess,” I said, relenting. I opened the bottle and gave her another pill, which she took by levitating it in her magic. Her eyes matched her mane, and so did her telekinetic haze. Goddesses-damned fucking cheater magic! I couldn’t help but growl.

“Like I said, I used to run with bad ponies. We killed who we wanted, and took what we wanted. Leader saw himself as a hero, recruiting those he felt worthy, and taking them with him over to the old manufacturing district,” she explained. She took the second pill and let out a happy-sounding groan that bordered on lust. “What was right for him was right for the group. He did good, sometimes.” Her tail snapped, and she stood up on her hooves. She arched her back and dragged her forehoof against the ground.

“Ashen Hooves, right?” I asked her. I slid the bottle of Buck away, not wanting to offer her another. It was mine, and I didn’t want to give it all away. Ironically, I found myself doing to her exactly what the pink mare had been doing to the town. But that was it. She wasn’t getting any more. I wasn’t going to enable her to throw her life away. I needed it more anyway. It got me through fights, it made me stronger and tougher. I wasn’t going to let this bitch squander it all.

“Yeah, yeah. See. He’s always looking for good ponies. Ones that can get the job done,” she explained.

“I can get the job done just fine. But that’s the problem: how do I know that what I did was the right thing?” I asked her. The conversation had taken quite a weird turn, and I really needed to either steer it back on task, or meet the challenge I could tell she was giving me. I’d win. Easy. I just needed answers first. Then I’d beat the piss out of her.

“I’m getting there, just listen,” she said. She shook a hoof at me, then slammed it into the ground, hard enough to chip chunks out of the sidewalk. “Sometimes others don’t agree with you, and you gotta find the ones that really want to keep on your side. Those are the ones-”

“Stop,” I cut her off. “I went on a rampage and killed several ponies to save a few. Was it worth it? Do the ends justify the means? Somepony told me that they do, if you look at it in the right timeframe.” I gritted my teeth. “A few deaths for ponies who aren’t really...” My thoughts were strangely clear, but I seemed to have the damndest time expressing them through the haze of violence at the front of my mind.

“Rampage, eh?” Fire Bomb said with a chuckle. “I miss rampages. Those were the days.” She looked up at the sky and smiled so widely that I thought the top of her head might pop off. She laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh. Whatever joy might have been in it was from the memory of the pain she’d caused others.

That crystallized my thoughts. I never wanted to end up like that. I wanted to to turn her head into pulp, but fought the urge to tackle her, no matter how easy it would be. I knew that the Buck was goading me to act, but I had to fight against it, no matter how tempting it was. “Hey!” I snapped. “I asked you a question!”

“Huh, wha..? Oh, right,” she whispered. She looked back at me. “Do you think you did right by them ponies?” Her eyes flickered to my saddlebags, then back to me.

“Yes. I killed a dozen copies in an effort to save ponies I knew were slaves, and had been tortured and sold off,” I answered her. “I did what I needed to, because they needed saving. Who cares what my tactics were? That pink pony needed to be stopped.”

“Sounds like you did the right thing to me, saving ponies is hero work rig- Wait, pink pony?” she asked. She pinned her ears back and glared at me. No matter what thoughts ruled her head, I knew that look.

I forced myself up into a standing position, and glared right back. “Yeah, a pink mare. Aquamarine eyes, dark pink mane and tail. She’d been supplying drugs to that place... the Goddesses’ Bed, or Helter Skelter, or whatever the actual name of it was,” I answered her. “Why?” I practically spat the question at her. I had a very good feeling about what was about to happen. I took a step forward, daring her to start something.

“You killed Rose! How’m I going to get my fix now?” she screamed. She grabbed the sides of her head with her hooves and started to shake. “No... no... fuck! I can’t go back to Ashen, or he’ll kill me for desertion!” She looked me right in the eye. “You!” Her eyelid twitched, and she took a swing at me.

I didn’t expect a pony her size to have that much behind her. Her hoof caught me right in the cheek. I shrugged it off, letting somepony else deal with the pain. She’d done exactly what I’d wanted her to. I grinned.

Instinct kicked in. I tackled the mare into a nearby lamppost, smashing her head against the metal pole while I bashed her face in the exact same spot she’d hit me with my left forehoof. Inside my head, I heard somepony screaming for me to stop, but me and the Buck needed to vent. And this Fire Bomb pony gave me the perfect excuse.

I wouldn’t kill her though, not intentionally.

The blood flowed, and my veins surged. The pounding in my legs and head overtook everything else. It was hot and powerful. I whinnied and struck at her again, only to find my hoof blocked.

The mare chuckled. I looked over to what exactly what she found so funny. Her hoof, once a brown that reminded me of the Steel Rangers from Stable Sixty, now glowed bright red, almost matching her mane. She clobbered me in the face, knocking me clear across the sidewalk, and into the wall of the building I’d been sitting against. It burned like the slab of metal Lost had stuffed my stump into.

“Fuckin’ killin’ my dealer?!” she spat. “The fuck is wrong with you!? You think I can just go back to Ashen after deserting him like that?” She charged, both her forehooves glowing the same bright red, with little flickers of light erupting all around them.

Suddenly, I knew why they called her Fire Bomb.

The unicorn reared up, pulling both forehooves back. I rolled away, but it didn’t matter. Her hooves slammed into the concrete of the sidewalk, and burst into flame. A shock wave toppled me as I tried to get to my hooves. And she kept after me! She let out a war-cry and raised both brilliantly flaming forehooves to stomp me, matching the flaring of her horn.

In for a bit, in for a cap. I met her halfway, sidestepping at the last second, just like I’d done to Slipstock a week and a half ago. I heard a quiet ‘huh?’ when we passed one another, and took that as my cue. I slammed her sideways and pinned her against the building. Plans? What plan? I needed one, in a hurry.

Fire Bomb struggled as I held her against the wall, and felt forehooves flailing as she tried to attack me. Thankfully, ponies didn’t quite bend that way. She might not be able to get to me, but I was stuck too. “Let me go before I turn you to steak!” she screamed.

And then a flash of brilliance hit me. I grabbed her tail’s dock in my teeth and pulled, shifting to loosen my hold on her at the same time. With every ounce of strength I could muster, I swung her around, dragging her along the rubble and brick wall in front of me, her cries of pain music to my ears. The aches in my legs were gone, lost in the adrenaline rush. I swung her around and let her topple... then hesitated, not wanting to deal with the flaming hooves. But my body acted on its own. I leapt forward and slammed her against the pavement with my own hooves.

She grunted, but it didn’t seem to faze her as much as I’d hoped. She wrapped both flaming forelegs around me, and dragged me down onto her, bringing her head up and slamming her horn against me.

I dodged being stabbed through the eye with her horn, managing to only get a deep gouge across my face. It both stung and burned at the same time, as if her horn were on fire and dipped in alcohol.

“Oh, fuck!” I screamed. I hadn’t cleaned myself off after the last fight. I was still covered in booze. Fire Bomb brought a fiery hoof across my face, hard. I heard something inside my skull break as I burst into flames. The alcohol caught and flared up, scorching parts of my coat off and blinding me in one eye. I closed it just in time, and the fire dissipated. The booze burned away in a flash, and left me with nothing but a pain that even the Buck couldn’t rid me of.

Fire Bomb laughed and hit me again, though the second hit didn’t have the same heat behind it. The air felt cool and painful on my exposed skin, and the hoof-to-the-face only made the sting worse.

I leaned back and slammed her to the ground. I could beat her, burnt or not. I dropped down, planting whole weight on her and forcing her hooves outward. The ache in my legs flooded back, suddenly feeling like a fire inside my bones. I really started to hate fire. After all the times it’d been used against me, I felt justified. With a war cry of my own, I bashed my hooves and forehead against the burning unicorn.

I didn’t have cheater magic or a horn to stab with, but I refused to let up. After releasing a furious flurry of blows, I finally let up, breathing heavily and looking down at the mare’s bloodied face.

She spat a gob of blood off to the side, then spat out a tooth, and laughed.

I had no idea what was so funny, but I found myself laughing as well. Unable to control myself, I rolled off of her and simply laughed. The heat disappeared, and her laughter rang in time with my own. I hoped she felt the same as me, worn out and past the point where she could actually fight. I knew I felt it, my legs burning and aching.

The Buck wasn’t lasting as long anymore.

“Sorry,” I muttered, looking at the red-maned unicorn.

“I’ll find a new supplier, or I’ll go back,” she answered, “I suddenly really miss fighting with the gang.” Her horn lit up again and the familiar knitting feeling of healing flesh covered my face. The fires around her hooves snuffed out, and she let out a sigh, closing her eyes. “Shit ain’t as good as it used to be, anyway.”

“Don’t have the same kick,” I agreed. Lifting my flesh forehoof, I tapped at my face. I could feel again, and my coat was back in place. “Thanks.”

“Sure. Worth it for a pony who can give as good as she gets,” she replied with a small smile. “You might want to look into joining up with The Ashen. We could use a good ‘hero’ fighter. Hup!” She rolled to her hooves and looked down at me. “Manufacturing district, the old E.C.C. building. You’ll know it when you see it.” She winked, turned, and limped away.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath into my overworked lungs. One more thing, then I’d go back and... and do... something. I didn’t know exactly what yet.

* * *

Given what had happened with Fire Bomb, I found myself doubting my prowess in hoof-to-hoof combat. I knew I could hold my own when in a bad situation, but I needed to stop having to rely on drugs to do it. If only because it made everything hurt a lot worse afterward. On top of that, I’d been dealt too many moral defeats in my fights, even when I’d technically ‘won’ them. I needed more ammunition, and I needed to prove I could handle myself outside of combat as well as in it.

Okay, really, I just didn’t want to go back to my sister and friends with my tail between my legs and nothing to show for it but a face that almost got burnt off. It still stung a little, but at least the mare had been friendly enough to heal me up and not leave me with a horrific burn. I felt a sudden twinge on my back, where so long ago I’d been hit with a grenade and lit on fire, then whipped, then- eugh!

I focused, kept walking, and searched for a store.

After what felt like an eternity of searching, despite aching legs and lungs that wouldn’t breathe right, I managed to find a store. At least what I thought was a store. The sign that hung above the door was made of an old Sparkle~Cola billboard, split down the center of the cap. No other building I’d found looked remotely like a store, so I figured I’d just try my luck.

I pushed the door open and walked in, praying to the Goddesses that I wasn’t walking into somepony’s home. Inside looked exactly like a house, with a shattered staircase along one wall, a chair, and a small table in the center of the room. The table was loaded with knick-knacks, ranging from punctured stuffed teddy bears to unopened cans of centuries-old food. Along the back wall was a shelf covered in guns, all lined up next to one another.

Either somepony was extremely obsessed about how they decorated, or I’d just wandered into a repurposed building.

“Hello?” called out the soft voice of a mare. “Anypony there?” she asked a moment later. From the hallway at the back of the room trotted out a massively tall mare with a pastel-pink coat and a two-toned blue mane that flowed as she walked.

I froze. “Goddesses help me,” I whispered under my breath. Another one of those unkillable giant alicorn monsters.

She towered over me, her eyes scrunched up in confusion and one eyebrow raised. The mare had a horn longer than any I’d seen aside from Rebar’s, and yellow eyes that reminded me of what little sunlight I’d seen through the cloud cover. She walked into the room and took a seat behind the table.

“No wings?” I half-asked the mare, half asking myself. I wasn’t quite sure. She didn’t have any wings like Rebar did, and she had a cutie mark that looked almost identical to the sign on the door; a bottle cap shattered clear in half. Come to think of it, Rebar hadn’t had a cutie mark that I’d seen. I knew I wasn’t the best at noticing that sort of thing at first glance, but the moment I noticed this alicorn-looking mare’s, it stuck in my head.

“Of course not. When have you ever met a unicorn with wings?” she asked, her voice barely loud enough to hear. She pursed her lips into a sweet little smile and gave me a once over, looking from hooves to head. “So, new in town then, I take it?” she asked. Her voice lost the quiet sweetness, and instead sounded like a mare ready to devour the first piece of food she’d seen in a year. Suddenly it became painfully clear that I was ‘fresh meat.’

I gulped.

“Passing through,” I answered, trying to sound as noncommittal as possible. I really hoped she hadn’t seen or heard me gulp like that.

“Buying or selling?” Her question was short and to the point, from a mare who knew exactly what she wanted.

“Both,” I answered. I licked my lips and rolled a shoulder to slide the saddlebag from my sides. It thudded on the floor.

The mare’s ears perked up and twisted forward. She sat up straight and her eyes practically lit up, brightening up so much they almost looked like a different color. “Excellent. And you are?” she asked as she slowly lifted herself to her hooves. She stopped barely a foot from me and lifted my saddlebags in her telekinesis. The mare was easily twice my height, but unlike the addict from a few hours ago, she had none of the bulk, leaving a slim mare who suddenly made me feel quite unattractive by comparison.

“Hidden. Hidden Fortune,” I squeaked. Whether the crash from all the drugs had sapped my mental strength as well as physical, or I was just intimidated by this pony, I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I really wished I’d brought Xeno to do the bartering for me.

The unicorn nodded curtly, already lifting out various objects from my saddlebags with her magic and floating them in the air in a small circle around her head. She continued this until she had everything I owned out of the bag, hovering for her inspection. Her eyes darted back and forth between guns and pills, syringes and bullets. With expert control of her magic, she shifted the items around as if juggling them, until she’d sectioned everything into two different levitated piles.

“I’m willing to put a price on the items in this pile,” she explained nodding her head over to the one group of items. “The rest of them aren’t worth their weight in caps, and I suggest you keep the lot of them. I don’t see any resale value in the bunch, and I doubt that the price I could possibly offer while still making a profit for myself would be worth either taking them off your hooves or cluttering my shop. Assuming you wish to sell everything in the aforementioned selection that I do see fit to purchase from you, I believe I can give you fair market value.” She moved the items she didn’t wish to purchase back into my saddlebags and lowered them back onto me.

“Umm. What?” I asked. I hadn’t been able to keep up with everything she’d just said, let alone figure out what at least three of the words meant.

“Oh, aren’t you just darling?” she cooed. With the items in tow, she floated away the ones on her table and placed them in a perfectly identical setup on the floor to the side of her chair. Resting herself back into it, she lowered each item back onto the table. I could see the remaining grenades we’d brought, my various drugs, and a few other pieces of what I’d considered trash in there. None of it had a value assigned in my mind, and without the PipBuck to give it a value it somehow randomly knew, I didn’t know what any of it was worth.

“Well, I don’t normally do the selling, I have a friend who takes care of that,” I admitted. The minute the words left my mouth I realized I’d made a mistake. I didn’t know a lot about how to barter properly, but I knew giving her the upper hoof was a big problem. Rather than approach it directly, I snatched up the things I knew I didn’t want to sell. I left the trash and two of the grenades, but pulled away the drugs and what I intended to keep. “But I know I don’t want to sell those, I still need them. Instead, umm...” I pulled out the popgun pistol that I’d been using, having found it far too weak for my tastes, and some of the spare ammo for it. “I’d rather get rid of these instead, even if that won’t get me the same amount.”

“How frugal of you,” the mare commented.

“Wait, since we’re doing business, what’s your name? I told you mine,” I said. If I was going to get scammed, I wanted to know by who, so I could come back later with Xeno and do some proper bartering. Goddesses, why’d I done a stupid thing like run off on my own? I really could have used some backup.

“Most ponies call me Deal Breaker, but you can call me Ms. Breaker,” she purred. Her horn lit up with a golden glow and she lifted the pistol up to inspect it, paying almost no attention at all to me.

Deal Breaker? My heart sank at the name. Silently, I vowed to never try to go to a shop without Xeno. In all honesty, I hadn’t even paid attention to half of what I took anymore, ever since we’d started going all out and taking every last thing we could. Looking over the surprisingly well-organized mess on her table, I saw boxes of cleaner, scrap electronics, empty shell casings, and even some toys. I didn’t know where I’d even picked up half of those things!

I did grab the scrap electronics back. “Sorry, promised these to somepony,” I admitted. I tossed them back into my saddlebags and sat across from her.

“Right, that removes quite a bit of the incentive to make a purchase from you,” she said, “since I had a pony lined up requesting that sort of thing. But I suppose if you really do think you have a better use for them, then by all means, be my guest.” She waved a hoof across the items on the table. “Fifty, total.”

“Fifty? That’s an outrage!” I shouted. I didn’t really know if they were worth one cap or one hundred, but without anything to go on, I tried my best to pretend I knew how to haggle. “Seventy-five, minimum.”

She laughed. “Forty-five.”

“What? That’s even less,” I argued. Part of me wanted to reach out and snatch everything up and send Xeno in instead. It would only take another walk through town and admitting to Lost that she was right about not letting me out of her sight. Only that. Ugh. I couldn’t let that happen, so I just swallowed my pride. “Trade instead?”

“I thought you wished to sell?” Ms. Breaker asked, casually tilting her head to the side and giving me an inquisitive look. The mare’s long, flowing tail flicked through the air to the side of her chair, distracting me just enough. I thought I saw her smirk, but I couldn’t be sure.

“I need ammo for my gun,” I said, motioning toward where Persistence hung at my side. “Bullets are worth more than caps to me right now.”

“Oh! Why didn’t you say so, darling? We could have skipped right to that. That’s a .308, correct?” she asked. Her horn lit up again and a box underneath the shelf on the far wall lifted into the air. She levitated it over toward the two of us and cleared a spot on the little table for it. Setting the box down gingerly, she flipped off the lid to reveal row after row of perfectly ordered shells, all going from largest to smallest in little lines from one edge of the box to the next.

“Yeah, how many do you have?” I asked, letting my eyes trail over the box. From the top, I couldn’t quite tell which bullet was which. I knew enough about guns to fire them and load the bullet that fit, but I couldn’t pick them out of a row without being able to see them from the side.

“More than enough to match the value of what you have,” she answered. A golden haze covered two dozen bullets and she lifted them from the box. Once more lifting multiple things, she closed the box and floated it back to its place without breaking her telekinetic grip on the ammunition.

I’d remembered when I’d had more bullets than I could count. Was I really stuck in such a position where I had to scrape together everything I could, just to afford enough to get me through a single battle? Maybe I just needed to take some time to hone my other skills, or learn how to use Persistence properly. Or keep the gun from firing multiple times. Maybe if I had Lost take a look at her, and give the gun a once-over? She’d already been really good at using her magic to keep our guns in tip-top shape. I looked back and forth between the ammo and the things Ms. Breaker wanted to purchase, before finally looking at the mare herself.

Hunting for ammo in the Wastes was so, so much easier than this...

She smiled, a tiny smile with just the very edges of her lips curled. Her telekinesis floated the bullets in the air, bobbing them up and down enticingly. It was obvious even to me that she’d been doing it on purpose, and I hated the fact that she knew just how much of a bind she had me in.

I didn’t need the others, though. I could do things on my own just fine. I wasn’t the forgotten sister of a much better, more talented, and smarter mare. I was just as good. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have her cheater magic, or Xeno’s way with words and her freaky self-professed luck, or that I couldn’t make myself look like any pony I needed to to exploit my way through a situation.

I stomped my steel hoof. “Deal,” I stammered, doing my best to keep from sounding desperate.

“Ms. Breaker,” she corrected me. “And no, this isn’t a deal. To purchase what I hold here in my grasp, I’m quite afraid that I’ll be needing much more than what you presently offer up as a trade. The value betwixt the two sets of items is far, far from even, and to balance it out, I’d need something quite in excess of what you probably have to offer in return.” She shifted on her haunches and settled back into the chair, her hooves curling against the floor. She raised one forehoof and stacked the bullets in a little pile atop it, letting her magic hold them from falling off onto the floor.

“How much?” I asked, already afraid of the answer. I knew I’d need to start digging out caps to shell over. I also knew I’d probably overpay.

Maybe I did need them. I probably needed them. Oh, fuck it. I knew I was worthless without them. The only true thing I brought to our little group was the fact that I could act as the muscle. I was the best shot, and with my steel hoof I hit the hardest. Biting back the frustration, I nodded.

“Fifty Five,” she said with a sneer.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew she’d added the extra five as an insult. I didn’t care. I fished out the caps she demanded, and threw them across the table.

With ease, she snatched up every single cap from the air with her magic. I’d never seen such fine control of cheater magic by a pony, even from mom when she’d pulled off all sorts of little tricks while teaching Lost.

“Pleasure, Miss Fortune,” she said. With a whisper, she added, “Do come again.”

“Of course, Ms. Breaker. I’ll visit the very next time I have something to sell,” I answered mindlessly. It took me a moment to realize what just happened, and I shook my head. “I mean, if I’m ever in town.”

The mare smirked at me, and passed me the ammunition.

I snatched it up in my hoof, threw it into my saddlebag, and left, once more with my tail between my legs. I needed my sister and my friends, no matter how angry or justified I felt my anger was, and I’d need to just suck up my failures. Without my friends, I got taken advantage of.

Twice, in as many hours, I’d gotten into serious trouble. Was I really that pathetic?

* * *

The first thing I planned to do was check the PipBuck to see if I’d just gotten scammed. Okay, first thing I was checking was how badly I was just scammed. Once outside Deal Breaker’s shop, I loaded up Persistence so she had a full clip. I left the rest of the ammo sitting on top of my saddlebags.

I vowed never to do the shopping myself again, now that I knew just how outclassed I really was. The bright side was that we had Xeno now, and could go back to Pommel Falls, avoid Hydro, and get her to take Broker down a few pegs. The little glimmer of future revenge was nice, but it didn’t really do much for me at the moment.

I’d found myself lost again, in a particularly destroyed part of town. On the whole, I’d realized, the further in one direction I went, the worse the destruction. Places like The Restless Mare and Deal Breaker’s shop were located in the better parts of town, while whatever the actual name of the other bar was, was further down in the more ruined section. I felt a bit of relief knowing I was at least close. L.A. and the others would either be at The Restless Mare or waiting for me at The Goddesses’ Bed.

I decided I liked that name better, since it was far less weirdly gibberish. The connection to the Goddesses didn’t hurt. Maybe now that we’d effectively vacated it, I could use one of the rooms for a nap.

Then I remembered what they’d been used for, and shuddered. Nevermind. I could wait until we got somewhere safer. I’d already worked myself to exhaustion and felt a nice second wind coming on. The aches and pains were starting to subside, and I didn’t even really feel tired anymore. I’d gone so far in that direction that the sleepiness had totally disappeared.

Idly, I wondered if this was how Lost felt all the time. I rarely saw her actually sleep, and she tended to stay up late in the night doing whatever it was her cheater magic let her do. With her special talent of fixing things, that usually meant maintaining our weapons and equipment. On occasion she would also fix up any bit of old world tech so would could sell it for a higher price later.
.

I’d never be able to do that with my hooves. No skill for fine manipulation and all. I looked down at my hoof. Maybe I could get claws, like a griffon’s, attached somehow? I laughed. As if that would ever happen. I was a pony, and ponies had hooves.

It was just another reminder that, without my friends, I couldn’t really do a whole lot by myself. Terminals and the like terrified me, and I couldn’t barter or pick locks with any particular skill. I didn’t know how to mend a wound unless somepony told me exact steps to do it. On top of all that, I couldn’t even sneak well anymore because of the Goddesses’ damned clanking of my hoof. I might have gotten used to the sound by now, but other ponies always stopped to look when I came stomping through.

I turned a corner, and so did my thoughts. I walked down another road, looking for the brothel.

I wished for the PipBuck, both for the map and the radio. Hearing about the heroine on the radio would be a perfect way to lift my spirits right now. I bet she never had to worry about things like whether or not she was justified in a rampage, killing ponies she felt deserved it. She was a hero, like we were pretending to be. Like the stallion I’d killed had been.

Should I go back and visit his head? I’d told him ages ago that I wouldn’t be coming back, but that was back when I’d thought we wouldn’t be heading that way ever again. I couldn’t risk a romp through the Wasteland, just to tell a severed head hello. But if we were traveling back by, and going to walk right past him, all I had to do was look for the tree I’d marked, and make a quick stop. I’m sure nopony would mind... Except maybe Xeno.

I’d make it quick. I needed advice. I’d gotten used to the image of other ponies in my head, both a version of myself on Buck, and the little version of Amble that I could never quite see, whispering in my ear. So who knew, maybe I’d get some really good advice on how to be a hero.

Right now, I didn’t feel like one. My mind didn’t care, but my heart hurt something fierce. On the other hoof, having deluded myself into thinking I was capable of being a hero and saving ponies might have been my first big mistake. I was a treasure hunter at heart, a pony who survived. Not a savior.

I turned the corner and started down the next block. I hoped to find it soon, and save me from my own thoughts.

I didn’t really feel like a good pony at this point either. Had Lost not exploited a weakness of mine and given me an order, I’d probably have become just as bad as one of those raiders or bandits, taking joy in murder, without any care for others. I needed to set myself right. I decided that yes, I would go see Gunbu-

A lance of pain shot through my side. Whatever I’d been thinking about disappeared, replaced by agony. I screamed in pain as I fell to the ground. A bang echoed down the street from the gunshot. Blood poured down my sides, dripping to the shattered road from under my armor.

I bit my tongue to stop the screaming and looked back to see what happened. Breathing heavily, I pulled my jacket to the side. There was a hole in it, and another clean through my armor. Inside looked bad.

I needed to get back. I needed to get to my sister. At least to apologize before I bled out.

I forced myself to my hooves, only to collapse a second later. I vomited from the pain. The same kind of pain I remembered from when I’d broken a rib before. This felt so much worse. I checked my other side and saw a bulge in the armor, where the round had punched clear through me and hit the other side. I felt worse by a scale of thousands. Had they... used an armor-piercing round on me?

With blood dripping from the corners of my mouth, I dug frantically through my saddlebags. I needed something, anything, to heal myself. Mostly, I needed Lost for this, but a healing potion would do in the meantime. At least I didn’t have to worry about trapping the bullet inside. Finally finding a potion, I dragged it out and chugged it, praying to the Goddesses I hadn’t lost too much blood or gotten too torn-up inside.

Chucking the bottle down the street, I looked around. I needed to know where they’d fired from, and why they hadn’t gone for a second shot. Was somepony toying with me? The gunshot scattered the drug-addled locals, and they’d rapidly vanished. I didn’t see anypony with a gun nearby. No glint from a scope.

“What the absolute fuck!” I screamed at the empty streets. Dragging myself back to my hooves, I limped forward, struggling to pull my hind legs behind me. The healing potion had helped, but the damage the bullet had done inside me was too much for just one. On top of that, the pain in my eyes from the chandelier glass earlier was getting much much worse.

I might have just healed the glass inside my eyes.

The ground beside me exploded as another shot whizzed past, so close that I felt the drag from it. I lurched forward and collapsed on my side, screaming in pain. I looked side to side, hoping for some clue as to where the bullets might be coming from. The sound of the gunshot echoing through the empty streets gave no hint to where the shooter or shooters might be. I forced myself back up and bit back against the pain.

Now, I knew exactly how Marshmallow Sundae felt after what had happened to her back at Leathers. I limped forward, struggling to put one hoof in front of the other. Breathing heavily, I mentally counted off the time between the shots. If the shooter was consistent, I’d have another-

“Ow! FUCK!” I cried as another bullet tore into me and knocked me to the ground. I didn’t need to look back to know that it had hit me right in the cutie mark. Suddenly the idea of having a big stylish-looking X emblazoned on my flanks was a nightmare. All I did was give a pony a perfect target to aim at. I didn’t want to know what the far side looked like. I just hoped Lost could fix the damage when I got back to her.

Target or not, it was my cutie mark.

Grinding my teeth, I fought against the tears. With my good forehooves, I dragged myself away. Somewhere... I needed somewhere out of sight. Not knowing where the shooter was, I pulled myself behind a broken down wagon on the curb. Hopefully it would be safe. I only needed a few seconds. Once again, I cursed not having cheater magic as I reached back and dug through my saddlebags to grab something to deal with the pain. I couldn’t run if my bones were fucked. I caught glass with my fetlock and pulled another vial out. Wonderful healing liquid in my grasp, I rolled to my side and looked.

“Oh, Celestia...” I whispered, seeing what the shooter had done to me. The white of my coat ran dark crimson. The wound opened like a blossoming flower of killing joke. I could see bone... Taking a deep breath, I tipped the vial and poured. Wincing as the potion spilled in, I closed my eyes and breathed. It would have to be enough to get me back. I just needed to wait for the next shot.

Like clockwork, a bullet tore through the cover I’d been using, just past my head. The echoing crack of gunfire followed a second later. I threw the bottle away, as hard as I could, using it as a distraction. The meager healing I’d done would have to do. I made a break for it in the opposite direction. Whoever was shooting couldn’t be moving too fast, since both bullets had gone through the same side of me.

I heard the bang of a gun going off again, but I didn’t feel or see a bullet hit anywhere. My ruse seemed to have worked. I ran, trying not to trip over my dragging hooves, praying to the Goddesses I was going in the right direction.

Right or not, I turned the next corner, and dove into the alleyway. Bullets could go through a lot, but I doubted even a good armor-piercing round could pierce the collapsed rubble of a three-story building. I leaned against the wall and sighed.

Lost had better not be fucking somepony again when I got back...

* * *

I finally found my way back, chugging and chewing every last healing item I’d owned. I hoped it had been enough to stop whatever internal bleeding I was probably suffering, but I was far from ‘in good shape.’ I felt barely good enough to walk without a limp.

The sign reading ‘Helter Skelter’ showed the way to paradise for me. If the Goddesses cared about me at all, and if zebra luck decided to fall on my side this time, then my sister and my friends would be in there, rested and waiting, able and ready to heal the damage I hadn’t been able to take care of myself.

I nudged the door open with my face, and looked around the room. Instead of seeing everything ready and waiting for my return, I saw, well, I saw what I might have done, had I been left alone there.

Lost stood next to the bar, her forelegs and chest splattered with blood. Xeno sat behind her at the bar, her helmet on and pulled down far enough to hide her eyes with her flattened mohawk. Fine Tune stood beside my sister in his unicorn form, wearing a new set of reinforced leather barding and floating a silenced pistol in the blue-green haze of his magic.

Blossom, the pony who owned the place, lay in the center of the room. Surrounded by a pool of blood, and her coat covered in splotches of it, she wasn’t moving. A dozen bullets lay scattered all over the floor, with several shell casings all around Fine Tune. Every one of the bullets was covered in the same blood as the mare. She stared at the floor, not even blinking. Were it not for the slow rise and fall of her chest, I’d have accused Lost of killing her outright.

Rather than question any of what happened, I simply collapsed. The door chimed right as my head hit the ground, before everything went black.

* * *

“I didn’t faint, I passed out,” I argued. “Now, will somepony please tell me exactly what I missed?” I looked at my rear, watching my sister’s healing magic close the hole over my cutie mark. I breathed a sigh of relief as she managed to get it back to perfect shape. Were I able to, I’d have reached back around and hugged my own flanks. Just having that X back the way it belonged was a weight off my withers.

“Well, after you ran off, I tried to talk to little miss Show Blossom over there, and get some information from her. She wasn’t as... forthcoming as I would have liked, so I had to take the hard way,” she explained. Slowly she trotted around me, her horn closing my little cuts and scratches, healing the remainder of my face where Fire Bomb had missed spots. She’d managed to pull the glass slivers from my eyes in the fifteen minutes I was unconscious, for which I was eternally thankful. I really didn’t want to know what it felt like to have tiny slivers of glass pulled from me, especially from my eyes.

I stood without my barding or jacket, leaving me feeling strangely naked. I really hoped I could find a pony with some skill with a needle and thread to patch the poor thing up. I didn’t worry about my armor, since I knew Lost could fix metal, but we lacked the materials to fix a leather jacket.

“So, the blood splatters?” I asked.

“Remember when we escaped U Cig, and I killed Lead Line?” Lost said. She took a step back and looked me over, from freshly-healed ear to my now-clean hooves.

“Yeah, you killed her because she had closed our escape route,” I answered. I remembered that a little too well, honestly.

“Yeah, and by killing her I made it so we couldn’t get the combination to her lock, meaning we had to fight our way out,” she said. “So when Show Blossom here decided to fight her way out I shot her through the hoof, instead of killing her outright. The gun belongs to her.”

“And this new barding, too,” chimed in Fine Tune. He trotted in a little circle to show off the reinforced leather. The barding covered his chest, barrel, and haunches, leaving only his hooves uncovered. He didn’t have a helmet, but he finally had something to keep the worst of the Wasteland off of him. “Too bad it doesn’t have room for my wings.”

“Maybe we can make some,” offered my sister. She turned back to me and continued. “I got the slave dealings out of her, then I got what she knows about your pink pony, the one you’d decided to kill indiscriminately.”

“I didn’t kill the last one,” I argued. “I told you before, it was The Glowing One.” I raised my hoof to stomp it, but relented, knowing I wasn’t in any position to be angry.

“Alright, sorry,” she admitted. “Either way, she talked. I gave her armor and gun to Fine Tune, and relieved her of her supply of exploding collars.”

“Okay, and all that actually means?” I asked.

“It means that sheis a bad pony and that wehave stopped her slave trade,” Xeno answered for her. “Itis one step closer to my requests.” The zebra spit the cigarette she’d had in her mouth into the rather large pile growing on the bar, and looked over at me. “Itis not important. What is important is that wehave done what you wished to do, and we should leave before dark so that we can reach my brothers and my homeland sooner.”

“Short version, sis?” I asked.

Lost shrugged. “She’s the slaver of the town. She buys the mares to keep the selection fresh, sells off customers who can’t pay or are too drugged out to put up a fight. The sign out front is misleading to keep out the capless bums, and your pink pony was the local ‘drug lord.’ Med-X helps ween the mares into their new lives here... She has no idea where the pink ponies came from; only that they kept her well supplied.”

Well, that answered everything nicely. It also put to rest the issue of the sign and name mismatch, which had really been bothering me. “What are we going to do with her then? If we leave her, won’t she just start up again?” I asked.

“I’ll be making a quick stop to talk to Relly, and she can decide what to do with her,” L.A. answered. She trotted over to the Unity mares and waved her hoof. “C’mon, we’re about to head out.” She trotted back over to me as the four mares slowly started to get to their hooves. “She might be a drunk, but she did want the town cleaned up. A quick stop at The Restless Mare to say goodbye to Nip Chaser, then, assuming nothing goes wrong...” I knew the look she gave me. She expected something to go wrong, or everything to go wrong. I wasn’t quite sure.

Given the luck we’d had lately, I could only expect the Wasteland to come down on us like a bloodwing on a lost foal. Whatever the Wasteland had, I was ready for it. After the day I’d been through, I felt I could take on anything.

“...we’ll take the mares back to Skirt, then we head back to pick up Xeno’s brothers,” Lost finished.

Together, the two of us looked over to Xeno, who smiled. She actually genuinely smiled. She pushed the slaver helmet up to move her mohawk, which shifted just enough that we could see the pleased look in her deep blue eyes.

“Okay, so we have a plan, that’s good, right?” I asked. I sat on my haunches and pulled my armor back on, ignoring the hole and the dent on the sides of it. It took a bit of work without magic, but I managed to wriggle my way in and get it pulled on where it belonged. Lost helped me, and then assisted me in getting my jacket back on over the top. The battle saddle with Persistence went on last, and then I was all ready to go.

“Yes. Now do you want to tell me what you've been doing and who's been trying to kill you?” Lost asked, her horn glowing again. Her forelegs and chest lit up in the same blue glow, as she started to slowly use telekinesis to lift the splattering of blood from her coat. It didn’t look like an easy process, but it kept her eyes off of me.

I bit my tongue. “I talked to an ex gang pony, bought some new bullets, and got shot by a pony I couldn’t see,” I answered after a moment’s hesitation, glossing over the details.

“New bullets? Oh, do you have any for this?” asked Fine Tune. He floated the gun over toward me and popped the magazine from it. There were only two bullets inside, far fewer than it could hold at its maximum.

“If I can see the PipBuck, I’ll know,” I answered. I held up my right forehoof. “Can I have it, Lost?”

“Please, my Queen?” whimpered the changeling.

“Alright, here,” answered Lost. She unclasped the hoof-mounted device and floated it over to me.

It closed atop my steel hoof with a click, and flickered to life. The familiar little display menus appeared in the corners of my vision, telling me lots of little things I hadn’t quite figured out how to process, other than the frame of reference for how hurt I was and how many times I could shoot in the targeting spell.

With mild annoyance, I flipped the display color back to green. “Thank you, Lost,” I said, already staring at the screen and organizing the items in my saddlebags. I found a grand total of ten bullets for the little pistol Fine Tune had and pulled them out. I passed the bullets to the unicorn-disguised changeling.

He let out a shrill happy-sounding chirp clear through the illusionary form and snatched them in his magic.

“Are you sure that’s all?” my sister asked. She glared over the rims of her glasses, making me shrink back.

I still wanted to be mad at her, but what little time I’d spent away from her had really drilled into me my need for her. Whether she trusted me or not, I figured it was best to swallow my pride, bite back my complaints, and just nod. So I told her exactly what happened, from the drugs to the fight, to how I’d been taken advantage of by Deal Breaker, to the two shots that dug through my sides.

“Hidden, what am I going to do with you?” she finally asked. The tone of her voice wasn’t angry, but worried.

Xeno simply shook her head. Fine Tune half-smiled and gave me a sympathetic look. Show Blossom just lay where she’d been since I stumbled in.

“The same thing you’ve always done?” I offered. I lowered myself to the floor and scuffed my flesh forehoof on the wood below me.

She sighed softly. “Yeah, watch out for you and make sure you’re alright. C’mon, let’s go.” She placed her hoof on me, and I looked up at the white mare. Clean of most of the bloodsplatter, she looked perfect to my eyes, like the protector I’d always known.

I nodded and stood up.

“First things first, we go back to The Restless Mare and drop off Show Blossom,” Lost explained. She looked around at the group, her eyes pausing on each one of us as she talked. “Then we find a safe route back to Skirt and drop off these mares to their families, hopefully they'll be grateful... We don't stop though, we continue on to Pommel Falls and our friends, resupply and recover then we'll go take Xeno's brothers home.”

Xeno nodded and smiled. She grabbed her knife from where it was embedded in the countertop, and slid it away to wherever she kept it hidden. Fine Tune nodded as well, before sliding the silenced pistol into a holster around his foreleg. The Unity mares grumbled approvingly, none of them doing more than standing calmly behind my sister. Even Show Blossom looked up, a relieved look in her eyes.

We turned and headed out. Things finally seemed back how they should be.

* * *

I walked down the street, the map showing me where to go for once so I wasn’t running blind and wandering all by my lonesome. Lost and I walked behind Show Blossom, a pistol lazily trailed on her to make sure she didn’t try to bolt and escape. Behind us were the Unity mares, with Xeno and Fine Tune bringing up the rear to make sure none of the mares fell behind or got hurt. Given how seedy the town proved to be, we took every possible precaution.

The sooner we got away from this cesspool, the better. I didn’t want to have to worry about that pink bitch of a pony appearing from somewhere, or everywhere, in the shadows to take shots at me. I missed the long stretches of road with lots of visibility, that allowed us plenty of time to get off the road if any of us saw a pony coming up early enough.

Despite our reunion, there wasn’t much talking to be done. The stress of everything that had happened in just a few hours wore on our entire group, and though none of them said it, I could tell that they were almost as ragged as I felt. Maybe...

I looked down one of the streets at the rubble lining the edges of the road, and shook my head at the mess toppled all over the sidewalk. Such a shame. One of the buildings had two wagons in front of it, which weren’t like the skywagons I’d become so used to using as cover during the shootouts I seemed to find myself in these days. Instead the two wagons were flat wheeled platforms with huge engines over the back of them, that looked more at home on the ground than in the air. A trip riding one of those instead of walking would be wonderful, and it would give me a chance to sleep without getting in the way of helping Xeno.

Of course, riding around in something like that without any armor would just be a big ‘come kill me’ beacon to any pony with an itch under their tail. Still, it was nice to dream.

I turned back to my sister, who smiled at me.

“I’m excited,” she said, “to go back and see every-”

With the clang of metal hitting metal, and a flash of fire, the world erupted between us. I heard the distant ring of a rifle firing as I flew through the air. The explosion floored both my sister and I. The mares all around us started to scream and panic, as did the locals who’d been in the street the shots came from. Xeno and Fine Tune started yelling over them, trying to calm the ponies. I only heard voices screaming, but not the words, through the ringing in my ears.

“Lost!” I yelled, straining to hear my own voice. “Lost!” If the explosion had hurt her I’d- The cloud of smoke cleared with a gust of wind. She lay on the ground, her armor cracked clean in half down the length of her body, with a huge piece missing over her shoulder. Charred chunks hung by her skin, revealing bone. Blood drained from her side and pooled underneath her. “Xeno! Help!”

I looked back at the zebra, who had her rifle in her hooves already. She looked over at me, eyes wider than any time I’d ever seen before, and grimaced. Turning to Fine Tune, she yelled something in her zebra language and pointed the rifle at the mares.

Before the changeling could do anything, another grenade hit the ground between us. It bounced once. Mid-bounce, it exploded. Everypony around us was thrown back. The air filled with rubble, bits of the street blown all around. Another one hit Show Blossom in the side. The explosion splattered the former slaver’s insides on the road and she collapsed into a mass of gore and blood. She didn’t even have time to scream in pain before she died. We hadn’t intended to do anything terrible to her, just turn her over to Relly and let the town sort their own problems. It didn’t matter anymore. We didn’t have enough pony left.

Lost groaned. I looked over at her. One of her eyes fluttered open and she started to cry. Weakly, she lifted her head and looked at the mess of her shoulder. “Oh...” she whispered. “That’s what it feels like...” Her head dropped again, both eyes closed.

“Sis!” I yelled, pushing myself up onto my hooves. I’d been lucky, I was mostly unhurt from the explosives. I had to get her out of the line of fire. Xeno and Fine Tune could handle themselves, and hopefully they’d take care of the Unity mares too. I ran to my sister. I just-

A hail of grenade rounds bombarded the street at our side, most falling short or going too high. The one that hit my sister must have gotten a lucky shot, or they were banking on quantity over quality. I could hear the screams of other ponies as they fell to the explosives meant for us. The wall of one of the buildings in the intersection exploded. Two grenades hit the bottom corner. The sound of shifting rubble rattled into my ears. I didn’t have time for-

“Scatter!” I yelled as loud as I could. The scream hurt my throat. Without hesitating, I grabbed Lost’s barding and dragged her away. Every second mattered, and deep in the back of my mind, I wished I’d been expecting this sort of thing enough to take a Buck before. I tried to find a safe place, my ears skewed back to listen.

Bricks fell, shattering on the broken asphalt of the street behind me. The building groaned. I looked back. My ears drooped.

“Celestia, Luna. Please?” I whispered to the heavens. I stood overtop my sister and braced myself.

Three stories of brick, mortar, and wood toppled into the intersection, and cutting me off from the mares I’d helped to save, and more importantly, from my friends. Plumes of dust from two centuries ago shot into the air, blocking out any and all visibility. Several pieces of wood and rubble struck me, but I didn’t care. I could take it and Lost couldn’t. Not right now.

The ringing in my ears finally died down enough to hear the voices of other ponies yelling. Xeno’s voice echoed louder than the others. She yelled in a mix of her native tongue and the one I understood, barking orders to the various ponies around. I’d never have expected her to be so cool under that sort of pressure.

“Xeno!” I yelled, looking around frantically. This wasn’t the time to wait. I needed to act. Neither of us were hurt by the collapsing building, and the ponies or whoever had been attacking seemed to be slacking off for the moment. Either they thought dropping a building on us was enough to down the group, or they were relocating.

I dug through Lost’s saddlebags. Sure, I’d used up all the healing supplies she’d given me, but she had to have some left over. Frantically throwing things onto the street all around me, I searched for the supplies I needed. Lost was an organized and smart pony, so why weren’t the healing potions and bandages on the top of her bags? She was still breathing, shallowly, but that was still breath.

That breathing might not last though. The wound in her shoulder was huge, and I counted it a blessing that her leg was still attached. Through the cracks in her armor I could see her coat completely scorched, and spots that looked to be burnt down to the muscle. Her side looked almost as bad as the pony I’d watched burn alive. The charred flesh went up from her shoulder over her neck and across the side of her face, stopping just below her eye. At least she wouldn’t need new glasses again.

“Hiddenpony!” Xeno yelled back, finally. “Lostpony!” Echoing alongside her voice were the screams of several other ponies. Now I just needed to hear from Fine Tune.

I switched saddlebags and found a healing potion sitting right on top. She was a smart pony. Grabbing the cork in my teeth, I pulled it from the bottle and spit it away. Working my clumsy hooves as fast as I could, I poured the vast majority over the bloody wound. She wasn’t bleeding that badly, I didn’t think. The blood just oozed out, draining slowly. That was good, right?

“Lost, c’mon. Wake up. I need help here,” I begged. Using my flesh forehoof, I swatted her cheek a few times. “You need to tell me what to do!” Tears fell from my face. She couldn’t die, not again.

“Hiddenpony, Lostpony! Please tell me whatis going on over there!” yelled the zebra again over the other voices. “Quiet!” The screaming of the Unity mares quieted as Xeno snapped at them.

“Shut up!” I screamed back over the building. “Lost is hurt! Get over here!” I lifted my sister’s head and pulled her mouth open. Her eyes didn’t open, and she wasn’t breathing anymore. “Come on, sis. I don’t have the magic to fix this on my own. You need to wake up so you can tell me what to do.” I poured the remainder of the potion into her mouth and prayed. “You’re the smart pony, mom taught you the medical stuffs. I just know how to-”

She coughed. One eye opened, followed by her mouth, which let out a long pained groan. “Ugh... hurts. What happened?” she asked through clenched teeth. Her wounded leg twitched, hoof lifting. She howled in pain and dropped the leg down again. “Hidden...!”

“Explosion. What do I do?” I asked. I could barely see her through the tears in my eyes. Whether they were sad tears because I thought I’d lost her, or happy tears because she was awake again, I didn’t know. I wanted to grab her and hold on so tight not even the Goddesses could separate us, but first she needed to be healed.

“Wher- Ahh!” she tried to ask back. She tried to lift her head, but only winced and set it back down. Her breathing came in rapid shallow pants, with her cursing ‘fuck’ over and over under her breath. She sputtered, choking back howls as her whole body shook. Her eyes didn’t quite focus, and I could already feel her flesh going cold.

“Hiddenpony, I am leading the ponies around the building,” yelled Xeno. “Bugpony will be flying over.” Oh thank goodness. Fine Tune was still alive too.

As if on command, the changeling flew over the remains of the building that blocked the street. He chirped once and flashed green fire to transform. Wings disappearing, the familiar unicorn form dropped to the ground. Half a second later, the dust split open as a grenade flew right through the spot he’d just been hovering. He saw it too, and crouched down, eyes wide. Without his barding or gun, he looked like the average Wastelander once again, and wouldn’t have survived that shot.

“What do I do?” I yelled over the explosion behind me. I didn’t care who answered.

“Another potion,” Lost ordered. “Now.” She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. Once again she looked over, but gave up halfway. Even though she was panting, she still spared the breath to swear several more times.

I did exactly as she said, grabbing the last one from her saddlebags and offering it to her.

A faint blue glow wrapped around the bottle as she took it from my hoof. Fine Tune’s own blue-green joined hers and he helped her to uncork the vial. The two of them together lifted it to her mouth, and she swallowed every last drop.

Xeno’s voice cut through the air once more. “Gun!” she screamed. Once again on cue, the silenced pistol arced through the air over the rubble.

Fine Tune’s magic wrapped around it, catching the gun in midair and pulling it down to hover near his head. He winked at me and turned his back, slowly sweeping over the gaps between buildings and offering us much needed cover.

I found myself smiling as we worked as a team, even if it was a somewhat dysfunctional one that seemed to make shit up as we went. A team after my own heart. Snapping back to reality, I looked down at my sister.

The gaping wound on her shoulder had started to close up, the edges already healing as the magical liquid did exactly what it’d been designed to do. Lost looked up at me, her eyes half-closed and her breathing weak gasps. “Bandages next,” she said.

I dug into her saddlebags again. I wasn’t designed to be a field medic. I was a soldier, just like The Glowing One said. This wasn’t my calling, and without any magic to lift things, I found myself fumbling. I dragged out the bandage she had rolled up inside, managing to unfurl it in the process. I sighed and offered it to her.

"I- I can't. You do it, around shoulder, tight," she ordered. Groaning and grimacing, she shakily lifted up the offending leg.

Really, having a building crash between us worked better than it could have, since we actually had the time to do this. Were it not for the wall of rubble between us and the shooters, Lost Art might have died while we scrambled around. Falling on old habits, I both blamed and thanked Xeno’s crazy zebra luck.

Quick as my hooves would work, I wrapped the bandage around her shoulder and under her leg, doing a few passes around her withers and barrel completely whenever she instructed me to. The process was slow, but with each wrap of the bandage she moved easier and easier. Bandage applied and healing potions completely used, Lost slowly lifted herself to her hooves. The second I finished, I stuffed her belongings back into her saddlebags.

“Hidden. You have my permission to kill any pony in this Goddesses-forsaken town that stands in our way of getting out alive,” she said, staring me straight in the eyes.

I only nodded. The word ‘necessity’ fell away, only to be replaced with the word survival. I wouldn’t hesitate, not anymore. If I saw that pink pony, or any other pony trying to stop me, my sister, my friends, or the freed slaves, I would do everything in my power to make sure we survived and they didn’t.

As we talked, Xeno finally got around the next block and intersection and led the terrified Unity mares up toward us. She barked orders to each mare in turn, keeping them in line. Whether they listened despite their fear because of the barding that made her look like a slaver, or because she had the only level head of the group, I didn’t know. It might even be conditioning from Rebar, given how the others with her followed without question.

Lost stood on three legs, showing considerable favor to the foreleg wrapped in bandages. She looked the three of us over, then at the Unity mares. One eye closed and her teeth clenched together, I could see the gears in her head moving as she tried to figure out what to do. With time working against us, we all waited impatiently to hear her plan.

My idea for the situation was to run in and start shooting, but if they had any more explosives to fire down the street at us, that would be a suicide run. Xeno, I felt, would tell us to just leave and forget it. That had been her stance since we left home yesterday morning. Fine Tune, viewing L.A. as his queen, would more than likely simply follow whatever instructions she gave. He was a good bugpony, but he wasn’t a leader. The three of us stared.

I could feel myself starting to sweat. Every second she waited was another second the ponies firing at us could move closer. The fact that I could hear the screams of ponies in pain in the distance, but no more gunfire, had me scared. Others were hurt because of us, and the attackers were taking their time, letting the wounded suffer. I couldn’t decide which was worse, the thought that they were waiting for us to step into their trap, or that they were closing in for the kill and didn’t want to give away their position.

“Al-alright,” she started, pausing only to cough. “Fine Tune, you have wings and can move fastest. Get the mares somewhere safe. We didn’t go through the trouble of saving them just to let them die here. Xeno; you, Hidden, and I are going to rain death upon this town.” She didn’t stutter once, and even managed to get the entire plan out without stopping to pant or wince in pain.

Fine Tune wasted no time in throwing a mock salute and turning tail to help the Unity mares.

Xeno shouted something in her native tongue, and pointed her hoof at the changeling. Whatever she said, it had the same air of confidence she had when bartering with a merchant. “Follow him, no questions,” she ordered.

Fine Tune bolted, running down the street past the mares and around the corner of the next intersection. The group of mares followed as ordered, their heads down and hooves shaking. From around the corner came a flash of green as Fine Tune transformed again. He was such a smart changeling, but a lifetime of training to stay out of sight probably left him with quite the overabundance of common sense for being outside of line of sight before transforming.

I checked Persistence. I knew she was loaded with the bullets I’d gotten from Deal Breaker, but it didn’t hurt to be sure. If they had more grenades, this wouldn’t be a fun fight for us. It took everything I had to not jump out over the remains of the building and start firing blind. A combination of something digging at the back of my mind and the phantom pain over my cutie mark kept me from making a kneejerk reaction.

“And how do we do that, Lost?” I asked, fighting the urge to go commit murder on whoever had dared hurt her.

She looked down the street, up at the buildings behind us that were still standing and the rubble of the fallen one. Slowly she set her hoof down, but stopped the second it touched the asphalt. With a hiss of pain and flinch, she pulled it back. “We’ll need to find whoever’s shooting and hit them where they can’t see us. Umm,” she said, once again pausing to deal with her pain.

I dug through my bags while she thought, looking for some Med-X. After all we’d been through, a single shot of painkiller wouldn’t do any harm. Before she could stop me, I jabbed the needle into her leg and pushed it in.

“Hidden wha- Ahh...” she said, starting to pull back. As the chemical surged through her veins, a wave of relief washed over her face and she smirked. “Thanks, but ask next time.”

“No time, sis,” I reminded her.

“Fine, whatever,” she said, relenting. “Xeno, can you get up to a vantage point to overlook the street? We’ll need covering fire.”

“I can,” the zebra confirmed. She turned on a rear hoof and went for the broken door to the building. It had plenty of windows on both sides, which would give her plenty of room to move around and keep whoever our enemy was guessing.

“Stay safe. Move forward if we get out of sight!” L.A. yelled after her. She lowered her hoof, wincing as she put weight on it. The leg held, and she pulled out the plasma pistol she used for medium-range fighting. “Ready? We move for cover, one step at a time.”

“If that’s the plan,” I answered with a nod. I mouthed the bit of my battle saddle and moved for the corner of the building we’d been hiding behind. With the cover of a shattered building and a brick wall to my side, I felt safe enough to take a quick peek to get my bearings.

The road down was a complete mess for several blocks. A half-dozen ponies lay dead, fallen mid-step as they’d run from the barrage. I could see chunks here and there, limbs too, all blown away by the explosions. I shuddered, seeing one without a head. It brought back too many unpleasant memories.

One mare was still alive and crying for help. Her back legs were completely missing, blown away at the hips. Part of me wanted to put a bullet in her head from here, just to put her out of her misery. No pony should have to suffer like that.

Forcing myself to look past the carnage, I searched for good spots to hide. One of the wagons I’d been looking at earlier now lay on its side, a crater in the street beside it. Between here and there I didn’t see much in the way of cover. Getting there from where I was would be one long run.

I kept an eye out for further cover, doubting that one change of position would be enough. Another wagon, some sales carts in front of ancient storefronts. It could work, but it would be slow going and leave me open to getting shot most of the-

Another explosion shredded through the wall of the building I was hiding behind. “Ahh!” I screamed, jumping back. I pressed against the wall, looking myself over to make sure I hadn’t been shot clean through again. No damage spotted, I turned to Lost. “Cover me?”

She nodded, lifting the pistol into the air in her telekinesis. She hobbled over and ducked behind the collapsed building, crouching so only her head was above the line of rubble. Her gun floated above her, ready to fire. “Go,” she whispered.

I ran around the corner, moving as fast as my aching hooves would let me. Head down, I ran in a little zig-zag pattern toward the cover of the toppled wagon.

The ground behind me exploded, sending my rear hooves up into the air, and a shower of road chunks over my backside. I bit my tongue to keep from crying, eyes watering as one chunk hit a particularly tender spot. No second shot followed, as the echo of B-KEW marked my sister’s return fire. Thanking the Goddesses, I jumped over one of the corpses, dove behind the wagon and backed up against it.

I shot the wounded mare in the head. I’d have asked her to do the same if it were me in her position.

The act of kindness brought another round of gunfire down the street. The wagon I stood behind exploded, throwing wooden shrapnel all around me.

I crouched and covered myself as best I could, eyes clenched shut and hooves over my head. I’d picked good cover, and the upturned wagon protected me from the worst of it. The heat and pressure washed over me, but it was nothing I couldn’t weather.

A single gunshot from behind me silenced the onslaught. I knew the sound well: Xeno’s rifle. Whether she hit something or not, they stopped firing. I poked my head out to see if I could spot who might be firing. No matter how good they were, they had to look to shoot at me. I saw nothing. No ponies, no armored behemoths, not even a turret set up to attack automatically.

“Any idea who we pissed off enough to gun us down like this?” yelled my sister.

“Do you need me to read off a list?” I yelled back. Not wasting the time I had between salvos, I ran from my cover to the far side of the road. I dodged left, right, then dove into a building. My hooves clipped the windowsill, and I crashed to the floor. Groaning, I pushed myself back up. No shots that time. Worked for me. I leaned out the window and aimed Persistence.

I was ready to fire at the first sign of movement. None of the locals were left, thank goodness, which meant little in the way of collateral damage. I wanted to feel bad for getting so many locals killed in the initial shooting, but that part of me was still locked up by Amble’s torture.

Movement.

I bit down on the battle saddle and fired down the street, sinking three shots into the building across the road several intersections away. Persistence was a good gun, but her accuracy only went so far. All three shots missed.

Whoever was firing back pulled away from the window they’d been aiming from. I thought I saw a flash of color, but I couldn’t tell who it was. If it was that Goddesses-damned pink pony, then I’d make sure to get there and end her up close and personal. With my hooves, not my gun.

“Now!” I yelled to Lost. I kept firing, unloading several more bullets down the street to keep whoever it was at bay. Skewing an ear back, I listened to my sister’s hooves on the broken street. When one of the shooters popped out to fire at her, I sent off the final bullet in Persistence’s clip.

A satisfying scream of pain pierced the air for a moment, then everything went silent again. One down, who knew how many left.

“About that list?” my sister yelled to me. She stood where I’d been a moment ago, crouched down behind the remaining chunks of wagon.

“Well, there’s slavers, and Jazz’s Steel Rangers,” I offered. “Anypony who might be coming after Gunbuck’s killer. My bet’s on the pink pony though.” While I thought of another possible attacker, I reloaded Persistence. I could hear the telltale B-KEW of my sister’s gun keeping the enemy’s head down. “Or maybe the ponies in Skirt came back for you?”

“Which?” she asked.

The sound of an explosion cut off my response. A single gunshot answered that, followed by another scream. Xeno must have finally hit something. If only Celestia and Luna had blessed us with a talented sniper. Well, the one we had was better than none.

“Either?” I yelled back. “The one you shot the legs off of, or maybe The Ashen?” I looked back at her and nodded. When she nodded back, I looked for the next safe spot I could reach. The only option I had that I could reach more or less safely was the next intersection, which would give me another wall to hide behind.

Another explosion shattered the wall above me into a million pieces. Bricks and support beams toppled all around me. Whether I wanted to go then or not, the choice was made for me. I leapt through the falling debris and ran. Hooves thundering down the street and zig-zagging around body parts, I looked for where the attackers would be. Rifle barrels peeked from windows, with the shooters hidden from my line of sight.

They fired regular bullets this time, riddling the ground near my hooves with holes. A few actually hit me. The lead lodged in my legs, in between the joints and getting stuck in my bones. It felt like I was getting shackled all over again, but I ignored it. Several bullets hit my armor, tearing my jacket apart and knocking me off balance. Groaning, I hit the far wall and dropped.

Another of Xeno’s gunshots followed, missing completely but pausing the attack.

I pushed myself up against the wall, breathing heavily. Putting weight on my hooves, I slumped further against the wall. “Thanks for... using... regular bullets!” I yelled, trying to keep up a facade of strength, but something was seriously wrong. Deep down, I was crying. I’d already gotten shot too many times today, and every new bullethole felt like the reaper pony’s grip around my neck. At least I had armor to keep them from hitting the vital spots.

But why hadn’t they aimed for my head?

“Lost! Can you make it up?” I yelled. I winced and took stock of the damage. As bad as they felt, my legs didn’t look too bad. The big problem was my steel hoof. I couldn’t move it. The hoof had a hole in the joint, the one spot where anything could get through. I could see the recharger rifle’s battery-thingy glowing from inside. It looked like it was still be working, but the bullet was lodged inside, blocking any movement. I tried to flex it, but nothing worked. Something inside sparked and a jolt of pain shot up my leg, feeling like I’d been struck by lightning or tried to lick a live wire.

L.A. didn’t answer. All I heard while looking at my hoof was the distinctive B-KEW and gunfire exchanging shots. Then Lost screamed in pain. By the time I looked up, I saw her hiding behind the damaged chunks of building where I’d been a minute before.

“Sis, I got a problem!” I yelled, waving my steel hoof.

“I think we all do right now!” she yelled back. “Don’t let up on them!” Her voice cracked. I knew that crack well, it was the only real sign I had that she was under pressure.

I nodded, and scooted on three hooves to a spot I could fire back from. Looking past all the buildings, I searched for a likely target. I just had to keep them pinned down so Xeno could move forward. If only Fine Tune would get back soon.

Paydirt. The pink mane of a mare. I caught the barest glimpse of her levitating a rifle through the window.

Her!

I aimed up, praying I could hit just the tip of her head. If was a long shot, but if I aimed just right... Wait, I had the PipBuck! I’d actually forgotten I had the little arcano-tech device. I bit down on the battle saddle’s bit and activated the S.A.T.S. targeting spell. Everything froze, giving me time to focus on the spell and where to aim. The little hazes of color, the only indicators I had, were all looking bad. The chances of me hitting were absolutely abysmal, but it was better than free-shooting. With two shots set up, I confirmed the spell and fired. Both shots missed, but the rifle disappeared back into the window.

I looked down at my E.F.S. Eight red bars lined the corner of my vision, surrounded by too many green bars to count. Those were bad odds, but I knew we could take them. I just needed to get inside, and-

The rifle appeared again. I fired. One of my bullets clipped the rifle itself, and she dropped it. The gun clattered to the ground, but her marker stayed red.

I swore to Celestia, Luna, and every other copy of her I could that I’d kill each pink pony slowly, then find the real one and break her neck.

“Hey Lost,” I yelled. “Remember when you got on my case about killing that- Oh shit!” I ducked behind the wall, barely dodging a group of bullets. The sound of gunshots and spatter of bullets against the wall didn’t stop. “Well, that was close,” I said to myself. “Lost! Eight left! My pink pony!” I yelled over the din of gunfire.

They must have really wanted revenge.

The far wall creaked as the bullet tore through the one remaining support beam. Whether that was the intended target or a fluke, I’d leave up to Xeno’s peculiar little luck. I kicked myself mentally for not thinking of that. If they could damage the town to kill us, why couldn’t I do the same? I dug through my saddlebags with my good forehoof for a grenade. I had to have some left.

The building creaked, shifting down as the weight of the intact upper floors fought gravity. I found one, pulled the pin from the apple-shaped explosive with my teeth, and tossed it around the corner. My aim was terrible with throwing things, but it got close enough that the explosion did exactly what I wanted. The brick second story lurched upward from the blast, then came back down.

The ear-splitting smash of the building resounded through the streets, and two of the red markers on the E.F.S. went out. Enough dust and dirt swirled into the air that Lost could get across the road.

She ran over to me, dodging blind-fired shots. She slid to a stop right around the corner I’d been using for cover. Bleeding and perforated with almost as many holes as I was, she gasped for breath. “Fuckfuckfuckfuck,” she cursed again.

“Sis, my hoof,” I said, holding it up. “It’s not working.” I didn’t do well with being crippled, and I didn’t want to be in such a position again. The PipBuck didn’t display an error message for it, but since it wasn’t really a part of me, I had no idea if it could even tell that. I just needed it fixed.

“Hold it up,” Lost ordered, ignoring her own wounds. Her horn began to glow, already helping me to lift the steel prosthetic. She did something to the bottom of it and popped the steel plate free.

Xeno fired another shot down the street as the dust cleared, but none of the markers in the corner of my vision seemed to react. They were moving, but didn’t dodge the shot.

“Lost, I think we need to hurry,” I urged, my hoof shaking.

“Half a second. I’m patching you up first. We can’t fight like this,” she chided. Her magic wiggled the bullet out of the spot it’d wedged itself into, and she flicked it off into the distance. With that gone, she popped the plate back onto the bottom of my hoof. “Try now,” she said, already starting to pull bullets from my legs.

I could feel the warm knitting sensation as she worked to get me back into fighting condition. I did as she said, finding the joint stiff and slow, but functional. I looked at the E.F.S. Six red markers moved around, all overlapping one another and blocking out the dozens of green markers indicating the locals.

“Sis, I think they’re-”

“Almost done,” she said, cutting me off.

“No, I mean they’re coming for us,” I whispered.

Three of them walked around the corner, all looking exactly alike. Pink coat and darker pink manes. Two of them held rifles in their magic, and the third had a pistol.

“Thought you could kill me, did you?” asked one, sneering. She aimed her rifle at my head, while the other rifle-wielding mare aimed at my sister.

“What’re you going to do with us?” I asked, trying to stall. I just needed Xeno to fire one shot, and this would all be over. A single distraction was everything I needed.

She spat, “Kill yo-”

The side of her head exploded.

The mare with the pistol shifted the gun in the air and pressed it against the head of the second mare before the body of the first could hit the ground. The dead mare’s gun clattered against the sidewalk, followed a half-second later by the still-living mare’s.

“My Queen?” asked the disguised Fine Tune.

“Kill her,” L.A. ordered. The whole time she kept healing me, never missing a beat.

The mare’s head muffled the gunshot. With one side of her face missing, she slumped over onto the ground next to the already fading copy. Two more down.

“How’d you do that?” I asked Fine Tune, groaning a little as a particularly tender part of me got worked over by the healing magic. I really did not need Lost poking around back there.

The mare winked, set her gun down, and disappeared in a wave of sickly green flame. The changeling reappeared in all his black-chitin glory. He let out a shrill series of chirps, smiling wide, then transformed again. When the green fire faded, a blonde pegasus mare remained. She picked the pistol up from the ground in her hoof. “I’m not a fighter, but I’m good at being unnoticed,” she said. Fine Tune stretched her wings, put the pistol in her mouth, and took off into the sky.

“I’m beginning to think he’s a keeper,” joked my sister. With my wounds taken care of, she’d moved on to patching herself up. “How many are there now?”

“Four left, assuming one of those four is the original,” I answered. I looked down at the E.F.S. and tried to pinpoint any one of the remaining red markers. I wished the ponies who designed the PipBuck had taken the time to add a distance or height marker as well, because having only a ‘they’re over there’ tag really wasn’t doing me much good in the heat of battle. If I had a grenade launcher or something, maybe...

“You go, I’ll catch up. Stay safe, sis,” Lost said. She edged as close to the wall as she could, her horn still glowing and closing up the wounds on her legs.

I nodded and did as she said. The ruins I’d just made would be the perfect next spot to hide behind as I worked my way closer. If I could get to them and get at least one alive for questioning, I’d consider this a complete win. But I’d settle for surviving it.

Shots buzzed past me as I pelted down the street. I used one of the fallen ponies as a shield, then jumped past. More return fire blazed over my head as Xeno lobbed two bullets from her hidden spot with the sniper rifle. Smaller pops from a pistol echoed down the street as well, and one of the red markers on my E.F.S. disappeared. Having a pony in the sky wasn’t something I’d take for granted, ever.

Looking over the E.F.S., I tried to narrow down the possible places another pony could hide. I dug through my saddlebags as I looked, using the PipBuck’s organizing function to put my grenades at the very top of my bags. Xeno had taken more than enough from U Cig when we fled, and I wasn’t quite sure which to use.

Then the PipBuck told me I had incendiary grenades. Perfect.

I grabbed one of the apple-shaped explosives and pulled it out. I knew this one well, with the orange band around the center of it. Peeking up from the rubble I was using for cover, I shifted until one of the red markers was directly in front of me. Across the street a block down was a building with several busted windows facing this street. It looked like it might have once been a store, filled with happy ponies going about their lives and making sure they had their groceries for the day.

Unfortunately, that pink bitch didn’t have any qualms with leveling the city trying to kill me. Then again, if it meant getting out of this alive, I couldn’t either.

“Lost, a little help?” I yelled over to her.

My sister peeked around the corner of the building and looked at me. “What?” she yelled back. Her horn wasn’t glowing, which meant she’d patched up everything she could.

“I need help getting this down the street!” I yelled back. I held the orange-banded grenade up, keeping it out of sight of the attackers. I wanted this to be a surprise.

She nodded. After what happened with Wirepony, we both knew how to pull this off. She eased her way around the building’s corner and ducked low. Running along the edge of the storefronts, she slid behind what had once been a fruit-covered sales cart. Whatever was once there was long since rotted. Once more she managed to avoid getting shot, another blessing. I didn’t need to watch her get hurt again. She crouched down and looked down the street from below the cart.

“Go!” she yelled.

I pulled the pin with my teeth and hurled the grenade as hard as I could in a high arc down the street. Lost lifted it with her telekinesis as I threw, making the normal weight of the explosive completely disappear. The weightlessness, combined with my strength, got it far enough, and the grenade crashed through the one remaining window of the building.

Both windows on the second floor disintegrated. What little remained of the glass melted into nothingness with the blast. Flames licked through the windows as the inside of the building caught fire.

I cheered, waiting and hoping the red marker would disappear. Just in case, I mouthed the battle-saddle’s bit and aimed at the first floor entrance.

The red marker moved, but didn’t blink out. A few seconds later, the pink mare jumped from another window on the side of the building. Her horn was glowing, as were her hooves. Had she learned the trick Lost used on me to jump the piano?

Without hesitation, I changed my aim and slid into S.A.T.S. With everything frozen, I queued up three shots and executed the spell. Three rounds of three-oh-eight hot lead death pierced through her, splattering blood against the wall and killing her before she landed. Three left.

I whinnied, happy with my shot. The pleasure faded quickly as my body reminded me just how badly everything hurt. Taking a deep breath, I looked over to my sister. “Can you take point for a while?” I asked. “I need a rest, bad.” I looked down at my legs, then to my hoof. Once more, I felt an ache deep down, almost to the bone.

I really needed a break.

“Sure,” she answered. During the short break in gunfire coming at us, she dodged around the cart and to the next block. Not two seconds after she started running, the bullets flew again. Each rifle shot was met with a B-KEW and a blast of magical plasma flying through the air toward them.

I moved right after Lost did, switching sides with her to stay on the opposite end of the street. Unfortunately for me, there wasn’t any cover on this side, so I kept running. I thundered down the sidewalk, making a break for the first red marker I could find.

Shots poured from the windows opposite me, above my sister. Both mares were holed up in the second story of the building. With me acting as a distraction, Lost had time to attack.

She ran into the open doorway and out of my sight.

“Fine Tune!” I yelled, hoping he was close enough to hear me over the sounds of battle. When the familiar green pegasus mare appeared in the air, I grinned. “Top floor, that building!” I yelled, pointing a hoof at the offending store.

Fine Tune gave a salute and divebombed through one of the windows. Several bangs, pops, and B-KEWs later, the two red markers disappeared from view.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I fell to my haunches. There was only one left, and as long as we didn’t get swamped by another set of reinforcements, I’d be okay. In the back of my mind, Amble’s voice reminded me that I was a killer, and for once I didn’t argue with her. These weren’t real ponies, and they’d fired the first shots. Together, the lot of them had done almost as much physical damage to me in one firefight as Amble’s slavers had done in a week of torture.

Then again, that didn’t count all the mental torture.

I glanced down at my E.F.S. and twisted about, looking for the last mare. I needed her alive for questioning.

Lost and Fine Tune trotted out the front door of the store, coated in swiftly fading blood. Fine Tune had transformed back into his normal blue unicorn form, which lacked the raider scraps I’d come to suspect came with the pegasus form naturally. He frowned at the pistol he carried, which was probably out of ammunition. Lost, on the other hoof, was reloading her plasma pistol with another spark cell.

“One left,” I announced.

“Fine, dear, can you go get Xeno? We need to regroup. Follow us while we take care of the last little problem and see if we can’t get some answers,” she said in a calm voice. She snapped the plasma pistol closed and held it up in the air with her magic. “Which way?”

I pointed down the street just as another of the pink mare clones rounded the corner. “Right there,” I answered. Without waiting for a response I took off like a bloodwing out of Tartarus. The mare took potshots at me, but I ignored them. Chunks out of my mane, my ear again, and a gouge deep under my eye didn’t stop me. I kept on her with one goal in mind: her death.

In what looked like the smartest action of any of the pink ponies I’d seen so far, she dropped her gun, turned tail, and ran as fast as she could.

“Run all you like, you pretty little thing. I’ll catch you!” I shouted as loudly as I could, never breaking pace. I’d have her, I’d get what I needed, and I’d kill her. Then we’d go find our friends and everything would be absolutely perfect and magical.

“Hidden, wait!” yelled L.A.

I ignored her. I didn’t have time to wait.

* * *

Once again, I proved to myself and everypony around me that I was not a thinky pony.

Lost had fallen so far behind I couldn’t even hear her hooves on the ground behind me anymore. She had a good head on her shoulders, and she’d find me no matter how far ahead I got, but what if Xeno and Fine Tune couldn’t follow? In the back of my mind, something whispered to me that it might just be a trap.

With one goal in mind, I kept running. I had to dodge around locals to keep up, scrambling from side to side as ponies finally perked themselves up to see exactly what was going on. The sounds of gunfire no longer filled the air, and they must have felt safe enough to inspect the chaos. I kept my eyes locked on the red marker in my E.F.S., praying to both Celestia and Luna separately that the marker wouldn’t turn green now that she’d decided to stop being hostile.

“Move!” I yelled, smashing my way past one of the more strung-out-looking ponies. She fell back on her haunches and screamed something at me, but I didn’t hear what. I could barely see the dark pink tail in front of me as it twisted around a corner.

She looked back as I rounded the corner, a mix of terror and... something else... in her eyes. Yeah, probably a trap.

I just had to keep running, tackle her, and get my answers. If I stopped her before her destination, then the trap couldn’t be strung. Simple plan. I sped up, pushing my aching body well past its limit. If I had a spare second, I’d down another Buck, or maybe even try that one hit of Dash I had saved from before. That would be my last resort.

She twisted on her hooves and dove through a building, disappearing through the open doorway and out of my sight. Her red marker gave her away though, and I followed without issue. We both twisted through the small shop and out the back door into a tiny alleyway. The alley itself was full of trash and the corpse of another pony, this one long-dead. It stunk something fierce, but I didn’t let it bother me. When the pink mare took off down to my left, I rounded the corner stiffly, and followed.

She broke past the building line while looking back at me, that strange look still on her face. She didn’t see the other pony running in the same direction. The two collided in a mix of pink and white, rolling on the ground several times. The pink mare wasted no time in kicking her way off the purple-maned mare and onto her hooves. She disappeared again into the street, leaving my sister looking extremely confused.

“This way, Lost!” I yelled as I ran past her. L.A. was a big mare, she’d be okay. One less thing to worry about. I kept on running down the street, homing in on that singular red marker.

We passed through another building, snaking between hallways and into alleys, running from street to street in a nonsensical pattern that left me lost once again. At no point did she get so far out of sight as to switch places with another.

A brilliant idea hit me. I bit down on Persistence’s firing bit and slid into S.A.T.S.

Rose. It said her name was Rose. I’d never really noticed that S.A.T.S. could identify targets by name. I supposed everything else had always just been ‘Raider’ or something equally non-descriptive, and since I so rarely had the chance to use it, it hadn’t ever been on my mind. I let loose a bullet into her flank.

She yelped in pain and surprise as the lead buried itself into her haunch right below her cutie mark. I made sure not to kill her. Now I’d know if she tried to swap out with another copy of herself.

The chase went on for too long, with me gaining so little distance overall that I didn’t think I’d ever catch her. We tore through several more buildings on the way and slowly worked ourselves back to the ‘good’ part of town.

“You can stop running and save yourself the trouble!” I yelled at her. The offer was more a plea, as I couldn’t keep running that this pace. If those copies didn’t feel tired like I did, this might never end.

She looked back at me, smirked, and swung the door on the building next to her open. In a flash, she disappeared inside, and the door slammed shut again. A house, fairly neutral in appearance, like the dozens I’d run past and through.

“Running through another house isn’t going to help!” I yelled. I pulled the door open and ran in. “You won’t lose... me... that... Fuck.”

Ten identical mares stood there, each holding a weapon of some sort, from pistols to shotguns to rifles. One even had a grenade rifle. They all wore the same shit-eating grin. The PipBuck suddenly showed so many red markers that all the green of the locals were covered. The worst part? I’d known I was running into a trap the whole time.

I really needed to stop and consider the consequences of my actions.

“Lost, it’s a tra-”

A barrel pressed against my head stopped my warning.

Seconds later, my sister ran into the building behind me. Wonderful, calling out for her had done the exact opposite of what I actually wanted it to do. She skidded to a stop right next to me and gaped. “Shit...”

That annoyingly familiar voice rose to my ears. “Unicorn, get the other two in your group.” Another one of the mares added, “Or else we shoot this one.” The pony holding the rifle to my head pushed it harder against my skull for emphasis, making me take a step back.

If there was one thing I learned from what happened after killing Gunbuck, it was that I did not like having guns that close to my head. I took another step back, trying to put just a hair of dodging distance between me and the barrel.

L.A. said nothing. She backed out slowly, her eyes shifting back and forth as she looked at each mare in turn, then back again higher up where their weapons hung in their magical grasps. She looked at me for a split second, then disappeared out the doorway.

“Even if she tells them its a trap, it won’t do you any good,” said one mare.

“So, stay here with us and just wait patiently,” finished another.

They finished one another’s sentences and referred to themselves as ‘we’ and ‘us’ rather than individuals. They weren’t alicorns, which meant they couldn’t be a part of the Unity whatever Rebar was always talking about. But why did I know that sentence-finishing trait from somewhere? It was from... Something hazy. Like a memory creeping up and invading my dreams. My dreams.

“You’re that manticore!” I shouted, pointing a hoof accusingly. It came back in a flurry: the two manticores with the scars and the flower pot and the guns from... oh Goddesses. “You were spying on me!”

“So, she’s not as dumb as she looks,” said one of the mares with a snicker.

“Are you sure?” asked a second. She laughed. “She did just say she thought we were a manticore.”

“We did check up on you,” said another.

“We found nothing interesting. You’re just another Wastelander,” taunted a fourth.

None of them moved when they talked. Their weapons stayed perfectly still in their telekinesis, not even bobbing slightly. Aside from their lips and the occasional movement of their eyes, I might have thought they were statues. I couldn’t believe it. How long had they been spying on me, and how many times?

“Stop trying to think so hard. We can see the smoke coming from your ears,” said one of them. They all laughed.

“F-fuck you!” I shouted.

“And here we thought you went for stallions,” one said, her voice barely above a whisper.

I turned bright red, blushing so furiously I thought my face might erupt into flame. “That. That’s personal!” I screamed.

“You’re not denying it,” said the one holding her gun to my face. She prodded me with it a few times.

Lost walked back in with Xeno and Fine Tune, ending the torment. She looked at me and raised both eyebrows above the rim of her glasses, then just shook her head. Her eyes flickered to the floor, then back to me. With the slightest movement, she shook her head.

Well shit. If she couldn’t think of a plan that fast, we were as good as dead.

Fine Tune let out a quiet whistle, not completely unlike his normal chirping. His forehoof raised to gently run along his neck. Xeno said nothing. She scanned over the group and pursed her lips.

“So, you caught us. Now what?” L.A. asked calmly. Her voice wavered the tiniest bit, and if she wasn’t my sister, I might have missed it. She was just as scared as I was.

At least it made me momentarily forget why I was blushing.

The various ponies dispersed, until only the Rose with the grenade rifle was left. They disappeared into other rooms, taking their weapons with them. But if they were really all one in the same, and whichever was the real one could just make more, then sacrificing one copy to a grenade to kill all four of us was nothing to her. She only needed one to keep us locked down like that.

But if I was fast enough... I looked down at the bit of my battle saddle. A half-second with S.A.T.S. and she’d be a fading husk.

“Ah-ah, none of that,” chided Rose. She aimed the grenade rifle at my sister rather than me. “All four of you, follow me. This will be far different than what you’re probably expecting.”

She led the four of us through the room and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. With the rifle’s barrel, she pointed to a doorway at the end of a short hallway. The hallway looked completely unused, like it had just been sitting for two centuries, which was strange if a pony lived there. Even the fading wallpaper was unmarred, not ripped or rolling down from the ceiling like I’d seen in other ruins.

The stink though, was so strong I almost gagged even at the top of the stairs. I slowly walked down the hallway and pushed the door open. When I did, an even worse odor hit me in the face with enough force to make my eyes water and my lungs burn.

Inside the room was a bed. Only a bed. And on that bed was a mare. She bore a resemblance to the mares I’d been chasing for the entire day, but only in color. She was so morbidly obese that the legs of the bed were bowed outward and had been repaired with wonderglue and rotting wood several times. Her mane was a horrible knotted nest, as was her tail. Her eyes shared the exact same look as the copies though.

So this was the real Rose.

She waited until all four of us had stepped into the room. She even patiently waited while my sister and the others gagged. The smell must be from her, which made it all the worse. I swore it was like a corpse left in the sun, with radiation poured all over it with a manticore using it as a bathroom. Ugh!

“Do you- have any idea- how much trouble- you’ve caused me?!” she half-yelled. I could hear the anger in her voice, but she had to gasp every few words, making it hard to follow what exactly she said. With an annoyed look, she waved a sickening bloated hoof at the door.

The thinner, prettier Rose with the grenade rifle walked in.

“I suppose you want me to do this too?” she asked. The original nodded. “As you wish.” The mare turned to us. “She’s not happy, and by proxy, neither am I. You’ve really ruined a good thing here.” She stomped her hoof and looked at me. “And you! Count your blessings we don’t share pain, or I’d be ripping you limb from metal limb right here and now for all the harm you’ve done. I’d leave your head alive underneath the bed as extra punishment.” She growled and bared her teeth at me.

“Hey! Leave her alone!” shouted my sister.

“Lostpony, I donot think we are in a position to make demands,” countered Xeno. She held a hoof over her nose and stared at the obese mare on the bed intently.

Fine Tune transformed, flashing the green fire into the room. The caparaced changeling remained, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It smelled mildly less terrible afterward. Maybe his fire burned some of the stink away.

“No, you’re not. Now listen. We had a good thing going here,” lectured Rose’s copy. She paced back and forth in the room as she talked. “Do you have any idea how long she’s been working to get her sales routes set in stone?” The mare pointed at the bigger mare on the bed. The obese mare just glared at us.

“You’re all very lucky she’s a nice pony. The Ministry of Peace teaches one thing, and that’s kindness,” she pressed her muzzle against mine. “You might want to learn a thing or two about kindness!” She cracked me in the chest with the butt of her rifle and returned to pacing. “So, here’s the thing. We know exactly everything about what’s going on with you all, ever since that run in with Wirepony over near Leathers.”

So that was his real name. Weird. How... fitting.

“Run in? He bit off my hoof!” I yelled. I hadn’t really wanted to yell it, it just popped out.

“And you deserved that,” she spat at me.

“No she didn’t,” countered my sister.

“Shut up. Point is, we’re going to need new supplies and new sales routes if our job is to continue here,” she said with a smile. At least she took pride in her work. “It’s a very important job and we aren’t happy with it being broken by a ragtag group of wannabe heroes who think they’re hot shit.”

The mare on the bed waved her hoof again and pointed at us.

“She wants you to know that you’re not the first group of misfits wrecking all the work that’s been put into place,” she translated. She looked between me and my sister, then over at Xeno and Fine Tune. “I think you could stand to learn a thing or two about working in harmony.” With a sigh, she looked up at the ceiling. “If only,” she whispered. She said something else, but I only caught the word ‘friendship’ out of it.

“And you’re telling us this why, exactly?” asked L.A. She shifted uneasily, then snorted. Her lips parted slightly, and she started breathing through her mouth.

I did the same, hoping it would help with the stench. Instead, it just tasted bad.

“Because we need somepony to fix the problems you just caused, and we think that making you fix your mistake would probably be the best course of action,” she explained.

“What makes you think we won’t just leave if you let us walk?” goaded Lost. She took a step forward, but was stopped by the grenade rifle pressing against her head, right below her horn.

“It’s a simple task. We just need more Med-X and Buck, and a few other drugs to keep the population here happy,” she said with another shit-eating grin.

Xeno answered before any of us could. “Wewill do it.”

“Of course the zebra agrees!” she cheered. The mare looked over at the obese Rose on the bed, who giggled quietly. It was horrific, seeing all the rolls of her body fat jiggle. “Your kind was always so good at getting us what we needed. A shame what happened with your country. Roam had the best drugs anywhere.”

“Itis a practice we have not abandoned,” said Xeno, a little smirk across her lips.

“Xeno, what in the Goddesses names?!” I yelled, finally able to find words.

“They are not my Goddesses, they are yours,” Xeno answered calmly. She pulled the slaver helmet down, blocking me from seeing her eyes. “Wewill return to my home, my tribe will craft what is needed, and we shall return. It willnot be difficult.” She looked over at the clone. “Clonepony, trade will be required, then wewill have a deal.”

“That went easier than we expected, actually. Zebras were always so nice, smuggling things for us,” praised the Rose clone. The original waved her hoof and smiled.

I looked over at Fine Tune, who hadn’t said a single thing during the whole exchange. He didn’t look back, but just stared at the ground. Captivity of any kind seemed to cause him to lock up completely. I wish I’d noticed it sooner when we were in Skirt. Was it so ingrained in him?

“And if we don’t come back?” Lost asked.

“Oh, we’ve been watching you for quite a while,” said Rose’s copy. “What makes you think we’ll stop? Besides, as insurance, there’s always the mares you took from Show Blossom, before you got her killed...” She paced once more, bobbing the grenade rifle in the air toward each of us in time. She looked far too relaxed, holding an explosive launcher right next to what was her lifeline to existence.

“You wouldn’t. They’re innocent!” shouted my sister. She stomped her hoof and bared her teeth.

“What makes you think that’d stop us? But fine, have it your way. Don’t come back in three days,” the Rose copy said with an evil grin. “And we tell Amble exactly where you and your Steel Ranger friends are.”

I wasn’t letting that happen. Anything was a better option than getting thrown back in with Amble, especially if it got our friends captured too. I tackled the mare, and before she could react, wrestled the grenade rifle from her telekinetic grasp. The moment I had my teeth on the trigger, I fired a grenade over the bed and behind the mare.

At least her body would shield the rest of us.

“Hidden what are you-”

The grenade exploded, cutting my sister off. Blood splattered against the far wall, followed by great chunks of fat. The original Rose flailed her forehooves in the air, the backs of them burnt to a crisp and charred completely black. The clone of her threw me off and against the wall, while her magic ripped the gun from my grasp.

“Nice... Try...” wheezed the fat blob of a pony. Her horn lit up, followed by a massive glow all around her body. In an instant, the blood on the wall was gone and she looked completely unexploded, with the charred and destroyed pieces of her body filled in as if nothing had happened. All that remained of my attempt on her life were the swiftly fading chunks that had been cast to the sides.

“Let’s try that again,” announced the clone. “Except this time, without anything stupid. In fact, now it’s two days, and you get an escort.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Chem Resistant – Putting yourself in the seedy underbelly of chem culture, you've forced yourself to gain the willpower to fight addiction. You are now 75% less likely to be addicted to any chems or drugs you take, not that it's going to stop you from taking them.

Skill Milestones:
Battle Saddles - 100
Unarmed - 100

Lost Art:
New Perk: Momma’s Filly (Rank 2) – Being taught how to survive, you can even coach others in what to do, +5 to Medicine and Science skills.

“So uh, how do you think she makes each of those copies of herself?”
“Do you honestly want to know?”
“I was thinking that I might be able to learn the spell myself sometime!”
“... Are you fucking serious?”
“No, there will be no fucking what-so-ever. I promise.”
“OH GODDESSES! I wasn’t even thinking of that!”
“Oh come on now, it’s not as fun if you’re working yourself...”
“Just, just stop, please.”
“Hiddenpony, you need to loosen up a bit, itis just sex.”
“It isn’t just sex! Sex is... You can’t just...”
“I think we broke her...”

Author's Notes:

(A massive thank you to Kkat for creating, and everyone else who has helped to flesh out the universe of Fallout Equestria. And to everyone who has/will help with with editing and making this more palatable... Big hearts to Dimestream, Sabsy, SugarCube, Moth, and everypony else who helped with ideas, editing, and brushies. And of course everything is copyright their respective owners. ~Hnetu)

[[Sorry for lateness on this chapter, everypony. Between me goading Hnetu into dragging her ass across the United States to come visit me, then ME moving to a different city and being unable to edit until I got internet again, it’s been one hell of a delay, and mostly my fault at that. My new schedule doesn’t allow me to edit quite as much anymore, but with how much she’s improved (have you noticed?), there’s not as much work for me to do anymore, so there shouldn’t be much difference. Should be back to relatively regular intervals soon. Same Bat-time, same Bat-station! @Dimestream]]

Chapter 17: There's No Place...

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Chapter Seventeen: There’s No Place...
“It’s good to see you again, dear.”

Incentive.

I didn’t like the word ‘incentive’ at all. It felt more like ‘blackmail’ to me. I really hoped Lost and I could come up with a plan to ditch the pink bitch and get revenge. The sooner we got free of her chokehold on us, the better. It sent a chill up my spine to know that if we weren’t fast enough we could end up back in collars at U Cig. If they got Praline and Lamington and all the rest, well, I couldn’t forgive myself for that. On top of that, I had the lives of the Unity mares to worry about too. I prayed to the Goddesses that the Wasteland itself would give us enough time, or we could buy more somehow.

It would take the entire night, walking non-stop, just to get back to Pommel Falls and the Stables, let alone however far away it was through the mountains to wherever Xeno called home. Add dealing with whatever happened there, the time needed to make everything on Rose’s little shopping list, and then another walk back. I tried adding up the time needed, and every different possibility just came up with us ending up returning late.

Then again, it was a good thing we didn't have to walk.

I lay on one of the rear seats of the motorwagon, as Rose had called it. It was extremely similar to the ones we’d used as cover during the firefight, except that this one worked. The engine appeared to be a combination of old-world combustion through steam or something. I couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said it was. The part that did work was magically powered by spark batteries. The only thing driving it right now was a combination of Rose and my sister putting their magic into it. I’d long since given up on figuring out exactly what they were doing, after Rose started going on and on about horn output and other terms that made my eyes spin.

I found myself unable to focus on anything my sister or Rose said to one another. It felt like my head was in a vice, or like I’d gotten caught in a daze. Instead, I focused on my surroundings. Thinking was hard right now, looking was not.

I looked back from my seat at the motorwagon itself. Four identical wheels were bolted on axles underneath, and a gigantic engine took up the majority of the back half of the deck. The floor was more a deck than anything else, and had a decent enough clearance on either side of the engine block so a pony could walk around to the back, where enough space was left to sit and keep watch. The engine consisted of a boiler-ish thing, and several other gizmos that I didn’t know the names for, all attached to various cogs, gears and pipes that went underneath the deck to power the axles and the wheels.

The engine might have once had an intact housing, but the wood had splintered and broken, leaving the top half exposed. Whoever had used it during or before the War had armored both the sides of the engine and the edges of the wagon, though time had worn most of it to rust. The front of the wagon had two bench seats facing each other, with a third one right behind the steering wheel for a driver. The deck’s wood was in good shape for its age, but the cushions over the seats were grimy and smelled awful.

Given I was in the Wasteland, it was par for the course.

The very front of the wagon had an armored, slanted bumper to push debris out of the way. Lights were fixed on either side of the driver’s seat, though one of them was busted and the other glowed so dimly that I expected it wouldn’t be of any use once the sun finally finished setting. Everything else about the motorwagon felt barren. Wheels, flat deck, seats, engine, and a whole lot of nothing. I’d have killed for a mounted gun or something, because I knew riding around in this thing would just draw all sorts of raiders, bandits, and monsters to us.

But it meant I didn’t have to walk, and that was worth it.

The seat was comfy too, compared to walking. I shifted and got comfier, relaxing into the cushion. I didn’t have to worry about standing or keeping myself going forward. My muscles didn’t scream in protest anymore, almost like I could just close my eyes and... No. I shook my head. I needed to stay awake and vigilant, in case something attacked this gigantic rolling ‘ponies with shit here’ beacon.

Xeno sat on her haunches at the back, behind the engine tower and the rest of the mechanics. She leaned against the boiler and held her rifle across her hind legs, ready in case of emergency. A thick stream of smoke wafted behind us as she chain-smoked cigarette after cigarette. How she lit them still confused me, but I was beginning to wonder how she still had so many. I’d watched her smoke at least a dozen between leaving the blob-pony that made up the original Rose and leaving the city limits. Her freaky zebra magic was actually beginning to weird me out.

Fine Tune meanwhile flitted back and forth as the pegasus. I’d started to get used to the idea of referring to the changeling I’d come to know as a ‘he’ as a ‘she’ whenever she was in the pegasus form. It only bothered me when I stopped to actually think about it, but really it just felt natural to see a mare and go ‘she’ without taking the time to consider body versus mind. I could always ask what she prefered to be called, but that could come when I wasn’t fighting to stay awake. I gave up worrying about it. It was just too damn complicated to think about.

The green pegasus darted around the motorwagon, inspecting the wheels as they turned, sticking her face into the top of the boiler-thing, and fidgeting with the steering wheel-thing whenever we weren’t needing to turn down the road.

How could she be so restless and twitchy? Had sucking part of me out really given her that much energy? I yawned.

L.A. stood at the side of the wagon with Rose, whom I’d decided to stop quantifying with ‘clone’ every time, since it was yet another thing that made my head hurt. The two kept talking about magical propulsion, for so long that I’d completely tuned it out. Despite Rose being our current captor, Lost seemed genuinely interested in how the vehicle moved, which I hoped meant we’d be keeping it after the ordeal was over. Having a mobile platform for cover would be nice, once we got it re-fitted with better armor and maybe a big gun I could use for protection.

I sulked a little. For protection. For half a second I’d wanted to have a big gun just to kill enemies before they got close, and had to remind myself that I couldn’t fall into that raider mentality again. I needed to think the way ponies before the War thought. Peace, friendship, kindness. The Glowing One said that if ponies cared about friendship as much as winning, they’d have never let the world end. Maybe I could learn a thing of two from that. Maybe I could find a pre-war book and get a fresh perspective on the importance of friendship and working together, and use that to break the hold Amble had on my mind. Her hoofprints still marred my brain, along with the little claws that tended to pick and poke at places I didn’t feel should exist. At least her hold had weakened.

I felt bad about the townsponies who had died. I knew I wasn’t the one who killed them, but I felt remorse that their deaths were caused by ponies who were actually out to kill me. It was a step in the right direction, and as long as I knew what direction I needed to go in, I could get there eventually. I hated that Lost felt she needed to give me an order, but I knew her heart was in the right place. A little push was worth it, and orders were easy to follow. It’s just too bad she couldn’t say ‘Miss Fortune, be normal’ and have me snap back to how things were before.

It just didn’t work that way.

I closed my eyes and sighed softly, and the world sank away into darkness. Friendship, trust... What made a good friend though? Loyalty was high up there, and that’s why I felt Xeno was such a good friend to my sister and me. She’d stood by us when she could have abandoned us. Rose had said that the Ministry of Peace taught her kindness, and I remembered something mom had once said about that and the mares who ran the Ministries. Maybe it just took a little bit of cheater magic to draw us all together.

I chuckled quietly to myself.

Suddenly, I felt very grateful mom had taught me how to read. I looked over in the direction I knew The Cinch was. It housed quite a few things that had just become goals of mine: the Ministry of Peace, lessons about kindness, and the stories of the Ministry Mares. I knew exactly where I’d be treasure hunting next. The minute we got away from this obligation, I’d ask Lost to let us head there so I could do a little research on something called friendship.

Maybe then I could find out how to keep my head on my shoulders and under my control.

~ ~ ~

Two mares battled in front of me, each stabbing with horns and kicking with hooves, attempting to put the other down for good. One mare had a crippled hind leg, with bone sticking out the back and a trail of blood following every step she took. The other wore ragged barding thrown together from what looked like the tanned hide of another pony, studded with far too many spikes. Both unicorns were green, but only one had the rust-colored mane that belonged to my mom.

I just hoped she could end the fight fast enough.

I hid with Lost behind an old mailbox. We stared out from behind it to watch the fight, one of us at each side. We’d been told not to move, and we weren’t going to while another pony was still alive other than mom. I shook against the cold metal of the mailbox, hoping the fight would end soon.

It was winter in the Wasteland, and every second we waited outside was one step closer to an early grave. But we needed food, and mom never let us split up. She always wanted us in sight and within charging distance. We’d had a few close calls before, but mom always kept us safe. She jumped to protect us the moment something bad happened. Lost and I couldn’t have asked for a better mom.

“Get her! You can do it mom!” yelled Lost. She waved a hoof in the air, cheering mom on.

I looked over at my sister. I prayed to the Goddesses, like mom taught me, that she’d win. The raiders had attacked what seemed like forever ago, and mom hadn’t had a single second to stop fighting since they started. The corpses of two other ponies littered the street, ones that hadn’t been so tough or stubborn. But mom wasn’t immortal, even if I wanted her to be. I was shaking, partly from the cold but mostly because I was terrified that mom wouldn’t make it.

“Working... on-Ah!” mom answered, dodging another jab from the raider unicorn’s horn. My mother wasn’t having any of it though. She bit down on the offending horn and yanked, dragging the other mare off balance and onto her face. “Gon’t you gare!” she shouted around the raider’s horn. She stomped the raider in the face with her forehoof.

She sounded strained, and I whimpered. Lost knew enough to keep the two of us safe, but I’d seen enough of the Wasteland already to want mom around for as long as possible. I fought back tears. I needed to be tough for her. I needed to have faith. I just... If something happened to her... Why’d they have to be so terrible?

The raider grunted, but didn’t let up. A kick to the face didn’t seem to faze her, and she just grabbed onto mom’s leg and pulled. Mom toppled, and soon the raider was face to flank with mom’s cutie mark, a set of three flowers in different phases of blossom. Both grunted, and resumed their battle. They rolled across the street, kicking and biting. Every now and then one would headbutt the other, but neither could reach with their horns from such an angle.

“Momma! Do you need help?” I yelled, thinking that I might be able to get a kick in and buy her the time she needed. Mom always said I was a strong pony, so maybe... I took a few steps forward, past the mailbox. I could bring her one of her guns, and then she wouldn’t have to worry about her leg. I’d never seen her with a broken leg before. I didn’t even know if we could fix something like that. I sniffled, and asked Celestia and Luna to keep her safe if I couldn’t myself.

“Get back there now!” mom shouted. She kicked the mare in the face and looked up at me. “You... Grr. You will stay- Hidden! I don’t have-” She screamed in pain as the mare bit her neck and twisted, digging a chunk out of her flesh.

I shied away, back behind the mailbox. Looking over to my sister, my ears drooped. I’d be in trouble for that later, especially since it got mom hurt. So I was a strong pony, she said, Lost was still the smart one.

Mom kept on with the mare, but she wasn’t gaining any ground. With her broken leg, I worried she’d pass out from blood loss before the fight ended. She didn’t give up. She pulled both hind legs underneath the mare, who’d gotten on top of her and was hitting her in the face with both forehooves, and pushed. She screamed in pain from the pressure on her crippled leg, but the mare went flying into the air and toppled through a pile of trash.

Given the moment to move, mom jumped to her hooves and charged. She dove into the trash heap and smashed both forehooves down hard onto the mare below her. They both screamed, and mom reared up once more. Slamming both hooves down, she pulled back and speared her horn straight through the leather armor, into the raider mare’s chest. Her red mane fell over her face, but we could still hear her panting.

She took a deep breath and pulled her horn out. Looking battered and torn, bleeding from her neck, her nose, and with bone sticking out of her back leg, she walked back over to my sister and I with her head held high. She breathed in shallow gasps, but wore the widest smile she could at the same time. “Alright, that was fun, wasn’t it?” she said, laughing hollowly. “Lost, go grab my pack so I can patch up, please.”

Lost nodded and darted off. Her horn started to glow a light blue, already reaching out with her telekinesis to find mom’s hidden saddlebags.

“Lucky fight, that one,” Mom joked. “They didn’t bother using their guns.” With a deep sigh, she sat down on her haunches and stuck her broken leg forward. “Hidden, when you grow up...” She bit her lip and winced, her horn and leg lighting up. “When you grow up. Find somewhere safe and don’t live like- Ah ah... like this.”

“Are you okay, momma?” I asked, scooting forward to look at the shattered bone. I’d seen her hurt bad before, but I’d never seen her hurt this bad. I could see the bone shift ever so slightly with her heartbeat. It made me a little sick to my stomach, and looked away from the wound. I thought the world of my mother though, and I knew she could handle everything the Wasteland might throw at her. I was scared, but I knew she’d pull through.

She always did.

“I’m fine, it just stings a little,” she lied. She always talked in the same voice when she lied, soft, with emphasis on the ‘a little’ that almost always followed when she was in pain. Seeing my concerned look, she patted me on the head with one of her blood-covered hooves. “Oop, sorry. Little red on you,” she giggled. “Look, I promise I’m okay.”

Lost ran back with saddlebags in tow, hovering them a few inches off the ground in the blue field of her magic. “Here mom!” she announced. She slowed to a trot a she got close. Her eyes went wide when she saw the full extent of mom’s broken leg. She swallowed, and took the final few steps forward, then set the saddlebags down. “A-are you gonna be okay, mom?” Her legs shook, but she didn’t show the fear in her voice.

“I’ll be- I’ll be fine, Lost. Would you like, ugh, to learn how to patch this sort of thing up?” Mom asked. She held the top of her leg, above the break, with both forehooves, and groaned. She was obviously in pain, but given how she pretended it was nothing, she didn’t want us to know just how bad it was.

Lost looked over to me, then back to Mom. Her coat was even paler than normal, but she nodded ever so slightly. “Yes,” she answered quietly. She took a few steps forward and sat down next to mom’s broken leg. She yelped when she sat, then scooted to the side to sit down again. She’d sat in the slowly pooling blood, and now looked as if she were about to faint.

“Alright,” Mom started. She groaned and fought back against the pain with gritted teeth and shallow breathing. “It’s a simple spell. I’m gonna do it this time, and I’ll teach you- Ugh. I’ll teach you next time.” Her horn lit up a lighter green than her coat, and she began to cast the spell. Lost watched intently as the bone slowly slid back into place and the lines where it had broken began to seal back up.

My sister gasped, holding a hoof over her mouth. Her eyes darted back and forth, from one chunk of bone over to the flesh that slowly closed itself up and sealed the meat and bone back beneath mom’s green coat. The process took several minutes longer than my attention span, but Lost never once took her watering eyes off while she worked.

I wasn’t a unicorn like the rest of my family, so I didn’t have any interest in healing spells. After a few minutes I got up and wandered off. While they worked their cheater magic together, I could at least see if the raiders had anything worth taking. Mom couldn’t get mad at me for that, right? She was wounded and I was just helping her with a step she’d be taking right after anyway. Then we could get back to our hideaway where it was nice and warm.

I trotted over to the last mare that she’d taken out, the one in the giant trash pile. Somepony had cleaned up the street long ago, but left the junk from old wagons, debris from the buildings nearby, and assorted bones lying in a pile. It was the perfect place to dig around for something good. I stuck my head in and started to nose around. “Where are you?” I asked nopony in particular, since I knew the raider wouldn’t be able to answer.

A voice groaned.

“Oh no,” I whispered. Maybe she could answer. Mom might not have killed her. I turned and ran. “Momma! Momma!” I screamed. I had to warn her. She could get Dedication and Devotion and-

I heard a strange noise, almost like somepony yelling ‘PLZ-OW.’ A pain like I’d never experienced before tore through my stomach. I fell mid-step onto the shattered sidewalk and slid forward, leaving a bright red trail of blood behind me. I curled up and groaned, tears already flowing down my muzzle.

“Hidden!” shouted my mom. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear the limping gait of her running toward me. A shot rang out, and the groaning behind me silenced instantly. The raider was actually dead now, not just playing that way and waiting for somepony to come back and check on her.

“Momma, Ah’m shory...” I muttered. “It hurts, momma.” I clutched my open stomach, the warm blood flowing over my hooves. It became hard to breathe, and I had to force myself to get any air in. For a second, everything went black, before reality snapped back with another horrible pain through my body. I cried out, sobbing as I fought to be strong against the pain.

“Don’t be sorry honey, it’s my fault,” she said, already working me over with her magic and her hooves. She pulled my forehooves from my barrel and looked down at me. “Oh, no...” She looked over at my sister. “Lost! I need your help.”

Lost stood there, staring at me and not moving. She hadn’t moved from where she’d been sitting while watching mom patch herself up. She’d barely managed to get to her hooves. Tears fell down the sides of her muzzle as well. She didn’t even blink as she stared at me.

“Lost Art!”

Lost snapped out of it and ran to my mother’s side. “Ye-yes, what do you need, Mom?” she asked, stuttering. She ran her hoof over her mane, pushing it from her face as she watched, once again standing on shaking legs.

“I need you to...”

I didn’t hear what she said after that, as the whole world faded to black.

~ ~ ~

I woke up with a start and bolted upright in the seat, only to find myself in the middle of the night and unharmed. Slowly, I touched the spot where I’d been shot so many years ago. I pulled my jacket open, and looked at the old scar. With a deep breath, I curled back up on the seat and held my forelegs over the spot.

I wanted my mom so bad. Lost was an excellent healer now, since she’d been able to learn how to actually cast the spell, but she wasn’t Mom.

I started to cry.

* * *

“Dammit, wake up!” yelled Lost as loud as she could. “Hidden, I need help here!” Her voice was full of urgency, but I just rolled over and covered my face with my hoof.

It wasn’t morning. I still needed sleep. Even if it was morning, I still wasn’t ready to get up. I just clenched my eyes closed and groaned.

“I’ll get her up,” shouted a voice I didn’t want to hear. There came a loud click, and then the FWUMP of a grenade rifle going off right above my head.

That woke me up in a hurry. The following explosion had me sitting up on the seat at attention.

“Finally,” Lost said. “Grab Persistence and go to the back with Xeno.” She stood at the steering column and fired her plasma pistol several times into the dark of the night.

The magical plasma lit up the sky in streaks, revealing a horde of advancing ghouls. I couldn’t count how many there were in the time it took the plasma to smash into one of them and send it back to where it belonged.

I rubbed my eye with my flesh forehoof, trying to make sense of what I saw. “What ha-”

“Now, Hidden!” she yelled. In her telekinesis she lifted another spark cell from her saddlebags and slammed it into the gun. The PipBuck glowed amber on her foreleg, lighting up just enough space in front of us to show how many they’d already killed.

The motorwagon rolled forward, past the charred remains of a dozen now-dead feral ghouls, each peppered with scorch marks from magical energy and grenades. The remaining ferals followed us as we moved, keeping pace until they were shot down. I looked back at the engine block, which chugged away, turning the wheels. Either Lost and Rose had found a way to keep it moving without their help, or they were pulling double duty powering the engine and defending us.

Fine Tune dove back and forth in his changeling form, chirping madly the entire time. Each pass he made, he lit up with the baleful green fire of transformation, only to slam into the ground with enough impact to throw up chunks of dirt and rock. A corpse flew into the air and out of our path.

“There’s another one over there,” L.A. yelled, pointing her hoof. She popped another shot of plasma off into the horde. “No, there.” She jabbed her hoof into the air several times. Turning back to look at me, she shot a glare like I’d never seen before. “Hidden!” Not missing a beat, she returned to firing.

With no time for even a salute or affirmation, I grabbed Persistence and got to work detaching her from the battle saddle. It would take longer for me to get it on than to get Persistence off, since I’d gotten good at swapping out weapons. After what felt like an eternity, I pulled the hunting rifle off. “Going!” I shouted. I grabbed some ammo in my teeth and made for the back of the wagon.

“Itis about time you woke, Hiddenpony,” Xeno whispered as I got to the back. She lay between the outermost wall and the engine block, hidden by the meager protections of the rusted armor along the side. In her hooves rested the sniper rifle I’d given her so long ago, and next to her rested her striped knife.

“How long have you been fighting?” I asked. I dropped down on the opposite side of the engine from her and leveled Persistence. I wasn’t the best shot without the battle saddle, but I’d make do. I just wished I had the PipBuck for S.A.T.S. It would make free-aiming a lot easier.

“Too long,” she answered. Her hoof twitched and the rifle unloaded another bullet. The casing ejected, bounced off the armored wall, and flew into my face.

“Ahh! Fuck,” I cursed. The little bastard burned. I bit down on my tongue and aimed, not bothering to try and converse.

Ahead of us, behind the wagon itself, shambled another half-dozen ghouls, dodging the corpses of their slain comrades and jumping over the craters left by Fine Tune. These had been Wartime ponies, going by their tattered clothes. I saw dresses and suits, and even one wearing the barding of a soldier. I aimed for the armored soldier, and pulled the trigger.

Two shots hit the zombie pony in the chest. It staggered him, but he didn’t stop. I’d aimed for the head, but my shots veered off a lot more than I’d expected. Maybe the time I could have used to get the battle saddle on would have been worthwhile.

Without my sister or Rose to keep the engine output at its max, we moved dangerously slowly. Our pace was just barely faster than the ghouls could move on their rotted and broken legs. I looked over the edge of the armoring and saw another ghoul beside me. On instinct, I hit it in the face with my steel hoof and dropped back down.

Ghouls on the sides were waiting for the open back of the motorwagon, but I finally figured out what exactly was going on. We’d gone into feral territory and had to make it through before we got overwhelmed. Numbers weren’t in our favor, so barreling through had to be the best bet. At least, I hoped that was what Lost was doing. It seemed like a smart pony plan, given how many zombies were surrounding us.

I fired again, aiming at the nearest ghoul this time, since it was easier to aim for the close ones as we passed. It would keep the more aggressive ones from dragging themselves onto the wagon and eating us. I missed the headshot I’d aimed for, but I took out the mare’s foreleg, and she toppled over. She wouldn’t be getting onto the wagon, but that wasn’t good enough. Another shot divorced her from her head.

“Are there a lot?” I yelled, trying to talk over the fwumps and B-KEWs from the front of the wagon. I knew I saw plenty in the front, but getting a better number than my sleep-addled brain could pull would help. The sky lit up every few seconds as Fine Tune dive-bombed to clear us a path.

“Less than when we started,” answered the zebra quietly as she stared down the approaching zombies. She was so quiet I almost didn’t hear her. She squeezed her trigger and dropped another with a sniper round through the chest. “Not many left,” she continued. “You fire, I will go fight the fast ones with my knife.” She passed me the sniper rifle and jumped from the back of the wagon.

I started to yell for her to stop, but she had a look of determination on her face that I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop. We were going slow enough she could catch up afterward. If that’s how she wanted to fight, I’d cover her.

Her dark coat blended in with the darkness around her, but I could see the smallest of flashes of her stripes when she moved. Holding her knife in her fetlock, she moved gracefully on her hind legs around the undead and got behind the fastest one. Once there, she turned and jabbed her knife into its skull in a single swift movement. Pulling it free, she jumped over the falling corpse and slammed another to the ground. The knife came down over the throat, and with a twist found its way up into the skull through the jaw.

I stared in awe, not having seen Xeno fight like that before. Either the night made her deadly, or she had something against ferals. She targeted carefully, moving in a slow path back away from the wagon by taking out the fastest of them first. I looked through the scope of the sniper rifle, wanting to save ammo in Persistence since she liked to fire multiple shots. I pulled the trigger, and another zombie fell behind my friend.

Unfortunately, that was the last bullet I had in the sniper rifle, and I didn’t want to waste the time to run back and get more. I tossed her rifle over to the side Xeno had been lying on, and pulled up Persistence. By the time I looked back up, she’d taken down another of the zombies, but the final one, the soldier, managed to get behind her.

“Behind you!” I shouted over the gunfire. I fired Persistence, but missed entirely.

The feral ghoul Xeno had just slain somehow snared the zebra’s legs, and she couldn’t pull away. The soldier ghoul attacked her, latching on with its teeth and pulling her to the ground. She screamed as she fell, twisting to trying and stab or slash the zombie, but he had her in such a hold she couldn’t reach anything.

Blood sprayed from the bite when the monster released her, but he only went back for another bite. Xeno yelled again, stabbing at the only thing she could reach, one of his armored legs.

I took a deep breath and aimed. I needed to hit it, or I might lose the best friend I had aside from my sister. I prayed to the Goddesses for the crazy zebra luck to once again be on my side. It had worked, most of the time, and I really needed it.

I fired.

The ghoul’s head exploded. Then the bullet passed straight through, right into my friend’s side.

Xeno yelled something in her native tongue and went limp.

I tossed Persistence down onto the deck and jumped off the wagon. She needed to be brought back, and Lost needed to fix her. If she died I wouldn’t forgive myself. I leapt over the remains of the zombie ponies and skidded to a stop next to her, right into a pool of her blood. I grabbed the rotten flesh of the soldier feral in my teeth, and threw him aside. Holding back my vomit, I grabbed my friend’s knife and stabbed it through my jacket. I grabbed Xeno next, and dragged her back to the wagon.

“Hiddenpony?” she said quietly. “You forgot my helmet...” She smiled, then closed her eyes.

* * *

Lost sat on the right seat of the motorwagon, her horn glowing light blue. She stared intently at the bite marks on Xeno’s back as they closed up and chewed on her bottom lip as she worked. Taking her glasses off, she looked at me and asked, “Why’d she jump off?”

“To go after them with her knife,” I answered. Remembering the striped blade was hanging from my jacket, I pulled it free and slid it into Xeno’s bag. She wouldn’t want me to lose it, after all. “What happened when I was asleep?” I asked.

“Well,” Lost started, looking back at Xeno to continue her healing. She looked down through her glasses and blew on them. Satisfied with how clean they were, she slid them back over her muzzle. “It was an uneventful ride. Rose got it so we could take turns powering the wagon and steering.” She hopped from the seat and pressed her hoof against Xeno’s neck. A small smile crept across her lips. She sat back down and looked over to me. “She’ll be fine.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Fine Tune chirped loudly from behind me. He’d taken to steering while Lost was healing Xeno, since he claimed to have the best night vision. He’d wanted to make Lost happy, and taking over one of the chores to free up time for her to heal did that just fine. He was pointed in the right direction and ordered to keep straight ahead.

Rose, meanwhile, stood at the back with her grenade rifle. She guarded the rear for any straggler zombies that might catch up to us, now that we were out of their territory. The distance gave us alone time and let her focus on both guarding and keeping the engine running.

“Continue?” I asked, waving my hoof to get L.A. to finish the story.

“Hmm? Sorry,” she said. “We went off the road to cross to one heading in the direction of the river. The wagon doesn't ride very well when it's not on a road.” She pulled her glasses off and rubbed them along her foreleg to clean them off. “Sorry, smudge.”

“That’s fine,” I said. I just wanted to hear the story and she seemed to be stalling. Or her glasses just really needed cleaning. Looking down at her hoof, I realized I knew exactly how she felt. We both had something we needed to function, and when it got dirty or full of grit, we needed it fixed.

“You had the PipBuck, I should have gotten it off you before you went to sleep but I didn't think of it,” she explained. Looking at her glasses once more, she scowled. She rolled her eyes and put them back on anyway. “It was dark and we couldn't see much at all, then I spotted a pack of ghouls ahead. Rose shot first, with that grenade rifle.” She looked back at the engine block, more than likely to the clone mare behind. “The explosions attracted the rest of the herd from all directions and the firefight started. Then I thought to grab the PipBuck and get E.F.S. up and some bearings.” She held the PipBuck up for emphasis. “Red markers in all directions. They would have been on us if we'd tried to turn and run and we wouldn't have been able to outrun them so we went through.”

Fine Tune chirped, and with a flash of green fire, transformed again. “We couldn’t go past though, because a one of the corpses from Rose’s grenade was blocking the way,” he continued for her. “When I saw my Queen needed help, I jumped to clear the road.” He didn’t mention that, at the time, we weren’t actually on a ‘road.’ I let that slide.

“Yeah, with that little exploding dive-bomb trick of his, he kept the path clear the whole time,” L.A. said. “Luckily he didn’t leave the road in such bad shape that we couldn’t drive over it.” She laid back on the seat and stretched her hooves out. Little pops followed as she cracked her rear hooves. Rolling onto her side, she looked up at Xeno, then back at me. “Anyway. I tried to wake you a bunch, but you were deep under. We got good headway clearing through the herd, but all the ghouls following us started gaining ground.” She looked over at Xeno. “She started to take them out in the back, but there were too many, too close for a sniper rifle. That’s when we finally woke you.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. My ears drooped to the side and I looked down at the wood deck of the motorwagon. “I just, hadn’t gotten any real sleep since we got away from U Cig.”

“Nightmares?” she asked.

“Yeah...”

“I’m sorry, sis,” she whispered. “Anything I can do?”

“No, just finish the story I guess,” I answered. I didn’t want to think about the nightmares. For some reason my subconscious wanted me to remember all the bad things that had happened to me in my childhood. I could only wait impatiently for it to get to the day we left the Stable. Maybe they’d stop after that, since everything before that was fairly nice.

Unless I got to dream about dad. Then a nightmare would be worth it. Seeing his face, even in a dream, would be worth any pain or trauma imaginable. It had been too long, and I feared I might forget what he looked like, soon.

With a shake of my head, I snapped back to the present.

“...was clearing a path for us, and I helped with Loyalty to turn the closest ones to goo,” she said. I’d missed a few words somewhere. “It gave us just enough room to squeeze through. We’d have been fine were it not for Xeno getting hurt.”

Beep!

Lost looked down at the PipBuck. “Time to change shifts,” she explained. She stretched her hooves once more, twisting mid-stretch to pop her back. “Running this thing really takes it out of you. I think Praline might be able to fix it though.” She rolled onto her hooves and walked to the side of the deck. “I hope she can, at least. See you soon, sis.”

She disappeared behind the engine housing. A few seconds later, Rose walked around and took a seat where Lost had just been, carrying the grenade rifle in a sling on her back.

“Ew, it’s all warm,” she whined, while shifting her haunches on the rotten cushion to get comfortable.

I glared at her.

“What?” she snapped.

“What do you mean, what?” I snapped back. “You’re blackmailing us to get something. You expect me to be pleasant to you?” I stood up and took a few steps back, then sat down again.

“Do you remember what I said about the Ministry of Peace?” she asked, deadpan. She pulled the grenade rifle from her back. From the sling she pulled a small dirty square of cloth, then started polishing the barrel of the gun.

“It teaches kindness,” I answered. I looked over to Xeno, who hadn’t woken up yet. A twinge of guilt struck through my heart, as I worried about how kind I’d been to her the past few days. We’d been procrastinating helping her so much.

“Exactly,” she answered, not looking up from her rifle. “Now, we’re stuck together and I didn’t get a say in the matter either. I know I’m a copy, but we all have our own brains. It’s a load of shit that I had to be the one to come with you.” She looked up at me and squinted. “Let’s at least try to get along.”

“It was your idea that we be escorted,” I snapped. “I’ll try. But...” I didn’t know exactly how to broach the subject, so I simply asked. “But, what are you? The world ended two centuries ago, how could you, or that fat blob of a pony in the bed, have been taught at a Ministry?”

Rose glared up at me. “You’re quite rude. Do you know what else the Ministry of Peace did during the war?” she asked. She squinted and polished a spot on her rifle’s barrel. “I’ll tell you, since you can’t know unless you’ve been reading classified materials. It taught ponies to heal on a level they never could before.”

“I take it she knows how to do that, then?” I guessed. I’d watched her heal herself back from a grenade exploding against her flesh. That took some powerful magic to do, so... maybe?

“Bingo. Trade secrets keep the original around long enough, and well...” She trailed off. “If I told you any more it would put me in a bad position.” She spit on the barrel of the grenade rifle and swiped it clean, then slid the gun over her back.

“So, umm. What was it like before the war?” I asked. “I’ve always wondered what the world was actually like, y’know from a eyes of a pony who lived there. Well, a pony I could sit next to and not need to chug RadSafe every other minute just for a conversation.” I chewed on my lip, hoping I wasn’t going to piss her off. “Mostly, I wondered what sort of life I could have lived if I was born back then. It’d be nice to live in a world where I could wear a pretty dress and not feel horribly out of place.”

I couldn’t help but blush, admitting dreams of mine for the first time and all. The Wasteland meant barding and weapons, not fanciful parties. I looked at Rose.

“The world was... boring? Better? I don’t know, two centuries makes you forget a lot,” she answered, and shrugged. “I came from Manehatten originally,” she explained, talking as if she were the original Rose and not a copy. “But they needed a courier to run back and forth between the Ministries, once the War got bad. I was scouted from the postal service and offered a job here in Blackhoof. The pay was a lot better, being a government job. I took it, packed everything, and moved.”

“Why were the Ministries that important?” I asked. If I’d paid more attention to Mom when she told us about the history of Equestria before the Wasteland, I wouldn’t have so many questions, but it hadn’t seemed important back then. Being a thinky pony wasn’t high on my priority list as a filly, and I was paying for that now.

“Because they were Princess Luna’s new way of ruling things, and she needed to make sure everything worked,” Rose answered. She looked out into the darkness and brushed her mane away. It fell back into the exact same spot. She looked at Xeno. “Every pony with a special talent that could help the new government function to its fullest was asked to step up. The zebras took the change in leadership badly, and everything got a lot worse. But for Equestria? For Equestria we would give everything.”

Rose leaned back in her seat and stared up at the cloud cover. “The Princesses could move the sun and the moon, we had a strong country, brave ponies, everything we could ever want as civilians. We thought we could win,” she continued. Her expression softened, as if she wasn’t talking about centuries long gone anymore, but about memories from yesterday. “I jumped at the chance to join the Ministry of Peace. It stood for everything I thought I believed in. Kindness, compassion, helping others. There were divisions for healing, divisions for re-integration to help soldiers who’d seen too much come back home and fit in. Fluttershy did so much for the country. Until she ruined it all...”

I cocked my head to the side. “She what with the who?” I stuttered. I could have sworn I’d heard that name somewhere, and racked my brain to place it. A moment later it clicked, as Fluttershy must have been the Ministry Mare of the M.O.P. Still, I didn’t know what she meant by ruining it all.

“The reason the world ended was because Fluttershy’s Ministry found a way to make megaspells, magic that was far more powerful and versatile than any one unicorn could cast,” she explained. “I never personally figured out how she came to the breakthrough, since she was a pegasus, but she did it. I was just a message-runner at the time.” She shrugged and smiled. “The promotion was so wonderful, to get a chance to work with those brilliant mares and stallions. We tested a lot of them initially, when she still needed to get the kinks out of the program.”

“Uh-huh?” I muttered. Most of the info went in one ear and out the other, but every piece of it was still interesting. Suddenly, I wanted to forgo the path we’d set ourselves on to get the Buck, Med-X, and other drugs, and forget Xeno’s brothers. I wanted to drive right to The Cinch and learn as much as I could about the Ministries. Knowledge could be a treasure too, and it wouldn’t shoot me if I started digging in.

I felt a pang of guilt cut me right through to the heart. No, Xeno had proven herself and it was our turn to be true to her. I couldn’t dare think about abandoning her request now.

“Blackhoof was a nice city, back before everything went to shit. The shopping center that made up the ‘public face’ around The Cinch had some nice stuff, and I loved spending the day there when I had time off,” she rambled. “Trusty and I, well, we knew this wonderful place where anypony with the right friends could get a supply of Mint-als.” She covered her mouth with her hoof and giggled. “She was a naughty girl once I got her going. Then the world ended.”

“How’d you survive?” I asked. To my knowledge, the surface was uninhabitable for ages afterward, with all the balefire radiation. I looked at Xeno, wondering if there were others like her that could just ignore it whenever they ran into it. I knew it would get to her, but she had such a high resistance for some reason. Did ponies back then have the same thing?

“Location, location, location,” she answered.

Xeno groaned and shifted on the seat. By the time I made it to her side, she’s opened one eye and started to look around. “Hiddenpony?” she asked weakly. “A brew.” She pointed at her bag.

I did as she asked, dragging out one of the many elixir or concoction vials out. She shook her head and I put it away. Three tries later, I passed her the one she wanted.

The mare pushed herself up with a hoof and chugged the potion down in three gulps. Finishing it, she gasped and panted. She looked at me, then up, then at Fine Tune. The changeling waved at her, and she lifted her hoof in a half-wave in return. “Where is my helmet?” she asked finally.

“In your bag,” I answered.

“And my-”

“I put your knife in there, too,” I said, cutting her off. “You feeling okay?” I rested a fetlock across her forehead, something I’d seen Lost do to me several times when I wasn’t feeling in top shape. She didn’t feel any warmer than usual, so I lowered my hoof.

“Iam fine,” she said.

“Does that make me Xeno?” the changeling asked jokingly. A burst of green flame erupted around him as he transformed into a zebra identical to Xeno. She looked back and laughed at us, before transforming back with another flash of fire.

Xeno gaped, looking positively mortified. Given how wide her eyes became, I figured she was feeling alright. It took serious strength to look that embarrassed.

“Good. We’ll be back in Pommel Falls soon enough,” I said with a chuckle. “You just rest.” Patting her side, I went back to the spot I’d been sitting. When Xeno finally laid back down, I breathed a sigh of relief. That had been far too close for comfort.

“Is getting shot like that normal for you, Miss Hidden?” Fine Tune asked in a quiet voice. He looked back at me and frowned. “I’m not much of a fighter, remember?” He had mentioned that magical energy weapons could affect him far more than any normal pony, and he’d professed to be better at sneaking than combat.

I nodded. “Just do what you do best,” I said. “Blend in.” I looked back at Rose, wanting to hear more of the story about Blackhoof before the world ended, but she had her eyes closed and was already snoring quietly. I guessed even clones needed to sleep.

Fine Tune looked back from the steering column. In a quiet, sheepish voice he asked, “Miss Hidden, can we listen to the music again?” The tiniest of smiled formed, and the look he gave me was almost pathetic.

“I’ll go get Lost,” I said as I pushed myself up. “I could use some music myself.” I trotted around the side of the engine block to see if we could liven up the dead of the night just a hair.

* * *

“And why aren’t you coming in?” asked Lost. She lit the area around us with her horn, and wore a not-quite-pleased look on her face.

The wagon sat in front of a house not too different from our own home, but in far worse condition. It leaned to the side steeply, and at least two of the support columns were cracked completely through. The closed windows had all been blown out, but the door remained firmly on its hinges. I knew why Rose wouldn’t be coming with us, because it was a deathtrap. I knew a place like that would be perfect for treasure hunting, though.

“Because it’s a deathtrap,” Rose growled.

Bingo. Only the bravest of ponies would dare try to loot a place like that. Or the stupidest. I preferred the former, since I’d have gone in there in a heartbeat given the chance. It might even be locked, unopened for two centuries and full of stockpiled food and weapons. I could almost feel myself drooling.

“This is a special place to me, and there’s an old memory orb in there that I want. So, since I’m in charge, I’m going to make you go get it,” Rose explained. She pointed at one of the windows on the second floor. “In that room is a bag. Bring the whole thing to me.”

“No. Going in there would be asking for certain death. You’re a clone, why can’t you go?” argued Lost. She looked back at the house and shook her head.

“Because I’m the one calling the shots, and I don’t want to be killed in there. It might not hurt, but I like having consciousness,” Rose countered. “Look, I only need the zebra alive. The rest of you can go back to the slaver if you prefer.”

“I’ll do it,” I offered.

Lost and Rose both turned and looked directly at me. Rose looked pleased with herself, while Lost’s face lost what little color it had in it. Suddenly the dark rings under her eyes looked far darker than they had in a long time.

“We’re wasting what short time we have arguing about it,” I explained with a shrug. I looked over the house again, from the cracked support beams to the second story window Rose had pointed to. It couldn’t be that hard, could it? “If I go alone, there’s less weight on the supports and less chance of a collapse. Plus I’m good at finding the little things we need, so we’ll be playing to our strengths.” I forced a smile. It was a good plan. I could be a thinky pony, dammit.

Lost looked at the window, then to the changeling resting on one of the seats near the engine. She cleared her throat and asked, “Why can’t we just have Fine-”

“Deal,” Rose agreed, cutting her off. She shot my sister a look that quieted the argument already forming in her mind.

I hopped from the motorwagon’s deck and looked up at Lost. “This way, if I get hurt, you’ll be ready to fix me up,” I said with the brightest smile I could muster. I knew I’d get yelled at for this one later. But for the chance to dig for treasure in a building that hadn’t been opened in two centuries, I’d deal with it.

I walked over to the door and gave it a try, just to confirm my thoughts. It wiggled a little, but stuck tight and locked. Perfect. “Fine Tune, can you please unlock this for me?” I asked the changeling.

His eyes lit up brightly and he jumped from the motorwagon after me. A flash of green fire in midair left only his natural changeling form when he landed. His wings started to buzz and he zipped past me to the door, chirping to himself, “Ki, crii!” His carved chitin lockpick slid into the lock with ease, and after several twists and catches, he pulled the door open. “Crikiki,” he announced, and flittered back onto the deck.

“Thanks,” I said. With a wave, I walked inside the rotting home. “See you on the other side.”

“Dammit, Hidden,” I heard Lost whisper as I passed the threshold.

Inside was dark, very dark. What little light filtered through the cloud cover from the moon and the stars kept it just bright enough to see, but inside I couldn’t make out my own hoof in front of my face. Even though the windows had been blown completely out, the place had an almost unnatural darkness to it. Once again, I wished for eyes like a ghoul or something similar that glowed bright enough to let them see in the dark. Maybe there was a cheater magic way to give a pony that sort of ability? I’d ask Lost about it later. For now, I needed to explore.

The house creaked slightly when I took a step forward, settling under weight that hadn’t been put on it since the world ended. I walked as light as I could, barely setting the heavier steel hoof down whenever I moved. I bumped into the sofa and winced. Maybe I should have waited for my eyes to adjust. A moment later, once I could actually see, I looked past the sofa I’d stumbled into, past the table in front of it, and for a door.

I needed to check the important spots first, the kitchen or the bathroom. Then I’d look upstairs.

For having such a troubled-looking exterior, the inside of the house wasn’t terribly damaged. The second floor hadn’t caved in or collapsed over the first floor, and I could see the staircase still had a guardrail attached to it. I ignored that for the moment and stepped into the kitchen.

The house creaked again, and the walls shifted. I jumped when I heard a snap as one of the window frames splintered and collapsed onto the counter on the far wall. I stood perfectly still, waiting to see if I needed to bolt for the door. Nothing else happened, as if the house had found its new resting position agreeable.

I breathed a sigh of relief and made for the cabinets above the countertop. Each new one I opened brought another noise from the building. I worked fast, not trusting it to hold steady for too long. I found the barest of supplies, a can of corn packaged before the world ended, a single bottle of Sparkle~Cola, and an unlabeled can... I slid all into my saddlebags. Waste not, want not. When I’d cleaned out what sparse food I could find, I turned away to head toward the bathroom.

An open note on the table in the corner caught my attention. It sat above a pile of other envelopes, but was the only one that had been opened. I picked it up and squinted through the darkness. An overdue bill for one ‘Sterling Silver.’ Was that the pony’s name, or had they been buying jewelry for a loved one? I set the bill down and left.

Had the ponies who lived here long ago known at all how close they were to death before the megaspells hit? I’d seen things like that before, in my treasure hunting. Books left open on a random page, meals half eaten and left to rot. One place had the water still turned on, not that it still flowed through the ancient pipes. Goddesses, I’d been spoiled by visiting that Stable. Ponies here must have dropped what they were doing on the spot and fled when the klaxons went off. But to take the time to stop and lock their doors after hearing such a warning?

I didn’t think I’d ever understand Wartime ponies.

I set my hoof down in the main room again and waited, expecting to hear another creak as the house shifted. When nothing happened, I continued on to the bathroom. Halfway across the room, I felt a jolt, and the floor underneath me began to sag, throwing me off balance. Something snapped behind me. Then another snap. I heard the groan of the wood that made up the floor.

“Well, shit,” I muttered to myself. I leapt forward and ran. I had no idea if this house had a basement and I wasn’t looking to find out by falling into it. I dashed around the coffee table I’d passed earlier and toward the bathroom door. It should have been supported independantly and hopefully safe. Twelve uncertain steps later, I jumped through the door. My heart pounded, and I felt it all the way in the back of my head. I’d never needed to count my steps before.

Another loud snap sounded behind me, and I turned around to watch the carnage.

The floor connectors on the far side, near the kitchen, broke off one by one from the wall they connected to. The sofa and the table both started to slide away from me as the side of the room dipped lower and lower. When the final beam cracked in two, the floor collapsed. A huge plume of dust and grit shot into the air. The furniture crashed toward the wall, tumbling to their sides from the sudden jolt of the floor.

It stopped a foot lower.

The house had no basement. Just a crawlspace tall enough for a pony to climb through. The sofa lay on its back, unmoving once it had settled after the ‘collapse,’ while the table had slid far enough to bump the wall.

I just laughed. I’d been so worried about getting trapped in a bathroom and needing to navigate my way back. I wiped a single tear from my eye and turned back to search for a medicine box. The Wasteland really just had me far too stressed and expecting the worst of everything.

Lost’s voice yelled through the walls, loud and clear, “Everything okay?”

“I’m fine!” I yelled back, hoping she wouldn’t come in and get herself hurt.

I looked around the bathroom for one of the iconic first aid boxes I’d gotten so used to. This house didn’t seem to have one, as all I saw was a tub, a sink, and a mirror. Tilting my head slightly, I walked forward and looked around the mirror. It sat a bit too far away from the wall. Raising a hoof tentatively, I pulled at one corner.

The mirror swung open.

“Well, that’s new,” I said to myself as I looked inside. A few bottles and a half-used tube of something sat on the shelves inside. I pulled each out and looked at the labels, searching for what I recognized. None were Buck, Med-X, Dash, Mint-als, or anything else I actually wanted to find. One had some ridiculously long name that I gave up trying to pronounce, the other was ‘whitening gel,’ and the rest just ended up being medicine for some condition that I couldn’t pronounce either. “And... bust.”

I trotted out toward the stairs, across the uneven floor. The building didn’t seem to shift or creak when I put weight down on the now-collapsed section, so I felt safe to cross without any real worries. The second I put a hoof on the stairs, though, the building gave a massive, ear-splitting groan. I could see the support beams holding up the stairs’ railing twist and split in half as the bannister moved away from the floor.

“Shit,” I whispered breathlessly, as if even the slightest change inside would settle the house to the new position of ‘fallen on me.’ I couldn’t back down, not when I thought about what was on the line. I pushed on, walking slowly up every step, counting them to keep myself from going too fast. Upstairs, front room. Grab what I needed and get out.

The house groaned again, and then I heard a horrifically loud snap. I didn’t like the sound of that. I held perfectly still, waiting. My ears twisted back and forth, trying to find any sound to betray that the building would collapse. I heard nothing, and decided not to wait any more. A few more steps and I reached the top of the staircase.

Once on the landing, I looked for the room in question. There were only three, so I just had to-

“Finally,” said a voice I recognized all too well.

I turned around and stared at the pink-coated, dark pink-maned unicorn mare. She cocked an eyebrow up and stared back at me. Same aquamarine eyes, same cutie mark.

“H-how’d you get up here?” I stammered. Nopony had opened the door after me. I hadn’t heard anypony trotting around on the wooden floors. I was alone inside. How could she be in...

She just stared at me. One ear twitched to the side, and her tail swayed slowly behind her. She looked almost bored.

“You’re not the same Rose,” I finally managed.

“You catch on quicker than I thought,” she said in the snarkiest voice I’d heard in a long time. “Come in here.” She turned and walked into the room that the Rose in the motorwagon had pointed me to. By the time I walked through the door, the building creaked another three times, and the other Rose had grabbed a brown burlap sack. She tossed it through the air at me with her telekinesis.

I fell back on my haunches and caught the bag with an ‘oof’ against my chest. The building groaned in protest.

“That’s what you need. Have that sister of yours watch it as soon as possible, it’ll answer some questions,” she explained. “I’m sure you want to know why I’m here.”

I didn’t give her a response, instead I was already opening the bag she’d thrown at me. Curiosity got the better of me. I needed to know exactly what was inside. A memory orb and... “Oh my,” I whispered. Enough Buck and Med-X to keep me off my own haunches for a month solid.

“Pay attention!” snapped the Rose. “Fucking Wastelanders.” She pressed a hoof to her temple and rolled it in a circle a few times.

“I’m not stupid. This was a show, to prove that she’s always watching,” I said, pulling the bag closed. “I can figure things out just fine, I just act before I think most of the time.” I stuffed the now-closed bag into my saddlebags for later. “I knew damn well that we were under close watch, once I figured out where I recognized you from. I just want to know what tipped you off that it was us who killed Wirepony in the first place.”

“If I told you that, it’d ruin the surprise. Now get out,” she said. She pointed her hoof and walked toward the far window, the one overlooking where the motorwagon was parked. “And watch your step. I’d rather not die here.”

I aimed Persistence at her. I really only needed one alive.

“And stop trying to kill all of us,” said a voice behind me. Suddenly I could feel the heat of a body next to me, as another of the Roses pressed herself close. She leaned in and nipped at my ear. “It hurts, how much you hate us,” she whispered.

I shuddered and took a step away. I really didn’t like the feeling of breath blowing across my coat. My ear twitched on its own, as if rebelling and trying to leap away as well.

“Fuck you,” I shouted. Pushing her out of the way, I ran down the stairs and for the door. I ignored the creaking of the house. I just needed to get out and get away from the craziness. I looked back, only to find the Rose who had snuck up behind me watching as I left, a sad smile across her lips.

I missed the days when exciting meant we got to see a pony walking by in the distance.

* * *

“Cut the engines here,” I said to Rose. We’d gotten close to Pommel Falls, and I didn’t feel comfortable strolling in with a motorwagon to announce our arrival. Heading in on hoof would do nicely, and then we could slip out just as quick. I didn’t need to see Hydro at all, not if I could avoid it. It had been... Goddesses, how long had it been? A few weeks maybe?

I didn’t know if she’d had enough time to cool down yet, and I wasn’t about to tempt fate to find out. A thinky pony I wasn’t, but that would be stupidity beyond the pale.

“Why?” she asked. Her horn continued glowing, and the engine kept rumbling as it had been all night.

“Trust me,” I shot back. With Lost still in the memory orb we’d found, I decided that I was in charge. When the engine quieted and began to whir down, I turned to Fine Tune. “Find somewhere to park, off the path, please.”

The changeling chirped in response and nodded. He spun the steering wheel with a hoof and turned us off into the dead forest.

The sun sat low in the sky, just barely cresting the horizon and still not above the cloud cover yet. It felt nice, warming and reassuring. Today would be a good day. We still had a day and a half to get back to Idle, and the motorwagon would get us there in time, so long as nothing broke on us. But for now, it was time to visit where this all started. I grinned.

The dead trees all around us were nice and familiar, even though we’d come back on the opposite side of the river. A bridge a short distance away would get us across so we could pass over toward the Stable. Even from this distance, I could see that Pommel Falls had changed. The waterfall at the far end of town was still visible, but now the framework of a new building blocked some of its majesty. Surrounding the town was a makeshift fence as well. It wasn’t as fortified as U Cig or The Cinch, but it was better than nothing.

Hopefully they’d built it as a precaution and not as necessity.

“As soon as Lost wakes up from the memory orb, we’ll head into town. All we need to do is see Broker to unload a few things, then we bolt,” I explained. I looked back at Xeno. “Ready to do some trading?”

The zebra sat on one of the rear seats with her sniper rifle propped up against her shoulder. She had the striped combat knife hooked in one fetlock and was enthralled in picking the dirt from her hooves. Her ear twitched when I addressed her, and she looked up. “Iam ready, Hiddenpony,” she answered. With a flick of her hoof, the knife disappeared into her bag. She grabbed the slaver helmet and slid it over her head, folding her mane down over an eye.

“I’m sorry I shot you,” I said quietly.

“Iwill return the favor one day, I promise,” she said back. Her tone sounded playful, but I could never quite tell with Xeno.

I just laughed.

Fine Tune did as well, though he wore a confused look on his face. He’d taken the familiar form of the blue unicorn with the f-holes again, and seemed to be content to stay that way while we were in town. “So, what is this place?” he asked once the laughter died down. While we had the downtime, he shimmied himself into the armor we’d picked up from the late Show Blossom.

“This is Pommel Falls. The Stables where we first found Gunbuck and his PipBuck are here,” I explained. I neglected to mention the severed head I’d carried with me and buried under a tree nearby. “That’s what started this whole adventure. We have friends in the Stables fixing them up. And since the mountain pass to Xeno’s home is nearby, this is a nice staging area to do some bartering.”

“Itis also the site of my brothers’ corpses,” Xeno interjected. She shot me a look.

“We’ll get them while we’re here,” I promised her. I looked at the wagon again. There was plenty of room to lay the fallen for transport. It was a load off my mind, to be honest. I’d been expecting that we would have to carry them on our backs through the mountains. I just hoped whatever ancient road wound through the mountains would still be serviceable for a vehicle to actually get through.

One of the skywagons would have been nice. We could have just flown over.

While I’d been lost in thought, Lost Art had woken up from the memory orb. She rubbed her head with one hoof and stared down at the memory orb. After blinking several times, she grabbed it in her hooves and slid it into her saddlebags. Once it was safely tucked away, she looked over at Rose, who stood behind the seat she was in.

“Did you take it?” L.A. asked her.

“Of course I did,” answered the clone. “The bits were better. I got to do something to help Equestria, or so I thought.” She shrugged and hopped off the wagon onto the dirt of the dead forest. “We need to hurry.”

“Right, everypony out!” I shouted.

“Hidden, there’s more than just ponies with us,” Lost chided as she hopped down.

“Oh, sorry. Everyone out!” I corrected myself.

We all filed out of the motorwagon and started toward town. Xeno and Lost chatted behind me, but I behaved like a good pony and didn’t eavesdrop. Fine Tune spent the entire walk staring at the rotting trees and darting back and forth to examine little bits of this and that within the forest. Rose said nothing, and simply kept her head forward and her horn alight with a telekinetic grip on the grenade rifle she had slung over her back.

While a fence had been built, it wasn’t being guarded. I didn’t see any ponies wandering around the streets though, so it might just have been for lack of personnel. Broker’s shop sat in the same place as always, as did the inn we’d stayed in forever ago. I could see the waterwheel in the distance, now churning away as the water passed through it.

Either the Steel Rangers had gotten it working properly, or the townsponies found a way around it. Good. The world hadn’t stopped just because we fucked everything up. I smiled, happy that they’d moved on in one way or another.

The five of us made for the shop first. The goal was to get in, sell our junk, and then get out. Xeno could sweet-talk Broker in a circle like he did to us when we were here the first time, then we’d leave. The faster, the better. Any longer and we chanced running into Hydro again. Since we’d technically been evicted from her town, I wanted to spend as little time inside as possible.

If she did show up though... well, I already had a contingency plan for that.

An apology.

“You go first,” I suggested to Rose. Broker wouldn’t know her, I hoped.

Rose just cocked an eyebrow at me. After a moment she rolled her eyes and went through the doorway.

“Hello, my good mare,” said the voice of Broker. He sounded the same as always, trying to be good salespony, but actually just self-serving.

I trotted in after he’d made his introductions. The blue unicorn stallion with the teal mane stood behind the counter, a bright salespony smile on his face. Beside him stood a lightish-red mare with just the faintest hint of discoloration in her coat. For half a second I thought she might be a zebra, or at least a mix. I looked at Xeno for comparison, but dismissed it. She seemed somewhat out of place, staring intently at the register and not making eye contact.

“Oh, you two,” he muttered the minute he saw me and my sister. At least he hadn’t forgotten us. His eyes widened as Fine Tune and Xeno followed us in. “Hmm,” he muttered. “You brought friends this time.” He didn’t bother with the sweet talk like he had before. I guess he knew better than to try with the fake sales-stallion act this time.

“Yeah, we just need to do some trading and then we’ll be on our way,” my sister said. She stepped past Rose and lifted her saddlebags off her back with her telekinesis.

“Alright, but my sale price for ‘saving’ the town has expired, I hope you know,” he said. He turned to the mare behind the counter next to him. “Alright Cherry Chalk, watch and learn. Okay?” He turned back to my sister. “Show me what you’ve got.”

“Gladly,” she said. Turning the bags over in her telekinesis, she emptied the contents onto the counter. While I usually held the majority of our things, she poured out a veritable gold mine of junk, knick knacks, supplies, ammunition, and weapons. I really hadn’t been paying attention to all the little things we’d picked up on the way to Idle and back.

Broker and Cherry Chalk’s expressions matched my own as they looked at the pile of things. Several items disappeared as Lost filtered what she wanted to keep back into the saddlebags. Finished sorting, she set the saddlebags back over her back and moved away from the counter.

“Xeno, go ahead,” she said with a smile. She looked over to me and winked, then moved to stand next to Fine Tune.

It was time to watch the master go to work.

Xeno whispered something in her native tongue and pulled the slaver helmet from her head. She trotted forward and set it down on the counter and appraised what sat before her.

Broker lifted and sorted, stacking various items in small groups based on what they were. Ammo went into one pile. Broken guns taken from U Cig went into another. Miscellaneous garbage went into a third pile. He separated tools away from that, organizing them into two separate bunches: one for household things, another for construction and repair tools.

Xeno watched patiently as he did, saying nothing. She looked over to the mare behind the counter, then back at the merchant. “What is your offer, merchant pony?” she finally asked.

“This is a lot more than what they brought here last time, I’ll need a minute to calculate,” he answered. Magenta eyes darted from stack to stack, and it was obvious he was adding caps up in his head. After only a moment, he nodded and looked up at her. “Fifteen caps for this pile, seventeen for this one.” He pointed at each grouping as he talked. “Tools go for thirty total. Seven for this stack here; I don’t really need any of them. Ammunition’ll get you another twenty, but I’ll throw in an extra five because the guards we’re hiring are asking to have bullets provided. That comes to... Ninety four.”

Xeno watched as he motioned to each pile, then turned back to us. She tilted her head to the side and glared. Receiving only a shrug in response, she turned back to him. “No deal, pony.” She lifted a hoof and set it on the counter. “These prices do not meet the quality,” she explained. “I was told by my friends you were a fair trader. Why do you insult us with this offer?”

“I have two foals and a wife,” he answered, pointing to the mare next to him. “She and my little ones are what matter to me, not caps. Food is worth more than any of this here, and I’d gladly up the price if you put something down. A single can of old-world food would get you the same as this pile here.” He pointed to the junk pile, which he’d noted would go for seven caps. He turned to the mare beside him. “See dear, you can’t give them any leeway or they’ll think they can run roughshod on you.”

“The wares are good, and you know it. Ihave heard much about you, Brokerpony,” she said, while squinting at him.

I turned to Lost. “I really hope he’s not teaching others to swindle customers,” I whispered. “Do you think he would actually do that?”

“Well, he screwed us and we never got our deal,” she whispered back. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think he’d be trying to get anypony who ran his shop to get the customers caps for as little as possible.” She looked back over at Xeno, then toward the door. She shifted on her hooves and grimaced.

I knew what she was thinking. The first time we’d tried to sell, Hydro interrupted us. I didn’t need to experience déjà vu about that. Ever.

I looked back over to catch Broker shaking his head. “I’m telling you, that’s nowhere near what those are actually worth. It’s part garbage and the rest, well, I’d need to find a buyer,” he answered. “If I paid what you’re asking, I’d need somepony to come in and pay twice that or else I wouldn’t make anything.” He reared back and whinnied. “If this were the old world, you’d have been laughed out of the store.”

Cherry Chalk looked mortified at how her husband treated customers.

“Wehave saved you the time and danger of finding wares yourself. You stay in town where it is safe,” she said. With a wave of her head, she motioned outside. “Walls now house your town. They were not here before, what caused you to build them?”

Broker’s eyes shifted. He looked at me, then at my sister. It lasted only the briefest of seconds, but I saw it. He shook his head. “Times change, we needed defense.”

“Itis not that a pony, ponies, warned you of raiders nearby?” she asked, a sly smile forming.

For a moment Broker said nothing. His wife tapped him with her forehoof and she motioned for him to lean closer. When he did, she cracked him in the head. “Give them a good deal, dear,” she said. Her accent sounded similar to Xeno’s, but far more diluted.

Broker stared at her. He looked her up and down and made several displeased faces. Finally he looked back at Xeno and hung his head. “One fifty, even if they’re worth less than a hundred,” he finally relented.

His wife looked quite pleased with herself. She waved at Xeno and said something in the zebra language.

Xeno laughed.

And here I’d thought this town was anti-zebra. Maybe times were changing. After all, it wasn’t zebra who had caused the trouble here. They’d retaliated when they felt cornered, yes, but they weren’t at fault. So, if they could soften enough that Broker would let his wife be in public and not wherever they actually lived, maybe Hydro would forgive us too.

“Deal,” said the zebra. She pushed the items forward with her forehooves. Turning back to face us, she gave a happy wiggle and snapped her tail side to side. “I didnot even need to threaten this time!” she said cheerfully.

“So you didn’t,” said Lost.

“Is this how you normally do business?” asked Fine Tune, looking away from the shelves. He’d spent the entire exchange watching intensely, never looking away from the scene. But now his curiosity seemed to have gotten the better of him.

“Eeyup. Let’s get back to the motorwagon. I want to get to the Stables before something happens,” Lost admitted. She collected the caps from Broker with her telekinesis and deposited them into her saddlebag.

“And have a good day,” said the salespony. His wife waved as we left.

“Back to friends,” I said happily. Looking back and forth, I saw no sign of Hydro or any other ponies. Given how early it was, I realized I was a bit surprised at Broker’s shop even being open. I followed my sister and the group out of town and toward the motorwagon.

* * *

We left the town without incident. Xeno looked pleased with herself the entire time, having gotten what she wanted from trading. Fine Tune spent the time exploring around the woods, just as he had when we’d arrived. Only Rose seemed unhappy, as she focused entirely on traveling. We got back to the motorwagon and started her up.

Reversing direction wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped, but after nearly breaking the back axle over a fallen log, Lost managed to steer us back around and to the bridge I’d seen earlier. While Rose powered the engine and my sister steered, I took the time to relax. The woods had been relatively safe, and since it wasn’t night we didn’t need to worry about any bloodwings flying around.

I sat in my seat and watched the woods as we wound down one of the old pathways. Fine Tune sat across from me, a dopey smile on his face as he took in the sights. The path we took must have been used for trade or for materials when making the Stables, as I couldn’t see a hoof path being this well cleared out. Had the world not ended, I expected it might have been overgrown. Luckily for us, the world had died...

“So, what’s got you so excited?” I asked the changeling.

“I’m not used to relaxing and just taking everything in,” he answered. He looked down at me, then back up at the remains of the forest. “I’m so used to scrambling from place to place and being unseen. You don’t get a chance to step back and see the sights while running for your life.” He could say that again. “Plus I’ve never been this far away from U Cig.”

“Were you born there?” I asked. I didn’t know anything about changelings, or how their life-cycle was set up. But if he came from the slaver town, it made perfect sense that he’d want to see whatever he could.

“You could say that,” he admitted. He shrugged. “I try not to think about it.” He looked over at Lost. “Truthfully, I know she’s not a ‘Queen’ in the same way a changeling queen is. But it’s a part of me to think like that. It’s just the way we changelings are programmed. And well, the old queen was killed and we ended up taking a surrogate.”

“You’re a lot more articulate than when we first found you, you know that?” I mused. It took me somewhat aback, to remember the stammering mess of chitin he was when we’d first met. He seemed so frantic and unable to even put together whole sentences at first.

“You did have me tied to a table,” he said. “I either shut down completely, or I start talking nonsense when I’m under pressure.” He rubbed his head, where I’d hit him just a few days ago. Funny how quickly things could change. “Like I said, programming.”

“I’m sorry,” said my sister. “You did sneak into our house though.” She didn’t look back from steering. She just stood there, forelegs up on the steering wheel and focusing on the path ahead. “We need to take a detour here anyway, on hoof.”

“Xeno’s brothers...” I muttered. “See anything on the E.F.S.?” Before she could answer, I grabbed Persistence and started to reattach her to the battle saddle. Better safe than sorry.

“It looks pretty clear. The forest is completely dead,” she answered. She waved a hoof in front of her, pointing toward the dead trees all around us as far as the eye could see. “Run up the mountain, grab them, bring them to the wagon, and off we go.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Rose. She walked around the engine block and stared at my sister. “I think I’ll keep the earth pony and the changeling to make sure you come back.”

“That’s unnecessary,” I protested. “We’re not going to abandon the ride, and you already know where we’re heading next. And we have names, you know.”

“I don’t feel like making the journey and I don’t want to be ditched,” she countered. “Either we do it my way, or we don’t do it at all.” She looked at me with disdain, as if we didn’t really have names to her, as if we were beneath that.

Xeno walked around from the back on the far side of the engine block. “It doesnot matter. We donot need all of us to carry them. I shall carry Zaki, and Lostpony can carry Zahi. He didnot weigh much,” she said. She set her sniper rifle against the back of my seat. Reaching to where we’d all stored our things, she grabbed her bag and slung it around her neck. “Itis a small sacrifice. Letus go.”

She hopped down and started toward the path up the mountainside.

“I’ll be quick, I have the map anyway. Just stay safe and don’t do anything stupid,” Lost said. She gave me a hug and a kiss on the forehead, then hopped off the wagon. A short trot later and she’d caught up to Xeno.

Together, the two walked into the distance.

* * *

I laid on the deck of the wagon and stared at the cloud cover. It looked a little darker than normal, which meant it might rain soon. I couldn’t ever really tell, since it looked the same in every direction as far as I could see. Only the tiniest slivers of blue between the horizon and the clouds at the very edge of the world gave a hint that it might not cover everything. Maybe some ocean past the edges of what used to be Equestria still had sunlight naturally?

I didn’t know how long I laid there staring up. Without the PipBuck, I didn’t have a good way to tell time. It went by slowly, since nothing bothered to attack. As Lost had said, the forest was dead.

Fine Tune passed the time transforming into different ponies. It wasn’t very amusing after the first two minutes. It did, however, give a nice bit of insight into how he could mix and match pony traits to make individual forms. His mane would light aflame all by its lonesome, and the color and style would be different whenever the flames receded. At one point he transformed into a female version of his normal unicorn self, with the same mane, colors, and cutie mark. It was actually kinda cute. Transforming back to normal, he looked over to the woods. “They’re back,” he said.

“Ugghhh,” I groaned as I pulled myself up. My back hurt from lying on the wooden deck, but it was better than being curled up on the seat.

L.A. and Xeno walked back, zigzagging around trees and carrying bodies on their backs. Xeno’s older brother was slightly bigger, but both had expressions of frustration from carrying them. I couldn’t imagine having to go through that tiny path like that. I thanked Celestia and Luna individually that they’d brought something to cover the corpses.

I didn’t need to be confronted with the memory of two headless stallions we’d killed without taking the time to at least ask what might be going on.

Lost lifted the corpse from her back and set it on the walkway between the edge of the wagon and the engine block. Without a word, she lifted the other from Xeno’s back and set it next to her brother’s body.

“Why not carry them with your telekinesis?” I asked, watching as my sister used her magic to hoist both corpses onto the deck. I knew better than to ask either of them about what had actually happened near the lake above the waterfall. I could see how bad it must have been.

“Xeno requested it. The way of her kind,” Lost answered, without looking at me. She hopped up and took her place at the steering wheel, while Xeno moved to the back of the wagon again. Nopony said anything as the engine was started again, and we moved on.

Lost, Rose, and Fine Tune had everything under control in the front. I decided to go sit with Xeno, in case she wanted to talk about what happened. I walked down the far side path to the back and took a seat at the edge of the deck next to the zebra.

“You okay?” I asked. It felt strange, dangling my hooves off over nothingness as we moved. Did ponies back before the War really use these sorts of things to drive around normally?

“Iwill be okay, Hiddenpony,” she answered. She kicked her rear hooves a bit. “You shot me.” She tapped her side where the bullet had pierced through her the night before.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” I said. It hadn’t been. “I thought you were going to get killed by the zombie. I acted without thinking. Just like...” I looked back at the covered bodies.

“Itis the way of ponies, yes?” she asked. “To jump so quickly at death without taking the time to look at the other side.”

“For a lot of us, yeah,” I admitted. “It was your brothers’ way too. They shot at us without warning.” I looked down at my own hooves. “I’m trying to be better than that, though. I’ve changed a lot since that day, and not just because of the slavers.” The shackles did a damn good job of making sure I remembered that I did change a lot because of what happened there. I pushed that memory aside. “You were my first friend, did you know that?”

“I had exhumed as much,” she said. Her tone sounded just a bit more playful than usual. “I agree. You and Lostpony have both changed. As have I.”

“I am sorry about your brothers,” I repeated.

“Iam sorry too. My mother will do what is needed, and they will be put to rest,” she said.

“Is she a, umm, spiritual... zebra... mare?” I asked, completely at a loss for words. I didn’t really know much about zebra culture and what they called their spiritual leaders, if they were called anything specific at all.

“Sheis a shaman, shewill know what to do with my brothers’ souls,” she answered. Once again she looked back at them, then to the ground. “I miss them, Hiddenpony. My brothers, and my family.”

“I know. I know we can’t replace your family, or your brothers,” I admitted. “I can’t speak for Lost, of course, but... well. I consider you part of my family.”

Xeno looked up at me. Her eyes wavered, and she looked me up and down twice. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and she fell onto my side. She held on with her hooves as tight as she could, and for the first time since I’d known her...

She let it out.

I just held her, running one hoof through the mohawk of her mane. I listened as she told me about her brothers, all the little things that made them special. She told me in whispers how they talked, the little quirks her younger brother had picked up from her older brother. Most of what she said I could understand, except when she’d falter and start to talk in her native tongue. In times of stress, I supposed a pony or zebra would turn to what was most natural to them. Halfway through the story she started to hiccup, before she finally managed to calm down.

With closed eyes and her muzzle pressed against my side, she slipped into a fitful sleep.

I wiped a tear away and flicked it to the dirt of the forest.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to no one.

* * *

“We’re here!” Lost announced. She pointed at the familiar cave where the adventure started. Goddesses, that felt like forever ago. “Hidden, go tell them we’re here while I park this damn thing, okay?”

“Sure. Back in a minute,” I said. I hopped from the slowly-moving motorwagon and started toward the opening of the cave.

The minute my hooves hit the dirt, ponies began to pour from the split in the mountain. First Custard Berliner, then Raspberry Berliner. The two started to run toward me as fast as their little hooves could carry them.

I braced for it, knowing I was about to be tackled.

Then Praline emerged from the cave. “You’re here!” she shouted loud enough to drown out the sound of the engine block of the wagon. Thankfully, she wasn’t wearing her armor. That did nothing to calm my fear as she bounded toward me. She passed both foals with her longer legs and tackled me as hard as she could.

I braced myself at the last second.

She hit me hard enough to topple me onto my back. Both of us screamed when I landed. Praline, in all her bubbly happiness, sat atop me as if she were just as small as Custard and Raspberry. She even managed to bounce a little, eliciting a loud ‘oof!’

“Hi... Praline...” I groaned. Everything suddenly hurt like I’d just been blown apart with a grenade.

“Hi! I missed you guys! Welcome back. How’re you feeling? How’s your hoof? Have you been taking care of it? What’s it like on the other side of the Wasteland?” she asked, firing off question after question before I could answer. With her forehooves, she grabbed onto my steel hoof and started to inspect it.

“Hi, Hidden!” shouted Raspberry.

“Hey!” yelled Custard.

Then they saw the motorwagon. “Ooo!” both shouted at once. They bolted from me and jumped onto the wagon, where they began to scramble from seat to steering wheel picking things over and inspecting them.

“Praline. I. Can’t. Breathe,” I muttered. I let her jerk my hoof back and forth, unable to muster the strength to fight it.

“That’s okay, I’ll be done soon,” she said. She popped the bottom off my steel hoof and looked inside. With the bottom off, she wiggled the joint around. “Oh wow, you’ve gotten this thing so dirty. We’ll need to fix it right now!”

“Knight Praline. Would you kindly stop sitting on our guest?” chided the static-laced voice of Star Paladin Lamington. He trotted toward us, covered head to hoof in the ornate etched armor I’d expected him to be in. “Welcome back, Miss Fortune.”

I twitched, fighting it. “T-thank you,” I finally stammered.

“Sorry,” whispered Praline. She hopped off me and slammed the plate back onto my hoof. “Come on, we’ll go inside and to the maintenance wing!” With a wave, she trotted off and disappeared back into the caves.

“Knights Custard and Raspberry. Give our guests a proper welcome,” Lamington ordered. He offered a hoof to help me up. When I grabbed it, he pulled hard and righted me back on all four hooves. “Where did you get those shackles?” he asked, his helmet tilted down at my hooves. Even with the helmet hiding his face, I knew the tone. He knew exactly where I got them, and it sounded like he wanted details.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said, not making eye contact. I turned back to my sister. “So, was that a setup?” I asked.

“Why do you think I’m still on the wagon?” she asked. She laughed, and Fine Tune and Xeno joined in as well. “I figured out how to work the broadcaster while you were asleep. Rose actually gave me a bit of help with it.”

“Welcome back,” said Custard. “Where’d you get this?” he asked right after, lifting up one of the cushions on the rear seats.

Before anypony could answer, Raspberry chimed in. “Welcome! It’s good to see you again.” She hugged Lost’s leg, then joined her brother in digging through the cushions and poking around the engine block.

“So, who might these new companions of yours be?” asked Lamington. He pointed to Rose and Fine Tune, who were hopping down from the deck of the motorwagon.

“That’s Rose, she’s, umm,” I started. I decided to omit the little bit that she was ‘escorting’ us to get drugs for a town halfway across the city. “She’s from Idle, and we’re doing a favor for her. The stallion is Fine Tune. We met him after getting out of U Cig.” I rubbed a hoof behind my head, ruffling up my mane. It was hard to act casual without telling him things like how our captivity actually went and how Fine Tune was really a changeling. Stuff like that would mean more questions, and we didn’t quite have the time for that yet.

“Wonderful. Any friends of yours are friends of ours,” he said. He clopped a steel-encased hoof on my shoulders and cocked his head toward the cave. “Let us return to the atrium. You have arrived just in time for breakfast.” With a nod, he released me and walked toward the cave.

I breathed a sigh of relief and trotted over to my sister. Playfully, I hit her in the leg with my flesh forehoof. “That wasn’t very nice,” I said.

Lost just mussed up my mane. “One-time thing, I promise,” she said with a smile. “Let’s go.” She walked past and toward the cave, with Fine Tune in tow and already asking questions about the Steel Rangers. Xeno followed her, with her rifle slung over her shoulder.

I stopped Rose before she could walk off. Once we were alone, I looked her dead in the eyes. “I don’t care if you send me back to those slavers, but if you try to do anything to any of the ponies in this family...” I just squinted.

I’d let her imagine what I’d do if something happened to them.

Turning away, I snapped my tail in her face and trotted through the cave entrance and into the darkness.

* * *

The breakfast table hummed with more life than I thought possible. I saw the familiar faces of Elder Drop Scone’s family. Everypony, well almost everypony, from Stable Sixty milled about at the buffet line that Marshmallow Sundae had set up near the kitchen of the Atrium. Walking amongst them were almost a dozen ponies I didn’t recognize. A few unicorn stallions stood waiting in line, while two new earth ponies talked in a corner amongst themselves. Clinker and Lighthoof had made it here safely, and sat at one of the many tables talking. They both waved when they saw us, but went back to eating and talking once I waved back.

“Livelier than I remember,” I said to L.A. I looked for the end of the line, but couldn’t tell in the chaos where it might be. Another mare stood behind the buffet line with Marshmallow, serving something that I couldn’t see, but smelled delicious.

It felt a little hollow, knowing that a few weeks ago this Stable had been a ghost town. It was meant to protect, to help ponies to work together and realize they were stronger when they shared a bond. Something clicked in the back of my mind. Friendship. That’s what this place was supposed to teach. The design tried to get ponies to trust others they hadn’t known before, and to be generous enough to share what little they had for the good of all.

A shame it didn’t-

“Ow!” I yelped, feeling a jab at my side.

“Wasteland to Hidden, you okay?” asked Lost. She looked rather concerned, and rested a fetlock across my forehead. “You feel okay...”

“Sorry, just lost in thought. You were saying?” I asked, trying to recover.

“I was agreeing with you, that’s all. Look. Get something to eat. I’m gonna go... umm, take care of something,” she said. Before she even finished the sentence she’d looked away, her eyes darting back and forth as she searched for something, or more likely, somepony.

“Tell Crème Brûlée I said hi,” I said. I didn’t mention Nip Chaser, though I should have. Without waiting for an answer, I trotted off. Food and conversation called to me. I waved to ponies I knew as I moved through the crowded atrium, catching bits and pieces of conversations while I walked.

“...hear night shift is getting close to...” said one stallion as I walked by.

“Delicious!” yelled a mare, followed by the noisy smacking of her mouth as she ate.

To think, less than a month ago, and I’d have run from this, screaming about how groups of ponies only cared about their own. Now all I wanted to do was stay and never leave. Marshmallow Sundae’s delicious cooking? Conversations with Lamington and Praline? Teasing Lost about her ‘secret’ relationship with Crème Brûlée? It would be perfect. Xeno and Fine Tune would fit right in, too.

I looked at Rose, who had made herself comfortable chatting with one of the stallions I didn’t recognize. If only the threat of slavery didn’t hang above our heads.

“Hidden! Come, sit with us,” said Lamington, his voice artificially enhanced by the armor’s speakers. It still crackled with static every other word. “Elder Drop Scone was kind enough to procure a generous helping for you. She said you look emaciated and had better have seconds.”

I couldn’t help but crack a smile. I wondered if all older mares were like her, or if it was just a trait carried over from before the War due to their seclusion down in the depths of that mine. I trotted over and took a seat down at Lamington’s table, across from him. A smorgasbord of food waited for me on a large plate, piled high enough I knew I couldn’t finish it if I wanted to. And Goddesses, did I want to.

The table looked exactly like every other in the room, but somehow felt friendlier now that I was back with ponies I knew. A full plate sat next to the Star Paladin, loaded to the brim with wheat cakes and fried tomatoes, topped with sliced fruit and triangles of cut toast. I assumed that would be for the Elder, whenever she returned to the table. Chocolate Fondue sat next to his older brother, and winked at me when I sat down. He said nothing and simply returned to his meal. An empty plate sat next to Drop Scone’s plate, with not so much as a stain on it.

I felt I knew who it belonged to, but curiosity got the better of me. “So, who are we eating with? I see two extra seats,” I said cautiously.

“Yes, the Elder will be returning momentarily. She stepped away to gather Scribe Lemon Tart. The other plate is in remembrance of Paladin Chocolate Éclair,” Lamington explained calmly. His helmeted head turned to the empty seat. “It is somewhat of a tradition, I suppose. The Elder was very specific. We never had a soldier fall in battle due to the nature of our seclusion.” He leaned over and rested a hoof next to the plate. “While not superstitious by nature, my mother wants to make sure his spirit knows he is not forgotten.”

Chocolate Fondue placed a hoof on his brother’s shoulder. He tapped a few times, while looking away.

“I’m sorry, Lamington,” I said, holding back tears. “But, I’m glad you kept a place for him,” I blurted, then felt like crawling under the table and hiding. I hadn’t meant to say that, but I did mean it. It would at least allow me a place to apologize for reacting so poorly when Eclair tried to help.

“It’s the duty of a Steel Ranger,” he answered. Slowly, he raised both hooves and undid a set of hidden latches at the base of his helmet where it connected to his armor. Leaning his head down, he pulled the helmet off and set it off to the side. When he looked up, he smiled at me.

I’d almost forgotten how gorgeous he was. His mane looked perfect, not a single strand of hair out of place from the removal of his helmet. His smile lit up the room, brighter than the fake lighting from the giant tree-structure in the center of the room. Were it not for the polished metal of his one eye, I’d have said he was perfect. They matched though, both the same intense yellow.

I looked down at the table, trying to hide the blush I could feel forming.

Luckily for me, Elder Drop Scone arrived with Lemon Tart that exact second. “Good morning everypony,” she announced. “I hope you all slept well. I’d like you all to settle down for our meal. Take as much as you want, I don’t want anypony...” she paused and looked at Xeno. “Anyone. I don’t want anyone leaving until you are feeling too full to move.” The older mare smiled her warm motherly smile. She trotted through the room, stopping at table after table to share a few kind words and make sure each pony had more than they could ever need.

When she finally reached the table I sat at with Lamington, she walked around and hugged me with strength hidden by her age. I could have sworn I felt a rib crack. “It’s good to see you again, dear,” she said. She released me and sat at the table where her plate was. A hoof rested on the seat next to her, the spot saved for Chocolate Éclair. Without a word, she moved her hoof away and began to eat.

I saw Lost, Crème Brûlée, and Fine Tune eating at a table together with Praline. Xeno sat with Clinker and Lighthoof, quietly eating with her eyes closed. Rose, with no food in front of her, had managed to work her way into sitting with the pony she’d been talking to when we first got into the room.

Despite our long time away, nothing had changed. Everypony, everyone, slid right back into their place. Like family and close friends should.

* * *

“The weirdest thing about this Stable...” Praline said, more to herself than to me. She stood hunched over, her face buried into a filing cabinet.

“What’s that?” I asked. We were in the same drab grey maintenance room I’d taken tools from back when we first got the PipBuck. It still looked so incredibly boring. A mural really would have brightened the room up. I noted that Lost’s blood wasn’t splattered everywhere, nor had I seen any bloody hoofprints in the hallway. Just how much had they cleaned up?

“Well, none of the ponies here were issued PipBucks, not according to the records,” she answered. “But for some reason they still had the tools listed in the manifest.” She pulled her head back from the cabinet and slammed it shut. Whatever she’d been looking for must not have been inside. “But that’s not the weird part. The weird part is that the tools were actually missing. I could still see the outlines where they should have been.”

I chuckled. “I took them,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. Shrugging, she turned to face me. “Well, we don’t need them anyway. Curious how things work out... What we do need is for you to sit up here.” She pulled a chair around. “So I can take you apart.” A wicked little smile crossed her lips, before she started to laugh. “I’m kidding! I just want to clean the hoof out.”

“Uh huh, hah... haha,” I half-said, half-laughed. That wasn’t funny. I knew Praline well enough to think that she might actually try and dismantle me completely just to see what made me tick. With a deep breath, I sat down in the chair she provided and stuck my hoof out.

“So, I heard from the grapevine,” she said, already working on parts of my hoof. She popped the bottom off and set it on the table next to her. “A certain Star Paladin asked me the other night.” She paused again and pulled the casing from my leg, removing the entire outside of the prosthetic steel hoof so that only the cap on my stump and the replacement bone piece were left. Every movement she made was slow and careful, pulling it so the wires would stay connected and intact. “He asked what I thought about you. He was surprisingly vague about it, which is strange for him.”

“Oh. Did, umm, did he say why he was asking?” I stammered, focusing on the work to keep from blushing. I looked down at my hoof as she pulled the wires and connector pieces out and set them separately on the table. It looked quite morbid, with wires being the only thing that connected me to the parts I needed to move and stand without hobbling.

“Nope, he dodged the question when I asked,” she answered. She looked up at me and pursed her lips. “I think he might be thinking about starting to think about naughty things.” Without elaboration, she grabbed a brush in her forehoof and put it between her teeth. Perfect, stalling to make me wonder about it.

Could Praline even be that devious? I didn’t think she had it in her. She just sat there and brushed at the joint, digging little bits of dirt and grime out from between the hinge and the rubber material underneath.

I cleared my throat and looked at her. He had to have been asking about why I wanted to see her, even when I’d said my hoof was in perfect working order. Goddesses above, he must have thought Praline and I were seeing one another. Did he think I was like my sister? I didn’t- I mean. I couldn’t.

I looked at the mare as she diligently worked to get every last speck of dust from my hoof. When she wasn’t talking her head off, she wasn’t that bad. A good maintenance pony, and a good soldier. Bubbly, but a competent surgeon who’d learned from reading about it in theoretical books? There really was more to this mare than I gave her credit for.

She spit the brush down and slammed the hollow cylinder that made up my hoof on the table. “Almost done,” she said with a pleasant chirp. “Just.” Slam. “Need.” Slam. “A little.” Slam. “Elbow grease!” She flipped the steel hoof in midair, only to catch it sideways and bang it against the table’s edge.

Dirt fell from the inside, enough to make a small but obvious pile on the floor.

“Wow,” I whispered. I had no idea I’d gotten that thing so dirty.

“I see you’ve been shot in the hoof, too,” she said, pointing at the recharger rifle’s power source. It had a very small dent in it. “You need to be careful now, since the integrity of the cell is damaged. A strong pulse could short the whole thing. Like, if you were struck by lightning or something! Then even with the frogplate attached to complete the circuit, the entire hoof might die on you.” She looked up at me. “Understand?”

“What’s a frogplate?” I asked. The rest made sense. Electric parts could be disrupted. I might not be the smartest pony around, but I’d figured out that it needed to have all the parts touching to make sure the power flowed through.

She stared at me deadpan, not smiling for the first time since I’d met her. She grabbed the bottom piece of the hoof. “This is a frogplate.” She grabbed my flesh forehoof in her other fetlock and held both up so I could see the bottoms. “See this part right here? That’s your frog. So the steel that replaces it is called a frogplate.”

“Oooh, that makes sense,” I said, as it dawned on me exactly what she meant. I’d never thought of it that way. I poked at the layered bone piece that stuck out from my steel-capped stump. “Thanks for cleaning it.”

“Well, you’ve got a warranty for ten thousand miles walking, and since we can’t really measure how long that is, I’ll just make sure it still works no matter what,” she said, her smile finally returning. “Lemme get the doc.” She turned to face the door and held her hooves to her face. “Lemon Tart!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

I tried to cover my ears with my hooves, only to get the wire tangled around the bone replacement. Blushing at my mistake, I quickly untangled myself before I got caught. My ear twitched, and I heard the blood-fearing Scribe running down the metal halls.

Heavy clanks followed, metal on metal. Star Paladin Lamington, once again helmeted, followed. Behind him I could see my sister.

“Everything okay?” she asked as soon as she made it through the door.

“You called for assistance, Knight Praline?” asked Lamington in his typical by-the-book manner.

I felt myself turning red again. Literally, I could feel my coat changing colors from all the attention I didn’t want and didn’t need.

“Nope! I just wanted to make you all run down the halls,” she answered with a giggle. The reaction she got only made her laugh more.

Lamington just turned and walked off. Lost glared at the brown mare, and Lemon Tart nearly had a conniption fit.

“Hehe, silly. Just wanted to ask you to give her a once-over,” Praline explained. She pointed at my stump. “It’s been shifted a little. Can you make sure it’s connected properly?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned away and began to reassemble my steel hoof’s parts.

Lemon Tart’s eyelid twitched, and she looked over at my sister. The look on her face said it all. Day in and day out she must have to deal with antics like that. Rolling her eyes, she sat herself down and looked at my stump. “So, who tried to rip it off?” she asked. She shot me a look and slowly backed away from the offending limb. “Were they sick?”

“Slavers. And no, they were doing it for torture,” I answered. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Even mentioning it hurt. I didn’t feel physical pain, but a strange phantom sensation of something not belonging inside me down through my leg, where they’d separated everything and hooked the wires to.

“Hidden...” Lost cooed. She walked over to me, in the crowded room, and hugged me tight. “We’ll pay them back. I promise.”

“I know, sis,” I agreed. I knew she was good for her word, and that one day we’d kill Sunbright, Slipstock, Amble, and most importantly Vice Brand, to keep them from hurting anymore ponies, zebras, or changelings in the Wasteland. “But right now, we have other things to worry about. Let’s let the doctor do her work.” I tapped her nose with my flesh forehoof. “Go spend some time with Crème Brûlée or Drop Scone. I’ll be ready soon.”

She nodded, but didn’t pull away. Instead she gave me one more tight squeeze. When I hugged her back, she let go. “See you soon, I’ll have the wagon ready when you are,” she said. With a wave, she disappeared through the door and into the hall.

Lemon Tart watched L.A. as she left, then turned to me. “You’ll be okay. I just need to give it a little twist and a once over with my healing spell. The screws were probably stripped and pulled from the bone, but once it’s back in place the bone should heal over it,” she explained. I heard her mutter something about blood, but I couldn’t make out exactly what she said. “On three. One, two-” Then she twisted the steel plate.

I screamed in pain as it ripped the flesh apart again. Even Vice Brand had been more gentle. I felt blood drip from the freshly opened wound where the mesh I’d been healed into cut open the muscle again. Tears rolled down my cheeks, unstopped even by the warm flesh-knitting feeling of healing magic undoing all the damage that she’d caused. I bit down and ground my teeth.

By the time I managed to look back down, Praline had gotten my hoof rebuilt. It looked far better than it had. With the prosthetic once again polished to a shine, I could see my reflection in the steel. The etchings looked as if they were brand new, too. I tested it out at her insistence, and found it to move smoother, and faster than ever. She’d even replaced the rubber inside the joint to keep it insulated.

“Thank you, Praline, Doc,” I said. I looked at my hooves. Much better, assuming I could ever get the shackles off. I held the offending forehoof up. “Do... do you think you could get these off?”

The two mares exchanged looks. Praline shrugged. Without a word she turned and reached underneath another workbench. She grabbed something from under the table with her hooves and spun around. She held up a saw with two wicked looking circular blades sticking out the bottom. She grinned maniacally as she turned it on.

“Hold out your hoof and I’ll take it right off!” she said, over the revving saw blades.

“What? No! The shackle, not my hoof!” I yelled, flailing my forelegs about.

The mare blinked a few times, looking from me to the petrified doctor Lemon Tart. She giggled, and lowered the saw. “I knew that! I was just teasing, calm down.” She tapped her chin with a hoof. “Though, we could always just replace your hoof with another steel one to match the other side. I’ve got the materials now!”

I could feel my eyelid twitching in frustration. “Please just take the shackles off?” I begged. “Just be careful, they have spikes inside, embedded in the bone.” I prayed she’d actually listen to that warning.

Doctor Lemon Tart went from yellow to white, almost matching the color of the band that held her mane out of her eyes. Her eyes darted back and forth, looking at me, then the door. When Praline rested a hoof on her shoulder, she nodded. “We’ll do what we can. We’re the professionals, right?”

I nodded and held my hoof out.

Praline nodded. As the Doc wrapped her telekinesis around my leg to hold it into place, Praline brought the saw down and started cutting. The metal sparked and separated, loosening its grip around my leg to something less than horrible. The process was amazing, as the two blades worked together to cut in a perfectly straight line. While she worked on the shackle, Lemon Tart produced something of a shield spell around my actual leg to keep the blade from getting to me and slicing my hoof clean off.

I gave little prompting, only telling her where to cut. It was a slow process, but she eventually worked six separate cuts through the metal. As careful as Praline was, I could still feel the buzzing of the blade as it cut through vibrating down to the bone. Were it not for Lemon Tart holding me in place, I’d have given up and left the shackle attached. But I stayed strong and ignored what pain I did feel.

“Alright, that was the easy part,” Praline said, in what sounded like a reassuring voice. She moved one segment around in her hoof, testing it. “All at once, or one at a time?” she asked. At least I got a choice.

“All at once. It’ll be over with quicker,” I answered. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I knew this would hurt. It would be over in an instant though, then the doctor would heal me up, and I’d be all set for the next part of the journey. “Ready.”

I thought I was.

The world around me shattered, every other sensation absolutely destroyed by the pain that shot up my leg. I heard my bone shatter when the barbed spikes pulled free. Whatever the doctor in U Cig had said, she wasn’t lying. Vice Brand made them to never be removed. My brain couldn’t even process it enough to make me scream.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked at the mess that used to be a functional leg.

That was a mistake.

* * *

I woke to the sound of screaming.

“A monster!” yelled the mare’s voice. Clinker? The sound of dozens of hooves, armored and unarmored, falling against steel followed. The chatter of several ponies echoed down the halls, drowning out individual words.

I lifted my left hoof and pressed it to my head. “Ow!” I yelled, as pain shot through my head and leg. Why had... I cracked an eye open and looked at the hoof. “Oh Goddesses... she didn’t!” I cried. I lifted my right hoof, praying I was just turned around. My other hoof was looked the same as always, nearly identical, with only the etched design on the front showing a difference. They were mirror versions of one another.

I looked around, wondering what happened after I passed out. What happened before I passed out? I shook my head, trying to remember. That was a mistake, as my head began to throb. The screams of the mare ripped me from my thoughts. Finding out what exactly was happening took precedence suddenly, for no other reason than to get Clinker to shut her Goddesses-damned mouth.

With neither Praline nor Doc Lemon Tart around to ask what they’d done, I instead opted to just hobble. The sooner I found out whether they’d cut my hoof off or not, the better. Placing three hooves on the ground, I tenderly lowered my left foreleg.

Pain shot up my leg, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t stand on it. I held back the tears, happy that they at least meant my leg and hoof were still attached inside their metal prison. At least it took my mind off my headache. I left the maintenance room at a decent gait; a quick hobble. I moved through the hallways toward where the voice came from, as best I could. With steel echoing the sound from everywhere, I found the task quite hard. If only Lost had given me the PipBuck to use, I could at least track with the E.F.S.

“Hello?” I called down the hallway. If just one pony would tell me what exactly was going on.

“This way!” yelled Clinker. I had no idea if she was talking to me or not, but I took it as a sign. “I saw it in the bathroom!” The hooffalls fell again. The sound of weapons being cocked filled the air.

“Wait!” I yelled. I had a feeling I knew exactly what she’d seen, and I couldn’t let them fire.

I slammed my hoof down and ate the pain. I ran. If my memory served me, I’d seen the bathrooms on this floor nearby. Again I wished for the PipBuck for a map. I rounded the corner of one of the halls, in time to catch the tail of an unarmored pony turning another corner down the hallway.

“Wait, hold your fire!” I yelled, hoping the pony would hear me and take heed. When they didn’t turn around, I kept chasing.

I followed the yelling and talking of ponies, and found a large group crowded around the entrance to the bathrooms. They spoke in hushed tones, whispering to one another about what might be inside.

“She said it was a monster,” said a stallion.

“This is the Wasteland, there’s lots of monsters,” answered another.

“But one getting inside? What if there are others?” asked a frightened sounding mare.

“Move!” I said. I pushed through, shoving ponies to either side with my shoulders. I didn’t have near my usual power behind it, but they still moved. Once I got to the front I poked my head through. “What’s going on?” I demanded, staring directly at Clinker. The sooner this nonsense ended, the sooner I could do something about my head and my hoof.

“A monster in the bathroom,” she answered, her voice cracking once. She pointed at the stallions’ room. The action made a few murmur, questioning why she was in there. Blushing at their accusations, she answered, “I wasn’t inside, I just saw it go in!”

“Let me go in,” I said. “I can fix this.” I pulled myself from the throng of ponies and stepped past her. Ignoring the aghast expression, I pushed the door open and walked inside. I’d been here once before when the Stable was empty, and knew what to expect. The second the door closed, I lowered my eyelids. “Fine Tune, you can come out.”

A hoof full of holes stepped from one of the stalls, followed by Fine Tune poking his head out. The changeling stared at me and chirped. Even though it wasn’t a word, or honestly even language, I could hear the embarrassment in it. Fire flashed and he transformed into the red-maned stallion. “I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly.

“Why weren’t you transformed?” I asked him. I needed to talk to Drop Scone and explain about him, to keep things like this from happening. Mentally I kicked myself for not doing so sooner. “And how do we get ourselves out of this one?”

“That’s, umm. I can’t,” he stammered and his eyes shifted, the pupils turning to haze and matching his blue irises. “I was rushing,” he finally managed to say. He looked up and trotted over to the sinks to wash his forehooves.

I facehoofed. Instantly I regretted hitting my throbbing head with my newly steeled hoof. There was exactly no more about changelings that I wanted to know. I’d officially reached my limit of curiosity. “Alright, and the ‘getting out of this’ part?” Wincing, I sat on my haunches and held my left forehoof. Both the hoof and my forehead throbbed.

“I’ll just take another form?” he suggested. With telekinesis he turned the water off, making more thoughts go through my mind as to why he needed to use his- No. Stopping that train of thought. “Something similar to my original colors and then change back later?”

“There’s not a lot of ponies here, but that might work,” I said. I wished Lost were around so I could ask her.

The door cracked open behind me. An armored head poked its way inside, one far too big to be anypony but Lamington.

“Interesting. You’re the one causing such a commotion here?” he asked. Even though it was an accusation, his tone gave way that he was joking. A burst of static came from the speaker, and echoed around the room, before he stepped inside. His helmet twisted and he looked at Fine Tune. “You arrived with Miss Fortune here, correct?”

I twitched.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“What seems to be the problem?” the Star Paladin asked. “I’ve dispersed the crowd, but I would like to know what has my ponies so agitated.” He looked back at me and sat down, slamming his armored haunches onto the floor with an ear-splitting clang.

Time to come clean. “He’s a changeling,” I said. Getting it all out fast was better, right? I gulped, hoping he would take it well.

Fine Tune shot me a look. At first he looked upset, but when Lamington didn’t instantly shoot him, he began to look worried.

The Star Paladin tapped his hoof a few times, then looked at Fine Tune. “Are you a threat?” he asked.

“No,” answered the changeling. He looked at me, then the floor, then back at the visor of the Steel Ranger. “Sir.”

“As you were then,” he said. He pushed himself up onto his hooves and turned. Wrapping a hoof around the entrance to the bathroom, he looked back at us. The position of his helmet lingered on me for a second longer, and he nodded. “Good day.” With that, he pulled the door open and walked away.

“What just happened?” Fine Tune and I both asked at the same time.

* * *

“No, I’m going. This is something I need to do,” I argued. I sat on one of the examination tables, which was covered in a crinkly paper that made noise every time I shifted. The Steel Rangers had cleaned the Clinic out well, removing the references to patients that died ages ago, leaving only a sterile operating area and counters without a speck of dust. It felt almost strange, to know that a few weeks ago I’d been running through this same room, frantically searching for meds while coated in blood.

Lemon Tart and Praline stood around me. Lost stood at the door, blocking any exit. They’d collected me once Fine Tune and I left the bathroom and dragged me here. I had another reason to hate magic now, having been bound against my will and pulled through the hallways.

The memory of a nightmare from long ago poked at the back of my mind, as if to remind me just what happened when a pony was tied down and muzzled. I shuddered. It wasn’t that bad, and I trusted my sister not to do something like that to me.

“We don’t have the time, and you’re hurt,” said L.A. She took a step back and blocked the door further.

Praline and Lemon Tart exchanged looks. The doctor shook her head. “You can’t in your condition,” she said. “After what happened with your leg, I can’t in good faith let you go walking around on it. You’re liable to do even more damage than we did taking the shackle off.”

Praline just looked at the ground. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“You need to take the others off, too,” I said. I looked at the remaining shackled on my rear hooves. “The less reminder we have about what happened, the better.”

“We can’t,” admitted Lemon Tart. Seeing both my and Lost’s expressions, she sighed and pulled a rolling chair from under the counter. “From what I can tell by looking at them, when we pulled the shackle off, the barbs in the spikes pulled the bone in six directions and splintered the full length of it. I did what I could with healing magic, but I don’t have a spell for regrowing bones.”

“I tried to help too, Hidden,” Lost added. “Even with both Lemon Tart and I working together with both of our magic, we couldn’t repair the damage.” I guessed mom never actually finished teaching her the spell for mending bones.

“Oh.” It was the only thing I could think to say.

“Were it not for the quick thinking of Praline here, you’d have lost the hoof,” the doctor continued. “Basically, we’re using the armor as a cast to hold everything together. I applied everything I know, but the skills I honed are that of a copy scribe, not a healer. My talents are at pain relief, through medicine, not magic.”

“Well, what do I need to do then? I need to be able to walk,” I said. I stared at my forehooves again, saddened by the fact that now both were lost to Steel. And it meant that I couldn’t even- Oh Goddesses, I’d never even get to try. Stupid shackles, taking that away... I blew air from the corner of my mouth to cool down. It wouldn’t do any good to stress about that. Maybe if Lamington...

“Umm, Hidden? Hello?” asked Lost. She looked rather concerned. “Why are you blushing?”

Reality hit hard. I coughed and turned away. “What were you saying, doc?”

“Time. That’s the only thing I can think that’ll heal this. You should heal naturally, assuming you aren’t too rough on the limb,” she answered. “I saw the scars you’re covered in now. You look like a decent healer all on your own.”

Had I really become that scarred? A shot through the belly when I was little, and the whip marks across my back that had to heal naturally. My lost hoof, and now this. Shackles that I couldn’t remove. I really had managed to find myself getting hurt far too much.

“So, she’ll need to keep that steel boot on as a compression garment. It’ll hold everything in place and protect it,” Lemon Tart continued. She grabbed a file from the counter in her magic and passed it to Lost. “It’s held together enough to walk on, but anything more than that and she’ll do more damage than I can fix without finding some Hydra. Using Hydra, of course, has its own risks. And don’t use any healing potions, since that’ll just heal the bones where they are right now, not fuse them back together.”

No fighting with my left forehoof? I could do that! It’d be easy. “I’ll be okay. But I still need to take care of something personal before I leave,” I said.

“No. You’re going to get on the motorwagon and sit there like a good filly, without hurting yourself,” said Lost. She looked up at me from the file, then back down at it. She wasn’t in a mood to be argued with.

“What if I take an escort? To make sure nothing happens?” I asked. This was something I needed to do before we left.

“I’m sure Lamington will go,” suggested Praline. “He’s been stir-crazy lately. Some fresh air might do him some good.” She smiled mischievously, but I ignored it.

Lost sighed and nodded. “Alright, fine,” she said. Hopefully she hadn’t caught on to anything going on between Praline, Lamington, or me.

The doctor frowned and pointed a hoof toward the door.

“I’ll go get him,” said Praline. She hopped up and bounced out the door. Her mane seemed to deflate the moment she passed through, though I was the only one looking. She turned to face me. “I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you, though!” She bounced once more and disappeared.

“That mare,” muttered Lemon Tart. She lifted her hooves and pressed them against her eyes.

* * *

I found I didn’t need the PipBuck. Even without a gang of ponies chasing us with magical energy weapons and flamers, I could remember every step I made as if it were the same night. When I walked past each tree, I noticed the same markings on the dead bark. Each twist, turn, and weave came back to me. Part of me felt I was even stepping in the same spots, though I knew that not to be true. Even if it were, one of the hooves I had wasn’t the same one I had that night.

Lamington followed me, his armor outfitted with a slightly less destructive chain gun. He spent more time staring at the woods themselves, focused on his duty, than on being a conversationalist. It came as a relief, to be honest, because I had no idea what the two of us would talk about as we walked through the woods.

Maybe if we’d brought some food or something. It could be a nice picnic. Gunbuck’s head would chaperone.

Or I might lose my mind. Either/or.

“We’re almost there,” I said. The walk went far slower than I wanted it to, since I had to hobble. It felt longer than I knew it was, given we weren’t running for our lives and instead traveled at a reasonably slow pace.

“I’m somewhat excited to meet this stallion,” said the Star Paladin, his voice crackling with static. “Aside from members joining up after hearing about our military service, I haven’t gotten the chance to meet many outsiders.”

“I thought you were all about tradition and doing things by the book?” I asked, looking back at the armored stallion.

“Yes, usually I find myself needing to be the rock that holds my family together,” he explained. “Elder Drop Scone is a talented leader, but she’s followed mostly because she is the matriarch of the family. You might have noticed that the others don’t take their service as seriously as they should. Scribe Crème Brûlée has spent much of her life lamenting her isolation and the loss of other members of the order. Knight Praline, while talented and intelligent, finds it more enjoyable to be a goof. Much of the family is like that.”

“So, what makes it so you need to be the stuffy one?” I asked. I instantly regretted my choice of words. Rather than look back at him, I dodged around a tree and kept forward. It was close...

The Steel Ranger chuckled. “I prefer to use the term ‘orderly,’” he answered. “In the end, we are a military force, and stuck below the world in a Stable or not, it is a duty to be respected. I merely wanted my soldiers, my family, to be prepared. Were it not for my stern ways, we might be down more than just one brother.” His inflection didn’t change at all through his little speech, and aside from the static breaking it up, he sounded like a stallion who truly believed in his calling.

“I’m sorry about Chocolate Éclair,” I said. I only wished he was buried in the same place as Gunbuck’s head so I could talk to him at the same time. Maybe it was just better to let sleeping hellhounds lie?

He didn’t respond, and neither of us talked for the remainder of the trip. When we arrived at the tree with the X marked on it, I stopped. The gun I’d left there still sat propped up over the burial site. Lamington kept walking, not knowing to look for the emblem I’d left to remember where he was buried.

“We’re here,” I said. I didn’t look away from the X.

“There’s nothing here. We’re still in the woods,” he said. He looked around the dead forest, then did a small circle around the tree searching for something.

“Just sit with me for a bit, okay? Right there,” I said. I pointed to a spot on the ground, next to where the head was. I didn’t want him sitting on Gunbuck, after all.

“As you wish,” he said. With a loud thud, the stallion sat down next to the tree. He stretched his hind legs and rested against the ancient wood.

I took a seat next to him, and stared upward at the morning cloud cover. With a deep breath, I closed my eyes and asked, “Did you find a large pool of blood on the bottom floor of the Stable? Signs of a fight...”

“Your Gunbuck?” he answered with another question.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “That one was... that one was my fault. He shot Lost and I just fired on instinct.” I looked down at the spot where I’d buried the head. Not wanting to stare, I looked back up at the sky and relaxed. I just let myself feel the wind blowing through the trees, and listened to the quiet of the dead world.

“That’s not an unreasonable reaction, when one’s family is concerned,” Lamington said. The clank of armor against armor gave away what he was doing. He set the helmet down next to him and leaned over to look at me.

“I know,” I answered, looking back at him from the corner of my eye.

He was a good-looking stallion, with a good head on his shoulders. Responsible and able to back it up too. Some mare would find a good husband in him, one day.

“Elder Drop- My mother used to tell us, as foals, that the road to Tartarus was paved with good intentions,” he said in a soft voice. “Usually to Praline, when she did something silly to try and cheer the rest of us up. We grew up in a very bland world, all greys and routine. It was a secluded world, and in only a hoofful of generations, only our family remained.

“Everything we did was to cheer each other up, and we all coped in different ways,” he continued. “Some by dreaming of the world above, some by diving into books. I took up the calling with a fervor none of the others had seen. The armor I wear was my father’s, before he died. I wanted to honor what he’d done, even if all I protected was the four walls in my room.”

“It’s safer down below, though,” I said. “You don’t need to worry about wild Manticores eating you, or feral ghouls irradiating you. There’s nothing to jump out in the middle of the night and make you pull the trigger before you mean to.” I couldn’t help but turn toward Gunbuck.

“I think he’d have understood,” said Lamington. “He probably had a family, too. Protecting one’s own is part of what makes us ponies, and not monsters.” He reached over and placed a hoof on my shoulder.

I looked at the spot I’d buried him, at the head slowly rotting underground. It was now or never. “Hey, Gunbuck. I know I said I wouldn’t come back but, a lot has happened and I figured I should keep you updated,” I said. “It was supposed to be your quest, afterall.”

“Do you normally talk to him?” asked Lamington. He didn’t ask in an accusing tone, but with honest curiosity.

“I have before,” I admitted. “Is that weird? It’s probably weird.”

“Only a little,” he answered with a laugh. “Don’t let my presence stop you. I understand if this is something you need to do.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. I shuffled my forehooves about, thinking about what to say. “We went to Leathers, like the PipBuck said. There was a monster there, and he took my hoof.” I held my steel hoof toward the burial site. “I had to have it replaced. Then we went to Skirt, and found out what was wrong there. I wish you’d left notes or something...” It might be a bit much to ask for a dead stallion to give me more clues. “Then there were slavers, and a whole week of...” I dropped my voice to a whisper, not wanting Lamington to hear. “Torture.”

The steel ranger didn’t say anything, he just stared away, allowing me my privacy. Thank the Goddesses.

“We got out though, and we took care of the problems in Skirt,” I continued. Once again I shuffled my hooves, worrying about Rebar and the mares involved with her. Were the unity mares left in Idle still doing okay? “We went a step further, to help stop the slavery trade, and now we’re going across the mountains on a favor for a friend.” It was better if I didn’t mention what exactly the favor was. Less questions. “Ah, am I doing a good job? I’m not supposed to be a hero...”

The buried head didn’t answer, of course. At least he knew we were trying to do the right thing, now.

“I’m sure he would be proud of the dedication you’ve shown toward making the Wasteland a better place,” said the Star Paladin. He looked back at me and smiled reassuringly.

“What do you know about friendship, Lamington?” I asked. Not wanting an answer, I continued. “I’ve met ponies, who lived before the War. They said, they told me friendship matters, and that it could have helped us overcome what happened. I wonder if, maybe, if I’d taken half a second to ask first, he could still be alive and I wouldn’t have gotten caught in the situations I did.”

“Many of the books we had at Stable Sixty were considered new when the world above ended,” Lamington explained. “That’s how Praline acquired her book about cybernetics. It wasn’t something that had been intended for the public, because it was all ideas and theories. Among those books were ones about friendship and how it helped ponykind to survive as long as it did in peace, under Princess Celestia.” He dropped his hoof from my shoulder and turned to the sky. “I read them quite a few times, since they were one of the few distractions that wasn’t a military pocketbook. If I’d known we were going to talk about this, I’d have brought them with us. If you go back, grab the Elements of Harmony book from the shelf in my room. You’ll know which one it is.”

“I’ll do that, if we ever pass by,” I said. “Hey, Gunbuck? This is Lamington. He’s a Steel Ranger and a good friend. You should say hi.”

The wind blew, but there was silence.

“Hello,” said the Star Paladin. “You knew them, didn’t you?” At least he was humoring me, talking to a severed head like a crazy pony. “Kindness, Loyalty, Generosity, Honesty, Laughter, and the Magic that brings us all together?”

I knew some of those, from the things Rose had said to the way Xeno stuck by our side. Now I had the rest to learn.

“I’ll take them all to heart,” I said. “We should head back, Lamington. I’m on a time limit.”

“Yes, that sounds reasonable,” he answered. He got to his hooves faster than I thought possible, and trotted to my side of the tree. When he arrived, he offered a hoof.

I looked up at him, and couldn’t help but look at the scar around his new eye, and of course the eye itself. “Can you leave the helmet off, for now?”

“For you, anything.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Progress: 50%

“Somepony’s getting close to Lammy!”
“Shut up.”
“You finally gonna tell him how you feel?”
“I don’t even know how I feel!”
“Oh, is it the cold steel you like?”
“SHUT UP!”
“Do you need something artificial that never stops to keep you going?”
“DAMMIT LOST ART!”

Chapter 18: What Lies Beyond

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Chapter Eighteen: What Lies Beyond
“War ravages more than the land and the soldiers, it hurts the morale of those at home. Sometimes a pony just needs a little break from reality. What’s wrong with escapism?”

“Hidden?”

“Huh, wha?” I muttered, snapping to attention.

“You’ve been staring a hole in the table ever since you got back from the gravesite. Are you okay?” asked Lost. She sat across from me at the atrium table, her hooves crossed in front of her. She stared at me over the rims of her glasses, both eyebrows raised.

“Just thinking, I guess. Something up?” I asked. I hadn’t been paying attention to the time, really. I’d been thinking about this whole trip and what the other side of the mountains might look like. I hadn’t left Blackhoof in as long as I could remember, and the thought of going so far from home scared me. Even if it was just a short trip through the mountain pass for a day or two, it felt like I’d be leaving everything I ever knew behind.

“The Wasteland wasn’t really meant for travel, not in a world where unfamiliar terrain could mean a hostile pony ready to gun down one of us without hesitation,” I said quietly. My mind switched gears, and I started to ramble, “I wonder if this is how the Steel Rangers felt, leaving their Stable. It was everything they’d ever known, and no matter how boring that was, it must have been a constant sense of familiarity. Knowing where everything is, all the safe spots and shortcuts? That had to make it feel like home. Leaving, even for a short ‘vacation’ of sorts... How could a pony just flee everything they knew?”

“They left as a family, together. We’re going to be together too, so we’re not leaving everything we’ve ever known,” said Lost. She poked my shoulder with a hoof. When I didn’t respond, she tilted my head up by pushing my chin with her hoof. “It’ll be fine, I promise.”

“I’ve just never been outside Blackhoof, and leaving is scary,” I admitted. I shuffled my hooves underneath the table, though the loud clanking of steel on steel gave it away.

“Actually, the Stable we were born in is on the other side of the mountains,” Lost said. She shrugged and lowered her hoof from my chin. “I guess you were too young to remember. Either way, it’s only a short trip. We won’t be gone more than a day.”

“Really?” I said, mulling that over. I guessed it made sense. The only Stables I knew about in Blackhoof were the ones we’d already seen. Given how big Equestria was supposed to be, even sixty Stables must have been spread far and wide.

“Mmhmm. I don’t remember exactly where it is, but I know we had to go through the mountains to get here,” she explained. She slumped down in the seat and rested her head against the table. “I’m a bit scared too. This is all just... so damn stressful. We’re on a time limit and I don’t think we can make it. Then there’s helping Xeno with everything with her tribe, and that could take who knows how long. I just wish there was a way we could handle Rose and be done with it.”

“We really aren’t cut out for this, are we?” I asked with a laugh.

“I think we can do it, but yeah... I miss the days when the biggest issue was finding a good place to dig for treasure,” she answered. “I’ve been thinking though.” She leaned in close and motioned for me to lean in too. When I did she whispered, “I don’t think we need to worry about slavers coming after the Steel Rangers. Look at where we are. We’re in a Stable, inside a cave. It’s easy to defend and there’s a good choke point for anypony who might come after them.”

“I know, I’ve been thinking about that too,” I said. I raised a hoof and gently patted her on the head. It felt weird, tapping the steel against the bandana around her mane. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt her. “We’re in a good place, and Lamington has the missile launcher, plus all the others have big guns. They could easily stop any attack.” I lowered myself down and pressed my muzzle against my sisters while resting on the table. I stared her in the eyes. “But what about everypony else? The mares we left in Idle?”

She looked away. “Four mares versus us, and all the Steel Rangers and everypony here?”

“Is that what the ponies of Equestria would have done?” I asked. “Lamington gave me a crash course in what it was like for those ponies who lived in Equestria before the War, from the books they had in the Stable. I’m pretty sure they’d have done anything they could have to save anypony they considered a friend, since friendship mattered most to them. They wouldn’t have left anypony, even one they might not have liked, to such a fate.” I smiled, feeling a little better about the situation. “You just said yourself that they’ll be safe here, if slavers come to try and take them away.”

She sighed. “I know but-”

“Before we leave we’ll tell them what to expect so they can defend the place,” I assured her. “Lamington and the others fought off Scifresh and Jazz, remember? And they were in power armor and using gatling guns with magical lasers! The family can defend themselves again a ragtag group of slavers.” I raised my hoof again and offered it to my sister. “I have faith in Drop Scone’s family. They can handle themselves against anything the Wasteland throws at them, especially with a little time to prepare.”

Lost pressed her hoof against my steel, and closed her eyes. “I still worry,” she whispered. “But you’re right.” She nuzzled me and pulled herself to sit upright. “I need to have a chat with Crème Brûlée before we leave, to clear the air.”

“Nip Chaser?” I asked, sitting up as well. I pulled my hoof back and stared down at it.

“Yeah. I’m going...” she said, stopping to gulp. “Going to go do that now.” Standing up, she turned and trotted off. “See you when we’re ready to go.”

“Good luck, sis,” I called after her. With that conversation out of the way, I got up and headed toward the Overmare’s office.

* * *

I still didn’t feel right in a Stable. Having spent the majority of my life outside under the cloud cover with miles of ruins in every direction, I just couldn’t understand how a pony could live in such confined spaces. It was just gray steel in every direction, the echo of hooves on metal... Everything wanted to just crush a soul inward. Ponies needed to be outside, to run free, not be cooped up and breathing in recycled air.

At least I wasn’t over in Stable Twelve. That would be so much worse, with the dark and the dank. The memories of what happened over there, and the ghouls that waited for a century to be put out of their misery...

I stopped in my tracks.

The Glowing One still had her mind. She hadn’t been lost to the insanity of the feral zombies. I’d met other undead ponies too, who still had their minds intact. So, what if some of those ponies I’d dropped the roof on were still sane, and hadn’t become mindless killing machines? Was it possible to keep their sanity, and just have gotten locked in, unable to open the door. What if they were just waiting for rescue?

Had I committed mass murder?

I took a deep breath and shook my head. I’d done worse, really. My intentions had been good, but I knew I’d find myself before the Goddesses to explain one day. Hopefully they’d understand. The best way to make everything right was to help as many ponies as I could, especially the ones I cared about. My hooves moved on their own, and I kept walking toward the Overmare’s office.

When I got there, I knocked on the flower-designed door. The steel on my hoof clanked against the door, echoing down the hallway again.

“Enter,” said the kind voice of the Steel Rangers’ Elder.

I opened the door and walked inside. Elder Drop Scone had transformed the office quite a bit, turning the desk and terminal displays into her own personalized workspace. The terminals showed various cameras that were still active, while a few displayed documents. The map of the Stable was replaced by one of Blackhoof, crudely drawn and covered in notes. It covered everything from Leathers to Pommel Falls, to the Stables. One of the Steel Rangers must have updated it as they traveled, but it matched fairly closely to what I’d seen on the PipBuck’s map screen.

“Good morning, Hidden Fortune,” said the Elder. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon. Come, have a seat.” She waved a hoof, offering one of the two chairs that had been moved into the office.

“Thanks, but I’d rather stand,” I answered. I walked over and looked out the Overmare’s window to the Atrium the floor below. A few ponies sat at one of the tables, talking about something I couldn’t hear. They looked so calm and peaceful.

“Alright then. Is there something you wanted to talk about?” she asked. She shuffled a group of papers into a pile and set them off to the side of the desk, out of the way.

I took a deep breath. “A warning, actually,” I answered. “I didn’t want to tell the others, but we’ve gotten ourselves into a little bit of trouble.”

“The slavers?” she asked calmly. Drop Scone pushed herself back from the desk, stood, and walked around to shut the door, then joined me next to the window. She looked out over the Atrium and nodded a few times. “Lamington told me what he heard from you, and I managed to get hold of Praline to question her.”

“Quick work,” I said, impressed.

“I know my foals well,” she answered. She looked over and smiled, obviously proud of the children she’d raised. “They’d already worked out what happened, as best they could. I had to issue a direct order to keep them from running off to play hero without any idea where they were actually going.” She laughed and placed a hoof on the window. “They’re good ponies, and their hearts are in the right place. It’s a shame they don’t take the time to think about what they’re doing before they do it.”

That sounded familiar. I felt myself blush and turned away. “I didn’t tell them the details on purpose,” I admitted. “Lost and I wanted to make sure they were safe, and that all of you couldn’t be put in a position where slavers, or anypony, could hurt you.”

“You know we see you as family, right?” asked the Elder. She didn’t look away from the Atrium. “We’d have come no matter what, if we knew exactly where you were. The Star Paladin is quite skilled with his missile launchers, and any group of slavers that hurt one of mine would be dead right now.”

“It’s different, here in the Wasteland. I’ve already caused the death of one of your-”

The glare from the Elder stopped me mid-sentence.

“I just wanted to say I was sorry for what happened,” I said sheepishly.

“Chocolate Éclair did what he thought was right and died in battle,” she said. Lowering her gaze from the window, she turned and walked to the desk again. Groaning, she sat down and shifted to get comfortable. “Sorry, these old bones are getting a bit stiff.” With another groan and a wince, she pulled her chair closer and leaned against the desk. “He’d have accepted the apology without hesitation. That was just the kind of stallion he was. But that’s neither here nor there, now. I have foals who are still alive and have a bright future ahead of them. Now, tell me exactly what’s going on so I can help. Please.”

“The pink mare with us isn’t a friend,” I explained. Finally feeling comfortable, I sat down in the chair Drop Scone had offered earlier. “We’re heading across the mountain for a day to drop Xeno’s brothers off at their home so they can have a proper burial. While there-”

The Elder gasped. Her hooves shot up to cover her mouth, and her eyes grew to the size of saucers. “That poor zebra lost her family as well? Oh you poor dears...”

“It happened before we met you, actually. There was a misunderstanding and Lost and I each killed one of her brothers,” I said. “It was a mistake, but we’re trying to make up for it.”

“That’s quite a heavy burden,” said the Elder, finally letting her hooves drop. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, but thank you. This is something we need to do ourselves,” I said, declining whatever offer she might have. My eyes drifted down to my forehooves. The Steel Rangers had already done enough for us, both in terms of help they’d offered and lives they’d given. We were big ponies and we could handle it. “Anyway. The other reason we’re going across is because Rose, the pink mare, is blackmailing us into getting a supply of Med-X, Buck, and several other drugs to take back to the town of Idle. She’s holding four mares hostage, ready to put them right back into the slavery we freed them from, and has threatened to tell the slavers that captured us where you’re located, too, if we don’t do what she says.”

“We won’t need to worry about that,” said Drop Scone dismissively. “This Stable system is very easily defendable.”

“That’s what Lost and I thought too,” I agreed, smiling. “But I felt that the more you knew, the better you could prepare yourself.”

“Well, I appreciate the thought and the early warning. I’ll make sure to post a guard at the entrance to the caves at all times in the event of an emergency,” she said. “In fact...” She spun her chair around and pressed a button on the terminal control panel. “Tim Tam, I have an assignment for you. Please come to my office immediately.”

“I’m really sorry,” I muttered.

“Don’t worry about it. You’re actually helping quite a bit,” she corrected. She looked at the terminal screens and then spun back around to face me. “He’s been looking for something to do anyway, and the early warning is the best thing we could hope for.”

“Anything to help,” I said.

A knock at the door interrupted our conversation. That was fast.

“Come in,” yelled the Elder.

The door slid open and a dark orange earth pony stallion walked in. “You called for me, ma’am?” he asked. The stallion had freckles on his cheeks and a brown mane, with eyes that reminded me of Broker back in Pommel Falls. Maybe this pony was a part of his family?

“I’d like you to get a pair of binoculars from Black Bun in the storage room and stand guard at the entrance,” the Elder ordered. “If you see anypony coming who looks like trouble, I want you to raise the alarm. We might be having some guests coming that we’ll need to deal with.”

“Yes ma’am, thank you,” said the stallion with a salute. He turned on his hooves and trotted down the halls.

“Do you think that’ll take care of everything?” I asked. I didn’t want these ponies in danger.

“It’s the best thing we can do in the meantime,” answered Drop Scone. “Now let’s go down and get some of Marshmallow’s cooking. You look like a skeleton.” She hopped down from the chair, moving surprisingly quickly for a mare of her age who’d just been complaining about her aching bones. A quick trot around the desk and she grabbed me by the side.

Together we walked from her office, apparently to give me an early lunch.

* * *

“You get to steer, Hidden,” said Lost. She lifted the PipBuck from her foreleg and strapped it to mine. As it clicked into place, she hopped up onto the motorwagon and settled into the left rear seat. The second she sat down, she let out a groan and closed her eyes. She’d been up all night steering and powering the motorwagon, so I couldn’t blame her for being tired.

“Here you go,” said Lamington, lifting up a large crate on his back. He and Marshmallow Sundae had stuffed it full of extra food the Stable didn’t need, to help us over the next few days.

Really, it was the best present they could have given us. Not needing to survive on what we found in the Wasteland was a gift from the Goddesses, especially since we’d be going through the mountains. I didn’t expect many ponies had decided to live up in what had been the middle of the woods, and the thought we not be able to find supplies worried me. Marshmallow Sundae’s cooking was the best I’d ever had, so I was quite excited for any chance to eat more of her delicious food, rather than any scraps we could find anyway.

It seemed like this was swiftly becoming the tradition for the Steel Rangers to give us food whenever we parted.

“Thanks Lamington,” I said, grabbing the crate on either side with my hooves and pulling it onto the deck.

The Star Paladin shifted and helped me to push until we’d gotten the food situated safely between the two seats in front of the engine. “My pleasure,” he said through a burst of static. “Are you quite sure that departure needs to come so soon?”

“Unfortunately,” I muttered. “We promised Xeno we’d get to her tribe as soon as possible for a burial for her brothers.” I pointed to the two wrapped corpses on the wagon. “The sooner we get there, the better.” I wanted to be quick both out of obligation, and to be rid of the rotting corpses. I’d been around the Wasteland long enough, and the less time I had to deal with the smell, the better.

“Yes, I understand,” the stallion admitted. “Be safe. Let me go gather the others for a real sendoff.” He saluted and walked off toward the cave. As he passed the guardspony, the two saluted one another.

I flicked the PipBuck’s display over to green and turned the E.F.S. on. When the little notifications and markers popped up in the corner of my vision, I did a quick scan all around us just in case. A few green markers, one red one. Steeling myself, I grabbed Persistence and held her close. I’d never bothered to reattach her to my battle saddle, but if I was going to be steering, I wouldn’t be able to stop to shoot anyway. Whatever the hostile marker was, it wasn’t close or I’d have seen it already. It was better to be prepared though, so I pulled my barding on, then my jacket, and finally reattached Persistence to the battle saddle. I set it on the seat next to Lost.

Just in case.

“So!” yelled a voice right next to me.

“Ahh!” I screamed, falling on my rump.

Praline stood next to me, head tilted to the side and a confused look on her face. “Did I scare you?” she asked.

“You just startled me,” I lied as I stood up. I dusted myself off and stared at her. “Where’d you come from anyway?”

She tapped her chin with a hoof and stared up at the cloud cover. “Hmmm. Well,” she said, “when a stallion and a mare love each other very much-”

“Please stop,” I said, cutting her off. “I know where foals come from. I meant just now. I just looked around and you weren’t here. So where’d you come from?”

“Oh!” she yelled. Bouncing into the air, she jumped off the edge of the wagon’s deck and stuck her head up underneath between the wheels. “I was tightening this axle.” She pulled herself from underneath and held up a wrench in her teeth. “Schee?”

Well, at least she hadn’t popped up from inside the engine.

“Performing a tune up?” I asked. I looked back at the engine. It really could use a looking over, to get it going faster. We’d taken most of the night to make it across Blackhoof, and time was short. “Mind looking at the engine?”

“Well, that’s a lot different than building parts for a pony, but I can try,” she agreed, a mischievous twinkle sparkling in her eyes. Bouncing again, she hopped to the far side of the wagon and crawled up the back portion of the deck. Reaching down underneath, she grabbed a toolbox that I didn’t even know she owned, and set it next to her. A second later, she’d opened a hatch on the back of the engine and dived into the housing. Only her rear hooves and tail stuck out the back, all of which wiggled about excitedly.

I rolled my eyes and ignored the sound of metal hitting metal, and the smoke that suddenly started to billow out the top of the engine housing. I was far from mechanically inclined, and I didn’t need to be in there breaking anything. As silly as Praline could be, I trusted her to have the engine in working order, or better than it’d been before, even if she somehow ripped everything out. That mare was weird like that.

Xeno trotted from the cave with a satchel in her mouth. Without a word she hopped up onto the deck and looked at me.

“Uhh?” I asked.

She set the satchel next to her brothers’ bodies and sat on the seat across from Lost. “Ingredients,” she explained. “The bugpony and I were gathering this morning. Itis surprisingly easy to collect what I needed with winged help.” She kicked her rear hooves and smiled. “Itwill be a good offering for the pyre.”

“Pyre?” I asked, squinting. “What do you mean pyre?”

“Itis what my kind does, when the dead are sent off,” she answered. “The leader of the tribe will perform the rites and those that have died in battle will be sent off with a hero's burial.” Holding her hooves up to her muzzle, she cleared her throat. “I simply hope Zoan will accept the offering. She is quite strict with the old ways.”

“Who’s Zoan?” I asked. We had to wait for Fine Tune, Rose, and the others to come out, so I had time for some clarification about Xeno’s tribe. I sat down in the seat behind the steering wheel.

“Zoan was the tribal leader when I left, several years ago,” Xeno explained. “An old zebra wise in the ways of our people and our ancestors. She is kind, but strict, and has a daughter whom I was good friends with.” The idea of Xeno, as strange as she made herself out to be, having other friends who were zebra startled me. Hadn’t she always said she had no place to go back to?

Before I could ask about that, Star Paladin Lamington exited the cave with Elder Drop Scone, Scribe Crème Brûlée, Fine Tune and Rose. The five walked to the motorwagon, only stopping to offer a salute to Tim Tam.

“It’s a shame to see you leave so soon,” said the Elder. She walked around the front of the wagon and laughed. “At least you’re going in style this time. Where do we get one?”

Her children laughed, and I laughed with them. I’d never noticed how many wagons there were in the Wasteland, but now that I had one of my own, I realized I’d seen a few around the city. If I ever saw another one in somewhat workable condition, I knew who I’d call to give it to.

“A shame indeed. I only wish I could accompany you on the journey. It is unfortunate that my duties require me to stay here,” said the Star Paladin. He held a hoof up to assist Rose onto the deck, which she took gracefully.

The bitch had been on her best behavior. For some reason, that rubbed me the wrong way, but it meant there wasn’t any real suspicion among the Steel Rangers about what might be going on aside from what I’d told Drop Scone. The less they worried about us, the better.

Crème Brûlée hopped up right after her and walked up between the two rear seats. She nuzzled Lost and held a hoof up to her face. “Isn’t she just darling, asleep already?” she cooed. “I must’ve tired her out.” Her silken voice sounded innocent, and only I could see the mischievous smile across her lips. She turned and looked at me, looking completely innocent. “Hidden, I must ask a favor of you.”

“What do you want, Crème Brûlée?” I asked, not bothering to pretend to be nice to the mare. Really, it was petty of me to act like that, considering Lost having slept around on her and everything else. If I lost my sister, it wouldn’t be to Crème, I knew that. I still felt a little pang of resentment.

She wasn’t a bad mare though. I tried not to hold it against her.

“Keep her safe and out of trouble, please?” the mare asked. She stepped forward and whispered into my ear, “Don’t let her go fucking every mare she finds.” Crème Brûlée pulled herself back and hopped off the deck. “Have a safe trip, all of you,” she said in the most sickeningly sweet voice I’d ever heard.

I felt my eyelid twitch all on its own. “Will do,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Wonderful! Good. Bye!” said the mare. She turned and trotted off. A second later, she disappeared into the cave.

“I wonder what’s gotten her all worked up?” asked Lamington to nopony in particular.

“Haven’t the slightest,” I lied.

“Let’s just go,” said Rose. Her horn lit up with an aquamarine haze and the engine roared to life.

“No! Wait, Pra-”

The engine sputtered and grinded, drowning out my pleas for her to stop. Instead of stopping, her horn glowed brighter and forced the engine to rev loudly. A horrible clank echoed from the housing, and it shook violently, before sputtering once more and falling into a normal running pattern.

“Oh Goddesses,” I whispered, holding my hooves in front of my face.

The others all looked at me with confused looks on their faces. Xeno and Fine Tune exchanged looks as he stepped up onto the deck. Lamington turned to look at the engine block, his speaker live and crackling static.

“What’s got you so worked up?” asked Praline. She looked at Drop Scone, who she was standing next to, and then back to me.

“Wait, when did... And how... What!” I stammered.

Better to just not think about it.

* * *

The goodbyes went all too quickly.

I steered the motorwagon around a tree and checked the PipBuck. We’d almost made it to the pass through the mountains, but still had a few minutes. I looked back at the others, who all sat in silence. Lost still had her eyes closed, but I’d long since realized she was faking being asleep. Fine Tune and Xeno rested against one another, while Rose powered the engine at the rear of the deck.

“Gonna stop pretending?” I asked Lost. I turned and paid attention to the path. The worst thing that could happen was hitting a tree or a hole and breaking the wagon itself. We only had a few hours to get across the mountain pass and through to Xeno’s tribe. Even then, I had no idea if we’d make it there and back with enough time to save ourselves and the mares we’d left in Idle.

“No,” she answered.

“Why not?” I asked, once again steering around a tree. Whatever Praline had done to the engine, it helped a lot. We moved much faster than before, even faster than any of us could move at a full gallop. And since the motorwagon never got tired, it meant good time for our trip.

“Don’t wanna talk ‘bout it,” she muttered.

“Letting it stew inside you isn’t going to help anything, sis,” I said. I could see the pass up ahead. We were making good time indeed. I turned the wheel slightly and aimed for the opening between the two mountains.

“Crème’s upset about what happened in Idle,” she answered. Somepony shuffled about, but I didn’t take my eyes off the path.

“Can you blame her?” I asked.

“It’s just sex, Hidden,” she shot back. “I told you that.”

“And I take it she doesn’t think the same thing?” I asked, hoping to keep her talking. I wanted to turn around and glare at her, but that wasn’t a luxury I had. Maybe I could get Fine Tune to steer again?

“No. It ended badly and I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered.

Relenting, I turned around to find her wedged up at the far end of the seat with her forelegs crossed in front of her. The scowl on her face perfectly matched the way she sounded.

“Umm, I’m a bit lost as to what’s going on here,” said Fine Tune. He looked back and forth between my sister and I.

“I,” I started, but paused to cough. I had no idea how to broach this subject, especially not with a changeling. “Err, how does a changeling queen make more changelings?” I asked, dodging the need to give him a talk about how foals were made.

“I was too young to see exactly how it worked,” he admitted. “There are drones and queens and, and then eggs happen!” He said, forcing a smile. He tapped his forehooves together and blushed.

I glared at my sister, continuing, “You come from eggs? Well, imagine that! It’s different for ponies, apparently often there’s a lot of drama because somepony sle-”

The wagon hit something and lurched to the side.

“Whoa!” I yelled, turning back to face the front of the motorwagon. I grabbed the wheel with both forehooves and spun it to the side as hard as I could. Pain shot up my legs as the old familiar ache reared its ugly head. I answered the groans and mumblings of the others, saying, “Sorry, sorry!” I jerked the wheel back and we landed on even ground. Righting the wagon back on track, I settled into the driver’s seat. “I’m just gonna turn on the radio and we’re going to not talk for a while.”

“Yay!” yelled the changeling.

Xeno chuckled.

Lost let out a little ‘hmph’ sound.

Rolling my eyes, I glanced over the E.F.S. to check for dangers, then clicked on the radio. No sound came out. Apparently Lost had taken the broadcaster out. “Lost, do you have the broadcaster?” I asked.

“Yeah, one sec,” she answered. The sound of shuffling came from behind me, and then silence.

“Iwill give it to her, then,” said Xeno. A second later she tapped on my shoulder and held the broadcaster out for me.

“Thanks,” I whispered. I snatched the add-on from her and snapped it into the PipBuck. When I did, music streamed out and filled the air. I adjusted the volume slightly, so it was just loud enough to drown out the engine but not alert everything around us any more than we already were.

“Oh, I love this song!” yelled Rose from behind the engine. I heard the clopping of hooves on the wooden deck as she trotted to our side of the engine. Then the clanking of metal hit my ears.

“Hey! Be careful with that,” I yelled, catching her tossing my battle saddle onto the floor.

“Sorry,” she said, her ears drooping to the side. Had... had she just apologized for something? Maybe she had a heart, even if it was a cloned one.

I turned the music up another few notches. Jerking the wheel to the side, I angled us right into the mountain pass. One quick trip over the mountains, and we’d be heading for Xeno’s homeland.

The engine groaned and revved up, making the motorwagon lurch forward. It steadied itself to a new speed at the incline, and we crawled up the well-worn path into a place I hadn’t been since before I could remember. Even after two centuries, the ground was still packed down as if ponies had just been traveling yesterday. I could see the remains of what might have been a road. Maybe a project that never got finished before the world ended?

“How long do you think it’ll take us to get there, Xeno?” I asked. I couldn’t be bothered to turn around now, since the path we were taking seemed to disappear just up ahead. I didn’t feel particularly good about trying to drive the wagon through mountains... I could see where I was going on flat land, but I had a feeling that the hills would hold more trouble.

“Itis a long winding path, Hiddenpony,” she said. “I feel a few hours will pass, at this speed.”

Well, a few hours of holding onto the wheel for dear life while going down a ‘winding’ path couldn’t be too bad. At least I didn’t have to walk, so I could ignore my legs yelling at me to stop and sleep. I had the radio on, too, and that helped most of all.

I looked down at it, hearing the song change. A song I hadn’t heard before started, with a quick tempo and instruments I couldn’t even begin to imagine. It was repetitive, but I couldn’t help but start to dance a little in my seat. I thumped my hooves on the steering wheel, bobbing my head slightly in time with the music.

Fine Tune seemed to enjoy it, given the shrill chirping sounds he made. A flash of green fire erupted and he let out another chirp. A flash of black flew past as the beat changed, the music getting heavier. The changeling danced in the air, flitting back and forth between parts of the song whenever the tempo adjusted and a new instrument took over.

Rose let out a cheer. Apparently this was another song she recognized. The clopping of hooves hitting each other sounded over the music, and I caught her bobbing her head and keeping time just like I was.

Even Lost smiled, while still pretending to be asleep. Despite how much I could tell she was resisting, one of her hooves kicked in time with the song.

Xeno was the only one not enjoying herself, instead staring at the corpses of her brothers. When she finally turned away and looked at me, she only shook her head. “Not my style,” she said over the music.

Well, maybe it wasn’t the music a zebra liked, but the rest of us were enjoying it. I turned back to focus on steering, a smile across my lips and still keeping the beat with my hooves. We drove over the crest of the hill and started downward, and I got my first view of the other side of the mountains.

As far as I could see stretched more hills and mountains. They were covered in thick brush, the brown of the dead trees so thick I couldn’t see the actual ground through them. On every side were more, with peaks even further showing through the gaps between the closer mountains. I could only see one indication of civilization through the snow-covered tops of the Unicorn range, a massive white spike that shot up between two peaks. The only reason I could tell it wasn’t natural was how it reflected what little light broke through the cloud cover. My jaw dropped and I forgot about the music. If only I’d been able to see this before the world ended...

I turned the wheel to stay on the pathway, catching view of some construction equipment up ahead. The remains of a road they’d been building was past that, and I followed it with my eyes, looking at the winding path that went from our side across the hills and mountains far enough to become so tiny I couldn’t follow it.

At least I knew which way to go.

The song died down and the voice of the DJ took over the airwaves. I flicked the volume up, hoping for a news update.

“Good afternoon, everypony! DJ Pon3 here, and I still cannot get over how great it is to finally have some new music for my show. It sends a shiver up my spine every time that music hits my ears,” said the radio host. He laughed. “I really hope it livens up your lives out there, because that’s the only thing keeping me playing. I’ve been getting reports in about some action going on out there, and I thought I’d switch things up today after what I’ve heard. A lot of buildings have been going down as a result of firefights in some cities.”

I groaned. Given what happened yesterday, and how fast the DJ found out about what happened in U Cig, I could only imagine I was about to get a lecture on destroying property in Idle.

“So I’m bringing you another of DJ Pon3’s survival tips! Today’s tip: ‘Property damage and you.’ I know you all know the Wasteland isn’t the safest of places, especially when dealing with buildings on the verge of collapsing. If you have a run-in with raiders, explosives, or just any time you’re out scavenging, be safe. Nopony’s been out there doing upkeep on Equestria’s old cities and towns, and the last thing we need is to lose a good pony by going somewhere that isn’t safe. Buildings are dangerous and could collapse at any moment. So no blowing them up and no shooting them. You never know who’s inside or what direction they could fall.”

Well, that wasn’t the lecture I was expecting, even if the stallion was right. Rose laughed at the word of warning.

“I’ll be back with more news and survival tips later, but for now, here’s more of the first new music I’ve had in as long as I can remember! Keep your eyes peeled and ears to the ground, and stay safe out there!”

The DJ’s voice cut out and another song started to play. It sounded much like the last one, with a fast heavy beat and a cut together of several instruments blaring at the same time. Less catchy, but I still found myself tapping along with it. I had to give it up to the radio, I completely expected the broadcast to get cut thanks to driving through the mountains.

I turned the wheel and headed down to the old road’s remains. This would be a long trip.

* * *

An hour of driving hadn’t gotten me any more accustomed to steering the motorwagon. On straightaways I could hold onto the wheel to keep it steady or tap along with the music with one hoof while steering. But problems arose whenever we needed to change direction. I held on for dear life whenever we took more than a gentle turn to either side. I felt my stomach being pulled in the opposite direction, and I could have sworn we would flip, every single time. Ponies just weren’t meant to fly around corners at such speeds.

Lost kept us at maximum output, powering the now-fixed engine with her magic while Rose took a rest. Idly, I wondered if Fine Tune’s magic could power the motorwagon as well, or if it took something special that only unicorns had. While they were all using cheater magic, there might be too many differences between the two kinds to switch.

Funny, we had healing magic and attack magic. Lost knew how to fix things with her magic, and we’d met a changeling with transformation magic. Yet, I ended up being an earth pony, the only species of pony I’d ever heard of without any magic.

I was actually grateful I didn’t have any magic of my own. I didn’t need to worry about how to channel energies and make spells. That was the trade-off for not being able to hold things in the air with telekinesis, or heal wounds, or any of the other tricks they could do.

I groaned and stared back at the road. Really, I just wanted a distraction. Driving, turns aside, was excessively boring. Even the music wasn’t keeping me occupied anymore. I stared at the same spot in front of me and all I had to do was make sure I didn’t hit anything. Whatever ponies were doing building this road through the mountains, they had built it to last. There wasn’t so much as a single hole in the road, and with the lack of wind blowing through the valleys, I hadn’t run across a single fallen log that blocked the path.

It felt too easy.

I’d spent weeks dealing with everything the Wasteland threw at me, from raiders to slavers, invincible alicorns to regenerating blob-ponies, drug addicts to radscorpions. When nothing was going wrong, I felt... I felt weird. I wanted to thank the Goddesses, but I knew the minute I did, something terrible would happen.

Griffons would fly from the sky and attack. An avalanche would bring the side of the mountain down on us. The wagon would break and the engine would explode, killing us all. Or maybe a dragon would swoop out of nowhere and snatch us up.

I needed to stop thinking! I cracked myself in the head with a steel hoof, and winced. My head pounded and my leg screamed in protest. Perfect, pain would take my mind off all the little terrible things I could make go wrong.

I slammed my forehead into the steering wheel a few times, then spun around to face the others. Conversation, that’d do the trick.

“So, Xeno? Tell me about your tribe, please,” I begged. Anything. I spun back around and put my eyes back on the road.

I heard the zebra hop down from her seat, by the sound of her hooves hitting the wooden deck. She walked up and sat down next to me. She’d taken off the slaver helmet she wore, though it had left her with quite a mess of a mane, which was somewhat amusing since it was the first time I’d ever seen it not in a perfect mohawk.

“What would you like to know, Hiddenpony?” she asked, squinting at me.

“Tell me about the tribe? Your parents? Anything really. I’m falling asleep here,” I muttered. I turned the wheel slightly, easing into a gentle turn around one of the smaller hills.

“Of course,” she whispered. Breathing in deeply, she let out a long sigh and faced me. “My tribe now goes by the name,” she said something in her language, which I couldn’t quite understand. It sounded like ‘Imani.’ “Itis a name that was chosen after the War ended, by those who survived. They were superstitious.” She said something else in zebra, with a not-very-pleasant tone to it.

“What does it mean?” I asked. I couldn’t speak her language, and suddenly realized I’d be completely confused when we got to Xeno's home village. I cringed at how many conversations I would miss. Why couldn’t I be bilingual?

“I donot know exactly in your language,” she answered. Lifting a hoof to her chin, she looked to the sky. “Itis Faith. Itis Belief. The tribe was created by many who had lived in pony lands for much of their lives, and were loyal to their home, not their birth.”

“And what do you think about that?” I asked. We’d seen xenophobia back in Idle, and I knew those weren’t the only ponies that had a problem with zebras. Wartime hatred, unfortunately, was still strong in some parts. The zebras had destroyed our world, even if we were just as guilty. Not everypony cared to make the logical jump that it took two to fight a war.

She looked at me for nearly a minute, then finally nodded. “Itis what I believe. Youare a good pony, your sister is a good pony. Iam proud to fight with you, against any enemy.” She switched over and said something in the zebra language while putting a hoof on my shoulder. A few pats later and she lowered her hoof.

“So, you mentioned that you don’t share their beliefs, a long time ago... What’d you mean by that?” I asked. It was something that had bothered me when I heard it, but after all that happened, it’d slipped my mind.

“Ah, yes. While the tribe was created by those loyal to their home, they still held the old beliefs of our ancestors,” she explained. Her hoof went to her flank and she pointed at the not-cutie mark emblazoned across her haunch. “It means ever-expanding, I once told you, I am able to accept truth beyond what little the myths and legends tell. I donot believe the old ways, that the stars wish for direct influence in the ways of the Wasteland, or Equestria, or the tribes around Roam.” She shifted and got comfortable again. “The tribe believes in this, but the original Imani did not believe your Princess Luna to be the harbinger of the stars.”

“Goddess Luna,” I corrected her.

She raised an eyebrow and rolled her eyes.

“Hey! I can’t hear the music, can you turn it up?” yelled Fine Tune from above. She was once again in the pegasus form, zipping back and forth exploring. After the DJ’s broadcast, I’d tried to calm the changeling down, but given up and let her do whatever she wanted. As long as we weren’t in danger, there wasn’t any harm in a little looking around.

“Yeah, sure, but fly closer okay?” I said, hoping she’d heed my plea. I looked down at the broadcaster and turned it up a few clicks, then looked back at Xeno. “Continue?”

She blew a puff of smoke from her nostrils and took the lit cigarette from her lips. “While itis true that your Goddess Luna was once marked by the stars, my kind lived in Equestria long enough to see it wasnot still the case. There are stories of our tribe fighting in battles alongside pony and other zebra soldiers, their stripes dyed to show their allegiances.”

“Hey, give me a cigarette, would ya?” asked Rose. She held a hoof out and wiggled it at Xeno. “I haven’t had a real smoke in a decade.”

Xeno nodded and pulled a pack from her satchel. She passed it to the unicorn and turned back to me. “We need more, Iam running low.”

“That’s what you get for chain smoking back in Idle,” I chided.

Both Xeno and Rose just laughed.

“There is a pony saying, I think,” she said, “Donot knock it until you try it.” She offered me one of the cigarettes.

“Yeah, sure. Later,” I said, grabbing it in a fetlock. The cigarette bent when the steel wrapped around it, and I slid it up behind my ear. It’d be there for later if I ever found a lighter or a match. “But, finish your story?”

“Many of our tribe are like the merchantpony’s wife, Cherry Chalk,” she said, taking another drag. “Our kind used alchemical concoctions to dye our stripes, to show allegiance. Over generations, the magic hasnot faded. Many in the tribe are like her, with stripes that shine green or purple if the light hits in the correct way.”

I started to ask her about her own stripes, but stopped as we came upon another turn in the road. “Hold on!” I yelled and spinning the wheel.

The wagon lurched to the side and the entire deck tilted as we sped around the corner. Once again I felt sick to my stomach as my innards were dragged off to one side. I actually missed walking. As we righted ourselves, I spun the wheel back and we started straight again, down a dead tree-shrouded stretch of road.

“Sorry. So is that why you’re colored the way you are?” I asked. Since I’d met her, I’d had to rethink my opinion on the designs of zebras, and now was a perfect time to get that nagging little question taken care of.

“I donot know. Our kind’s alchemy mixes strangely when added to one not affected by it. My mother is Imani, for generations. My father is- he is,” she said, stopping to think. She said several things in her native language and scrunched her muzzle up. “I donot know the word. We call it ‘bedui,’ one who has no home.”

“A nomad?” I asked. I’d heard mom call us that once before. “Ponies with no place to return to, who go where food and safety is.”

“Yes, thatis it,” she answered, nodding and blowing another puff of smoke. “Heis not Imani. Mother tells the story, how they met. He joined the tribe later, moved from zebra lands to...” She paused again and said something I couldn’t understand. “He left Roam to find himself. Instead, he found my mother.”

“Aww, that’s sweet,” I muttered.

“Yeah, saccharine maybe!” said Rose sarcastically.

Xeno shot her a look, but continued her story, “The tribe worries about the stars, and fears the day they might return. I donot accept that, thereis no proof.” She stomped her hoof and glared at the headlight she sat behind.

“We don’t have any beliefs about the stars, except some old mares’ tales,” I said. “If you ever find proof, we’ll be there to help you with it.” I nudged her shoulder and looked back at the road.

She laughed and nudged me back. “Thank you, Hiddenpony.”

“For?”

“Bringing me home,” she answered. “It has been many years. I believe the tribe will have changed in my absence.”

“They’re still your family and your home,” I said. “They’re still something you would fight and die for.” I leaned against her. “Something we would fight and die for with you.” She’d been there for us, through thick and thin, and we’d be there for her whether she liked it or not.

“You do know you’re still on a time limit. No starting a war,” quipped Rose.

I glared at the pink mare. “Spoilsport,” I snapped, then turned back to the road. The wind blew, rustling the leaves on the trees. Even with the death of Equestria, it seemed something managed to survive.

* * *

Something felt wrong, but I couldn’t put my hoof on it. We’d traveled far enough to lose the signal from the radio and gotten to a point where the road started to crumble underneath our wheels. I still couldn’t see the end of the mountains, and now I couldn’t even see where we’d entered from. The way the road kept twisting and turning, hugging stone that had been cut away to make a flat path, I couldn’t even tell what direction we were going anymore.

My saving grace was the fact that, no matter what, we only had one road to travel on. I almost feared I’d taken a wrong turn, but that couldn’t be. There wasn’t anywhere to turn. Unless one of the small gaps between the dead trees was the right direction to turn. I wanted to ask Xeno, but she’d decided to take a nap, and nopony else would know what direction to go. Fine Tune himself said he’d never been this far out, and Lost and I couldn’t know exactly where we were going.

So I just kept following the road. A cool wind blew through the mountain pass again, shaking the trees. I heard something in the distance, a creature calling out or howling. I thanked the Goddesses it was distant, because I wasn’t anywhere near ready to fight and steer at the same time.

“So, Lost, any idea where we are?” I asked. Chit-chat would keep my mind from playing tricks on me. I didn’t need to hear any strange animal cries and think they were getting closer.

“The mountains,” she answered. She turned a page on a book held in her magic. Sitting on the seat next to her was an open tin of Mint-als.

“Where’d you get that book, and why are you eating those again?” I asked.

“Borrowed it from one of the bedrooms. None of the others claimed it, so I figured I could learn something from it,” she answered, holding the front of the book toward me. The cover read Intermediate Spellcraft: A Reference Guide. She closed the tin and turned back to her book. “This is tough stuff, and they’re helping me wrap my brain around it.”

“Mmm, alright. Sorry to bother you,” I said, scowling. I turned back to the road to focus on steering. I caught sight of something bright green and moving in the corner of my eye. When I looked back, all I saw was dead trees. I skewed my ears forward and checked the other side of the road. Was I seeing things or what?

“Hey, Fine Tune?” I asked. Worrying I might be losing my mind, again, I needed a bit of confirmation. I gripped the wheel tighter with my steel hooves.

“Yes, Miss Hidden?” he asked, trotting up to stand next to me.

“Can you do a pass and tell me if you see anything dangerous? Something that doesn’t belong in the woods maybe?” I requested. As I asked, I pointed up toward the cloud cover and swung my hoof in a circle all around us.

“Of course,” the unicorn-disguised changeling answered. He saluted. Green fire flashed around him and he transformed into the green pegasus mare. With a flap of her wings, she rocketed into the air and off into the distance.

The sound of rustling hit my ears, and I twisted them toward where it came from. I didn’t want to look, but I had to. Something moved in the distance, but I couldn’t make out what it was. It moved too fast to be a radscorpion and wasn’t big enough to be a Manticore. I’d never known a feral ghoul to be agile, so, maybe... I had no idea what it could be. Bloodwings didn’t need to touch the ground to kill, and they were usually out at night.

“Sis?” I called back to her.

“What’s up?” she asked, setting the book down.

“I have the strange feeling that something’s following us,” I said. Once again I looked around, trying to spot whatever kept moving in the corner of my vision. “Just keep an eye out, please?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. With her telekinesis, she slid the book back into her saddle back and turned to the engine. “Rose! Keep an eye out back there. We might have company!”

“Roger!” yelled the clone’s voice back. The engine revved and the motorwagon jumped forward as she put more power into the ancient machine.

I held the wheel tight, wanting to avoid a fight if at all possible. Anything that could stalk this stealthily wasn’t anything I wanted to deal with on the move. If I had Persistence and my battle saddle, maybe, but... I pulled my tattered jacket tighter over my armor, just in case, and looked at my E.F.S. Little markers darted back and forth, several of them. None were red, but since I didn’t know what the criteria were for ‘hostile’ I couldn’t trust it. What if stalking wasn’t hostile to the spell, and it wouldn't turn red until something leapt at me?

Another howl cut through the air, louder and longer than before.

“Xeno, wake up,” said Lost. She shook the zebra, who groaned in response.

“What is it?” she asked, cracking an eye open and looking around. Her ear twitched and spun around to face where the sound was coming from. “Splinterwolves.” She sat up straight and her hoof dove for her bag. With a flick of her fetlock, she pulled the striped combat knife from it and turned to the edge of the motorwagon’s deck.

“What’s a splinterwolf?” I asked, turning back to steer.

A pile of wood lay in the center of the road, black and dead. It looked like a pony had tripped while carrying firewood and left it there unattended. A pair of the still-green leaves sat atop it, and the whole thing smoked slightly. In the pit of my stomach, I had a feeling I’d just discovered what a splinterwolf was.

The sticks and twigs in the pile began to glow a deathly green and lifted into the air. One by one they pieced together, forming a set of four legs, before the biggest piece, a thick, charred tree-stump floated into the air and attached. More wood rose from the ground and attached, forming a tail and a head. As if taunting us, the last parts to attach were the claws and teeth, made of wood that looked sharpened to a point finer than even Xeno’s knife. As the last tooth attached, the two leaves lifted, revealing eyes that glowed red.

Well, it couldn’t catch us if we were moving. “Faster!” I yelled.

The engine revved as Lost added her magic to it, and the wagon jumped forward. I held onto the wheel and aimed directly for the splinterwolf. I’d send it right back to where it came from. We slammed into the magical beast, smashing pieces all over and sending the trunk of its body flying. One of the lights shattered, and several hunks of wood landed on the deck around me.

Another one howled in the distance, closer than the others had been.

“Hiddenpony, stop the wag-”

“I’ll try,” I said. I jerked the wheel to the right, cutting Xeno off and sending the wagon around another sharp turn. I held on as tight as I could, ignoring the feeling of dread as my stomach was pulled in the opposite direction. I could hear things around us, moving through the woods. I dug through my mind, trying to remember anything I could about Splinterwolves or any other wolf I’d ever heard about. Weren’t they pack hunters or...

I should have paid more attention to mom’s lessons.

The wagon shuddered and I felt the deck drop out from under me. Green fire flared, and I knew it was Fine Tune. A weight lifted off my back, since at least it wasn’t another of those things. “Bad news,” he said, back in his unicorn form.

“Let me guess, we’re surrounded,” guessed L.A. She lifted Loyalty up in her telekinesis and aimed it toward the woods across from her.

“And then some,” he answered.

“We need to stop,” said Xeno. She waved her knife before her.

I hit a huge crack in the pavement, and the wagon jumped into the air. Holding on for dear life, I searched for a way to stop fast. Turning I could do easily, but I hadn’t figured out how to stop on a bottlecap just yet. The best I could do was slowly roll until we stopped moving, which was not going to work on this steep downward grade.

She said something in her native language and pointed the knife at me.

Behind the engine, I heard the sound of Rose firing her grenade launcher. “That company you mentioned,” she yelled, “they’re here.” Her grenade exploded, sending more chunks of blackened wood all over, with much of it showering the four of us sitting at the front of the wagon.

“Keep them back, then,” Lost ordered. “Cut the engine, now!” The aura around her horn dimmed as she yelled, and the revving of the engine slowed considerably.

Beside us, more of them started to appear in the woods. I saw dozens of sets of red eyes through the dead trees running with us alongside the wagon, easily keeping pace with our speed. Whatever the eyes belonged to howled and barked at one another, moving erratically. Was it an ambush?

The engine suddenly died, as Rose stopped adding her magic to power it. Now rolling near silently, we careened toward a sharp corner, with a drop-off past it.

“Of course,” I muttered. I spun the wheel again, as hard as I could to take us around the corner. Two of the wheels of the motorwagon lifted as we rolled past, teetering over much further than I was comfortable with. When we slammed back down onto all four wheels, I could feel something picking and scratching in the back of my mind, like that little nagging sensation clawing at me. It was different somehow, to the normal feeling of something digging at me. It started lower, and shot a jolt of pain shot up my back. Then something- somethings, pulled at my mane. I felt like the nervous feeling I sometimes got had somehow become real and was digging into the back of my head.

FNACK!

“What the fuck?” I yelled, hearing something go off right behind my ear. The sensation of clawing disappeared in an instant, followed by the whoosh of air passing right next to me. Chunks of wood fell to the side and clattered off the deck of the wagon.

Fine Tune just winked at me and swung his silenced pistol around away from my head.

“Now you see why they are called splinterwolves, Hiddenpony?” snapped Xeno.

“Yes!” I answered, jerking the wheel back around to put us straight again. The wagon jerked to the side, going up on two wheels for a split second. As we slammed down, I fell forward. “They reform instantly, and even splinters can attack, right?”

She said something in her language, but it sounded like a ‘yes’ to me. Well, fuck.

Lost fired Loyalty, causing a deafening B-KEW to echo around the mountains. A howl followed, as the splinterwolf she shot fell apart, and its entire front half liquified into a glowing green goo. The legs clattered onto the road and rolled after us, left in the dust by the speeding wagon. At least he wouldn’t be getting back up after that.

“Hiddenpony, you need to stop,” said Xeno. She glared at us. “They will chase, and they willnot stop.” Holding her knife tight, she looked back around the engine housing at the remains of the splinterwolf Lost had blown away. She whispered something in her native tongue.

“I’m trying! I’m just not good at the stopping part yet,” I said. I turned away from her just in time to see three of them run across the road. Hitting them just got parts onto the wagon and that could get us killed if enough started attacking. I spun the wheel the opposite way.

The last splinterwolf stopped in its tracks and looked at us, just in time for the left front wheel to smash over it. Everypony in the wagon yelped as they were thrown into the air, twice.

“Watch it!” yelled Rose from the back. She fired again, a fwump echoing as she sent another grenade to the ones we’d just passed. It exploded, causing the splinterwolves to howl in pain as they were sent flying away in pieces.

“Noise brings more,” said Xeno, her voice low. She grabbed Loyalty from Lost in her hoof and pushed the barrel to the deck. “Be quiet.”

“When we stop, how do we keep them from attacking?” I asked. I twisted the steering wheel back and forth, dodging side to side as more made their way onto the road. She was right. I could see nearly two dozen markers on the E.F.S. now, all strangely still green.

What the fuck was wrong with the PipBuck? They were obviously trying to kill us!

“Wewill stand our ground,” answered the zebra. She turned to face Lost and pinned her ears back.

“Understood,” said Lost.

“Grab onto something, stop coming fast!” I yelled, as all of the splinterwolves ahead of me split into pieces. Each one moved on its own, as if it didn’t need a central body or a brain to connect to. The parts lifted into a wall taller than the height of our wagon’s deck, from dead tree to dead tree across the road. The sharpened teeth and claws from each of them lined up behind it, ready to splinter and crack the wooden wheels we rolled on.

Biting back against the pain in my legs, I jerked the wheel hard to the side and sent the wagon into a skid. From the corner of my eye, I caught Lost and Xeno grabbing onto the rear seats and bracing themselves.

Fine Tune transformed with another flash of fire and took to the air, saving himself from the crash I knew was coming.

We slid sideways, the wheels dragging along the now-fractured chunks of road, threatening to send us into a spin, end over end. I righted the wheel the other way, praying to the Goddesses it would work. We spun back forward, but didn’t flip. The deck of the wagon tilted to the side suddenly.

One of the splinterwolves jumped on from the side and howled. Before any of us could turn and shoot it, it swung a wooden paw and slashed across Xeno, taking chunks out of the side of her face. I saw a flash of my mother, with lines scarred into the side of her face and the tip of her ear missing.

Xeno screamed in pain and jabbed the knife upward, stabbing the beast through the bottom of its leg and pulling. The leg split off and slashed again, missing.

Lost’s horn lit up and she cast the arcane blast she’d picked up in U Cig. It hit the splinterwolf square in the face, and it yelped in pain. A second blast slammed into its log body and sent it off the edge of the wagon’s deck.

We slowed as the ground leveled out, but not fast enough. The wagon rumbled, hitting what felt like every tooth and every claw as it went past the makeshift wall that splinterwolf parts made. Celestia, Luna. Please let it not destroy our ride or kill us. With the last of our momentum, we slammed into the wall. The wagon lurched up and the front wheels went over it. Slamming back down, we ended with the front wheels lifted into the air. The others groaned in pain, having been thrown from the seats to the deck by the sudden stop. The wall sunk under us, dropping the wagon back to the ground and shaking the entire vehicle.

“Not the kind of stop I wanted,” I said to nopony in particular.

“What now?” asked Rose. She came around the housing for the engine and stood with her back to us, her grenade rifle at the ready.

Xeno wiped the blood from her face with her free hoof and shot me a glare. “We wait,” she said.

“Let me heal that,” Lost offered.

“We. Wait,” said the zebra. Without another word, she turned around and faced opposite Rose. With her knife held up, she stared down one of the red-eyed severed heads.

“We wait,” I agreed. I took my hooves from the wheel and got up off the seat. “Rose has left, and Xeno has right. I’ll face forward.” I looked at my sister and nodded. She took the hint and faced rear.

Fine Tune landed between all of us, his pistol clutched between his teeth, even in his changeling form. He chirped quietly, in a tone that was undeniably a question.

The parts all around began to glow at once, and slid from underneath the wagon. Pieces lifted and rearranged, reforming the pack of splinterwolves all around us. Several snarled, while a few barked. They came in all sizes, from one massive splinterwolf made of a tree bigger around than my head, to one that looked like it was still an infant, made of twigs.

“What now?” I asked through gritted teeth. I looked back at Persistence, sitting on the deck next to Lost.

“They will attack, or they will leave,” answered Xeno. She spit blood off the wagon and waited, standing on her hind legs. She held onto her striped knife in her fetlock, pulled back and ready to strike.

“And if they attack?” asked Rose.

She answered in her native tongue, saying something that sounded like ‘bahati nzuri’ to me. Hopefully it didn’t mean ‘we die.’

I looked down at the steel at the end of my forelegs. It’d hurt, but I’d beaten down tougher things than wood. Were it not for the fact I was staring down a deadly enemy, I’d have facehoofed at how dirty that sounded in my head.

The biggest of the splinterwolves lifted its head toward the cloud cover above us and howled.

“Donot use guns. Noise will bring more,” said Xeno. “To kill them, we need-”

The wolves leapt, from all around us, at once.

I smashed the nearest one away with my right forehoof, cracking it in the head with the prosthetic and sending pieces back to the ground. I could hear the others doing similar. The swoosh of a knife cutting through air, the sound of Lost’s arcane blasts shattering another. The crack of wood against wood when Rose smashed one with the butt of her grenade rifle.

The moment the first wave fell, another set jumped in. I lost track of what happened with the others, as I fought to keep from being overwhelmed. Their claws cut through flesh with ease, and only by the grace of steel did I keep from losing my front legs to their attacks. Feeling a lack of space to move, I jumped at one, slamming myself into its maw in mid-air.

We toppled to the ground and rolled over several times, bowling two others away and smashing their wooden bodies to splinters. I groaned, my body reminding me I still wasn’t in the best shape for a fight. The splinterwolf didn’t go down easy. I grabbed its head with both forehooves and ripped up, tearing it away from the log-body and throwing it away. As it sailed through the air, its eyes never dimmed and it kept biting at me. With only its legs left, it kept attacking, clawing my sides and tearing new holes through my jacket.

Silently, I thanked the Steel Rangers for the barding.

Behind me I heard the sounds of the others fighting. Yells, grinds, and cries of pain. The sound of magic being cast and the howl of wounded animals crashing down. I tried to look back, only to be tackled by another monster.

It slashed at my face, tearing a single line up my muzzle. I screamed and headbutted it, snapping its jaw shut and making it yelp. I pulled my hind legs up underneath it and kicked as hard as I could. The body and head sections flew away, leaving just the legs on the ground. They lifted into the air and slashed at me again, impotently hitting the steel protecting my chest.

“How do we kill them?” I yelled as I hit another, knocking a leg away from a body. “I can’t do this all day,” I groaned, more to myself than the others. Already I could feel the exertion getting to me. If only I had a second to grab some Buck from my bags...

Past the fray I saw the splinterwolves reforming, with heads and bodies floating through the air and glowing slightly, only to reconnect with legs and tails. Once whole, they ran right back to the fight.

“Flame!” yelled Xeno, before letting out a battlecry and stabbing another through the head. She’d managed to get herself covered in blood, and gasped for every breath.

I swore under my breath. The last thing I wanted was fire. My face and flank ached, reminded of the pain fire had caused me.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Lost flinch. She looked at the mare and yelled, “Why the fuck didn’t you say that in the first-”

The half-second she took to yell at Xeno gave a splinterwolf time to sink its teeth into her throat. She screamed, but before it could tear her throat out, Rose slammed her grenade rifle into it. With a yelp, the splinterwolf let go. Its teeth, on the other hoof, stayed imbedded in her skin.

“Always my fucking throat!” Lost screamed. She lifted her head and clenched her eyes shut. Her horn sparked, crackling and glowing. A second layer of glowing aura formed atop of the first and she rose several inches into the air. Her eyes opened, shining completely white. She screamed, and flame erupted in the air around her.

A wave of fire, so bright I had to look away, blossomed from my sister. The wolves howled in unison, as their bodies started to glow as well. When the flames hit them, each burst, their wooden bodies and limbs cracking and fire erupting from their insides.

In an instant the flames faded, blown out in a ring around us, and leaving none of us burnt. The remains of the splinterwolves fell to the ground, the magic animating them burnt away by whatever in the Goddesses’ names my sister had just done.

Lost fell and collapsed onto the deck, her horn charred black.

Not one to question when I didn’t have the time, I ignored the blood on me, on my sister, and on my friends, and limped to the wagon. “Start it, now!” I yelled to Rose, who nodded and hit the engine with everything she had. Groaning, I jumped up and grabbed the wheel.

The engine revved, sputtering once and starting clean. “Thank you, Praline,” I whispered, glad that she’d looked at it. We sped off, trampling over the remains of the splinterwolves. I took a second to look back, just in case.

One splinterwolf remained, the smallest one I’d seen before the fight started. It whimpered, the wood of its ears hanging in defeat. Nothing else moved.

* * *

“It’s not closing,” I said. Tossing the still-full bottle to Xeno, I tapped my other forehoof at the line cut up the side of my muzzle. “I can’t take those until my leg sets, remember? And why isn’t it closing?”

“They arenot normal wounds, Hiddenpony,” she answered, catching the vial. She gently placed it into her bag and placed a hoof over the bandages covering her cheek. “Mine havenot closed either. I told you to stop, you didnot. Why?”

“I didn’t have my gun and I wanted to get through as fast as possible, okay?” I shot back at her. I grabbed the wheel with my free hoof and turned us around another corner, at a much slower, more agreeable pace.

“Stop fighting,” said Fine Tune. He sat next to the seat Lost laid upon, staring at her. “The Queen hasn’t woken yet.” He placed a hoof on her side, and closed his eyes.

“She’s alive, she’ll be okay. Once she gets up she can heal all this,” I lied. After that display of magic, I figured she’d be out a few days. She said she’d been burnt out in U Cig by being forced to overdo it with her casting, and cheater magic or not, that was far too much to be within her normal tolerance.

“I hope so,” said the changeling. He leaned down and rested his head over her side.

“She’d better,” said Rose. “That was a major setback.” Rose took less damage in the fight, and being a former M.O.P. pony, she’d managed to heal what little damage she’d taken right after we fled the scene.

“Why didn’t your clones come to the rescue to help us?” I asked her accusingly. “I thought you had them everywhere.”

“My guess...” she said, tapping her chin with her forehoof. “Splinterwolves got them!” She looked down at my sister and shook her head. “More will probably follow, to keep a communication network up, but it won’t be immediate.”

“Wonderful, tell that fat slob of a pony you came from that we need more time,” I spat at her. “There’s no way we can make it back in a day and a half like this.” I pointed to the slash down my muzzle with one hoof, and over to Xeno’s bandaged face with the other. Something clicked in my brain. She worked for the Ministry of Peace, what did they do during the War? “Can you heal this?” I asked, pointing once again to the wound.

“First take back what you said about my creator,” she snapped. “I’ll heal you if you ask nicely,” she said smugly.

“Fine, I take it back. Will you please heal my face, and my friend’s face?” I asked, smiling as fakely as I could.

“Sure! Why didn’t you just ask?” she said. With an equally fake smile, she trotted forward and lowered her horn to my face. It lit up aquamarine, but the sensation of knitting flesh didn’t start.

“Okay, prank’s over, heal me for real,” I said.

“I am,” she answered. “But really, despite the shit situation that we’re all in, I’ve done nothing bad to any of you.” She pulled back and looked me up and down. “Do you really need to treat me like such shit all the time? Here I am healing you, helping you through all of this. There’s more going on than you know, so why don’t you just calm down and work with me for once?”

The blood stopped leaking from the open wound, but when I looked down at it, I could still see the red line where my skin was split. I looked at the pink mare, then at the wagon’s deck. “Sorry...”

“Itis no use, Hiddenpony,” said Xeno, one hoof pressing against her bandage. “Splinterwolves are magic, ponykind cannot heal what their claws and teeth do. Weare lucky to have healed what we did.”

“What about your potions and elixirs?” I asked her. I chewed on my lip and let my tail droop. I didn’t want another scar, especially not one right on my face. All my other aches and pains were hidden under my skin, and I wanted them to stay that way.

“Itis possible, but I donot know if there are ingredients left,” she answered.

“Oh, stop worrying about it. Mares love scars,” said Rose with a laugh.

I felt my cheeks turn as red as the slash on my face. “Not funny!” I screamed as I turned away. I put both hooves on the wheel and glared at the cracked road in front of me. “No-good, drug-pushing, bitch-ass unicorn,” I mumbled under my breath.

Xeno laughed. “They will like me then, three times as much.”

I tried to stop it. I tried. But I couldn’t. I laughed.

Rose did too. Even Fine Tune chuckled.

Scarred or not, I felt immortal. I’d just gotten through a melee fight with splinterwolves. Creatures that kept fighting even without brains attached to their limbs. How many ponies could say that? I just got something to show for my troubles. We all did. Only Fine Tune managed to get out without a scar, though I didn’t know if that happened because his chitin was his natural armor or what.

I clicked the radio back on to test it, and was met with another song by Sapphire Shores. With a happy sigh, I turned the music up and focused on the road. “Any idea how long she’ll be out?” I asked Rose.

“Well, it’s been hundreds of years since I did any work healing another pony, but my professional opinion as a member of the Ministry of Peace?” she answered. “I have no idea.” She rested her fetlock across Lost’s forehead, then pressed it against her neck. “Probably another hour of rest and she’ll be awake. Maybe?”

“She’ll wake up though, right?” asked Fine Tune. He sulked and scooted as close as he could to the seat L.A. rested on.

“Yes, but don’t expect her to cast anything for a few days. I haven’t seen a pony put out something like that in, in, hold on,” she answered. Lifting both forehooves, she started to count. “One hundred and seven years.”

“That’s oddly specific. Have you been around that long, or do you share memories?” I asked. The road ahead was quite boring, with easier turns as far as I could see through the dead trees. No splinterwolves in sight, but nothing else to keep my mind busy. I rested my chin on the steering wheel.

“Are you actually trying to learn more about me, or are you being a bitch?” Rose asked back, the snarky tone returning to her voice. She hopped back up on the seat across from Lost and lit her horn up. The engine revved under her magic and we sped up.

“Well, I was learning about Xeno’s tribe earlier,” I answered, “Why not learn about you? We are stuck together.”

Xeno pulled out another pair of cigarettes and offered one to Rose. “I have traveled far, from Buckatello to Blackhoof, and the mountains between. Itis good to learn of your companions,” she said as she put the cigarette into her mouth. She said something I couldn’t understand in her native tongue. “Builds trust.”

Rose snatched up the cigarette and lit it with a spark from her magic. “Fine, fine. What do you want to know?” she asked, before taking a deep drag of the cigarette.

“Well, I can’t view memory orbs,” I said. I tapped where my horn would have been if I’d been like mom and Lost. “So, maybe your past? How you were created?”

The pink mare yawned, blowing smoke out the entire time. “Yeah, sure. I’m always up for a stroll down memory lane,” she answered.

“Story?” Fine Tune asked, his attention suddenly ripped from the unconscious Lost. He spun around in an instant and chirped loudly. Green fire flashed around him, and he was replaced by a colt without a cutie mark. In a foal’s voice, he said, “Bedtimes stories are the best, momma!” Finishing the sentence, he flashed the fire once again and returned to his normal stallion form.

That was weird, and several shades of creepy.

“Like I told you last time, I was born years before the war, in Manehatten. I got a job working in the postal service as a mailmare and moved to Blackhoof for a job,” she said, leaning back against the engine housing. “I got swapped up to research and development after a few months, a year? I forget. Rose can make as many of us clones as she wants, so long as she has the energy.” She reached down and tapped the mark on her flank. “Once she developed the special talent, she got good at it. As for me...”

“Yes, what about you?” I goaded. I didn’t need a repeat of the lesson from last time, I wanted to know what made her, as a clone, tick. I turned back to the road and steered around another turn. We skidded slightly, the wheels bumping over uneven terrain.

“Right, I’ve been around for over a century,” she answered. She took another drag of the cigarette, then crushed it between her forehooves. With a flick of her fetlock, she’d tossed it off the wagon. “I remember everything that happened before I was made, through Rose. I know all her secrets and everything she’s ever done. I remember the weight gain and starting to use us copies to do everything...” She laughed. “So many good memories, and quite a few bad ones.”

“So what happens after that?” asked Fine Tune. He fidgeted and twitched, obviously trying to contain himself. Did all changelings have that sort of energy?

“Well, I’m my own me, now,” she answered, blowing the last bit of cigarette smoke at the changeling. As he scrunched his muzzle up, she continued. “I don’t get any new memories unless she tells me, and then I only remember her telling me. We don’t have a hive mind or anything like that.” She scowled. “Not like those damn alicorns.”

“What do you know about them?” I asked.

“Not enough,” she answered. “One popped up a while back and tried to recruit us. We told her to piss off. So she killed a few dozen clones before leaving.” She laughed. “Stupid bitch.” That left quite a few questions, but we had the entire trip back to figure those out.

“Anyway, she’s made hundreds of copies, here and there for various things,” continued the pink mare. “Most spend their time waiting on her, making food and running errands. I haven’t ever seen her get up from that bed. My first ‘me’ memory is seeing her lying there, much lighter than she is now, and ever since...” She trailed off and looked back at the engine. “I like being made in her image in her prime, and moving. I might be a servant and bodyguard, but at least I can see the city.”

“Are you the first? Or the oldest?” Xeno asked. She pulled her bag up and started to dig through it. One ear flicked against the wind.

“Not by a long shot,” Rose answered, laughing. “I’ve been around a long time, but there are others from before the bombs fell. Magical radiation doesn’t do much to us, since we’re not technically real ponies.”

“If only that were true for all of us,” I said, looking at Xeno from the corner of my eye. I needed to ask her about the way she ignored radiation.

Lost groaned and shifted, interrupting the conversation. She raised a hoof and covered her eyes. “Ugh, why does it feel like my head’s full of radroaches?” she asked through another groan.

I pulled the motorwagon to the side of the ancient road and waved at Rose to cut the engine. I really needed to figure out how to brake, especially after the rolling stop that nearly killed us. “Lost, you okay?” I asked as we slowed down.

“No, stop talking,” she said. Pushing Fine Tune away with her other forehoof, she curled up into a little ball and draped her tail over her face. “Ugh...”

“We’ll take a break until she feels better,” I whispered. “Maybe, umm… Snack break?”

Everyone answered yes, so I hopped from my seat and walked to the crate we had the food stored in. I opened it, and I stared at the bounty inside. Trying to keep from drooling, I pulled out a snack for Xeno and passed it to her, then grabbed one for myself. “Here Xeno,” I said, then looked at Rose. “You eat?”

“Not in a century,” she answered, looking away.

“Well, you can have some if you need food,” I said. I looked over to Fine Tune. “What about you? Emotions only, or can you digest real food?”

He shook his head and turned to face Lost. Closing his eyes, he rested his head on her side and placed a hoof overtop of hers.

“Mint-al,” groaned L.A.

“No, no more of those for you,” I argued. Rather than give her another one, I grabbed a sandwich from the crate and set it in front of her nose. “Eat when you feel okay.”

* * *

Long after the snacks were finished and Lost fell back asleep, we started up again. Fine Tune took over steering. I just couldn’t force myself to stare at the empty road anymore. We passed a few other motorwagons in terrible shape, but when we stopped to dig through them, we found nothing useful or valuable. Since they were out in the open, I figured somepony had gone through them already and taken everything that might have brought even a single cap.

I rested my head on Lost’s side, much like Fine Tune had done while I drove. It was nice, to just feel the gentle rise and fall of her body as she breathed. I closed my eyes and sighed. Really, it hadn’t been a bad day so far. A gigantic breakfast, a chance to see Lamington, and I got my hoof fixed. And now a chance to rest against my sister and just rest my eyes.

I cracked one open and looked at her neck. We hadn’t removed the teeth left in her skin. Luckily, they hadn’t started moving or attacking. Lost would know what to do when she got up, and she’d fix it.

“Weare almost there,” said Xeno behind me. She pointed a hoof at the road. “Thatis the last pass.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. I didn’t want to disturb my sister if I could avoid it.

She nodded and pulled her knife out. “Youare welcome, Hiddenpony,” she said. With the knife, she started to pick at her other forehoof.

I nudged my sister, hoping to wake her.

She kicked a hoof at me and clenched her eyes tighter. “No, stop,” she groaned. Her hooves went to her head and she rolled over. “It still hurts.”

“Lost, we’re almost there. If you get up we can help?” I offered, trying to coax her awake. I nudged her again with a hoof, gently rocking her back and forth.

“The light hurts and my horn is killing me,” she argued. “Let me sleep.”

“Don’t you want to see the other side of the mountains?” I asked. I stopped rocking her and got up. “You’ll miss quite a sight.” Really, I had no idea what Buckatello would look like when it finally came into view, but I could imagine the view would be nice after being stuck in all these mountains.

“Fine, but I’m keeping my eyes closed until we’re there,” she said. With another groan, she rolled over and fell from the seat onto her hooves.

“I’ll take over, Fine Tune,” I offered, resting a hoof on the changeling.

“Of course, Miss Hidden,” he answered, and slid from the driver’s seat. As I took over, he walked over to Lost and gave her a hug. “I’m glad you’re awake, my Queen. I was worried.” He chirped loudly, but quieted instantly when Lost glared at him.

I steered us around the last of the curves in the road, and spun the wheel back in the opposite direction. We rolled around the mountain and, through the dead trees, I could see flat land.

“This it?” I asked Xeno.

“Yes,” she answered, still digging at a hoof with her knife.

Lost walked up behind me and rested her head next to mine. “I hate you for getting me up,” she whispered.

“I love you too, sis,” I whispered back.

The wagon passed the tree line, giving us a view of the land past the mountains. I didn’t remember a thing about it, but seeing it, I was glad. The city was a wasteland, decrepit and largely destroyed, but the scale of it was beautiful. I suddenly felt unimaginably small, compared to everything I could see. Before us lay another world, with markers all over for parts of the city that Gunbuck had once been to. It was a valley, surrounded on all sides with mountains, as far as I could see.

The massive white spire pierced the sky and the clouds, shooting up from another peak off to my right, with a large black military-looking building at the base of it, carved into the face of the mountain. For the second time in my life, I saw living, green plants, at the opposite end of the valley. They looked overgrown and untended, and even from such a great distance, I could see them moving around. Little houses and larger buildings dotted the landscape, built in little groups and surrounded by destruction. A large lake took up a majority of the valley, near the overgrown vegetation.

A flashy building lit up the far end of the valley, with lights atop it shining so bright I had to shield my eyes and look away. I couldn’t make out what the building was, aside from the large lopsided ‘C’ at one end of the name. It was surrounded by taller buildings, one with a gigantic ‘H’ sitting in front of it, smashed partway into the ground. Nearby was a blank patch, where I could see nothing but barren earth. Butting up against the mountains were no trees, no houses or buildings, just a massive half-circle of- of nothing, as if the ground had simply swallowed anything that once stood there.

“Wow,” whispered Lost. “That’s quite a view...” She leaned against me and nuzzled my cheek.

I nuzzled back. “It is,” I whispered. “I wonder where Xeno’s from?”

We passed a sign, still in good condition despite its age. “Welcome to Buckatello!” it said, in large blue letters, with a drawing of a zebra and a buffalo underneath. Both of the drawings had several bullet holes shot through them. The remains of other signs hung below that one, with chunks of metal shredded and piled up on the ground underneath the sign post. Somepony obviously didn’t like anything but the city name.

I turned around and looked at Xeno, who had put her knife away and was staring past us. “Which way?” I asked.

“A right at the fork,” she answered. She said something in her native language. With a sad smile, she looked to the corpses of her brothers and then turned toward the engine housing.

I didn’t press. I could see the tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Wow,” whispered Fine Tune, his face suddenly pressed against my cheek on the opposite side from Lost. “Is this where we’ve been headed?” he asked.

“Yeah, it is,” I answered. “Fancy, isn’t it?” I looked back and forth, from the spire to the plants. This city felt so different from Blackhoof, even from this distance. “Know what, you take the wheel.” I pulled back from between the two and let them fight over who would steer.

Resting a hoof on Xeno, I nodded my head and said, “C’mon. Let’s talk.” I walked around the back of the wagon and took a seat next to Rose. “Hey, you mind giving me a few minutes back here?” I asked.

“Yeah, whatever,” she said. Levitating her grenade rifle up and away, she walked off the same way I’d just come.

A moment later, Xeno walked around, her head held low and dragging her hooves. She slumped down next to me unceremoniously and leaned against me. “You wished to see me, Hiddenpony?”

I wrapped a hoof around her and squeezed. “I think we need to talk,” I said quietly. This would be between us, unless she wanted to include the others. “Are you going to be okay?”

“No, Iam not,” she said. Taking her helmet off, she sniffled hard and looked up at me. “Iam not ready to return home.”

“Why not, what’s wrong?” I asked. I gently ran my hoof through her mane and held her.

“It wasnot my mother’s idea for me to leave,” she said. “I left with my brothers at the suggestion of my father. We didnot tell my mother we were leaving. Now, for me to return with her sons dead... I donot feel I can face her.”

“Well, you don’t have to do it alone, we’re here for you,” I said, trying to console her. I squeezed again, hoping to stop her from shivering.

“Itis not that,” she said between sniffles. “Sheis very... there is a word in my tongue, I donot know the translation.” She said a few things in zebra, still shivering. Her hooves curled and twitched. “Sheis very forward, and has never met one of your kind that she likes. During times of trade, she would speak threats to them in our language.”

“And?” I asked, wondering where she was heading with her warnings.

“You willnot be by my side, for this,” she answered. “She will say you should be put to death for your murders.”

“I won’t let that happen,” I said in my most reassuring voice.

“Youare my friend,” she whispered, looking up at me. Tears rolled down her muzzle. “I donot want to lose another who is close to me.”

I hugged her as tight as I could. She’d been there through everything, not because of obligation, but because she saw us as close to her as we saw her to us.

“I’ll make it work, and if I don’t, Lost will,” I said, resting my head atop hers.

“I hope you are correct, Hiddenpony,” she whispered back. She said something in her language, a long string of words that sounded like gibberish to me. The second she finished, she hugged me tight. “Iam not like the others, I donot fit there.”

“Is that why you said you have no home to return to?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” she admitted. “There is more. The deaths of my brothers is a black mark upon me, as is my bringing home their killers.” She looked away from me and sulked. “Zoan willnot be happy, neither will my mother.”

“What’s her name?” I asked, trying to change the subject just a little. Hugging and reassuring only went so far if all we did was go in circles.

“Zorana,” she said through her teeth.

“Zorana, Zoan, Zahi and Zaki, Xeno...” I thought out loud. I looked down at her. “You like that ‘za’ sound don’t you?”

“Itis tradition,” she answered. She laughed as the wagon pulled to the side, going down a turn. It must be the one she’d pointed out earlier. “Yes, itis a sound we do like.”

“It’ll be okay, Xeno,” I repeated. “We love you like family. Nothing bad’ll happen.”

I really hoped I wasn’t lying.

* * *

“How much further?” I asked.

“Weare almost there,” answered the zebra. She looked up at me, her dark blue eyes hollow and emotionless. I knew she was asking me not to repeat what she’d told me. I nodded, and she looked away.

“Anything specific to look for?” asked Lost, sounding somewhat annoyed. She looked back from steering, looking marginally better than she had before. Her horn was still charred and blackened, and the bags under her eyes were almost as bad as when we’d gotten free from U Cig. She looked absolutely miserable, and the fact it was an improvement worried me.

I almost wanted to stuff a mint-al into her mouth just to get her to lighten up, but after everything I’d seen in Idle, I didn’t trust the damn things.

“Thereis a town nearby,” Xeno said as she stood up. She walked to the front of the wagon and stood next to Lost. “Itis where we lived, there.” She pointed her hoof past Lost and off to the side of the motorwagon. “Itis here.”

I looked around as we rolled around the corner she mentioned, but I saw nothing. Not a single sign of life.

“It’s empty,” said Rose. She lifted her grenade rifle and panned it from front to back while squinting. “I don’t like it.”

An empty fountain lay in ruin at the end of the road we were on. We circled the wagon around it and Lost braked us to a stop. Wait, how had she figured out how to do that? I shook my head and focused on what really mattered. I’d learn where the brakes were later.

Where was everyone?

“Zoan?” Xeno called. She placed a hoof to the side of her mouth and changed directions. “Mother?”

I twisted my ears back and forth, looking around as well. “Hello?” I yelled, hoping.

“This isnot right,” whispered the zebra. She moved back to the center of the wagon and sat on one of the seats. She placed her head in her hooves, but recoiled when she hit the slashes on her cheek. “This was a town, my tribe was here as long as I could remember. Have they been wiped out in my absence?”

“I doubt, there’s no signs of a fight. No blood, no corpses or bones,” Lost said as she looked around. “Fine Tune, can you check from the air?”

The changeling saluted and green fire flashed around him. When it faded, the blonde pegasus mare remained. She dropped the salute, flapped her wings once, and disappeared into the air.

A voice began to talk, echoing in the wastes, saying words I couldn’t hope to understand. I heard a few I recognized just from hearing Xeno say them often. Among the ones I recognized was ‘Imani,’ followed by words that, even through the language barrier, dripped with hate.

I could feel my mane raise at the back of my head, and shot a look to my sister. I let out a silent prayer to the Goddesses that whoever was speaking was one of Xeno’s friends.

Lost looked back at me, her eyes wide.

Only Rose seemed unfazed by it, as she still stood perfectly still holding her grenade rifle. Only the fact that one of her ears was twisted back gave away that she’d heard the voice too.

Xeno responded in kind, staring at the fountain. She whispered something under her breath, then laughed.

Sitting on the top of the fountain was a pony- no, a zebra. She had a green coat, with dark markings criss-crossing over her sides and face, and black lines running down her legs. A mohawk that matched her coat colors sprouted from her head, but bore obvious signs of having been inexpertly hacked to its short length. Her eyes looked identical to Xeno’s, from their exotic shape to the color. She threw her head back and laughed, making the black vest she wore jump with the movement of her chest.

“I wondered when you would return home,” she said. She grabbed a cloak from the fountain’s rubble in her teeth and jumped from it. Landing silently, she trotted over and offered a hoof to the zebra beside me.

Xeno said something in her native tongue and grabbed the hoof. She yanked hard, and pulled the green mare up onto the deck of the wagon. Tears already forming in the corners of her eyes, she hugged her tight. “Itis good to be back,” she whispered.

* * *

Xylia, the green-coated zebra mare, stared at the covered corpses. She held a hoof over her mouth and shook her head in disbelief. She said something in her language and looked over to Xeno, who could only nod in response. Her jaw dropped and she grabbed onto the other zebra, then buried her face against her neck. She cried and shook, barely able to stand.

Neither Lost nor I bothered them, we simply sat at the fountain and watched. This was something for zebra to handle, and the less we were involved in their grieving process, the better. I worried for the moment when it was revealed that Lost and I had each taken the life of one of the two stallions, and left Xeno an only child.

“What do you think will happen?” I asked Lost.

“Nothing good, I think,” she answered, while staring at the ground. “I just want to get this over with.” She shuffled a hoof and kicked a piece of the fountain’s rubble across the road. “We shouldn’t be involved at all. This feels wrong, it’s not our place.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. I looked back at the two zebras, who held each other for comfort. “Hopefully whatever Rose wants here will be easy to get, then we can leave.” Something hit me, and I turned to my sister. “What if Xeno decides to stay?”

“Then she decides to stay,” she answered solemnly. “In the end it’s her choice, and hers alone. I hope she comes back to Blackhoof with us, but if she wants to stay here, then she stays here with her tribe.”

I just groaned in response. This whole thing was a fiasco, but we needed closure, for all of us.

Fine Tune flittered back to the fountain with something hooked in his hooves. He let out a quiet chirp and landed beside Lost. With another of his fire-flashes, he transformed from changeling to unicorn. “I found some things while I was out,” he said, offering the fruits of his search. He’d found all sorts of little odds and ends, from several different colorful flowers that were actually in bloom, to the discarded parts of what looked like a manticore.

That was creepy and raised a ton of questions. “Where’d you find that?” I asked, worrying that he’d been battling manticores all on his own.

“There was a corpse a short ways that way,” he answered, pointing toward the spire in the distance. “I snatched up what looked useful for Xeno’s alchemy.”

“Good job,” L.A. said, with a pat on the changeling’s head.

“My Queen,” he answered, bowing down.

“How long until we find this tribe of hers?” asked Rose. She tapped one hoof on the opposite fetlock, as if to indicate the PipBuck’s clock.

“Give them time to mourn,” snapped my sister. She winced and grabbed her head with a hoof. “Still hurts.”

Xeno yelled in her native language, while waving her hoof for us to approach. When we got closer, she raised her hoof and pointed at me. “This is Hiddenpony,” she said.

Xylia said something only the two of them could understand and they both laughed.

“What’d she say?” I asked, suddenly horrified.

“She said that you are not Hidden, she can see you easily,” Xeno answered. She looked back at Xylia and then at the rest of us. She said something else privately to Xylia, then continued by pointing at Lost. “That is Lostpony.” Her hoof moved to Rose. “Rosepony.” Finally she pointed at Fine Tune. “Bugpony.” She then lapsed back into her language.

Xylia nodded and squinted at Fine Tune. Snorting, she nodded and waved a hoof. “Hello, ponies,” she said. She turned away from us and said something to Xeno, and the two began to talk in their own language faster than I could follow. Finally, the green-coated mare pointed past us.

We all turned around to see where she’d pointed, only to see a large crooked sign between two buildings, off in the distance. It read ‘Buckatello Towne Mall’ in faded letters, with a distance marker underneath. The minute I looked at it, another location marker appeared in the E.F.S. in the corner of my vision. Unlike many of the others, this one was hollow. Maybe the PipBuck knew about it, but since we hadn’t been there it wasn’t filled in?

With a destination set, the four of us on the ground hopped onto the motorwagon and Rose got the engine up and running at its full power. Fine Tune lit his horn up in an attempt to help, but even with his magic, the engine didn’t change from its normal course. Lost sat on the seat and propped her hooves up on the food crate from the Stables, and I sat across from her. Xeno took the wheel, and under Xylia’s directions, steered us away from the fountain and toward the road that lead to the Buckatello Towne Mall.

The two zebras kept taking in their own language, their tone changing from sorrowful to happy over the course of whatever they were saying, until the two were laughing. Xylia ran a hoof through her short-cut mane and rolled her eyes, then said something to Xeno. Both laughed again.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” I asked nopony in particular.

“Miss Xeno asked why she cut her mane off,” said Fine Tune. He took a seat next to Lost and stretched.

“You can speak her language?” L.A. asked, looking a bit shocked.

“No, no... I just know a few words,” he answered, shaking his head. “It helps to pick up on key things when you can change your appearance. I recognized ‘cut’ and ‘mane’ and put the rest together.” I was impressed. That was really neat.

I felt a pang of jealousy. It was as if everypony else on the cart could speak their own special language, with the zebras and their native language, Fine Tune and his connection to the hive and his chirping. Even Lost spoke above my head half the time when she or Rose started talking in technical magic-y terms that made my eyes start to spin. Maybe if I paid attention I could learn one of those languages too.

It wasn’t worth it to stress about that. Instead I looked from Xylia and Xeno to the corpses on the wagon. There were bigger things to worry about.

We continued on, driving in relative silence, with ears to the outside and guns at the ready, just in case. Xylia reassured us that the location was safe, as the path had been traveled by zebra since their migration from the home Xeno remembered to their new location. Rather than spend the entire time on edge, I instead looked into the map of the area. Quite a few locations had names and markers on them, but all were near the far end of the valley from Xeno’s home town. The only one even relatively close to us was the Buckatello Reservoir.

By the time I looked back up from the map, we had arrived. The mall seemed to be in decent shape, with the entrance barricaded both inside and out. The sign had long since fallen to pieces, leaving it saying ‘kat own all.’ The tribe had been resourceful, using the frames of the sign to block the entrance on the outside as a part of their barricade.

Xylia said something in her language and pointed to the right side of the wagon. When we turned that way, she looked back and yelled, “Stop!” The engine cut off in an instant and the zebra said something else in her tongue.

Xeno nodded and braked, bringing us to a crawl just off the main road. We ended up in a parking lot with a series of mangled machines sprouting up from the cracked pavement, all so worn-down whatever they once said or did was lost to the ages. The sign on the door read Solaris Energy, but gave no clue what it might be. With one last jerk of the wheel, Xeno parked between two motorwagons of similar design, but without the armoring on them.

To anypony who didn’t know better, our wagon suddenly looked just like the others. We blended in, like another broken down wreck that had been sitting in the same spot for two centuries. A few skywagons sat at the far end of the lot, and above all of us stretched an awning meant to keep everything dry. Were it not leaning so terribly to the side, it might have made a great resting spot for us.

“Donot bother, itis empty,” Xeno said when she caught me eyeing the main building. “Come, Xylia will show us inside.” She waved a hoof and hopped from the wagon. “Lostpony, your assistance please?” She pointed to the corpses of her brothers.

“One second, Xeno,” she said. With a groan, she hopped down.

“I’ll do it this time,” offered Rose. “You, changeling. Help me here, alright?” She beckoned to Fine Tune, and together the two lifted Zahi and Zaki’s corpses from the wagon and onto the zebras back.

“Thanks,” Lost muttered. “This headache is killing me.” The only answer she got was a positive sounding grunt from the clone.

With our charges ready and our gear on our backs, we started toward the ancient mall.

I pulled my jacket tight, checked Persistence at my side, and looked around the city, wondering where the Stable we were born in was.

* * *

The walls inside the mall were covered in peeling and chipped paint, with garbage and debris littering the floor of the maintenance hall we entered through. Xylia led us through, to the old shopping areas, in the flickering light. For two centuries of rot and neglect, the building held up surprisingly well. They still, somehow, had electricity running and the skylights built into the roof kept it very light inside.

As we walked out into the main walkways, I couldn’t help but notice how massive the place was. Two stories tall, with walkways and shops above us, it must have been magnificent in its day. The floor was made of tile, with several missing or chipped away from years alone, before being taken over by the tribe. The glass windows of the storefronts survived the destruction of Equestria, more than likely due to being inside. No signs or markings adorned any of the shops, though the shadows and dust of names still remained, unable to be ripped away. I read a few but had to stop myself, as several names were quite offensive to zebra and buffalo, to the point that I was appalled.

I suddenly wondered about the sign into town, and the large ‘C’ building at the far end of the valley.

Several zebras walked through the halls, most of them the standard white or light grey with darker stripes that I’d expected of zebras before I met Xeno and her distinct markings. When the light hit just right, the local zebras’ stripes would shine, some green, some purple, instead of the black they looked when not standing in a bright spot. A few spotted us, but the moment they saw the bodies resting on the backs of Xeno and Xylia, covered their mouths and began to talk in their tongue. Several ran from sight, off to tell others the news most likely.

Xylia pointed to them as we walked past, saying words I couldn’t understand. Other zebras returned them in kind, probably in greeting. Some walked with us, staying near the zebras and avoiding the rest of us. They rarely looked at us, and never switched to speaking in a language I could understand, as if we were invisible or cursed.

“I don’t like this,” I whispered to my sister.

“Nothing we can do about it,” she said. “This isn’t our place, after all. We’re the guests here.”

I muttered, not bothering to think up words for whatever I wanted to use as a response. Instead, I just paid attention to where I was walking and taking in the sights. I’d never been into an actual mall, much less one with so many actual living people wandering around. Every now and then I would see a zebra with pony colors, a stallion with a blue coat and black stripes, or a mare with stripes in bright orange instead of black. Occasionally a zebra would pass by with what I felt were the traditional colors, black and white stripes adorning their coats. It led me to re-evaluate what I thought of their cultures, and just how closely related we actually were.

At Xylia’s behest, we were led to a large open area where two hallways intersected one another. In the center was a small building separated from everything else, rather than being inlaid in the hallway’s walls like the other stores. With a few words in their tongue, Xeno and Xylia took the bodies into the small building and returned without them. The green-coated mare said something to Xeno, then turned to us. “Go well,” she whispered. Without another word, she turned and walked away, only to disappear into a crowd of other zebras without a trace.

“Does she always do that?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Itis a talent of hers, yes,” Xeno answered. She waved a hoof and beckoned us to follow as she turned away. “Come, wewill meet my father.” With a slight pause, she reached up and took the slaver helmet from her head. Her mohawk sproinked back up into the air as she put the helmet in her satchel. Suddenly we looked out of place, trotting down the halls in barding and armed to fight, unlike the casual locals.

We followed her as she turned down another hallway, this one looking to be in far better condition than the previous. Not a single tile was missing, though several had lost corners over the years. The stores still held a few letters each for their signs, and the windows had been blacked out for privacy. The thing that stood out the most was the coffee shop, a place with the sign completely in place, and reading ‘Starbucked Coffee’. An advertisement of two pretty mares tangled amongst one another, with their tails wrapped around a coffee cup survived in its spot on the glass storefront.

Xeno merely shook her head and said something in her language as we approached.

Lost, on the other hoof, turned bright red the moment she saw the ancient advert. I, myself, had to look away, lest I get another ribbing from Rose about my preferences. She saw it and laughed. I wondered if she were making a mental picture to tell her original about later.

Fine Tune, seeing it, cocked his head to the side and transformed with a flash of fire. First he reappeared as one of the two mares, then with another bout of his flames, reappeared as the other. With a giggle, she transformed once more to return to the unicorn stallion I knew so well.

Screams came from behind us, as a mare saw his transformation and fled. The sound of her hooves echoed against the cavernous walls and ceiling, but when none came to question us, we continued into the store.

The store was simple, with several tables and chairs along one wall, with a few extras spaced around the room. Two chairs in the back had been pushed together, and by the look of their cushions, had been used as a bed. Behind the counter sat several polished machines, all surrounded with bottles and vials. More machines and bottles covered the counter, giving very little space to actually do anything while back there.

A massive stallion, bigger even than Lamington, rested on the counter inside the store, snoring loudly. He had his head buried between his forehooves, and had coloration much like my classic understanding of what a zebra looked like, with a white coat and black stripes covering his back and legs. On his flank rested a mark I couldn’t understand; it looked like a short squat bottle with roots growing from the bottom, with two lines atop it. If this was Xeno’s father, his mark had nowhere near the same hypnotic quality as her spiral design.

“This is my father, Zolera,” Xeno said quietly to us. “I would like a minute.” Without waiting for an answer, she walked over to him and nuzzled the stallion’s forehead. With a kiss between his eyes, his snoring stopped.

He awoke and one eye cracked open just a sliver. Blue eyes, barely a shade lighter than Xeno’s own, suddenly shot open wide. The stallion said something in his language and grabbed his daughter in his hooves. Dragging her over the counter, he stood up on his hind legs and squeezed her so tight against his chest that she squeaked and began to kick her hind legs back and forth.

She said something in her language, and repeated it several times, before hugging him back. Her hooves barely made it halfway around him, given the size difference between the two. When he finally released her, he had to pry her from his body to set her on the counter. His hoof raised to the bandages on her cheek. Only when she finally let go did the two begin to talk in earnest, both talking so fast in their language that I had to pin my ears back to block out the sound. It was quite adorable, as, given the height difference, they were at eye level when she stood on the counter.

“Someone’s happy to be home,” said Rose. “We should get down to business, now.”

“Let them have their moment,” I said, glaring at her.

Suddenly the conversation in another language went silent. Zolera looked at us, then back at Xeno. He said something and pointed to our group at the doorway. Several more things were said, and his voice raised. Tears welled in his eyes, and he smashed one of the bottles near him to the ground. When it shattered, he grabbed another and held it up. Finding it full, he downed the entire bottle in a single chug.

“Iam sorry,” Xeno said to us.

Each of us dismissed it in our own way, and we just watched. I focused on the little similarities between the two. He had an opposite color scheme to Xeno, though their coat colors matched almost perfectly. Their manes looked similar, with his having the same long tapered point at the front that hers did. The way they pronounced things in their language was identical, and it was obvious he’d been the one to teach her to talk when she was little, though whenever she said something in my language, he’d suddenly gain a confused look before she translated.

After several long, extremely awkward minutes, she turned to us. “Come, rest and drink with us,” she said.

Her father grabbed several bottles and passed them to her. With bottles at the ready, she hopped from the counter and placed them on one of the tables. Once we’d all sat around it, she joined us.

Zolera jumped over the counter, and landed so forcefully that the table and chairs, with us in them, literally jumped from the floor. He walked over and took the final seat, which bent under his massive size. Slowly, he looked us over, from Rose to me, and smiled. In a deep voice he asked, “You drink?”

“I do,” said Lost.

“Yeah, I could use a drink,” answered Rose.

“No, sir,” I said, shying away from him.

“Today, you do,” he said, clopping a giant hoof onto my back. Still in shock that he could speak the same language as me, I couldn’t help but note the change in his face when he noticed the armor I had on. “Be comfortable. Is time for celebrate.” He slid a bottle in front of me, then pushed the extras in front of the rest of us.

“I told him what happened,” explained Xeno. She sulked and grabbed the bottle before her. With a heavy sigh, she took a deep swig and slammed the bottle down.

“Death in battle,” he said, holding up his own bottle in his fetlock. “Reason for celebrate. We drink.” He waited for us to raise our bottles.

As one, we each drank deep of his booze.

It burned down my throat, but for his family and his pride, I gladly took the pain.

* * *

“Your father’s very nice, Xeno,” I said, sipping down the last of the burning brandy.

“Thank you, Hiddenpony,” she said, smiling wide. She hiccuped, then took another drink of hers.

We’d sat around the table in Zolera’s coffee shop, telling him the stories of what had happened since we met with Xeno. Everything from the moment we killed her brothers to the ways Lost and I stared wide-eyed at the ‘town’ the zebras had set up inside the once abandoned mall. The stories helped to relax all of us as we drank, while the booze itself took the edge off my aches and pains. What started as a sad story swiftly became a daring tale of rescue and mystery, as we moved on from telling how we’d met Xeno again on the way to Leathers and saved our little group from Wirepony, to the questions of what happened with the Stable underneath, the Steel Rangers, and beyond.

Zolera laughed and cheered, acting far friendlier than I had initially thought. Given Xeno’s comments about being unable to return, I’d feared her parents were overbearing or abusive. After having met the stallion though, I wondered why she would ever leave. He made a wonderful host and provided us with anything we asked for that he could get from his shop. When Lost asked for a second drink, he mixed her a special one on the spot. Suddenly the mark on his flank made perfect sense, a bottle of booze he made with the love of his surroundings.

When the stories continued, he focused on every detail, listening so intently I thought his ears might pop off his head and attach to his daughter. She translated everything we said for him, which made for the strangest conversation. When we got to the part about U Cig, his demeanor changed completely, and even though I couldn’t understand anything he said, it was obvious he hated slavers just as much as we did. His tone snapped to its complete opposite when we told him that Xeno had been the one to save us, by putting herself in danger of being caught herself.

He grabbed her and hugged her so tight her coat began to turn a shade of blue, before he finally dropped her. A toast was raised, one Xeno told us was to honor her being a true warrior and his pride and joy.

She pulled her striped knife from her satchel and offered it to him.

He took it and examined. With an approving nod, he threw it.

“Eep!” I yelped as the blade passed by my face.

Rose laughed, and Lost latched onto me. Fine Tune chirped and ducked underneath the table.

“Sorry, little one,” said the stallion, his deep voice sending a shiver down my spine. He pointed past me, to the knife that stuck perfectly in the wall, to the hilt.

“He taught me,” Xeno explained. “Heis proud I put his lessons to good work.”

“Yes!” he roared, grabbing her hoof and holding it. “She best student. Brothers shoot. Very good. Not enough, better way. Knife. Always better!” He reached across the table, his long legs and giant hooves easily passing by us and to the knife. With ease, he hooked it in his fetlock and pulled it free. Tossing it into the air, he caught the tip on his hoof, and with amazing balance, offered it to his daughter.

“Goddesses,” Lost whispered.

“Teach me to do that,” I heard myself say.

“I’ll keep my rifle, but that’s a neat trick,” said Rose dismissively.

Xeno translated what we’d said, and the stallion laughed.

“Gun need bullet. Not always have. Knife?” he asked, pointing to the knife in his daughter’s hoof. “Always have. Best tool.” Tilting his head, he looked off into the distance. “Ah!” he suddenly said, slamming his hoof down. He said something to Xeno, and she passed him the knife again.

“What? What’s happening?” I asked.

“He said hewill sharpen it. Make it mine,” she answered, her tone indicating he had something special planned for the knife. With a smile, she looked up at her father and nuzzled his side.

I wish I’d been able to see this side of Xeno before. She always kept herself so locked up, never showing any real emotion. Since we’d started over the mountains, the distant, aloof ice queen disappeared almost entirely, leaving the raw person in front of me. She laughed, she cried, she loved her family. There was just so much more to this mare than she let on, while she hid behind a veil of cigarette smoke, quietly helping from the background.

Xeno said a few more things in her language, each time receiving a nod from her father. She talked faster and faster, moving her hooves around in the most animated fashion I’d seen since I met her. I heard a few words, ‘motorwagon,’ ‘Steel Ranger,’ and a few others that probably didn’t have a direct translation. When she finished, she leaned against him and once again hugged his leg.

“Xylia good scout. Brings home lots,” he said. It made some sense? Xylia was a scout for the village and brought home a good amount of supplies? The language barrier hurt, but he seemed so happy to try and speak in words we could understand. Just seeing the sparkle in his eyes whenever he said something in my language.

“Alright,” said Rose, tapping her bottle with a hoof. “Stories are caught up, and while it’s been wonderful to learn more about each of you...” She looked around the table, then pinned her ears back. “It’s time for business.”

“No,” said Zolera. “Family first. Business after.”

Rose’s horn lit up, and her grenade rifle lifted from her back. She swung it around with lightning speed and aimed it at the giant stallion. “We’re on a strict time limit here,” she hissed. “I have no time for games.”

Zolera slammed his hoof down on the barrel of her gun. It hit the table so hard the table cracked and the barrel flattened with a pathetic little ‘crink’ sound. “After,” he repeated.

Rose blanched and sat back in her seat. Gulping, she picked her bottle up and hid her snout behind it. “Yes sir,” she whispered.

For half a second, I thought I might love this stallion.

Lost, Fine Tune and I just laughed. Finally, someone had the balls to put the bitch in her place.

“In that case, what’s next? You’re our host now, so...” Lost asked, trailing off as Xeno translated the question to her father.

The stallion mulled it over for a moment, then said something to Xeno in his native language. The two talked for a moment, back and forth.

Our friend turned to us. “Wewill have a funeral for my brothers. Then, we meet with my mother to set up trade with Rosepony,” she explained. Shooting the pink mare a smug look, she collected the now-empty bottles for her father and trotted over to the counter. Once they were put away, she trotted back. “Let us go now.”

Zolera stood first, and backed away from the table. He bowed his head and motioned for the rest of us to exit first with a wave of his hoof.

I stood and moved to stand next to my sister. Along with the surprisingly quiet Fine Tune, and the still-petrified Rose, we followed Xeno through the halls back the way we’d come. The stallion brought up the rear, walking slowly with his eyes focused on his only remaining foal.

“What type of burial does your tribe perform?” I asked, trying to make the walk less solemn.

“The bodies will be cleansed in fire, re-wrapped, and given traditional rites of passage by the tribal leader, Zoan,” Xeno explained without looking back. “Afterward, we will feast. There will be stories told of their life and triumphs. Then we will discuss business. My mother will be there. All will be well.” She said something in her native tongue after her explanation.

Zolera said something back, then groaned.

Xeno turned back, her eyes wide. “Blind?” she asked.

The stallion nodded his head.

“What?” Lost asked.

“Zoan has gone blind. A shame...” answered Xeno.

We fell silent after that, the six of us walking down the halls in a makeshift funeral procession. When we arrived back at the intersection of the hallways, Zolera trotted off. With every step he made, the ground shook and the windowed storefronts seemed to jump about on their frames.

“We wait,” said Xeno. She took a seat at one end of the intersection and hung her head. “It is time for reflection, as the tribe will bring the necessary items.”

We took our seats behind her, and as she did, we hung our heads and focused on memories.

* * *

As time passed, more and more zebras joined us in sitting in the clearing between the hallways. Some stared at us as they approached, with comments slung back and forth in their language. Many focused more on the funeral than who the guests were. Throughout the arrival of the others, Xeno never lifted her head or opened her eyes. She stayed in her own world.

The others of her tribe varied in their looks as much as I expected. Each had a different design to their stripes, and while most were white, or similarly light of coat, the stripe colors varied drastically. Most were so dark the stripes looked black, unless they walked under the open skylight in the center of the intersection. Only one mare, a young pony with her mane and tail in dreadlocks had bright stripes, in a lovely purple. I caught a few stallions and mares with less than expected traits, a small hoofful with unicorn horns, and a single stallion with a pair of poorly concealed wings. Surprisingly, not a single colt or filly joined us.

After a long break between the arrival of zebras, Xylia reappeared. She walked down the hallway we’d come from, with an elderly mare leaning against her. The other mare was very obviously blind, her eyes having clouded over, and their color faded. Her stripes stood out, similar to the purple-striped mare, in that even in the shadows they had a noticeable green tint to them, almost matching the color of Xylia’s coat. Given what I’d heard, I guessed that to be Zoan, the tribal leader.

She sat with the group, at the very front.

I looked at what they’d brought. Every zebra who arrived came with something to be placed in the center of the hallways’ intersection. Wood and personal items were piled in the center, creating a massive stand beside the small building the bodies were stored in. They’d pieced it together as a group, forming layers as if it were to become a house. Watching was fascinating, before I realized exactly what they were doing.

It wasn’t until they’d finished that I realized what Xeno meant when she explained ‘cleansing by fire.’ The others in the tribe had all brought together parts to build a funeral pyre, to burn the corpses of her brothers. The fact that the entire tribe worked together to create it, rather than just the family who’d felt loss warmed my heart in the most morbid way. To see them brought together by tragedy, and knowing that they were supporting a family who had lost so much. I only wished ponies could still work together so well, to have that sense of community.

More than that, I wished that I’d never have to see such a thing again. After what happened with the Steel Rangers, and watching Elder Drop Scone break down and cry over the body of her son after his death in battle. I never wanted to attend another funeral.

And yet, here I was, once again sitting at the sidelines while those I cared about put the souls of their dead to rest.

When we got back, I was going to find the house mom had died in, and give her a proper send off. She deserved as much, now that I was old enough to know it. Even if all that were left were her bones, I would make sure her soul was sent to the Goddesses, where she belonged.

Zolera walked to us and placed his hoof on Xeno’s shoulder. He held her from behind and consoled her in quiet murmurs.

Xeno responded in kind, and stood up. The two walked off, heading to where we’d left her brothers when we arrived. Together, they brought the corpses out and rested them atop the pile of wood and community gifts for the ceremony.

Once the two bodies were placed, Zolera patted his daughter, and sent her away. After adding her items to the pyre, she left his side. The stallion spoke to the zebras, his deep voice echoing off the hallways in strange words I wished I could understand.

Xeno returned to sit next to us. Her muzzle was stained with tears, and she tried to hide it with a hoof. “Itis time,” she whispered.

The stallion continued to talk, and lifted a bottle filled with the same alcohol we’d been drinking just an hour earlier. He stepped back a few paces from the pyre, and threw the bottle. It shattered between the bodies of Zahi and Zaki, and in an instant, the entirety of their resting place lit with blue flame. Finally, I knew where his daughter had picked up the trick of lighting something without fire.

We all sat in silence as the fire burned, the blue dimming to orange after what felt like an eternity. Not a single zebra present so much as coughed, as they all stared at the burning of the two sons.

A mare walked from the far end of the hallway, opposite where we sat. As she approached, every single zebra said something that sounded like ‘sifa,’ but the meaning was lost on me.

The mare was tall, with long legs and a shapely figure, even to my eyes. She was astonishingly beautiful, with her long mane hanging down and framing her gorgeous face. Her green eyes were striking, and seemed to pierce directly to my soul even when she wasn’t looking directly at me. She walked with the stride of someone who knew she was important, slow and with careful, purposeful steps. Her stripes were almost invisible, so faint their grey color that they nearly bended in with her immaculate white coat.

The mark on her flank reminded me of a sunrise, with a horizontal line over three dots, and a half-circle of shorter lines rising from the ‘horizon.’ It stood out in stark contrast, being pitch black. The only other color on her were sigils painted over her coat with red paint or dye. They were intricate and intertwined with one another, forming a design that led my eyes from her legs to her side and back to her eyes.

Whoever she was, it was very obvious she was in charge, and given the reverence the tribe showed her, I could only imagine she was their spiritual leader. I could think of no other reason for one to paint themselves with such complex and winding designs. She greeted them with the same phrase they’d said to her, then took her place next to Zolera in front of the fire.

Xeno stared, her jaw nearly on the floor.

“Mother...”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Steel Hoof (Rank 3) – Finally putting that cyberpony hoof to good use? When attacking with the metal attachments to your body, you do extra damage equivalent to just how much steel you throw around.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Momma’s Filly (Rank 3) – Being taught how to survive, you can even coach others in what to do, +10 to Medicine and Science skills.
Quest Per: Energy Conversion – Booklearning has done you some good. With the basics of intermediate spellcrafting under your belt, you can now cast offensive spells in multiple energy types, including but not limited to Arcane and Fire. Conversion of energy from one form to another is exhausting, and until the new energy type is mastered completely, casting a spell in anything other than Arcane energy will leave your magic weakened and can potentially cause full burnout.

“Life on the other side of the mountains sure is weird.”
“We’ve really only just met the zebras, and you’re calling them weird?”
“What, no. That would be offensive. I just...”
“Just what, Hiddenpony?”
“Errr, your dad is really nice!”
“Crii!”
“We don’t have time for this, get to the next chapter so we can get back to Idle!”
“Who let Rose out here?”

Chapter 19: The Cost of Living

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Chapter Nineteen: The Cost of Living
“I do what I have to do, to protect those I love. Sometimes it isn’t what I want to do, but what I have to do.”

“Xeno?”

The mare moved her mouth, but no words came out. She turned back to me and my sister, waved a hoof, then pointed at her parents standing next to the fire. After several seconds, her hoof fell back to the floor and she hung her head.

I placed a hoof on her shoulder and leaned in close. “We’ll figure it out afterward” I whispered. Whatever was going through her head, I’d help her with it once we were finished. Right now, there were more important things to focus on than the fact that her mother was now in charge.

She just nodded.

I looked over at Lost, and we shared a worried look before lowering our heads as well. Fine Tune whistled a very quiet chirp, while Rose rolled her eyes. When I shot her a glare, she lowered her head too.

The red-painted zebra began to talk, her voice husky like Zolera’s, but with a distinctly feminine tone. She spoke in flowing phrases and verses, and repeated things occasionally. The tribe listened intently, their eyes focused on the mare. She looked to Zolera, and paused.

He said something, and the others repeated the phrase back. Whatever it was, the translation was lost on those of us who couldn’t speak the proper tongue.

The red-painted designs on the mare began to run, and though her voice never wavered, it was obvious she felt the same sorrow and regret that Xeno and Zolera had upon learning that her sons had perished in the Wasteland. She continued the service, stomping a hoof and steeling her voice. It was honestly amazing. Even through a language barrier, the way she spoke conveyed as much to me as the words she said must have to the others.

She finished her service by repeating the same word she’d said to start it, and the others of the tribe returned the phrase, including Xeno. Despite her disregard for superstitions, she followed along with the tribe to the letter. Maybe it wasn’t so much about her beliefs, so much as respecting what her brothers had followed.

I repeated the same phrase, to follow her lead, though I probably mispronounced it. I felt the intention was what mattered. I looked over to my sister, who smiled at me. It was a nice reminder that we were all in this together, and despite our differences, we worked together as a team to survive, and that each part was crucial. I looked at Fine Tune from the corner of my eye, and made a silent promise to myself to get to know him better, too.

For what felt like ages, we sat in silence in the glow of the fire, as the brothers’ spirits were tended to. Xeno’s mother and father stood, lifting to their hind legs and crossed their hooves before their chests. With their right forehoof closer to their chest, covered by the left, the two spoke in unison, repeating something that sounded quite solemn, before moving opposite one another and repeating the same phrases again. The rest of the zebras, and us ponies kept silent. The surprisingly sweet-smelling smoke billowing from the pyre rose through the air and out the open skylight, and everything else in the mall was still.

Finally, with one more repeat of her phrase, the mare snapped her hoof up and toward the fire. In that instant, everything went dark. By the time my eyes adjusted, all I saw was the charred wood and the cleansed bones of her sons.

Not a moment later, the zebras of the tribe began to move with a fervor I’d never seen before. Mares and stallions darted back and forth, their eyes filled with purpose. Xeno disappeared into the crowd, leaving the four of us without a guide in the bustling surge of activity.

“What now?” I asked in a whisper. As quickly as I could, I moved to a wall and out of the way of the zebras moving about.

“I don’t know,” Lost whispered back. She followed my lead and ended up a short distance away, against the store’s window. “And where’d the others go?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” I answered. I looked around, and saw the manes of both Rose and Fine Tune moving through the slowly-dispersing group of zebras. I’d had no idea there were so many in Xeno’s tribe. In fact, I’d never seen this many anything together at one time, well except back in U Cig. I shook my head to get that thought out of my head. “Wait, I see them.”

I waved my hoof through the air to get their attention, and luckily the two turned toward me. As the zebras parted, they made their way toward me. By the time the two managed to get to the wall, the majority of the tribe had disappeared.

“That was... weird,” I said.

“Zebras are always weird,” said Rose. “You should’ve seen them during the war.” She looked behind her, as the last few disappeared down a hallway, following the group.

“Do we follow them?” asked Fine Tune.

“Yes. We need to regroup with Xeno anyway,” said Lost. She waved her hoof and beckoned us to follow, then trotted down the hallway.

“Ever seen anything like that before?” I asked nopony in particular.

“No,” Fine Tune answered with a chirp.

“Once, but it was a lot different back in the day,” answered Rose. “There wasn’t any fire, and they didn’t speak a different language. Nor was the whole tribe there. They must have everyone out due to it being the leader’s foals’ funeral. Also they wore masks.”

We followed the tribe as they went down the hall, keeping some distance between us and the group ahead. The path took us to a different entrance than the one we’d come in. Everything was pushed out of the way, and the entire tribe grouped together outside.

The first thing I noticed about those we’d followed was that they now wore the same markings as Xeno’s mother. Their faces and coats were painted in multiple colors, instead of the solid red of their leader, in designs nowhere near as intricate as hers, while still showing dedication to making them look perfect, in their odd flowing way. It reminded me of Xeno and her sleight of hoof in how she managed to light cigarettes without so much as moving her hooves, that they had somehow all become adorned in something of a ritual garb in an instant. Maybe these were their replacements for the masks Rose mentioned.

Looking around, I noticed we’d ended up on the far side of the mall, away from the town we’d entered through. This side of the mall butted up against the barren emptiness I’d seen when we rolled through the mountain pass into town. I saw nothing but flat land from where we stood to the hills and mountains at the far end of the valley. It looked almost as if something had erupted from the mountains itself and wiped out everything above ground. Only small gravestones, made of rotting wood and covered in scrawls and symbols, broke up the flatness of the ground.

Far in the distance I could see the remains of what must have been civilization, before the War. Barely visible were toppled walls and shattered foundations, and a few holes in the ground that I guessed had been basements before, dotting the expanse of nothingness. A chill went up my spine as I thought about what might be able to do something like that.

Xeno walked up to us, now also painted with a design similar to her mother’s. She threw one of her forelegs around me, and the other around my sister, and squeezed tight. “Thank you,” she whispered. She released the two of us and gave Fine Tune a similar hug. Rose was the only one who got nothing, and I didn’t blame Xeno for not giving her the same treatment. “Itis time for burial. Iwill be needed to assist, then will come time for the tribe to discuss and honor their lives. There will be a feast.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “But... are you doing okay?”

She nodded. “Iam... fine. The shock of seeing my mother as the tribal leader has passed,” she explained, confirming my suspicions nicely. “Iwill produce you after.”

Lost frowned. “You’ll do what?” she asked. “Introduce us?”

Xeno nodded. “That too.” She turned her head as a voice called out from off to our left. She nodded to us again, then turned and trotted off.

“I wonder if her mother knows how to make that same horn-fixer potion she did,” Lost mused, tapping her darkened horn with a hoof. “Let’s find somewhere to sit.” She moved away and sat down behind a small group of zebra.

I followed suit, along with Fine Tune and Rose.

We all sat quietly and watched as the cloaked remains of Zahi and Zaki were taken to the front of the group, where several zebras stood with shovels before freshly-dug ground. They had dug two graves in the time it took us to find a seat. While more of the sermon given in their native language, the two bodies were laid to rest.

Xeno stepped forward and tossed the first of the soil back into the grave, first to cover one brother, then the other. When she finished, her father repeated the same gesture, tossing more dirt over their bodies. Finally, her mother did it, in a show of symbolism as the family put their departed to their eternal resting place.

The zebras of the tribe all repeated a short phrase, ending with the still mysterious word ‘sifa.’ The four of us, still out of place, followed their lead and repeated the words with them. Again I felt that participating, whether we understood or not, meant more than the words themselves. The ones who dug the graves filled in for Xeno’s family, and in a matter of minutes, the brothers were gone.

The red-painted mare said a new phrase, and the zebras instantly stood. Their leader passed through them, splitting the group in two, and they all turned and followed. Those at the front moved first, following the path she’d cut. Next went those behind the front-most zebras, until only the four of us non-zebras were left.

Before we started back, Lost and I walked to the gravesites.

“Goodbye,” I said, hanging my head. “I’m sorry for what we did.”

“The Wasteland is cruel, and we never meant to separate you from your family,” said my sister. She leaned against me and hugged me tight.

“They’re where they belong now,” I whispered, hugging her back. “It’s over.”

I looked to the sky, and at the cloud cover. Maybe, just maybe, they had their own Goddesses or someone they’d finally found their way to.

“Let’s go inside and meet up with Xeno,” Lost said. She nudged me, then turned and walked back to the mall.

“Right,” I answered absentmindedly, before turning and following my sister back inside.

* * *

Zebras bustled back and forth, talking among themselves. Zolera stood at the center of the group, behind a large table with several bottles of booze at the ready. He passed out drinks as each member of the tribe approached him, and smiled wide with every one he gave. It still amazed me how differently these people handled the death of family, compared to the ponies I’d seen deal with it. More and more approached to collect their part of the feast, and the chatter and background noise rose to deafening levels. Another zebra passed out food and the others gathered around a roaring fire, one that dwarfed the funeral pyre of the brothers.

I could smell something absolutely delicious, but had no idea what it might be. It was different than anything I’d smelled before, and was nothing like the two-century-old canned food, or Marshmallow Sundae’s cooking. The scent had a strange allure to it, probably spices from some far-off place brought out either for tradition or from wandering members of the tribe like Xeno’s father. Whatever it was, I knew I wanted a piece. Just the faintest whiff had my mouth watering.

There were no tables set out, and no chairs. The members of the tribe mingled with one another, sharing stories that I could pick out only from the mention of Zahi and Zaki’s names on occasion. For a tribe that hadn’t seen the three foals of Zolera for years, they certainly had their share of stories. If only I’d known the language, I could have learned more about the stallions whose lives we had cut short.

“So, what now?” I asked, looking at the others.

“We eat,” said Fine Tune, his blue eyes brightening considerably as he looked around the building. For half a second, I thought he might be drooling, but the feast he wanted wasn’t the same as the deliciousness I smelled.

“What do you mean by that?” Lost asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked at the changeling.

“Oh, my Queen,” he said, snapping back to reality. “They are happy, sharing stories. I can taste their emotions in the air, their love. Even their sense of community feels divine.” He panted, his eyes darting back and forth as he looked about the tribe. “I can feel it, deep inside.” He gulped, and looked up at her, as if begging her pathetically. “I need some...”

I stepped back and shook my head, remembering how horrifying it was when he’d fed on me. The hollow emptiness in the bottom of my heart started to creep back up, as if the claws that often teased at the back of my mind had instead decided to wrap themselves around my soul and tear it from my body.

“Will it hurt them?” Lost asked.

“Ask her,” interrupted Rose. She pointed a hoof directly at me.

“I-I... They’ll live,” I muttered. With all three sets of eyes on me, I suddenly felt very cold.

Lost snapped back to Fine Tune, her eyes practically glowing with anger. “Did you feast on Hidden?” she demanded.

“She offered,” he squeaked. With his queen angry at him, he shrunk to the ground, trying to make himself smaller. The predatory need in his eyes disappeared completely, replaced with a look of self-hatred at doing something to anger the one pony he looked up to.

“Is this true?” my sister asked. She looked back at me, and glared over the rim of her glasses. Before I got a word out, she faltered, and clenched her eyes shut. Bringing a hoof to her forehead, she groaned and gently rubbed the still-blackened tip of her horn. “I don’t care. Just don’t get caught, and no scaring a zebra. Wait until one’s about to pass out, or something,” she said.

“Of course, my Queen!” shouted Fine Tune. He clasped a hoof over his mouth immediately, realizing just how loud he’d been. With a few nods, he darted off into the crowd and disappeared.

“It’s horrifying,” I admitted. I could feel my legs shaking below me. “Like ripping a part of you out.”

“You’ll get over it,” said Rose. “Back in the day, I dealt with a few changeling feedings. A week or two and you’ll be right as rain.” She looked at a group of zebras that walked by. When they passed, she continued. “Just try not to think about what happened, and it won’t get to you. The minute you let the grasp overtake you, it’ll sink in and never let go.”

“How do you know for sure?” asked Lost.

“Look, I’ll teach you how to heal that sort of thing on the way back,” the clone offered. “Deal?” She held up a forehoof to my sister.

“Once I get my magic back in working order, it’s a deal,” answered Lost. She raised her hoof to meet Rose’s.

They shook on it.

“Hiddenpony, Lostpony, Rosepony,” called a voice.

Xeno pushed her way through the crowd, weaving back and forth between the chatting mares and stallions who tried to stop her to talk. In the politest tone I’d ever heard her use, she refused in her native tongue and moved to stand beside us. With the distraction of the funeral rites passed, I finally got to see the intricate designs on her coat. Strangely, they seemed perfect for her, and framed her face nicely. Even around the slashes down the side of her face, they just fit.

“The tribe’s leader wishes to see you,” she said, not mentioning that it happened to be her mother that wanted us. The formality struck me as odd, but that weirdness would probably be given reason soon enough, I felt.

“Of course,” said Lost.

“Finally,” muttered Rose.

I said nothing, but brought up the rear of the group as we all followed our zebra friend back through the crowd.

Dodging the feasting zebras was not an easy task. With so many zebras all jammed into such a small intersection of hallways, I found it difficult to keep sight of my sister and the clone pony. I gave up trying to spot Xeno, because even with her distinctive mohawk with the long tapered point at the front, her coloring blended in far too well with the others. Instead I focused on the dark pink mane of Rose, and my sister’s purple mane and black bandana.

Aside from accosting Xeno to share childhood memories or learn the stories of her and her brothers’ travels, the tribe largely ignored us. The diversity in the tribe still shocked me. Some were old, carrying several trays’ worth of food on their backs as they laughed and greeted those around them. One stallion had a gigantic scar down the side of his face and his neck, but seemed one of the happiest around. I had expected more like Xeno, with reserved personalities, talking in broken words as curtly as possible, but seeing them party shook me.

Was I really so closed-minded? They were just like ponies, with a different set of colors. We could accept everything from white coats and purple manes, to black with blue manes, so why were stripes so different? Almost every zebra had the same exotic and slightly slanted shape to their eyes, though I could see a few here and there with what I considered to be a ‘pony trait,’ in the way they were rounder like Lost’s. But what were cosmetic differences? A different shape of the eye, the cut of muzzle, and bi-colored coats weaving around one another instead of a single shade?

If we were so alike, why had we fought a war in the first place?

Because we had forgotten that friendship was what mattered, The Glowing One said. A war fought over something insignificant and petty, when camaraderie could have kept us all together and never ended the world.

I suddenly wanted to have a party in the Stables with Elder Drop Scone and her family, to see how they acted when they finally let loose and just enjoyed themselves without rank and duty getting in the way. When we returned and had free time, that would be the first thing I would suggest.

“This way,” said Xeno, pointing to the hall opposite where we’d entered initially. She pushed through the final group of zebras standing at the edge of the crowd, ignoring their words and laughter.

As I ducked between them, two of the stallions held glasses up and clinked them together above my head. Again, I was glad I wasn’t the tallest of ponies. Free of the crowd, I trotted forward so I could see my sister and Rose again.

“Any idea where we’re going?” I asked.

“I assume we’re headed for her mother’s office, or room, or whatever,” offered Rose. She shrugged and kept following.

“Correct, Rosepony,” Xeno said. She sounded crushed, as if she’d been beaten with a whip for a week. “Itis near.” She trotted faster, and rounded another corner into another hallway.

We followed, turning away from a massive department store that had once been called Shears. The entrance wasn’t accessible, as most of the ceiling had caved in and left only a small spot to slip through. It reminded me of our front door at home. Around the corner I saw the glass windows of a Mane Attraction salon, and felt the cold hoof of death trail its way up my spine and stop at the base of my neck, where a collar once hung.

I shuddered and ran past it, sticking close to Xeno. The others looked at me, then at each other and shrugged.

“You okay, Hidden?” Lost asked.

“Amble’s office was in a Mane Attraction,” I answered, not daring to look at it. Part of me feared that if I did, I’d see the same lineup of chairs, with the pink and purple mane of my former owner peeking over the half-wall near the back. I shook my head, trying to stop her whispering voice in my mind before it could start.

“She doesn’t have any hold on you, Hidden,” Lost said. She trotted forward and placed a hoof on my shoulder. “You’re stronger than that.” With a nuzzle, she passed me and walked next to Xeno.

“I hope so,” I whispered.

Rose walked by. She looked at me, shook her head, and kept walking.

The hallway ended with a half-dozen windows and a simple wooden door. Though warped and cracked at the top and bottom, it stood out with a large plaque near the top and center, that simply read ‘Office.’ The windows were all covered with long blinds that hung from the ceiling behind the glass, and all were closed as if to hide whatever might transpire behind the hallowed door.

Xeno walked up to it and knocked once.

“Enter,” said the husky, unmistakable voice of the tribe’s leader.

Xeno pushed the door open and beckoned us to follow her as she walked through.

We filed through, one at a time, to find a brightly painted office, lit by innumerable candles along the walls. A slashed couch on one side of the room showed signs of being a makeshift bed. A table rested in front of it, covered in ancient-looking scrolls of paper and a few books stacked on one side. Gems gleamed in a bowl on one corner of the table, and several vials of strangely-colored liquids filling in the remainder of the space. One stood out from the rest, a short, wide wooden bowl with a bright red fluid inside. Some still dripped from the lip, and a bleached white brush rested across the top. It’d obviously been used recently.

Two chairs sat against the far wall, along with more candles. The flames flickered out and all but disappeared, only to relight a split second later. From each of the candles, colored smoke wafted up and filled the air around us with a haze that smelled of something familiar I couldn’t quite place. Against the wall opposite the couch/bed was a desk covered in odds and ends. Much of it looked like pointless knick-knacks to me, but probably held more meaning to the serious-looking mare that sat behind them.

The blinds behind her were also closed, blocking out all but a few slivers of light that streaked across the floor and over the four of us. Sitting in the shadow, I almost couldn’t make out her features, but in the flickering light of the many candles, the immaculate red sigils repainted upon her coat in a new and different design shone like the eyes of the splinterwolves. She stared down at us, a frown on her lips, her hooves crossed before her.

“This is our Tribe’s Leader, Shaman Zorana,” said Xeno, introducing us. “Leader, these are my friends, Hidde-”

“Now, now,” said Zorana, cutting her daughter off. “Why so formal? You’re my only child now, we’re family. Why don’t you call me mom?” The corner of her lip curled up into a sneer, as she looked from the zebra mare to the rest of us.

I found myself shocked that she spoke my language absolutely perfectly.

“Of course, shaman, I mean... Mom,” answered Xeno, correcting herself. She hung her head and took a step back, moving away until she practically sat upon the candles in the chairs at the edge of the room. “They have a request, mother.”

Zorana’s half-smile-sneer-thing vanished. She pushed herself away from the desk and stood up. With the same slow, purposeful strides she’d used at the funeral of her sons, she walked around the desk and sized us up. The mare was tall, especially compared to Lost and me. She even towered over Rose, who had several inches on my sister and I.

Lost offered a hoof. “Hello, my name is-”

“I did not ask your name,” the tribal leader interrupted. She leaned to the side, then bent down and stared my sister in the eyes. Snorting, she leaned back and then turned to me. “Sisters, I see,” she said out loud, but obviously not to either of us. She squinted when she got close to me, and bared her teeth.

Only Rose seemed unintimidated by the tall red-painted mare, and to her credit, Zorana paid her exactly zero attention.

“A light in dark,” she whispered, looking at Lost. “Drawn to the flame and spark.” She turned her head and looked at me. “I see your prying eyes, the same as those who took my sons’ lives.”

I gulped and looked at my sister.

Lost stared back, her eyes wide with fear.

“You seek trouble, to throw yourself willingly to destruction,” she said, eyeing Lost once again. “And you,” she continued, looking at me, “Reckless, unthinking. You are a walking disaster.”

That hurt, even if she was absolutely right.

“You should not have come here,” she said. “Leave.” With that definitive order, she turned away and started to her desk again.

“We came here for a reason and we’re not leaving until we’ve gotten what I want,” said Rose.

“You bridge the gap between the living and the dead, a creature of flesh but not of soul,” answered the shaman, without turning back. “If I wished to speak to one in such a predicament, I would seek the soul itself, for the mortal shell is not what is important. I do not speak to your kind.”

Rose seemed to deflate. Even her mane drooped. She took a faltering step back. The purpose and rage she’d had in her eyes faded in an instant. She looked doubtful, hollow, as if the words had cut through her as a blade would. If she had no soul...

“Why did you bring these ponies to my home, daughter?” asked the zebra mare as she sat back at her desk.

“Theyare my friends, and while they were the ones who killed Zahi and Zaki, in self-defense, they made it their duty to return them home,” Xeno answered. “Theyare good ponies, who wished to help me put my brothers’ souls to rest.”

The mare grimaced. “Hmmmm,” she muttered, and looked over the three of us again. “You seek atonement for what you did to my sons?” she asked, after an eternity.

“Yes,” I squeaked, answering before I could stop myself. “Please.”

“Then seek the stars, and let them rip you asunder. There is no forgiveness for what you have done to my family and this tribe,” she said, her voice cold and even. She looked to my sister. “You are lucky I am not a follower of the Caesar. Your soul holds darkness in it; the stars will have their grip upon you one day.” Her gaze drifted to Rose. “You of no soul, you reek of arum lily, of death and rotting flesh. The curse of unlife hangs above you, blocking truth from your mind as the moon blocks the sun. You should be feared and cast out, like the abomination you are.”

“Harsh,” interrupted the clone.

Finally, Zorana looked at me. “A creature of steel and flesh, you will be cursed with a life unending, a sad fate that you truly deserve,” she spat.

“Mother,” Xeno whispered, trying to draw her attention from us. She looked up at the tall mare, her bottom lip quivering, but resolve once more in her eyes. “They are good ponies, even the clone. Theyhave come to make amends, not start a fight.”

“Your father and I taught you better than that. Cease speaking as if you were stupid,” Zorana said, before adding something else in her native tongue.

Xeno flinched, but nodded.

“I will let you leave, as a reward for bringing back my wayward foals,” the shaman said calmly. “Alive or not, my sons are now where they belong, with their kind, and not suffering in the Wastes with the likes of you.” She once again looked at Xeno and tapped her hoof on the desk a few times. “She has been gone many years, and many have asked about her. I’m quite sure Ziven will be glad to hear that she has returned, as a marriage can now be planned.”

Xeno’s eyes went wide. She blushed furiously, for the first time I could remember. “She is your assistant, why would...”

“There are two of the name Ziven in the tribe,” Zorana corrected her. “The stallion, you remember. Is that not why you fled?”

The three of us looked at the zebra mare. Even Rose seemed perplexed by the turn of events. Was that why Xeno kept saying she had no home to return to? Because her mom wanted her hitched with some stallion she didn’t know? Was that how zebra culture worked?

How fucking stupid could-

Zorana dragged me from my thoughts by her piercing eyes staring directly into my soul. Around her eyes, the red-painted designs shifted, twisting around in the flickering light, all leading the view back to her eyes... “Focus, Hidden Fortune,” she said. When had she learned my full name? “I’ve forgotten more than you will ever know, pony.” Was she a mind reader now, or was I just that transparent?

“What?” I stammered, once again lost in the conversation.

“You mean she didn’t tell you why she fled?” asked the mare. The sigils on her coat still seemed to move, swirling in circles and the lines shifting among one another. The candlelight reflected in her eyes and drew strange shadows across her face.

“That wasn’t why I left, mother,” interrupted Xeno. Her words snapped me from the strange illusion of Zorana’s decorations. “I left at father’s suggestion, to become my own mare.”

“Noble,” said Rose. A bit of life returned to her eyes. She, of all ponies, would know why somepony, or zebra, would want to become their own person by their own experiences and find strength in that.

Zorana laughed quietly. “And here I thought you were running from responsibility,” she said, a tone of venom in her voice. “Did you find yourself, in the Wasteland? Did running free and finding death for your family do anything to prove what you believed? Or have you finally come to terms with what is true, and accepted what watches over us?”

“Your beliefs are superstition,” Xeno said through gritted teeth.

The red-painted mare raised both eyebrows and blinked. She sat on her haunches and clapped her hooves several times, at a sarcastically slow pace. “Congratulations,” she hissed, “you’ve finally learned. You always thought it meant the stars would intervene personally, as if the lights in the sky you can see through breaks in the clouds would reach down and move you on strings.” She placed her hooves on the ground and stood up. Turning to the three of us ponies, she asked, “Do you feel that your Goddesses are truly a force that walks with you upon this world?”

“I don’t question my faith,” I answered. I had enough terrible thoughts going through my mind at any given time, between my own doubts and the whispers of a madmare telling me things that weren’t true. The last thing I needed was to worry about whether my faith in the Goddesses meant I actually thought Celestia and Luna put their hooves into my life personally, or if it was simply a matter of believing.

“Celestia and Luna lived and raised the sun and the moon,” Lost answered, without so much as blinking. “Twice Luna plunged the world into darkness. Of course they’re a force in the world.”

“I take it you haven’t heard of their demise?” the mare asked. “While I am nowhere near as extreme as those in my homeland, I can at least face fact. Perhaps it would do good to look at your lives.”

“We didn’t come here to talk about whether or not some higher power holds sway over our lives, we came to talk business,” snapped Rose. She glanced back at the grenade rifle that hung on her back, then grimaced.

I felt the same as her, knowing that if Zolera hadn’t damaged it, we might have had some leverage. This mare was a bitch. Worse than even the clone herself.

“Why should I do business with you?” asked the shaman. She turned away and snapped her tail at the pink pony before sitting down.

“Two reasons,” Rose answered. “One; I’m not going to leave until you do, and I can wait far longer than you can. Two; it’ll benefit both of us if we do, and save a lot of trouble for everyone.” She looked back and forth between Lost and I, then stepped forward. “Normally I’d work my way in and make threats until I got what I wanted, but you’re smarter than that. Your kind can make things that I need. I know you can, because I remember working with zebras personally during the war. We had a successful smuggling ring from your homeland.”

Zorana laughed.

Did a Ministry of Peace worker really work hoof-in-hoof with zebras, even during the war? Why would anypony do that? I understood that we weren’t so different, but when both sides were killing one another, was it really a good idea to bring their influences and their vices into Equestria?

“I’m not joking,” the pink mare yelled.

“She wishes for your alchemical creations, mother,” said Xeno. “She’s a drug pusher.” It still felt weird to hear Xeno use contractions, and she had to twist her mouth slightly to force the words together. Was it really so important to live up to the image Zorana expected?

“We don’t make those anymore,” answered the tribe’s leader. “I’m well versed in the creation of potions to heal, elixirs to strengthen, and extracts one can use to reach new understandings of themselves. I’m not one to advocate the old recipes used to force mares and stallions into a rage, or to stupefy them.”

“You might not be, but I am,” Rose answered.

“She’s telling the truth,” I said. “She has a whole town addicted to different drugs.” Of course, I neglected to mention that I stood to benefit from this, with the possibility of getting a larger supply of Buck or Med-X for when I got myself in over my head.

“You say that like I want to keep them all wrapped in a haze,” Rose said. “You cut me so,” she added, sarcastically. She turned back to Zorana. “Anyway. My supplies are dwindling, and after a certain mare went on a rampage, I need more.”

Zorana looked up at me, then back at Rose. “I’ve already said I refuse,” she said. Once again the lines and sigils on her seemed to shift, as if following the shadows made by the candles in the room. They snapped back into place whenever I looked directly at them.

“And I said I won’t take that as an answer,” Rose growled.

“What about a trade?” asked Xeno. She stepped between the two, and pushed Rose back a few inches from the desk.

“I’m not normally one to negotiate, but if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes,” said the clone.

Zorana closed her eyes and rested her hooves before her muzzle. For a moment she was silent, and her eyes moved about under her closed eyelids. “You’ve brought back my daughter,” she finally said, quietly. “You allowed my sons a proper burial. There aren’t many ponies who would do that for a zebra, especially one they killed themselves. Though we are isolated, we have intermingled with your kind outside, and we know very well how the majority of ponies view us.” Slowly she opened her eyes and looked down at us. From behind her hooves, she smiled. “I’ll think about it. Go and ask the others what they think. If the payment is worth it, I’m sure the old recipes will turn up.”

Rose smirked. “Thank yo-”

“Leave,” said Zorana, interrupting the clone pony. She pointed a hoof at the door.

We filed out quietly, not a single one of us daring to say anything to invoke the mare’s wrath. The minute I passed the door, it felt like a weight had been lifted from me, and my head felt clearer. Xeno exited last, and quietly shut the door behind her.

“I hope you liked my mom,” she said.

* * *

We left and trotted down the hallway back toward the rest of the tribe’s shops and homes. The zebras looked subtly different now, far more casual than they had been during the funeral. I managed to pick out little things I hadn’t noticed before. One mare sitting next to an open window wore several golden necklaces, stacked up from withers to chin. She looked at us as we passed, barked excited words at Xeno in their language and held up a set of golden earrings. Another shop held another mare, who looked nearly identical to the first, selling amulets and charms inscribed with letters and pictures I didn’t understand or couldn’t read. As I looked around, I noticed several other zebras with similar adornments. It was different, more befitting of what I expected of a ‘tribe.’

Without a response we passed by, only to see a stallion across the hallway trading with another. The two bartered with goods, rather than caps, one offering more of the paint I’d seen being worn. The other stallion offered a jar that looked exactly like the kind Xeno kept in her satchel, which I guessed was probably full of spices or an exotic ingredient for the alchemical concoctions they were supposed to be so proficient at crafting.

One rather glamorous mare, with a mohawk curled at the tip and a smattering of color painted over her eyes stood right at the door to a shop full of dresses. Though the Wasteland seemed to eat clothing for breakfast, given the damage to my jacket, one zebra seemed intent to try and bring some fashion back. Through the window of the shop were several patterns unlike anything I’d seen before, with flowing designs and sleeves that stuck out as if stuffed. They were designed in the most fanciful of colors, so much so that I’d never ever wear anything like them.

Already back to her normally bitchy self, Rose went right about her work. We followed her as she made a beeline for a shop that Xeno pointed out. With Xeno as a translator, we made good time going from shops to residences, and even spoke to some zebras in the halls. Within the hour, she found three different zebras (through several hallways and stores) that knew the recipes she needed. All of them hesitated to accept her offer, and only after she offered much greater payment were they swayed.

Xeno, of course, made a wonderful mare to translate between the clone and her potential business partners. Now that we were free of her mother and the overbearing nature and lashing out, Xeno got back to her normal self. I still found myself shocked to see her express so much emotion, since I’d always known her to be so reserved, and could only hope that when we headed back to the other side of the mountains, she’d truly let us into her head and meet the real mare.

Assuming she came back with us at all.

Lost and I weren’t able to help much, and instead discussed in hushed whispers what Zorana had said, trying to figure out what it really meant. Every stallion that passed us, we examined critically, as if Xeno was really our sister and we needed to protect her from her own kind. It kept us both busy during the business hunting. At least it made things go by faster. Without us interrupting, they were able to get work done quickly, and Lost and I spent a few minutes just being sisters and talking. Honestly, it felt somewhat naughty to gossip, as if we should be paying attention instead of scrutinizing the flaws of those around us.

I couldn’t stop myself thinking about Xeno though. What if she wanted to stay?

Truth be told, I had assumed they’d planned an arranged marriage for her. Even if everything Lost and I chatted about meant nothing, it felt nice to have a break from the constant stress of the Wasteland. Only the cut on my muzzle reminded me what we’d be heading back to when we finished.

“Xeno, you have a minute?” I asked. I hooked a steel hoof around her leg and tugged her away from Rose.

“Yes, Hiddenpony, what is it?” she asked as she stepped back away from Rose and let the cloned mare walk off without us.

“Can you really talk normal?” Lost asked. I flinched. That was her opener?

“Thisis normal for me, Lostpony,” answered Xeno. “My mother is a perfectionist, and Iam not to her standard. I understand your ‘contractions,’ but they donot feel natural to me. Itis not the way of my language. I do whatis comfortable to me.”

“Who’s Ziven?” I asked, dragging things back on track. I looked past the zebra at Rose, then pulled her around a corner. “And why’d you always say you never had a home to return to?”

Lost nodded, moving along with us. She rolled her hoof in the air, beckoning an answer from the mare.

“Heis a stallion from my youth,” she answered. “One of red eyes and dark purple stripes, a stallion of desires.”

“So one you find desirable?” asked Lost. “Why not go for it then?”

“You misunderstand, Lostpony,” Xeno said, shaking her head. She sat and pressed herself against the wall. With a sigh, she looked up at the skylight in the ceiling above. “Not my desires. He is one of avarice, of greed. I donot like him, but that isnot why I left. That isnot why I didnot wish to return.”

“Please, just tell us what’s going on,” I begged. “You’ve been so open lately. We care about you. You can tell us.” I hugged her, and got a grunt in response. Lost nodded too.

“What my mother said is true,” she said when I let her go. “My father suggested I leave to find who I am, to see whether the beliefs my mother follows are true. I found myself suffocating, as if those beliefs were designed to press the spirit from my body as they would the air from my lungs. There is much of what you would call ‘sameness’ here.” She looked back at her flank and rubbed her hoof over the swirl emblazoned on her, following the lines. “I must go, expand, learn. That is my calling.”

“But you seem so happy to be home,” Lost said, a tinge of sadness in her voice. I knew what she meant. We had no real home to go back to, no community we grew up in to provide happy memories.

“A day at home is good. A week is punishment,” Xeno said, staring at Lost. “A lifetime would be akin to your time with the slaver.” Her eyes flicked to the side, looking at the Mane Attraction salon. She shook her head, closed her eyes and wrapped her forehooves around herself. With a heavy shudder, she opened her eyes and stared at the floor. “Iam ready to leave now, if you were to run from the pink mare.”

“As much as I want to, there are still the mares from Skirt to worry about,” I said, wishing I could take the offer.

“We’re here for you Xeno, thick or thin,” said Lost. Her eyes crossed and she looked up at the charred tip of her horn.

“Then let us hurry. The sooner we finish, the sooner we may leave,” said the zebra. She smiled and stood. Her dark coat seemed to shine, as if a something lit up inside her. She looked happy, and her dark blue eyes practically sparkled.

* * *

With a nod, Rose turned from the zebra merchant, a mare living in a store full of vials. “That’s all we need,” she said. “I got my rifle repaired too, so I’m happy with how this afternoon went. Let’s head back to your glorious leader and get proper negotiations taken care of. This has taken far too long already.”

We’d only been wandering the halls and talking to the locals for a few hours, which seemed like far less than ‘too long’ for a mare who’d lived for more than a century already. Still, given that it had taken us the entire night to get from Idle to the Stables, and then another half-day to get across the mountains and to this city, I could understand. The afternoon wore on slowly, as time often did when I was bored, and we’d only have another day to make the long trip back. If we had enough time, I would consider it a miracle.

“Anyone wondering where Fine Tune is?” I asked, trying to push the worries out of my head.

“Doesn’t matter,” Rose said. “We don’t need him for the negotiations.” She pushed her way past me and lifted the barrel of her grenade rifle with her magic, then pointed it at me. “Time’s-a-wastin’.”

“He’s a big changeling, sis,” Lost said. “He’ll be okay, right?” She turned to follow Rose, even though she scowled at the pink mare.

“You don’t know what it’s like when he feeds on something,” I said. “I do. I’m not worried about him, I’m worried about others knowing and having caught him.”

“There hasn’t been any hysteria, and no one has made a fuss. I’m sure everything’s fine,” she answered. “I believe in the little guy.” She walked off. “How about this? You go with Rose back the way we came. Xeno and I will take the other hallway. We’ve the whole length of the mall to walk back at this point.” She pointed down another hallway that led off in the side direction, but met up with the main hallway at its endpoint. “One of us will find him somewhere.”

I looked at Rose. I did want to ask her about what happened when talking to Zorana, and get to the bottom of exactly what had her so harrowed, so it felt like a good plan. “Deal,” I agreed. I hugged Lost. “See you when we get to the office.”

“See you- Oh hey,” she said, catching herself mid-sentence. “Let me use the PipBuck, I might be able to snag him sooner.”

“Umm, sure,” I agreed. I held up my hoof and watched as her horn sparked several times.

Groaning, she gave up and hung her head. “Alright, that’s not going to work,” she muttered, crossing her eyes and glaring up at her own horn. She turned to Rose and, after an explanation that included far too many magical and technical terms that went over my head, had the clone pony swap the PipBuck across.

Lifting her own leg, the PipBuck clasped onto it, encased in a aquamarine haze. With a tap, Lost started it up, then blinked a few times as the E.F.S. came to life. “Thanks. See you on the other side,” she said, and hugged me tight. With a reassuring smile, she ruffled my mane and turned to Xeno. “Let’s go.”

The two mares walked off, their hooves tapping against the tile and their tails swaying side to side behind them. Really, there wasn’t much better backup I could ask for. But it gave rise to those worries Zorana had raised, about Lost being gripped by the stars.

I shook my head and trotted after Rose. Superstitious nonsense shouldn’t sway me, since she probably just wanted to hold something above us, to put herself in a position of power in the conversation. After all, if she acted like she knew something we didn’t, it’d make her look more important and keep us below her.

Of course, if she was right about any of it, would that mean she was right about all of us? I looked down at my hooves, one encased in metal and the other replaced entirely. Would I really become a monster of steel and flesh that couldn’t die?

Immortality had its upsides, I supposed.

“Are you alright?” I asked as I trotted up to Rose.

“That’s a stupid question,” she spat with a glare. Softening slightly, she slumped her shoulders. “I’m fine.”

I looked around, not wanting to seem like I was pressing the matter. I did need to look for Fine Tune, after all. We walked past a few ancient stores, most of which were still open, though now with new owners. Some had cracked glass, and the outlines of old advertisements, long since torn away. The zebras seemed fairly open, as a culture, since they technically lived in what amounted to ‘glass houses.’ A couple walked past Rose and me, talking in their native tongue.

Since the funeral feast died down, the mall seemed much more like a regular town. Zebras went about their business, walked from place to place, tending to their lives. Just like anypony would do.

“Is it true?” I asked, looking back to the clone.

“Of course it’s true. I’m quite happy,” she answered. “We’ve got the proper personnel to make what I need, and if everything works, we can start a trade. My original will be happy. I just need to relay the information to another copy to send it back home.”

“I meant about you not having a soul,” I clarified.

She stopped, her hoof still in the air. Her pink coat seemed to fade, as if the color somehow drained from it. She set her hoof down. “Yes,” she said. Turning away, she sped off.

I walked after her, passing another zebra and weaving past a trash can. “So what happens if you die?” I asked, pushing just a little.

“I die,” she answered. “So, nothing.” She sped up, walking faster but not quite breaking into a trot.

“I’m sorry,” I said, still struggling to keep up with her.

“Why? You owe me nothing, and you’ve treated me like shit since we started this escapade,” she snapped at me. “I don’t need your fucking pity.”

I trotted ahead and jumped in front of her. “I mean it,” I said. “I’m not the smartest mare around, but even I can tell that it bothers you.”

“Of course it fucking bothers me!” she yelled. “You try being a century old.” She prodded me in the chest with a hoof. “Try becoming your own mare.” She prodded me again, pushing me back a step. “Learn more about yourself than you ever did as a fat slob stuck in a bed.” She jabbed me harder. “Try knowing that when you die all that remains of you is a ‘she died’ message popping into her head, and bam, she makes another one. No more Rose number two-oh-three.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and with another jab of her hoof, broke free. They rolled down her cheeks, matting her pink coat. She sniffled and jabbed me a few more times. “Nothing!”

Zebras poked their heads from their shops, and others who’d been walking by stopped to stare.

“I’d remember you,” I said quietly.

She bared her teeth and stepped forward, pressing her muzzle against me. For a second I feared she might hit me. Her hot breath washed over me as she snorted. I realized she was fighting the urge to break down, to cry louder and just let it out.

“For what it’s worth, you’ve made an impression,” I whispered, pulling away from her a hair. Her muzzle stayed glued to mine, as we stared one another in the eyes. I could see my reflection staring back at me. I looked so unsure. “I’m sorry.”

The clone pulled herself back and abruptly sat down. Her rump hit the floor with a thud, and she grabbed onto her mane with both forehooves. Slowly, she twirled the hair back and forth between them. “When I die,” she said slowly, quietly, “I’ll fade away, as if I never existed. My memories, my experiences...” She sniffled and wiped an eye. “A hundred and some odd years of life by myself, since she spawned me, will disappear.” With a deep breath, she looked up at me.

I moved to sit next to her, and angrily waved the staring bystanders away. This was private, even if we were doing it in the middle of their home. “Go ahead, let it out,” I whispered.

“I told you before, right?” she asked with another sniffle. “There’s no hivemind, no presence or anything.” Her hooves worked faster at her mane, twisting it around and tugging at the curl on the end of her forelocks. “So when I die, all she knows is that I’m gone. She’ll send another. That new one will be a carbon copy of her, down to the memories... Anything I did, she won’t remember. And I have no soul, I’m just a meatbag. If you cut me, I don’t even really bleed...!” That set her off again, and she started to bawl. Her tears hit the tiles and formed a small puddle, as she sobbed and coughed, sniffling every few seconds.

“Is there any way to fix that?” I asked. I knew I was pulling at straws. There probably wasn’t a magical way to clone a soul too, was there?

“No. I just have to try and live and never die,” she said, before bursting out laughing.

The zebras I’d shooed away returned, and from the corner of my eye I could see them watching. Their ears swiveled toward us, even if they weren’t actively looking. Seeing and hearing strangers to put on such a display was probably prime material for gossip later.

The pink mare kept laughing. She fell onto her side and kicked her hind legs. Her eyes teared up again as she held herself and giggled. “She’s... hahaha! She’s been with servant copies so long,” she said, through bursts of giggling. “I doubt she remembers how to get rid of us.”

“That’s good right?” I asked, once again grasping at straws. “She can’t just erase you from life, so you can be safe and keep living!”

A few more giggles, and one more kick of her hind legs, and she nodded. “Yeah...” she said, then giggled again. Reaching to her head, she wiped the tears away and let out a long slow breath. “Yeah...”

“You gonna be okay?” I asked, holding out a hoof to help her up.

“As long as you don’t shoot me in the head,” she answered solemnly. Her fetlock hooked around mine and she pulled herself back to sitting. “You’re not so bad, y’know that?” She hit me gently in the shoulder with a hoof, smearing the remains of her tears across my jacket.

“I’ll try not to,” I said, returning the gesture, without smeary tears. “But I meant it. You’ve made an impression on me I doubt I’ll ever forget.”

“Thanks...” she whispered.

With the eyes of a dozen zebras watching, I made friends with somepony I’d considered an enemy, and actively sought out to murder as often as possible. “You’re welcome,” I whispered back.

* * *

A now-composed Rose and I walked down the last hallway toward the office Zorana called her home. Through small-talk after her breakdown, we’d gotten to know one another a little better. Despite our heart to heart, I still thought she was a gigantic bitch. One moment of breakdown didn’t exactly make up for holding the lives of innocent ponies hostage in an effort to make us supply her town with more drugs to placate the townsponies. But as much as she’d done wrong, this particular Rose copy wasn’t so terrible. She’d learned a lot in a century, and explained some of the details that made her different from the original.

While the original liked the drugs she pushed, and used them often back during the days of the War, this copy didn’t like much aside from the occasional drink and a good smoke when times were tough. She remembered watching her original home crumble and become just another ruin, years after the War, when a particularly bad radioactive winter rolled through decades ago, something the first Rose hadn’t been there to witness. She surprised me, with the little details and distinctions that made her become her own pony. Apparently, if ten Rose copies went out into the Wasteland on their own for a year, every one that actually made it back would be completely different; that was how easy it was to change their personalities. It made sense, when I considered that they really only had copies of memories, and those were probably overwritten the easiest.

While I still didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her, I didn’t hate her.

I didn’t see Lost, Xeno, or Fine Tune in the hallway when we walked closer. So, we’d beaten them back? I didn’t feel comfortable seeing Zorana all alone, given the way she talked circles around me. The weird way her sigils seemed to swirl around made it all the worse, because I couldn’t tell if it was my mind or my eyes playing tricks on me.

The office door hung open, just a crack.

“Well, we could always just listen to her plans?” Rose offered, pointing to the bottom corner of the warped door. It left the tiniest of gaps one could eavesdrop through.

“Quiet!” I snapped. “Usually I get caught doing stupid shit like that. And why would she be talking in our language, anyway?” We could just ask if Lost, Xeno and Fine were back yet. I reached over and knocked on the door.

“Spoilsport,” Rose groused as she stood up and backed away.

The door opened all the way, and Zolera popped his head out. When he saw who we were, his eyes lit up and he smiled. “Good! Come in, hurry,” he said, waving a hoof for us to come in. He pulled the door open the rest of the way, showing us a much nicer-looking office. The candles were put out, and the outside blinds were now open, letting in quite a bit of light and making everything look far more pleasant.

Surprisingly, Lost and the others were already in the room. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I guessed. It meant less time wasted, and more time we could use getting what we needed so we could save the poor mares back in Idle. The sooner that happened, the sooner we could deal with the fat slob Rose and get back to safety.

Or go hunting for more treasure.

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and trotted in to stand next to my sister.

“Hey,” Lost said, waving a hoof. “What kept you?” she asked, concern in her voice.

“Rose and I had a heart-to-heart,” I answered. The answer got a raised eyebrow and a confused look. Lost patted me on the head and turned back to the zebra in charge of the tribe.

Fine Tune waved to me, a gigantic smile plastered across his face. His eyes damn-near glowed, and he looked incredibly proud of himself. After a chirp-like whistle, he said, “Hi!”

“Have a good meal?” I asked, trying not to laugh.

“Mmhmm!” he said, nodding his head.

Better some poor sap than me. At least they’d be okay in a few hours. I hadn't gotten that sickening emptiness in the pit of my soul since I got to sleep overnight on the motorwagon, at least.

“Did you find any willing to help?” asked Zorana, who still sat behind her desk. None of her sigils seemed to be moving this time, much to my relief.

“Yes,” Rose answered curtly. She stepped forward and stood up. With her forehooves planted on the desk, she stared at the mare. It was a relief to not be the one doing negotiations with mares who obviously wanted nothing to do with us. “They’ve offered their help, and I can get a generous payment to each of them, and to you. We’ll call it a finder’s fee.”

“Do you really think it will be so easy?” asked the red-painted shaman.

Zolera whispered something to his wife. It stumped me how such a jolly zebra, who so passionately loved his drink and other simple pleasures, could find this condescending and outright mean mare worthy of his affections.

Zorana snorted. Her hoof shot up to cover her mouth. Squinting, she shot the stallion a look.

“I think it’s well within our powers to work together on this. You’re the only thing standing in the way,” said Rose. “Tell me, what exactly is the problem?” She swung a hoof out, knocking some of the odds and ends from the mare’s desk.

“Oh dear,” I whispered.

Xeno’s eyes went wide, and she took a step back.

I braced for it, but Zorana did nothing. She looked down her muzzle at Rose, and smirked. “Tell me, where will we get the ingredients for all these drugs and potions and chemical concoctions you desire so much?” She pushed herself from the desk and moved her chair out of the way. With a flick of her hoof, she pulled the blinds away completely.

The window faced the far fields, the same way to the graveyard where Zahi and Zaki were laid to rest earlier, and the barren nothingness that stretched on to the mountains. The view itself was magnificent, but she raised a good point. It took all sorts of things to make what Xeno made, and were it not for Fine Tune having arrived, we’d have run out long ago. Without ingredients, whatever they may be, there wasn’t a way to make what she wanted.

“Ihave some supplies,” Xeno offered. “Itis not much, but...”

“Unnecessary,” snapped Zorana. “And stop talking like that. I told you already, we didn’t raise you to act as if you were afflicted with a curse of tongues.”

“Kindness, love,” said Zolera. He rested a hoof on her shoulder and shook gently.

She looked over to him, the ghost of a smile appearing on her lips. “Sorry,” she said. With a deep breath, she continued. “Whether I’m the one standing in the way or not, there’s more to this than you know. We have our own troubles here, and cannot spare anything.

“Losing two of my own hurts, but the fact is, it hurt the tribe more than just me,” she explained. The mare leaned against her husband and rested her head against his shoulder.

“Scouts, scavengers. Scraps,” Zolera explained. He wrapped a hoof around his wife and squeezed tight. “We survive on little. Feast? Special times only.” He squeezed Zorana again, enough to make her squeak just like Xeno had when he squeezed her earlier.

She hit him in the chest and pulled back. Clearing her throat, she glared at him. “There will be no deal, no matter how much support you gather from my tribe. Zolera speaks the truth, we get by on what little we can. This has been a time of famine.”

“Trade with buffalo and pony alike has dried up, as few dare to come this close to our lands,” she continued. “I’ve sought many options, communing with the spirits, seeking enlightenment in drink, and spending my time with those like Zoan’s daughter.” Zorana sat at her desk once again, blocking my view of the mountains outside. “While we are able to make much from little, I still have an entire tribe to think about, before I go throwing our resources to another.”

“What about in Blackhoof?” I asked. “There’s plenty there. The city and its suburbs might be ruins just like here, but I always manage to find a little more.” I took a step forward, hoping... “Even in places that seem empty.”

“She’s right,” agreed Lost.

“I’ve seen it,” added Xeno. “Hiddenpo- Hidden has pulled treasure from nothing. The city has what we might need to survive.”

“Yes, we,” Zorana said, eyeing her daughter. “I will take that under consideration, provided you stay here.”

“What?” Xeno and my sister yelled at the same time.

“We have nothing to spend the bottlecaps you ponies use for trading on, they’re worthless to my tribe,” Zorana explained. She trotted around the desk and rested a hoof on Xeno’s shoulder. “What my tribe needs is to stay together. We are stronger together. Our resources are limited, and every set of hooves is necessary.”

“Rose already got everything and everyone that we need, and all we need is your stamp of approval. You're holding us up, just so you can get your daughter hitched to some random stallion?” I asked, completely taken aback by what just happened. Zorana was a bitch to us, and I felt like half of what she said was just posturing to hold something over us. But this was worse than, well it was worse than Rose holding four innocent mares hostage.

“Zorana,” said Zolera in a quiet voice. He stepped forward and pushed the two mares apart. He said something to his wife in their language, and they started to argue.

“What just happened?” I asked.

Lost shrugged, looking just as confused as I did.

“We might have just been fucked,” said Rose.

“I don’t know, but it’s not good,” Fine Tune said. He took a few steps back, his ears pinning to the back of his head. “I can feel it, and it’s bad.”

“Look you stupid bitch,” yelled Rose. “It’s simple. You name a price and we go get what you want. How hard is it?” She jabbed the one of the red sigils on Zorana’s flank.

The mare reared up the second the hoof tapped her. She backpedaled away and dropped down. With one hoof she shoved the much larger Zolera away. “How dare you touch me, you abomination!” she shouted at Rose.

“Just because I have no soul doesn’t make me less of a pony,” shouted Rose. “I’m trying to work with you here! If I wanted to, I could bring an army down on you and take what I wanted.”

“Whoa, Rose, calm down,” I said. I grabbed her and pulled back, hoping to keep a fight from starting.

“You think you can just walk into my home and make demands?” yelled the zebra mare. The sigils on her coat shifted again, as if her moved by her anger alone. “We have no need for your trinkets and toys! There are zebras that have lost all, and have given up finding new life in their time on this world. We are under constant attack from the outside, and our resources are sacrificed at all times to continue as we are with crumbs!”

“Stop,” said Zolera, his deep voice resonating off the walls. He placed a hoof on Zorana and pulled.

“No, this time I will put the dead mare in her place. I was easy on them before. Look at her, she reeks of arum lily,” she said, pointing a hoof accusingly at Rose. “She insults me, treating me as a foal. You understand her language, and the threats she has made, do you not?”

He said something to her, whispering it into her ear.

“Look, we want to work together,” L.A. said. She moved between Rose and Zorana. “We have ponies that we need to help too, and working together will benefit us both.” Her eyes darted back and forth, questioning. I knew what she was thinking, whether it was right to tell her what we’d done back at Idle, and what we would do once the situations were all taken care of.

“My ancestors’ allegiances lay with ponies, and we fought against our own,” said the shaman. “But the pact has been abandoned. Our trade contacts have disappeared, seasons have gone by with nothing. We need zebra to survive, not your pittances.” She spat on the floor.

“Hey, no need for that!” I yelled. Suddenly, I wanted to be the one to take care of this mare. No one spat at my sister like that.

“We have worked together with ponies before,” Xeno said. “Times of struggle can be overcome by working together, it can be a boon for the village, if you would cease your stubbornness.”

“Why do you need more zebras?” Fine Tune asked. “There’s dozens, maybe hundreds here. I can feel love between them. I don’t know how your kind create more, but it should not be hard for a Queen like you to issue the call for more.”

“I don’t think it works like that, Fine Tune,” I said, holding a hoof up to the side of my mouth. That suggestion might be a little awkward.

He had a point though, I hadn’t seen a single foal since we’d arrived.

“Look, there are lives at stake on our end here, too,” Lost said, holding a hoof up. “If we don’t work together, ponies will die. Ponies we promised to help.” She pled with the tribal leader. I hoped it would work.

Zorana just laughed, a laugh that made my sister’s hopeful look shatter. “Others? Like this one?” She pointed at Rose. “I deal with those who have souls, not monsters of flesh.”

“You can stop rubbing that in,” snapped Rose. “If money isn’t what you want, then what can I offer for a deal?”

Zolera said something to his wife, and tugged at her.

The room darkened, as the light coming through the window was suddenly blocked. For only a second we stood in the dark room, eerily still with no candles casting strange shadows about. As soon as it disappeared, the light returned.

The color drained from Zorana’s face. She regained her composure almost at once and looked us over, very obviously checking to see if we’d noticed the sudden change in her appearance.

Only Fine Tune scrutinized her, his eyes squinted as he looked at her face. His own face scrunched up, as he mimicked the exact expression she’d had for that split second when the light returned.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Probably nothing,” she snapped. Turning from me, she glared at Rose. “This is not up for negotiation. I will not sell out my tribe for your gain.” She pointed at the door of her office.

“No,” said Zolera. He moved between the door and the rest of us. “Deal. We must-”

“I’ve offered her everything I can, and she hasn’t given me a straight answer about what she wants,” said Rose. She pushed past the zebra, ducking around him and leaving the room. “Call me when she decides to be reasonable. I’ve got more time than she’ll ever know.”

“We want to work together,” Lost said. “There’s a lot at risk, and this can work out for both of us.”

“Out.”

“C’mon Xeno, let’s get out of here,” I said. I turned and trotted out. Once out, I turned to watch Lost and Fine Tune follow me. “Please?” I begged, as my zebra friend stood there, unmoving.

“I cannot,” she said. “You must understand, Hiddenpony.” She waved a hoof, and whispered something I didn’t quite understand, but it sounded a lot like ‘sadaka.’ She lifted her hoof, and just barely pointed at me. With the slightest twitch of her hoof, back and forth, she pointed to Lost, then back to me.

The door slammed shut.

* * *

I paced back and forth down the empty hallway. Every few paces, I looked back at the office door to Zorana’s room. All that posturing, and the refusal. It made no sense. We wanted to help her and she could help us. Was there really something so horrible about what we were offering? I knew drugs and addictions were bad, but dammit, this was to help innocents that needed saving. How could she be so callous and just not care?

“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor if you keep that up,” said Rose.

“I don’t care, I’m trying to figure out exactly what happened in there,” I snapped. I knew I wasn’t a thinky pony and a lot of stuff went over my head when I got lost in thought. I knew I tended to jump to conclusions, but this all had me flustered. What more did she want? And exactly what did ‘sadaka’ mean?

“It’s simple: she’s a bitch,” said Rose. She shrugged and walked off. “I’m going to go find some more of myself, and relay a message. This looks like it’ll take a lot longer than I thought.” She looked back at us and smiled. “As much as I don’t want to admit it, you’re helping, and those mares shouldn’t get enslaved because the zebra won’t work with us.” She waved and continued down the hall. “I’ll meet up with you afterward.”

“We’ll be around,” answered Lost. She sat against the wall, staring a hole into the office door. “We’re not going anywhere without Xeno.”

“Damn right!” I yelled, more to myself than to L.A. or Fine Tune. Snorting, I walked over to my sister and sat down next to her. With a sigh, I asked, “What do we do next?”

“We wait, I guess,” she answered with a shrug. “I didn’t see another door out of that room, and they can’t stay in there forever.”

Fine Tune trotted back and forth, looking quite antsy. “Something’s wrong,” he said, his voice shrill. “Emotions clashing, happy, sad, angry. I can feel too many. It’s driving me mad!” He trotted back and forth faster. “Can we move away? Too much, overload. Please, my Queen?”

“Yeah, as long as we can still see the door, that’s fine,” said Lost. She pushed off the wall and dusted herself off. Smiling, she offered me a hoof. “We’ll figure this out, then we’re heading back.”

“Do things by force if we have to?” I asked as I grabbed her hoof. I pulled hard against her fetlock and righted myself. A bolt of pain shot up through my foreleg, reminding me it was still extremely broken inside the steel hoof Praline gave me.

“Only if we have to,” she answered.

The three of us walked down the hall, away from the majority of the tribe. We ended up near another entrance, this one also blocked off with a makeshift wall of benches, sign poles, and garbage cans. It had a doorway to a service room off to the side, just inside the doors. It was small and full of old cleaning supplies, but that made it perfect for a spot we could talk in private. After Fine Tune shuffled in, I followed, and Lost sat by the door to hold it open.

To keep myself busy, I picked through the old boxes and crates. I found soap, brushes, and a broom. There was a bucket in the corner, which I turned over to sit on. They weren’t much, but I was sure the Steel Rangers wouldn’t mind having more to help clean out the Stable. I even grabbed an air-freshener, to put on the motorwagon, so we wouldn’t have to deal with the stench of the dead. The distraction helped, as I loaded everything into my saddlebags. The less I had to think about all the horrible things that might have caused Xeno to leave this place, the better.

“Do you have any ideas?” I asked as I sat back on the overturned bucket. Digging through the supplies really only killed a few minutes.

“I don’t know, really. There’s a lot of little things that could be going on,” Lost answered. “There’s a lot more than what we’ve seen so far.”

“Like why the cold, distant, creepy-ass shaman is together with the super-nice, gigantic boozehound of a stallion?” I asked, laughing.

Both Fine Tune and Lost snickered at the joke.

“He makes her laugh,” said the changeling. “She was... different when he was there. You saw it, didn’t you?” With a flash of green fire, he transformed into an approximation of Zorana, but without the painted sigils on her coat. The changeling let out a squeak, the same sound Zorana’d made when Zolera squeezed her in a hug. The same expression she’d made followed, where she regained her composure, up to and including the motion where she’d hit the stallion. When he finished his one-bug show, he transformed back to a unicorn stallion.

“There’s more going on than we know,” repeated Lost. “Xeno said they were superstitious, but I haven’t seen any of that so far. This whole thing about a Ziven is all new to us, and we don’t know anything about it. Really, we just need to talk to her...” She leaned out through the doorway and looked down the hall again.

“So we wait, that’s all we can do?” I asked. I rested a hoof on one of the cleaning solution bottles and rolled it in a little circle, to occupy myself.

“She didn’t leave us when we were in U Cig, and things were a lot worse there. If it takes a week, we’ll wait here for her,” L.A. answered. “Thick or thin, we’re here for her.”

“What if she wants to stay?” asked Fine Tune. He watched as I moved the bottle back and forth, like a predator focusing on his next meal.

“If that’s what she really wants, we don’t stop her, but do you think she wants to be here?” my sister answered with another question. She didn’t look at us, and instead kept focused on the hallway.

“No, I don’t think so. But I think if all we do is sit and wait, we’re not going to get anywhere. We need to actually do something!” I said. I clanked my steel forehooves together. “I’ve taken on worse odds. We can charge in, get her, and run!”

“What about the mares back in Idle, then?” she asked.

“I can just transform into Rose and trick her into freeing them?” offered Fine Tune.

Lost blinked several times and looked at the changeling like he’d just shot her. “Why didn’t you do that in the first place, then?” she asked.

“Well, umm,” he stammered, tapping his forehooves together. “We weren’t really in a position to do that at the time. If I’d disappeared, she might have thought something was up.”

Lost grimaced, then sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “This all sucks.”

“Eeyup,” I added, once again rolling the bottle back and forth. It felt good to keep my hooves busy.

“What was it she said when the door closed?” asked Lost, after a moments pause. “Sataka?”

“Zataga?” I offered, shrugging. “I don’t know her language.

“No, it was something else, zataka, or sataka,” said Fine Tune. He rolled his tongue around to the side of his mouth, trying to pronounce it properly.

“Well, it wasn’t a word in any language I know,” I said, neglecting to mention that I only knew one language. “You know a bit of hers right? What might that translate to?” I rolled a hoof, hoping.

“Hold on, hold on. Let me think,” he said. Both forehooves went to the sides of his head. He closed his eyes and tilted his head down.

“Take your time, we’ve got all day...” sighed Lost. She stared out and down the hallway, a frown firmly planted on her lips. “Hidden, how’s your face?”

I crossed my eyes and looked at the slash down my muzzle, then looked down at my hooves. The cut still hurt, but really wasn’t that bad. “I’ve had worse,” I said.

“I’m sorry I can’t heal it,” she said absentmindedly.

“Don’t worry about it, Rose tried while you were out. It didn’t work,” I said, remembering when she tried. That whole exchange had been far too awkward.

“Well, shit,” she answered. Her hoof went to the spots she’d been bitten on her neck. “I guess I get another scar to add to the one Gunbuck gave me...”

Without warning, the room erupted in green as fire swirled around the changeling. “Sadaka!” Fine Tune yelled upon the flames falling, now looking identical to Xeno. She threw a hoof in the air in triumph, then with another flashing of fire, she returned to the form of the blue unicorn stallion.

“But what’s it mean?” I asked. “She’s never used that one before, at least not to my knowledge. She pointed to Lost and I, too. Does that mean anything?”

“Hold on, I gotta remember. I’ve really only dealt with zebras once or twice before. They’re rarely buyers,” he said, waving a hoof to quiet me. “It’s, umm.” He chirped.

“Was it something they said when buying?” Lost asked. She turned her attention to the hallway to the two of us in the small room. “Context is important, right?”

Fine Tune stood, as flames erupted around his hooves and engulfed him. When they receded, the blue unicorn had been replaced with a tall, lanky zebra stallion. He looked ancient, with the mohawk of his mane nearly gone, and the white of his coat turning yellow. His gaunt face seemed to show a stallion who’d seen too much, as he stared, unfocused at the wall. “I will take the two crippled,” he said in a raspy voice, “it matters not for sadaka...”

“Well, that’s context alright...” said Lost. She looked over her glasses at the stallion Fine Tune transformed into, in shock.

The flames rose again, turning everything in the room a sickly green. As they faded away, the unicorn stallion sat back down. “I think it means... charity?” he said with a shrug. “Why would she think we’re charity?”

“She doesn’t,” Lost said. “What if it doesn’t mean charity... What if it means offering something to charity?” She looked back down the hallway and bit at her lip.

“Like, they feel like they’re giving something and not getting a return?” I asked. I didn’t want to think about how slavers operated anymore. Those memories hurt, and I knew they bought. That one strange colourful zebra I saw. It could make sense though, right?

“No... I remember. It means sacrifice,” whispered the changeling.

* * *

I stared at the page on energy conversion in Lost’s Intermediate Spellcraft book. Really, I had no idea what any of it meant, but this was how she’d made her arcane blast spell into the fire spell. At least that’s what she said. There were descriptions of how each type of ‘energy’ felt and what sort of concentration was needed to cast a spell. Graphs filled half the page with notes scribbled in with little formulas. Thinking about certain things helped to decide what kind of spell was cast? I turned the page and found a spread of pictures that looked almost like musical notes to me, with lines drawn connecting them and an explanation about where and how to focus, and what each ‘note’ meant for different energy and how to move from one ‘note’ to another. They even wrote down little incantations and rhymes for casting.

Suddenly, I was a lot happier I didn’t have to worry about cheater magic, because none of it made any sense to me. Unless there was a spell to fix the holes in my jacket. That one, I’d be interested in.

I flipped the page again, and read the last few sentences of the chapter. All they told me was that I needed to concentrate and that magic was fickle. It might happen, it might not, and that the only thing a unicorn could do to was try.

I crossed my eyes and looked up at my forehead, where a horn would be if I had one. Mom was a unicorn, and Lost was a unicorn. So maybe if I tried hard enough. I clenched my eyes shut and thought about it, as hard as I could. I peeked an eye open.

Nothing.

I didn’t even get a headache from the effort. All I’d done was waste a few seconds and hurt my jaw from grinding my teeth.

“Here’s your book,” I said, passing it back to my sister.

“Understand now?” she asked, taking it back with her hoof. She slid it back into her saddlebags and smiled at me.

“Not at all,” I admitted. “Run it by me again?”

Fine Tune perked his ears up and turned to Lost. “Can I do it, my Queen?” he asks. He looked so hopeful, it was nearly pathetic. When she nodded, he burst out in a grin and jumped to his hooves. With a swirl of flames wrapping around him, he transformed into a copy of my sister, though without the glasses

She looked exactly like Lost, down to the scars on her neck., though she looked somewhat out of place without the glasses across her nose. He could copy the bandana, but not those? Weird.

Lost snickered, and took her glasses off. She flipped them in her hooves with surprising dexterity, and set them on the bridge of the copy’s nose.

“It’s quite simple,” said the Fine Tune-Lost Art. “For example, telekinesis? It requires simply thinking about picking something up off the ground, and the innate spellcasting ability all unicorns have does the rest. There’s no real trick to it, you just have to know the right feeling for it, like flexing a muscle you didn’t know you had.” With the first part of the explanation finished, fire swirled again, leaving the unicorn stallion standing there. He passed Lost her glasses back.

“There’s not an easy way to put it into words, if you can’t feel it yourself,” my sister continued as she put her glasses back on. “You know when you go to hit something with your hooves, and you just know how? Your body takes care of moving muscles?”

I looked down at my forehooves. I remembered that all too well. The question of ‘how do I move my hoof?’ when I always just did it, hurt my brain. It took me nearly a week to figure it out, and even then I cheated by moving both my forehooves together, using one to rig the other into movement. Was it really like that? A part of you that you just somehow knew? “Like learning to walk?” I asked.

“Sort of,” she answered with a shrug. “Mom taught me, remember? She’d set a book in front of me and tell me to pick it up, but not with my hooves. Think about picking it up, imagine it lifting into the air in front of- Ow.” She winced and tapped her horn. “Old habits, I guess.”

“When I transform,” added Fine Tune, “I picture the pony I want to be, all the little details. Coat color, cutie mark, eye color, mane style and color. I put a picture of that pony in my mind, and close my eyes. I know it’s different because I’m a changeling, but she’s right. It’s something you’re born with, a part of you that you can’t lose.”

“What about a unicorn that loses their horn?” I asked. Personally, that’s where I always aimed, because I knew it took them out of commission for good. Unicorns tended to use their magic as a crutch, and I could exploit that, even if it made me a bad pony for going for that specific weakness.

“That’s just the focus,” Lost said. She reached up and tapped at her horn a few times, right where the black charred part started. “Remember The Glowing One?”

I nodded.

“Her horn was shattered off, all she had was a stump,” Lost reminded me. “She cast magic just fine.”

“Good point,” I admitted. I looked up at the tips of my mane and blew at them, making them flutter back and forth. “I still don’t understand how you do it.”

“It’s magic, Hidden, you don’t have to understand,” she said with a smile. “I’m sure mom would have taught you too if sh- Wait.” She stuck her head out the doorway and looked down the hall. “She’s out.” Lost jumped to her hooves and ran from the room. “Hey! Stop!” she yelled.

I looked over to the changeling and shrugged. “Let’s go!” I said.

He jumped up and trotted after her, chirping when he left the room.

I got up slowly. From sitting too long, my legs had locked in the position they were in, and since everything already hurt after the past few days, I didn’t want to do any more damage. Once on my hooves, I walked after.

In front of the office door stood Zorana, staring down at my sister. She nodded, saying something I couldn’t hear. Neither Zolera or Xeno were with her though. The sigils on her body had been repainted in a different design, this one with wave-like curves going up and down, instead of the spirals and lines that she’d had when I first saw her.

I got to her halfway through her sentence.

“...couldn’t help but feel terrible for how I treated you earlier,” she said. “Let’s go have our evening meal outside, and we’ll discuss a deal. Where’s your pink friend, the one of arum lily? She’ll be interested in the offer I have, no doubt.”

“She’s getting in contact with the ponies back in Blackhoof,” Lost answered. “She’ll be back soon. We can wait here.”

“Where’s Xeno?” I asked. There wasn’t time for playing games and I didn’t feel like being separated from my friend any longer. I stomped a hoof, and ignored the pain that lanced up my leg.

“She’s with her father, being prepared for other things,” explained the shaman. “There’s much to do to prepare her for Ziven, and I can’t have such a long-awaited date go wrong.” She trotted off, her long tail snapping behind her with each step. Without turning around, she continued, “Come. We’ll have a nice meal, and talk of plans for the future.”

“Ah, alright,” stammered Lost, obviously taken aback by the sudden kindness shown by the zebra. When Fine Tune walked past her, a hoof shot out to stop him. She leaned in close. “Wait here for a while, please? See if you can find Xeno for us? I don’t trust her,” she whispered.

Fine Tune saluted. “Of course, my Queen,” he whispered back.

“Good luck,” I whispered as I walked past him.

The changeling trotted off and disappeared back into the maintenance room we’d been waiting in. He peeked his head out so just one ear and one eye were past the edge of the doorframe and watched.

Smart little bugger.

“I did want to thank you,” Zorana said as we walked down the hallway. “For bringing my daughter back, that is.” She looked at the zebras in their homes and shops as we walked by. “It’s a shame what happened with my sons, but they are where they belong now. The stars must have had their light cast upon them, and it’s a terrible crime that they were taken from us so young.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“They’re home now,” she said, casting a glance back at the two of us. “Their spirits are where they belong, and I have said my goodbyes to them.”

“Can you actually talk to the spirits?” Lost asked, her tone skeptical.

“It’s what I do. The tribe looks up to me because of my abilities,” she answered. She sped up, forcing us to trot to keep up with her longer strides. “They believe I will lead them from the darkness. Even my name prophesied my abilities. I don’t know if I’ll be able to, but I will do everything in my power to save my people from the grasp of the stars.”

We passed the hallway intersection where the funeral had been held. Already the skylight had been closed, sealing the roof shut. The small building in the center sat alone, with none of the other zebras walking around the halls getting near it. We walked past, and headed down the same hallway the ‘cleansed’ corpses were carried through after their burning. Zorana lead us to the same doorway and held it open with a hoof.

“Wait for me here, I will speak to the others and find some food for us,” she said kindly as we walked through. “There’s a spot just outside that will suit our needs perfectly.”

“You want us to eat in a graveyard?” I asked. The idea of eating while surrounded by the dead terrified me in a way I wasn’t quite sure I knew how to handle. I wasn’t very superstitious, but something about that just felt wrong.

“Don’t worry, it’s not in the graveyard. Most of the graves are cenotaphs. They are empty, merely symbols. They represent those the stars took from us away from home,” she explained. “Not all of the Imani are lucky enough to be escorted back to their home to be laid to rest. The spirits are most comfortable here, where they belong with their kin, which is why we offer them a place to rest.”

“The false grave is a beacon to home?” Lost asked, one eye squinted in confusion.

“That’s a way to put it, even if not completely correct,” she said. “Go now. I will meet with you when I have food ready.” She pulled her hoof from the door and it slammed shut with a clang.

“So, she didn’t say anything about Fine Tune not being with us,” I said, turning to look for the spot she’d mentioned.

“She noticed. Something’s up,” Lost said. She huffed. “There’s nothing we can do at the moment. When Rose gets back, we need to come up with a plan.”

“Stall her?” I asked. A free meal wouldn’t hurt, either.

“Yeah,” Lost answered. She walked off and around the corner. “Let’s check over here.” After a short pause, she called back. “You know this is probably a trap, right?”

“Yeah, I’m keeping Persistence at the ready just in case,” I said. It might have felt weird to be walking around a town battle-ready, but after all we’d been through, it seemed appropriate. If Zorana had something planned for us, she’d have to deal with a shower of lead, steel, and plasma to get it. I followed Lost around the corner, looking around for the place the shaman mentioned.

Past all the grave markers lay a large slab of steel, looking like it’d been ripped from the side of a building. It rested in a clearing, covered in only a simple, dirty white cloth. Cracked plates and perfect cups sat all around the cloth, with a single bottle filled with dark red wine sitting in the very center. I counted, six places set. Lost, Fine Tune, Rose, me... Zorana. The last would either be for Xeno or Zolera. Just what did she have planned?

Lost and I walked over cautiously, taking slow steps and looking at the grave markers as we passed. All of them had words scrawled upon them, written in letters I couldn’t hope to read. I felt as hopeless as I had when looking at the spellbook. They must have held significance for the zebras, but to me it looked like gibberish.

The slab of steel actually looked much the same. In a perfect circle, around the cloth, was more of the writing. It trailed as one long sentence, with no significant place that could signify a break from one part to the next. At the spot where the sentence ended, it broke the circle only slightly, and curled up to start another row. By the time I’d stepped onto the cloth set out for us, I could see that it wrapped around a dozen times, with several of the symbols repeating every so often, in a gigantic spiral. It reminded me of Xeno’s mark, the way it seemed to lead the eye on to read it, despite the lack of meaning to me.

The last few inches on the outside edge of the spiral, at the very end of the writing, looked new. There were still filings sitting atop the steel, where they hadn’t yet been swept away by zebra or the wind. I half-expected to see my own name there, or my sister’s. It still felt off, but when I looked around, I saw we were alone.

“Well, this is ominous,” whispered Lost. She walked in a circle, following the writing around the spiral. “Reminds of me Xeno’s cutie mark, or whatever she calls it. I guess we just wait.” Shrugging, she sat down at one of the places set out, and grabbed Loyalty with her teeth. She plucked it from its spot on her foreleg and checked the spark cell inside. “Ready for anything?”

I looked down at my forehooves, then at Persistence. I knew she was loaded still. “For whatever they throw at us,” I answered.

Sitting at our chosen places, we waited and planned.

* * *

The meal Zorana and Zolera brought to us seemed... lacking. While I hadn’t expected anything as glamorous or special as Marshmallow Sundae’s cooking, I had at least hoped they’d bring us the best they had. Then again, what they brought might have been the best they had. Aside from Zolera’s alcohol and the glimpses I’d gotten of the zebras at the funeral feast, I had no idea exactly what the resources here were. If they were anything like Zorana implied during her negotiations with Rose, they’d pulled out all the stops to bring us whatever we could have wanted.

Zorana herself served the four of us. One of the zebras from her tribe had brought the food out when she and Zolera joined us, but left shortly after dropping off the large platter. Zolera, meanwhile, poured the wine into each of the mugs before us. Lost had suggested they might not stage an attack of force, and instead try something like poisoning us. Given the alchemy and the brewing, I didn’t think she was wrong. The suspicions I had waned slightly, knowing we’d all be eating the same food and drinking from the same bottle. In the end, we’d decided to tough it out and get whatever answers we could in the event Lost’s suspicions were correct. That meant small bites and little sips, and only eating what Zorana did.

Nothing on the plate they gave me was preserved from the old world. They offered us what looked like leaves of a plant I’d never seen before. They were so brittle and warped, I could only imagine how much radiation they’d soaked up from the time they grew to when they were plucked. Half the plate was covered in what looked like meat, sliced thin and heavily salted. The remainder of the meal was a small amount of bread, made by hoof with what little ingredients it seemed they could spare. To drink they only offered the wine that was left for us when we arrived.

Marshmallow Sundae had really spoiled us...

Two places at the cloth sat untended, with Fine Tune missing in his search for Xeno, and Rose off communicating with the other copies of herself. Across from my sister and I sat Zorana and Zolera, both quietly eating the food they’d brought for us. Sharing a glance with my sister, we both patiently waited until they’d eaten one of everything sitting on the platters. With the sudden shift in how they treated us, it wasn’t a chance we were willing to take. I hoped Lost was wrong about their plans, but better safe than sorry.

I still found it strange that Zorana hadn’t mentioned anything about Fine Tune’s sudden disappearance, and instead simply sat there chewing a piece of her meat. It took everything in my power to not start demanding things and asking questions, to try and figure out exactly what she had planned. The fact that all this was already set up, even though we’d been watching the door the entire time, unsettled me.

Maybe they’d always had it set up, and just waited?

What if the writing was some sort of obscure zebra magic she would use to kill us once we were fattened up? All the little possibilities of betrayal and murder, acts of revenge for killing her sons. Zolera was with us, though, and he wouldn’t let something like that happen. The giant stallion seemed far too nice to let another be killed.

What if that was a part of the act?

I shook my head and took a small bite of the meat they’d provided, feeling marginally safe after seeing the two of them eat it as well. I couldn’t let my imagination take over, or I’d come up with all sorts of unreasonable and far fetched ideas on whatever evil plans might come from the zebras. The meat wasn’t bad anyway, even if it didn’t look that great. The salt gave it a nice taste, and it had just the right amount of chewiness to it. It reminded me of bacon, and I took another bite.

I tried to eat as little as possible, while still being polite. Just in case.

“I wish your pink friend was here,” Zorana said quietly, between bites of her own serving. “Where’s she headed off to, again?”

“She’s contacting her ponies, to try and buy more time,” Lost answered. She looked around casually, glancing behind the two zebra and back past me. “So, why the sudden hospitality? When we met, you called my sister a walking disaster and said we willingly searched for destruction.” With a glare, Lost bit down on the bacon she’d been given.

“Again, I apologize,” Zorana stated. She leaned against the zebra stallion and looked at the cloth on the ground between us. “I found out I lost my sons this morning, and then had demands made of me by a stranger traveling with the two who killed them. Am I not allowed to grieve?”

“Mmm,” Lost groaned, still chewing agonizingly slowly. Rather than respond, she bit down on the bacon and ripped another small bite from it.

“I understand how you feel,” I said. “We’ve lost our family too, all we have left is each other, and our friends.” I set my own piece of bacon onto the plate. “Like your daughter.”

“As harsh as I am to her, she’s a good foal at heart,” Zorana admitted. She leaned down and ate the greenery from her plate in the second daintiest manner I’d ever seen. “It is such a shame she chooses to struggle against our ways. We’re not so bad, if you just take the time to look at things from both sides.”

“Ironic, coming from you. You insulted our faith that the Goddesses watch over us the first time we talked,” I reminded her. “We came here to fix the damage we’d done in the only way we knew how, not to start fights. Trust me, we’ve felt loss many times in our lives, from our father to our mother, to other friends we’d come to depend on. We don’t have a community like you do. We get by on what we can.”

My mouth felt so suddenly dry, and I looked down at the mug before me. Swallowing a few times, I pushed the desire back. I needed to hold out, just in case. I hadn’t seen them drinking the wine yet. I looked helplessly at Lost.

“Perhaps you should seek out a place then, somewhere more... permanent?” the shaman suggested. She looked over to Zolera and whispered something to him in her native tongue.

The stallion looked away and answered the same. He sounded almost as if he were pleading with her. Reaching down, he hooked the mug in his fetlock and lifted it. Still looking into the distance, he downed the entire thing in a single gulp.

I looked at my sister, to see if she’d noticed too.

“Are you offering us a home here?” Lost asked, looking at me and nodding slightly. Having seen Zolera drink of his, she looked at the cup of wine before her and scrunched her face up. Her horn sparked once, a tiny light flashing from the very tip. The cup didn’t move, and she clasped her hoof to the side of her head, crying out in pain.

I hooked the cup in my fetlock and lifted it up for her. “Here, sis,” I said, smiling weakly.

She took the cup from me and sipped the wine from it. “Thank you,” she whispered, not daring to look up from the mug.

“Sure thing,” I answered as casually as possible. I turned back to the two zebras. “We couldn’t stay here if we wanted to, we have obligations at home in Blackhoof. There are ponies we consider family there. All we want is to make amends for what happened, and let Xeno make her own choice on if she wants to come back with us.”

“We love her like a sister,” Lost added. “She’s walked through fire for us, and we’d do the same for her.” She pointed to the slash across my muzzle with one hoof, while the other pointed to the red spots on her neck where the splinterwolf bit her. “We fought to get here, because we care about her and owed her a debt. After what we did...”

“Thank you,” rumbled Zolera. “It means much.” He finally looked to us, and the corner of his mouth twisted up in a small, but genuine, smile.

“Xeno’s place is here with her tribe, as much as it would be nice to let her roam the Wasteland on her own,” said Zorana, after another bite of her food. “There’s more to our kind than you know, and probably more than she’s willing to tell you. We’ve lost countless members of our tribe to the wilderness, to raiders and hunters who see stripes and attack without thinking of allegiances. The stars do have a stake in what happens to my kind, whether directly or indirectly. Were you to stay a night, you would understand.” She looked to the sky, at the cloud cover. It was getting late, and if this dragged on any further, her words might become prophetic.

“Iz that why the tribe had moved from where Xeno had lasht known?” asked Lost. She took another drink of her wine and set the cup down. As she reached for another bite of her food, she yawned.

The dryness finally got to me. Without thinking, I grabbed my own cup and downed a good portion of the wine. It tasted horrible, but the burn killed off any aftertaste. I hated alcohol. Setting the cup down with one hoof, I grabbed some of the salted bacon-meat and took another bite. It was a never-ending cycle, but I could stand the dryness. The bite from the wine? Not so much. I tried to take small bites, hoping I could resist anything the zebras might have thrown at us. I prayed Lost was wrong, since they’d been eating the same as we had.

“Correct,” she answered. “The mall here was unused, but the enclosed space is safer for us. You can see, the land itself seems to be against us here.” She looked behind her and waved a hoof at the barren emptiness all around. “This isn’t natural, and many fear the stars may be responsible. I’ve yet to find evidence to tell them otherwise.” She turned to Zolera, prodded him in the side, and said something in her language.

He nodded, looking off into the distance.

I followed his gaze, and watched for what felt like ages. I couldn’t hear anything, until something jumped in the distance. My focus snapped back, but nothing nearby had changed in the slightest.

“Despite whatever you have againscht Rose, and whatever 'of the arum lily' means, can't you make a deal with her?” Lost asked, pointing a hoof. “She's a copy of a real pony, and she can make dozens, perhaps hundreds more. If money iz worthless here then what about labor? Her copies can work in exchange for your expertise. They can gather the supplies you needs as well as the ingredients needed for her chems. All without putting your tribe at rishk...”

Zorana raised a hoof to her chin and rubbed it several times, looking quite thoughtful. Something in the corner of my eye moved, just the tiniest bit, when I turned away from Zorana, I saw nothing but the tombstones and emptiness. “...admit I was hasty in my dismissal of her. Perhaps if we have a chance to talk,” she admitted after a pause.

Huh? What? I missed something, what was a dismissal of who? Maybe Lost was right. I gulped and took a deep breath. I just needed to focus.

I took another sip of the wine, and forced it down to keep up appearances. “Szo, what’s this Ziven thing about?” I asked, my curiosity finally piquing. “Arranged marriage, or... What?” I grabbed the bread and took a bite. It wasn’t as good as anything Marshmallow Sundae made, but it sure tasted better than two-hundred-year-old canned food. Once again I looked past the zebras, and casually glanced at the... umm... she called then cenotaphs? I glanced at the cenotaphs around us as I felt the weight of my hooves seem to lighten. I saw nothing, no ponies or zebras approaching.

“That’s a very long story,” explained Zorana. “He was a very intelligent colt, but somewhat demanding, so I understand why my daughter might not have been interested, but he’s calmed quite a bit since she left.”

“So it’s an arranged marriage or something?” I asked, cutting her off. It made little sense for Zorana to force her daughter into a relationship when she’d gone off and married a zebra who traveled from Roam, and not a member of their tribe. Right? That’s what she said, I think, and it made sense at the time. Shaking my head, I tried to focus. I was stronger than whatever was in the food. I just needed to keep conscious. Rose and Fine Tune would show up soon.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Zorana shot, raising an eyebrow. She said something else, but I missed it.

Things suddenly seemed to be moving very slowly. I could hear words, but the zebra shaman’s mouth moved so slow, like she were speaking both my language and her own at once. The words didn’t sync up to how she moved. Her red-painted sigils started to shift around again, moving up and down her muzzle.

“What? I misshed that part,” I said. I think I said. I tried to say that, but all that came out was muttering gibberish. I looked around, but saw no zebras closing in. We’d been so focused on something from the outside, trusting too much in seeing that they ate what we ate.

Lost lay asleep, her head on her hooves and her eyes closed. She drooled slightly on the cloth. Apparently we weren’t as strong, stubborn, or prepared as we thought...

“Finally,” said Zorana.

I hit the steel slab hard, and everything went dark.

~ ~ ~

I shivered as a cold wind blew through the field. Lunch break was almost over, and I didn’t want to be late clocking back in again. Last time I was late, the forepony chewed me out for ten solid minutes. The clouds just looked so pretty, floating by in that cool, gentle breeze. I rolled onto my side and scooped up my trash into my lunch tin, then snapped it shut. I had a few minutes...

I lay in the soft grass, tail twitching gently, resting. The mornings’ work sucked, and unlike the engineer unicorns, us earth ponies spent our time doing the heavy lifting. What I really wanted was to work on the next project. Construction was nowhere near as fun as destruction, and the demolition job they had scheduled for next week was the perfect chance for me to smash steel hooves to wood beams and destroy some things without getting into trouble.

Wait, steel hooves?

I lifted my forehooves and looked at them, and at the clouds moving through the sky behind them. Both flesh. So why had I thought they were steel for a second there?

No matter. I dropped my legs back down and looked at the blue sky. The cloud above me looked like a phoenix. I laughed and pointed at it, where the head was. Whoosh! A phoenix, flying majestically through the sky.

Then the sky turned grey, dark. Had the pegasi called for a storm today? I reached over and grabbed my hardhat and tin. Putting the hat on, I jumped up and ran toward the building site.

“Guys! Guys! I think a storm’s rolling in!” I yelled, hoping they’d hear before it started raining. The house in the distance disappeared, replaced in the blink of an eye with a gigantic steel door, shaped vaguely like a gear. “Gu- What the?” I stopped short and looked around. We were building a house today, not much bigger than a cottage. So where’d this giant steel door come fr-

The clouds kept swirling closer, and the sky grew darker and darker. What little light broke through disappeared. The ground shook, and I struggled to keep from falling. Something fell and crashed behind me, and I jumped. Where’d the field go? We were-

Darkness.

The sky closed up so much all light disappeared. I couldn’t see my hoof in front of my face. “H-hello?” I asked nopony, silently praying I wasn’t alone. I didn’t do well alone...

I reached up to grab my hardhat and pull it off, but all I felt was my mane. My hoof hit hard. “Ow!” I yelped. I didn’t mean to hit myself. Where’d my hat go and why was I suddenly wearing boots? The click of a light turning on answered for me. Ear twitching at the hum of electricity powering the bulb above me, I stared at the glinting reflection of steel on my forehoof, completely encasing it.

“What the hay?” I demanded. And why was there a light above me? I looked around, searching for something familiar, but found myself in a cave. Lights clicked on in front of me, showing as little glowing orbs in the air in a straight line as far as I could see. They didn’t glow bright enough to show me what was around, just... Little glowing dots in the void. I found more behind me, trailing off endlessly as far as I could see.

They went on forever, getting smaller and smaller.

“Hello!” I yelled. “Anypony!” I trotted in little circles, not sure which direction to go. Anything outside my tiny sphere of light seemed a million miles away, like the lights were getting further and further away. It was just me, the ornate boots I somehow wore, and the cables connecting my bulb to the slowly disappearing bright spots in the distance.

I grabbed my right forehoof in my left fetlock and tugged. There wasn’t any reason for me to have these boots on, and they weirded me out. It was stuck, but after an eternity of twisting and pulling, I popped it off.

“Eep!” I yelled, falling back. “Okay, that was on way way way too tight.” I threw the steel boot away and pushed myself back up. “Hello hoo- Oh Celestia!” My hoof. It was. I turned and threw up on the floor next to me. I could see chunks of bone and hanging bits of flesh. It looked like I’d let an Ursa Minor use it for a chewtoy. I turned away and hid it out of sight. I couldn’t look. But. But I had to.

I pulled the hoof back out, only to find it encased in steel again.

The floor disappeared from under me, and I fell into the darkness. My little circle of light got smaller and smaller as I fell, legs flailing and tail whipping about. I tried to scream, but found I couldn’t. I just watched as darkness took over.

Lightning struck, and I slammed down onto something. “Ahh!” I yelled, my back cracking several times. I bounced, and landed with a thud on my side. Tears welled up in my eyes from the pain. It felt like- like something I couldn’t even describe. Something dancing on me? I didn’t know how to explain it, like my brain couldn’t even process it. I coughed, trying to get my lungs to start up again. Instead, I just covered my muzzle and the floor in blood.

A massive Steel Ranger walked over to me. With every step, the floor shook and I felt every broken bone inside me jostle around. His visor lit up, glowing an eerie, sickening shade of green. The armor itself began to grin, the edges of the muzzle lifting up and twisting the metal.

“Perfect,” said a stallion’s voice, sounding as though a terminal’s programming were talking. It wasn’t natural. The light from the armor’s visor flickered as a line appeared in the center, then expanded down through the muzzle and up over the housing for the mane. The sound of metal shredding filled the air, and Wirepony’s face split clean in half, vertically.

The stench of death filled the air, as a black mass of wires fell to the floor. Little pockets of twitching and writhing, white rotten flesh splattered down amid the wires. They twisted and writhed, wrapping around the armor’s legs and curling up around the body itself. The armor kept opening, splitting clean in two, and chunks of flesh that looked exactly like my hoof fell to the floor.

Every, single, piece. Every piece was my hoof. Over and over again. It looked identical, with the same chunks hanging open, the same flecks of bone. When they landed, they bounced about, like the floor was electrified.

I wanted to pull away. I needed to pull away. Whatever it had planned for me, I didn’t want any of it. I tried to move my legs, but none of them would move. My muscles didn’t respond. I could feel them trying, but no matter what I did, they couldn’t budge.

The severed hooves all righted themselves, and slowly trotted around me by hopping around. I found myself surrounded by a circle of them. In unison, they twisted to face me.

Wirepony’s armor finished splitting in two, and just melted. The glow of the visor pierced the sky, swaying back and forth as it sunk to the ground in a mass of molten metal. Then the wires lunged. They flew through the air and wrapped around me, cocooning me in thick, black, pulsing wires. I felt the breath forced out of me as they tightened and tightened.

The molten metal lifted into the air, oozing about all on its own. A silver blob undulating, rolling like water downhill toward me. A wave of it washed over me, and I flinched.

It burned. Every nerve ending I had fired off at once. I smelled burning flesh. My hooves tried to kick on their own, but nothing happened. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t escape. I just lay there while it encased me. Finally I regained control, and screamed. The burning steel reached my head, it covered my mouth.

I could taste it. I screamed until I couldn’t hear anymore, when the metal covered my ears. Then the world went black again, when it encased my eyes. My screaming stopped, not because I wanted it to, but because the metal had gotten inside me.

My eyes shot open and I stared in a mirror.

A mare looked back at me. She looked like me, but not like me. Her hooves were my hooves, steel and rubber, with the intricate etchings the Steel Ranger, Knight Praline, had traced around them. But the rest was... it had to be somepony else.

A visor covered her eyes, and her bottom jaw reflected the image back against the mirror with its polished finish. Wires wrapped around her legs, from the hooves all the way up to the armor that encased her chest. It was metal, I could tell, but transparent. I stared at the organs, veins pumping blood and a heart that beat so slow at first I thought it wasn’t moving at all. Other organs, ones I couldn’t identify by sight alone, twitched and moved around one another, with wires snapping around them.

It couldn’t. I couldn’t. A monster of flesh and steel.

I had a gun. I was a gun. It was mounted to me, to my side, with a half-dozen barrels of enormous size. They started to spin as I stared, unable to take my eyes off them. With deafening bangs, the gun erupted, firing bullet after bullet at the mirror. The mirror didn’t break, the glass didn’t shatter.

Instead, when they hit, I felt it. They ripped through me, tearing apart the clear armor that housed my still-beating heart. I screamed in pain, twisting the metal jaw in unnatural ways. The visor fogged up, and suddenly I couldn’t see myself in the mirror anymore. I just felt the blood run down my legs, channeled to the floor by the grooves between the wires.

Two stars floated onto the mirror in the corners, and the gun stopped firing. The two stars shifted around, swirling in little circles until they came together, right in front of the visor. Where eyes would have been, they stopped. For a second, they disappeared, only to reappear with black dots in the center. Several more times, the star-eyes blinked, and a smile appeared below them, this too made of stars.

“Wake up,” said the hollow, airy voice of a mare.

“I want to!” I screamed. “Please!” I begged, and tried to move forward, but my legs wouldn’t let me. I felt the muscles inside tense, pull against the steel that bound them to the floor. Nothing worked.

Black tendrils erupted from the glass of the mirror. Little spots of light, more stars like the eyes, filled them. They wrapped around my neck, my body. They pulled hard, and the floor shattered away. It fell to nothingness, until only the mirror and I were left.

I focused on the eyes, praying to the Goddesses above. Maybe the zebra superstitions were right, maybe the stars were waiting to grab my sister and me. They could lead us to oblivion.

They pulled me through the mirror, which shattered into millions of pieces around me.

Suddenly I floated through the skies, far above the ground. I could see the cloud cover below me, and even the ground below that. I could see Blackhoof, but not the Blackhoof I knew. Instead I saw a bustling city, with skywagons flying through the air pulled by pegasi, and troops running around a gigantic wall that housed what had to be the R.E.A. Academy. A ring of buildings in the very center, The Cinch, looked so out of place, but strangely perfect.

Then it stopped.

Time froze, the wagons in mid-air hung still, and the wings of the pegasi stalled mid-beat. The little ponies off in the distance didn’t move from their spot, hooves in the air and mouths open mid-sentence. A green speck of light appeared in the R.E.A. Academy, tiny and inconsequential.

Realization hurt, and I begged it to stop. The stars who pulled me here. The Goddesses around me... Well, the Princesses? They were still alive, weren’t they? Couldn’t they do anything to stop this? Instead, I hung in the air, some abomination of metal and meat, and watched that tiny, little, almost pleasant light grow.

It expanded slowly, getting bigger and taller, and the buildings all around it seemed to disappear. They weren’t blown outward, or thrown away by the force. It happened too fast, before even the metal and wood that held the Academy together could warp. Instead they just disappeared in a green envelope of light.

In the blink of an eye, the light took over half the city. I could see my home, somehow from this distance, I knew exactly which house it was. I saw earth ponies and unicorns staring at the light on the horizon, as it got bigger and bigger. They gasped, hooves over their mouths. But it was too late for them.

I had to watch.

Another explosion, at the edge of The Cinch on the opposite side of the Academy, bloomed to life. The Cinch buildings, all protected by the best of the best the Ministries and the government could provide, withstood the blast. Instead, it tore through residences and factories, shredding the city apart and creating a death-trap I remembered all too well.

Gravity started again, and the tendrils of the stars let me go. I twisted in the air, falling with hooves up, and staring into the heavens. Tears fell around me, as the stars moved in the sky and became an outline of Lost. Her tears fell around me, toward the explosions of the end of the world below.

“Goodbye, Hidden,” she whispered, her voice mixing with that of the stars.

All I could do was wave. My mane whipped around my head, and my legs flailed wildly. If I’d been a pegasus, I might have stood a chance, but as things were...

I hit the ground.

That didn’t stop me. It shattered the metal, the wires, all of it off me. I fell through the ground naked and afraid. Above me I saw an inversion of everything I knew. The buildings became deep pits that sunk far past what I could see. Ponies walked at super speeds around, though all I could see were their hooves striking the ground. The explosions disappeared a second later, and I seemed to float through an expanse of bright white, in so many ways the opposite of the bleak darkness I found myself in before.

Grabbing the air with my hooves, I only managed to clutch at the exposed organs. I wrapped my hooves around them, praying I could hold myself together. I clasped my mangled forehooves around my heart, felt it beat in my legs. It was weak, as if I’d stop at any second and this horrible existence would come to an end. If it did though, I didn’t know where I’d end up. Would I find myself in a dream world, or would I just stop altogether?

Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d end up with the Goddesses?

My hooves tightened around the pulsing muscle, and as much as I tried to stop them, they kept clutching, tighter and tighter. I clenched my eyes shut, to keep from watching the world fall up away from me. Was this what it felt like to be caught between life and death? A pony with a head and legs, but nothing between? Did I lose my eyes, and somehow learn to see without them, since they were metal just moments before?

Momentum faded away, and I found myself floating in the middle of the great white emptiness all around me. I spun in circles, kicking at the air around me as if I were swimming. I looked around frantically, trying to find something I could use as a landmark, to tell whether I was right side up or not. Above me, and below me, the city was gone. I was alone.

My hind legs began to float away, and no matter how hard I tried to tell them to kick, they just hung limp and drifted off. Only when my intestines were pulled taut, did they stop moving away. There I hung, with half my body so far away from me that I couldn’t even move it. I twisted around, letting my heart go to use my forelegs. It too floated off, completely disconnected and swirling in the sky. Little red lines came from it, droplets forming a river of blood that somehow kept me alive with no veins. I watched my lungs float off in a different direction, followed by a half-dozen other organs that separated into parts and decided to go their own way, with only the trickle of fluids between them keeping one another attached.

I felt like somepony had taken a saw to me, and let the pieces float into space. Funny enough, I didn’t feel any pain.

I looked at my hooves, surprised they hadn’t floated off. The steel was wrapped around both of them again, but there was more. No hooves were inside either, it was just hollow metal. My legs faded away, turning black and disappearing like so many of the Rose clones I’d killed off. When a new section disappeared, more metal grew from the hooves, until it connected where my chest used to be. I turned and looked at the pieces of me, floating away.

The red of my blood had turned black, into oil or something of the sort, a liquid that never belonged inside a real pony. One by one, pieces of me turned metal. My heart became a cylindrical pump, which didn’t beat, it just cycled liquid through a little piece that rotated inside. My lungs disappeared and became rubber, they moved slightly, but not in the way I expected them too. There wasn’t any expansion to pull air in, or contraction to push it out. I knew the feelings well, and I could feel that the new ones were wrong.

Just like the metal of Wirepony, everything was slowly replaced with steel and rubber. Once all the parts were, they flew together again, clanking as they connected, hissing steam where the seams were, and bolting against one another to become one peice. Then the mass of metal and rubber organs slammed into me with so much force my vision went out.

When I found my sight, I knew I wasn’t me anymore. I felt nothing, and wondered if I even had a real brain left. Lifting my hoof to my face, I looked in the reflection, and saw nothing but robotics.

“New look?” asked a familiar voice. “I like it.”

A pair of manticores sat in front of me. They looked like mirror images of one another, each with a chipped fang and a scar across their face. Both looked at one another, then to me. They inhaled deeply in sync with one another.

“No, you don’t smell like a lily,” said one.

The other shot the first a confused look. “Wait, what’s that even supposed to mean?”

I looked underneath me, half-expecting to find myself potted like I was in the last nightmare I had involving these manticores. This manticore. Whatever. Instead I saw the two manticores flying underneath me, still working as perfect mirrors of one another. They looked back, and waved. Behind them flew by dozens more, some complete, others with body parts missing and covered in blood. Somehow their wings and paws moved perfectly, even when they had no legs or bodies to connect it.

The ones with eyes stared at me accusingly. Weapons floated along with them, dozens of pistols and grenades, with little bullets spinning in the air after their wings. The little popgun I’d used when Persistence was empty stood out, striking something deep inside me. I knew all too well what it was, and I didn’t want to admit it, admit how easy it was. As the realization washed over me, the bodies became clothed, wrapped in the spiked makeshift barding of raiders.

Then they looked like me. Each whole and smiling, covered in blood and holding as many weapons I could get my still-flesh hooves on. She opened her eyes, but they weren’t green like mine. Instead, the magenta eyes of Amble stared at me. She floated toward me and whispered, “Murderer...”

I shook my head. It felt weird, like I wasn’t moving myself. Instead I could hear the whirr of gears and cogs spinning, powered by something deep inside me that didn’t feel right. The longer I moved, the worse the sound got. It overpowered everything else, and my head just kept spinning, in a giant circle far past what I felt I should be able to move.

Two massive paws grabbed onto the sides of my head and jerked it around forward. The first two manticores pointed up. “It’s time,” they said.

A wedding dress flew through the sky, with a veil on the front of it. From the bottom of the dress rained vials, pills, and syringes. They fell from the sky, and into the manticores’ waiting paws. With a flap of the forelegs, the flying dress twisted around and looked at me.

I saw Xeno’s face in it, then that of her mother’s. She laughed, but not happily. Her laugh was sad, distant. It was the laugh of a mare who knew too much loss.

Then everything went black.

~ ~ ~

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that both Lost and I were chained down to the ground. My heartbeat sped up as I noticed new shackles above the ones I’d had on my rear legs since U Cig, and new ones wrapped around my forelegs. Lost’s legs were all bound the same way, with chains running from both of us down to a little pit in the very center of the steel slab. Looking around frantically, I checked for ponies or zebras or anything that might have taken advantage of me while I was asleep. I pulled hard at the chains, causing pain to shoot up my legs.

To keep from hyperventilating and coming up with every horrible possible scenario, I decided to keep myself busy by revisiting my good old list of ‘things I never wanted to do again.’ Any distraction would help.

The last time I had updated it, I added not getting caught by slavers, which still ranked pretty high. The entry for going somewhere without any knowledge about it first got a little mark added, as a reminder to actually ask if anything might have changed since that information was given, because Xeno’s intel on her home was way off. For fun, I added a new line for ‘being drugged,’ with a little mark added to that one, because some drugs were actually really fun when they didn’t knock me out and give me horrific nightmares. Somewhere on the side was a note about trying to outlast a drug and it not working, but that part was pretty hazy.

I moved my fear about getting operated on by Praline up too, because I did not want to become any more metal than I already was. Alternatively, I could just accept my potential future and embrace becoming a murdering killbot. Wirepony did really good while it was around, so maybe I could continue that legacy. Eventually, in my old age, I’d bite the hoof off another pony, and the cycle would repeat.

I could add plenty more of my bad experiences to the list, but I felt I’d calmed down enough. Nopony had come to try and do anything terrible yet, so I could just... I could just relax...

We lay on the same steel slab we’d eaten our meal on before, but without any of the cloth, plates, or food. Lost lay next to me, her glasses on the ground next to her and her bandana twisted up around her head. On the bright side, her mane had started to grow back. It was short at the top, and looked incredibly fuzzy. Looking down from her slowly regrowing mane, I noticed that she was painted with red designs, almost like Zorana’s. The ones covering her legs, sides and face were different, and didn’t have the gentle flow I’d seen, or even the same designs as the zebras at the funeral. They were harsh and jagged, as if drawn on in a rage.

“You awake?” I asked, reaching over and nudging her. The chains clattered against one another loudly, so I just asked again. “Lost, you awake?” My leg was covered in the same designs, and the etchings in my steel hooves were filled in with red. Looking back, I saw exactly what I expected. My sides and rear legs were also covered in the designs, and once I crossed my eyes, I could see a line opposite the slash from the splinterwolves.

“Yes, shut up,” she said. Her eyes clenched shut and she grimaced. “My headache’s back.”

“I think we have bigger problems right now,” I said, raising the chain and clanging it against another. I fought back against a shiver. “How long have we been out?” I looked up at the cloud cover, but with the sun completely blocked out, I couldn’t tell what time it was.

“Too long,” she whispered.

“I want to apologize,” said the husky voice of Zorana. She trotted from behind us, over the gap where I chains ended, and in front of both of us. The painted sigils on her coat had been redone yet again, in a slightly altered version of the ones Lost and I both had on us. They had the same jagged form, but were obviously done with more dedication and less haste. “I adulterated the wine you drank, and it’s been a few hours. It’ll be nightfall very soon. I just wanted to wait for you both to get up so I could explain what was going on.”

Why hadn’t I seen her before? “You drugged us?” I demanded. “But I saw you and Zolera drink the wine and eat the food too!” More important matters rose in my mind. “Unchain me, now,” I snapped. Tugging on the restraints did nothing but jangle them around and make a lot of noise. And hurt.

“It’s not that easy. Just, listen,” said the shaman. She sat a short distance away, still on the steel. “First of all, we zebras have been drinking that wine a very very long time. It affects your kind a lot more harshly than it affects any of my tribe. Call it, insurance. Second of all, you brought my daughter home, and made sure my sons got to their final resting place. That’s the only reason I feel like I owe you an explanation at all.”

“Where are Xeno and Fine Tune!” I shouted. I wasn’t asking anymore. I needed to know exactly what was going on and where they were so I could beat this mare senseless, collect my friends, and head back to Idle.

“Don’t worry about them, my daughter is safe and so is your changeling,” she answered. “If you listen, everything will make sense, understand?”

Grinding my teeth, I nodded. Explanation, then beating.

“We moved because we began to lose members of our tribe to the wilderness. At first I felt it might be the stars, returning to get some sort of twisted revenge,” she explained. As she talked, she waved her hooves about in ways that seemed meaningless to me but probably mattered to her. “Xeno is correct, that we are superstitious, and it was decided, as a tribe, that we should move somewhere safer, where the stars could not grasp us. The mall became the perfect place, with a roof over even the walkways between homes. It was somewhere that gave protection even the clouds could not.”

“The stars don’t matter. Give me my friends back and let me go!” I yelled. I pulled on the chains hard and tried to get to my hooves. Halfway up, my legs gave out under me. They burned something fierce, like my bones were on fire and burning the muscles inside up.

“Shut up and listen or I’ll put a muzzle on you!” she shot back.

The threat quieted me, reminding me again of the other nightmare about being chained and muzzled. My tail slid under me, covering myself just in case.

“Our losses stopped when we moved, for a time,” she continued. “The stars take everything from us, slowly. Moving only delays it. As more and more of our members disappeared, a bargain was struck... The members of the tribe wanted to stop losing their families, and we began to give offerings. Everything we had, we gave to the stars. Sadaka worked, offerings to the sky, to the stars... It helped.”

“So, why are we here?” I asked, trying to sound as calm as possible.

“Because what little food we had wasn’t good enough,” she answered. “Our weapons and barding were not good enough. Still members were picked off, disappearing as the sun set and they returned home. I believe him to be a messenger from the stars.”

“Him who?” Lost asked. “If you’re being held hostage or something, just point Hidden at him. You said yourself she’s a walking disaster. Weaponize her!”

I shot Lost a glare, but looked back at the zebra. “It’s not a bad idea...”

Zorana didn’t look amused. “It will not matter, there have been those that offered to do the same, whom have never returned. This is what must be done.”

“So you’re sacrificing us to save yourself?” asked my sister. She glared at the mare with as much hatred as I knew she could muster. “You’re a monster.”

“You’re right. I am. I gave up all but the bare bones, I gave away our protections,” she said, hanging her head limply. “I gave our foals. I’m running out of things to give, to appease the skies above, and keep the stars from taking us. If I could, I would send my bravest stallions, my bravest mares, to stop the stars. But as I told you before, those that offered to go never returned, and it never stopped.”

“And so... We’re the next sadaka?” I asked, once again pulling against the chains. The pain didn’t matter, I just needed to get out so we could keep from being killed by whatever she believed in.

“Correct. This is the way of the world, and we do what must be done,” she said quietly. “I don’t do this because I hold you ill will. I do this because it is all I know, all my tribe has ever known. We cannot leave our homes, not again. The tribe has been here in this valley as long as we can remember, since the world ended. We built a community, and cannot let that go. It’s what defines us, and its all we have.”

“Xeno managed to leave and find something better. We care about her and she cares about us,” I said. I stomped a hoof, sparking steel against steel. Once again I tried to push myself up, only to find my legs refusing to cooperate.

“One zebra can do much, a tribe does not move so easily. If you stop whatever is happening, and return, we will hail you as heroes,” she said. She stood up and walked a few paces away. “If you wish to turn your anger on something, turn it on that which makes us do these things. The why is more important than the what. Your lives are a small price to pay to keep my tribe safe.” She turned away and walked off. “If you see your Goddesses in the afterlife, give them my regards.”

Fuck the greater good.

The sun sank behind us, disappearing behind the mountains and casting impossibly long shadows over the ground around us. They swept up from behind and darkness stabbed at the walls of the mall before us.

I looked over at Lost. “What now?”

“We wait? Rose and Fine Tune will be here to get us out of this,” she said, looking back at me. “I hope.”

I could only nod. We lay there, watching the shadows slowly overtake everything, until finally darkness fell completely, and the last light inside the mall disappeared.

* * *

With my saddlebags missing, and Persistence stolen from me, I had only my hooves to use to try and break free. I struggled constantly, pulling at the thick chains with all my might. Pain tore through my legs, and I knew I was pushing myself too much. A few hours’ rest after overdoing it for days wasn’t near enough. I couldn’t stop though, I was a strong pony and I knew it. I could break this.

Unless somepony like Praline made them, in which case I was more likely to rip my own leg off than break the chains away.

If I could get out, then I could save Lost too. She didn’t move much, but held her head with her forehooves. Several times she tried to cast some spell, any spell, to get us out of the situation. Her horn would light up, spark, and fizzle, leaving her crying in pain and holding herself afterward. Waiting for Fine Tune, Rose, or Xeno wasn’t something we could count on.

If Zorana managed to get us like this, she could get the others just as easily. She already had Xeno, and she’d pegged Fine Tune as a changeling even through his disguises.

Creatures around us started to howl, and I could see bloodwings in the distance flying through the night, looking for prey. While the knowledge we were close to ‘civilization’ helped, in that it would keep the animals and beasts away, I didn’t want to know how long until their curiosity overcame their desire to stay away from potentially armed opponents. We were easy kills at this point.

Unless that was what she wanted. The thought that the stars were to come and snatch us into the sky was absurd, but the dangers of the ground were just as bad. A stray manticore wandering nearby would rip us apart, or a bloodwing could appear and drain the blood from our veins in seconds. That happened to me once before, and I never wanted to experience something like that in my lifetime again. I’d sooner give up my blood for oil than feel the cold grip of the grim reaper pony wrap around me and turn me into a lifeless husk.

“Why aren’t they here yet?” I asked Lost. I tugged on the chains again, and bit back against the pain. I forced my forehooves underneath me, and pushed up. The chains held me down, but if I were to die, I’d die standing.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. Her breathing came in ragged gasps. She tried her magic again, but while her horn sparked and crackled, nothing came of it. She cried in pain, and clutched her head again.

The ground lurched underneath us, knocking me from my hooves and toppling me face first into the ground. I yelped in pain as my nose hit steel with the force of my whole body behind it. I felt blood, warm and wet on my snout. Whatever just happened, it broke my nose.

“Sis...” whispered Lost.

I looked over at her, smearing blood across my face.

She stared behind us, her eyes wide and her glasses hanging sideways on her face. “Dr-dr...” she whispered, pointing one chained hoof.

Something gigantic stepped over us, blocking out what little light came through the clouds. It jumped into the air, and massive wings spread out from its back, to catch the wind and gently glide it down onto the top of the mall. With steps both graceful and soft, it turned around and laid down on the roof. Gold-tipped claws dangled off the edge and tapped slowly. Rings rested at the finger joints, gigantic and covered in gems larger than my head.

Part of me wanted to be free just so I could grab them, steal them, and leave. I’d be a happy mare with a gemstone that big.

One arm held onto several objects, ranging from the trunks of dead trees and the wheels of motorwagons, to ancient, golden, pre-War bits that fell through his claws like garbage. Before they could fall to the ground, the gold-tipped claws of the other arm snatched them from the air and held them up. He stared down at them, counting, before adding them to its pile again. Massive chains made of steel, gold, and silver hung from around its neck, dangling and caught in the scales. Once all his possessions were back where they belonged, he looked back up from them, directly at us.

A deep voice, so much deeper than even Zolera’s, rumbled out a laugh. “This is the offering they leave?” he asked, flashing teeth taller than I was with every word. “I haven’t had pony in a long time. This’ll be quite the treat.” Glowing golden eyes looked back and forth between my sister and I. The fangs reappeared as he smiled. The pointed muzzle lifted up, and he looked into the distance behind.

“Lost... Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I asked. I didn’t know whether to be terrified, or drooling.

She nodded, her jaw nearly on the ground.

The green-scaled head tilted back down, and an eyebrow raised. He licked his lips, slowly and deliberately. “What’s got you so surprised, my little ponies? Never seen a dragon before?”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Progress: 50%

“Lost, it has treasure.”
“And it’ll probably kill us.”
“But it has treasure!”
“Yes, and it’s still alive. Do you think it’ll just offer it up?”
“Maybe. But treasure!”
“Are you gonna just ask nicely?”
“It might work...”

Chapter 20: Chasing After

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Chapter Twenty: Chasing After
“Keep her in your sights. Keep a level head. Don’t let anything slow you down. Stay together. You’ll make it through. I promise.”

Treasure.

The only thing on my mind, in the middle of a certain death situation, was treasure. Now, I liked to think of myself as a normal, sane pony. I did a lot of things in the stupidest way possible, like jumping from a third-story floor onto a monster that wanted to eat me, but I was normal most of the time. So why was it that the only thing I could think of when looking at my first dragon, a monster bigger than me by a whole lot, bigger than our motorwagon, and as big as several buildings I’d seen recently, was treasure?

I guessed my brain had finally just checked itself out and fucked off. Thanks brain, I could handle this myself. I’d just break free, grab all those beautiful gems, snap the gold rings from his claws, and then I’d run as far and as fast as I could and get away.

I laughed.

I laughed the kind of laugh nopony should ever have to laugh. The whole situation was far beyond hilarious. Of course it was! We brought Xeno back home to give her brothers a proper burial. We brought her home for closure, because it was the right thing to do. I giggled a little, resting my head on the cold steel slab. Of course this would happen. Why didn’t I think of the worst and expect a dragon to swoop out of the- Wait I did think of this, back when we were driving through the mountain pass.

“Hah!” I shouted, stifling the laughter.

Lost, meanwhile, lost it. The irony of it wasn’t lost on me, and I just kept laughing. She stared up at the dragon, her eyes wide as saucers, with one eyelid twitching. Every few seconds her horn sparked, as she tried desperately to cast something. Though she was obviously in pain, and her horn was darkening more and more each time she tried to cast, she didn’t stop.

“Just stop, sis,” I said between giggles. “Maybe, hahaha, maybe we can reason with him.” I slammed my forehoof down, clanging steel against steel. It was fucking hilarious.

“Oh fuck. Oh shit,” she whimpered. “We’re going to get eaten.” She twitched, screaming and trying to cast something again. “Pleasepleaseplease don’t let us get eaten.” Her senses came back and she looked at me. “Hidden! What do we do?”

“Mister Dragon?” I asked, looking up at the monster and trying to put on my cutest face.

“Mmm, yes?” asked the dragon in his low, rumbly voice. He lay on the roof now, having settled down and gotten comfy. His massive tail swayed behind him, past his folded wings, as if he were bored. He slowly tapped one set of claws impatiently on the hoard of items held in them. His other arm propped his head up, with his claws dug tight enough against his skin to draw deep indents into his flesh. He watched the two of us, a smile across his muzzle.

Goddesses, his teeth were gigantic.

“Any chance you’d let us go?” I asked.

He lowered his arm and grabbed the edge of the mall. Leaning forward, he slid from the building and walked toward us. His movements were slow, weaving back and forth gently as he walked on three legs. With every step he took, caps, coins, and all sorts of other little trinkets fell from the gaps between his scales.

When he got close, he pressed his nose directly against my broken one. It hurt, but the snort of his hot breath through his nostrils made me think less of it. It smelt of burning flesh, a smell I was all too familiar with, since I’d been on the receiving end of a burning several times before. His golden eyes crossed and he looked at me. “No,” he said, then blew a puff of thick noxious smoke in my face.

“Hidden!” Lost shrieked. Chains rattled as she grabbed onto me. “Back! Off!” she shouted, the fear she’d had seconds ago gone, replaced by indignation that the dragon would do something so terrible as breathe smoke at me.

The dragon growled. It started low in his throat, very deep and ominous. He leaned back, still growling, and laughed. “It’s not often they give me two at once,” he said. “They must be desperate. Oh well, more for me.” His claws dug into the ground, cutting deep grooves across the dirt, and he picked up all the little pieces he’d dropped. One by one, he stuffed them back to their spots with the tips of his claws, and dropped the remaining dirt.

“What’re you going to do with us?” Lost asked. Her voice wavered, and she pulled herself as close to me as the chains would allow.

“Whatever I want. You’re mine,” he answered. Casually, he looked down at the ball of things wrapped up in his claws. “Just like all of this. Just like everything.” He stood high on his hind legs, stretching his wings out. “So, would you rather come living, or dead? I’ll be taking you one way or another.”

“We’re not going with you,” I shouted. Of course, I had no plan, or weapons, or way to get out of these chains. So really, everything I said was empty, but dammit, I had faith that something would go right.

“Yes, yes. I’ve heard that before,” he said boredly, settling back down on his haunches. “You’ll fight and you’ll struggle and in the end you’ll give in and just accept your fate. I’m bigger and stronger than you. So, be good little ponies, and I’ll add you two to my little town.”

“And, and if we’re not?” asked Lost. She shivered, but from the corner of my eye, I could still see her trying to cast a spell.

“You live until I’m hungry,” he said, matter-of-factly.

That nearly stopped my heart. He would eat us then? That just wasn’t fair. We’d done what we were supposed to, and this was our thanks? Fuck the Wasteland and fuck the ponies and zebras who caused it.

He blinked slowly and smirked. “I’m kidding, I don’t eat ponies,” he said. “Much too chewy. I prefer something with a crunch to it.” To demonstrate, he plucked one of the gems from his rings and tossed it in the air. Seconds later, his massive jaws clamped down on the jewel and he swallowed.

Both Lost and I breathed a sigh of relief. The fact that he wouldn’t eat me whole gave me a strange sense of relaxation. There weren’t a lot of worse fates than being eaten alive and digested. I glanced at my hoof. I’d had enough of me eaten, already.

“Why?” I asked. Stalling was the only thing I could think of. Hopefully the few seconds it would take to explain would buy us what we needed for Lost to come up with a plan. Or for the others to come get us. Hours must have passed while we were knocked out. Were they waiting for a written invitation?

“Why not?” he asked back.

That didn’t go as planned.

“We’ve already been slaves, owned by another,” Lost said firmly, “We’re not going back to that again.” She twisted a hoof, while shaking the shackle against it with her other one. If only they were so easy to get out of, but I’d tried that already. They never budged.

“Slaves?” he asked. After a moment, he leaned back and laughed. “Oh, you’re serious!” Still chuckling, he wiped a tear from the corner of one eye. “I don’t think of you as slaves. You’re just mine. There’s no reason to complicate it.”

Okay, so the dragon was stupid?

Fine Tune flittered into view behind the dragon’s leg. Thank the Goddesses. He held a holed hoof up to his mouth, motioning for me to be quiet. Behind him was Xeno, crouched down and walking in a nice wide circle around the dragon to keep from being noticed.

Lost saw it too, but said nothing. She kept twisting at the shackle, trying in vain to get it off. Her horn sparked again and again as she tried to force a spell out. “What did you mean by town?” she finally asked, forcing the words out over her strain.

“You’re not too bright, are you?” he asked.

From the side opposite Fine Tune and Xeno, I heard the muffled ‘fwump’ of a grenade rifle firing. The dragon heard it too. He snapped his head to the side, but it wasn’t enough time. The grenade hit and exploded. He roared in surprise more than pain, his voice echoing into the night. Trinkets, caps, bits, and all manner of things fell from his side where the grenade went off. He dropped his collection of items to the ground and spun around, looking for the source of the grenade.

“Where are you, you little pest?” he demanded, circling to the side. His tail swished back and forth as he stalked away from us, until he passed from sight. “Don’t go anywhere, now,” he muttered.

Fine Tune and Xeno ran as fast as they could to our sides.

“Thank the Goddesses, what took you so long?” Lost asked frantically.

“Worry later, chains now,” I said. We could explain at any time. But if he got back soon, we’d all get caught. Then he’d just have more for his little ‘town.’

Fine Tune just glared, his eyes dimming for a second, before lighting back up. He stabbed the lockpick section of his leg into the shackles and started twisting.

Xeno tossed down a bag, her eyes wide. “Youare marked for death,” she said as she looked at the lines painted upon our coats. She shook her head. “Your things. Iam sorry for taking so long.” As she talked, she grabbed things from the bag and passed them to us. To Lost she gave Loyalty, and she pulled my battle saddle out as well. Her satchel was amazing, to hold all that. While I was still chained up, she helped to pull it on and latch it in place.

“Thanks Xeno,” I said. “What do you mean, marked for death?” Persistence was already attached, and I kicked the lever to make sure she was loaded. I turned to look for the dragon.

Fine Tune kept working. When one shackle fell to the ground, free of Lost’s hoof, he moved to the next without a single chirp.

“The sigils on you, they are sacrificial marks,” she answered. “As I said, sadaka.”

I smiled at the mare. “Thanks for the warning, too bad we wasted it. What’s the plan?” I asked.

“Well, run for our lives or kill it?” Lost asked. She raised a hoof and scratched at the paint on her foreleg, but it didn’t come off.

In the distance, the dragon roared and breathed fire. It lit the night in a terrifying green that reminded me far too much of balefire. The sounds of battle followed, as Rose launched another of the grenades at him. The dragon’s body muffled the explosion. He roared again, and gave chase.

The ground shook with every step he took as he chased Rose. I could feel it in my legs. It hurt. I didn’t let the others see, though. I turned to Xeno. “Bring our armor and bags, too?” I asked.

“You wish me to put a bag in a bag, Hiddenpony?” she asked. “I could not fit your armor or jacket, but I brought what I knew you would want.” She pulled out a bottle from her satchel, one I recognized in an instant. She popped it open and passed me one of the tablets of Buck.

“Thanks,” I said, over the sound of another grenade exploding. I looked over at Fine Tune, who was working on the last of Lost’s shackles. “Hurry!” I snatched the Buck from Xeno as politely as I could snatch something, and tossed it into my mouth.

“Got anything for me?” asked Lost. She held Loyalty in her fetlock, and rubbed at her hind leg with the free one. “I’m pretty much useless without my magic, right now.”

“I didnot, Lostpony. The ingredients are rare,” she answered. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she answered. The final shackle fell from her leg, and she jumped away. Her breathing was heavy, but things were finally looking up. She spun around to face the field where Rose and the dragon fought.

The two of them kept running. The dragon breathed fire at her whenever she got into his sight, but she was faster and smarter than him. For being a hundred years old or so, she was very spry, and managed to weave back and forth between his legs whenever he caught up with her. Grenades were fired up at his belly, but when they exploded, all he did was yell and flap his wings in frustration.

Dragons were supposed to be tough, I knew that. But Rose had good aim; she hit the same spot repeatedly. Despite that, she didn’t seem to be slowing him down.

“Xeno, let me see your rifle,” I demanded. Rose was a bitch, and she was the reason we were stuck here. I’d be damned if I didn’t help a pony over a dragon, though.

“What’re you going to do, Hidden?” asked Lost. She took a few steps back, closer to the mall.

“Shoot him in the eye,” I answered. Tough skin or not, eyes were always a weak spot. I took the rifle Xeno offered and trotted closer from her, to the very edge of my chains. “Fine Tune, back legs first,” I suggested. I laid down and stuck my legs out, and held the gun to my shoulder.

The scope didn’t help much. It was dark and they were moving. Why he didn’t just fly off and breath fire on her from the air, I didn’t know. Maybe it wasn’t his style? I waited and watched.

Grenade after grenade flew into the air at him. He batted some away with his claws, swiping at her mid-way. She ducked and rolled, then got back up and fire again. Really, she deserved respect for going hoof to claw with a dragon and not getting splattered in the first five seconds. It wouldn’t last though. I could tell from where I lay that the fatigue of running circles around him was quickly catching up to her.

His mouth opened. Green death flared from it again, lighting the entirety of the field up, from the mountains to the mall. His golden eyes were open wide, reflecting the baleful fire. My aim wasn’t the best when doing it manually, but I had the biggest target I could ever wish for.

I pulled the trigger.

The fire died. The dragon roared, letting out another torrent of flame as he did, and clutched his eyes with his claws.

Thank the Goddesses.

Rose ran for us.

I could feel the shackles on my hind legs, the ones the zebras put there, fall off one after the other. Fine Tune did exactly what I needed, but I didn’t have time to wait. The Buck was already kicking in. I could take on a dragon. I could run up onto him and smash his Goddesses-damned face in. I grinned and tossed the rifle away. “Thanks, Xeno,” I shouted.

The second the shackles fell off my forelegs, I took off running. A little pony in my mind said this was a bad idea, but she could deal with it all later. Right now I had a dragon to deal with. I moved as quickly as my burning legs would let me. Halfway there I passed a terrified-looking pink pony, another one I needed to smash to bits. Her time would come, but first I had a dragon to kill.

I bit down on my battle saddle and fired repeatedly. The bullets hit, I could tell, from where the gold scales on his side sparked from getting hit. He didn’t even notice. Really, this was one of my stupidest decisions, and another item to add to my list when it was all over.

If I survived.

The dragon looked down at me with his one good eye, and laughed. When I got close enough, he spun around and slammed his tail into me.

I went flying through the air, back the way I’d come. I landed behind my sister and the others, and tumbled several times, head over hooves. When I came to a stop, they all just stared at me.

“That was stupid, even for you,” said an out-of-breath Rose.

“I don’t see you with a better idea,” I said, wheezing. He’d knocked the air, and nearly everything else, out of me. I pulled myself onto my hooves and kicked my reloading lever. “So, plan then?”

“Go back inside, lock the door,” said Lost. She looked back at the dragon, who was slowly approaching.

He walked the same way Zorana did, with the knowledge that he was in control of the situation and nothing could stop him. His head bobbed side to side slightly, opposite his tail. He looked completely uninjured, and his glowing golden eye held nothing but rage. “Really, this would be much easier if you just came with me like good little ponies,” he yelled.

“If we go inside, he rips the roof off and takes or kills the entire tribe,” explained Xeno. “My mother was quite stern. You would be taken, and they would be free again.” She turned to look at the dragon, just like the rest of us.

He’d stopped, and was picking up the items blasted free by Rose’s grenades. As he picked each thing up, he put them back where they belonged in his scales and then collected the rest, the bigger things, into his claws. “Enough games,” he snapped. “Come. Now. All of you.”

When we didn’t walk over to him or offer ourselves up, he just growled.

I fought the urge to run in and get myself hurt again. The Buck might have been a bad idea, but I stood by it. I just needed one weak spot where I could run in and start breaking him. Snap a wing and ground him? Go after his eyes again? I had no way of getting up there. My legs tensed under me, trying to push off to go attack. One weak spot was all I needed.

Xeno walked forward. “Iwill go,” she said.

“No, I want all of you. Especially that one,” he bellowed, pointing a claw at Rose.

“Oh fuck you!” shouted the pink mare.

“That won’t work anyway, Xeno,” said Lost. “What reason does he have to not take us all? He could simply grab you then kill us and take the corpses.” She moved closer to Xeno, stepping in front of her. “We’re in this together. No matter what.”

“How cute,” rumbled the dragon as he stalked forward. “You’re right though. I’ll have you, dead or alive, all at once. Best just give in.” He opened the eye I shot him in. Though it was bloodshot, it didn’t look to be damaged, and glowed just as brightly as his other eye. “Now!” he shouted. He started for us again.

Mental note: his eyes were not weak spots.

Ignoring the desire to run and hit him as hard as I could, I listened to the smarter part of my brain. “Run!” I shouted. I twisted to the side and took off toward the motorwagon and the Solaris Energy building. Lost and the others followed, and together we made for the corner of the mall. If we could just get out of sight for a second.

“Fine, play. This is good exercise,” he rumbled. A huge gust of wind followed, as he flapped his wings and took off into the air.

This was a terrible idea and I wished Lost had something better.

“Plan? What’s the plan, Hidden?” Lost demanded. She ran up beside me, and stared me in the eyes as we rounded the corner of the mall.

The far side of the mall wasn’t any different than the one we’d come from. All around us was emptiness and markers for graves that belonged to zebras more than likely taken by this monster. So, they really weren’t full of corpses. At least I didn’t need to worry about feral ghouls any- Why was I worrying about that? There was a dragon after me!

“You’re the plan pony, Lost!” I answered. “I’m running on adrenaline here. My plan?” I jumped over a grave marker. “My plan! Hide! Buy time!”

“Better than standing in the way of flames,” added Rose.

Fine Tune chirped and took to the air. He flitted back and forth around us, then disappeared into the darkness of the night. A second later, the dragon roared as green fire not so different from his own slammed into his face.

“There, a few extra seconds!” I yelled. I prayed to the Goddesses that the poor changeling was alright. That little dive-bomb trick of his was nice, but if it got him killed I’d never forgive myself.

“If he doesnot catch us, what will happen to my tribe?” asked Xeno.

We kept running, dodging around the makeshift grave markers. Rose reloaded her grenade rifle on the way, and kept it aimed back at the dragon as he flew through the air trying to catch Fine Tune. “Who cares, they sold us out,” she said. “Let them die, then we take whatever I need for Idle and go home.”

The changeling did a good job staying out of his reach. While the dragon was big, Fine Tune was fast, and blended into the dark all around him. He zipped back and forth, dodging gouts of flame and slashing claws. After a dodge, he’d erupt into fire of his own and slam into the dragon. He kept aiming for the eyes, which did good to keep him busy. A dragon that couldn’t see, couldn’t chase.

On the ground, the distance to the next corner and where we’d parked the wagon felt like miles. We made it to the cracked and broken road, and things went faster. Wreckage of old wagons littered the ground, with skeletons of ponies caught in the last moments of the Equestria, locked forever in the same place they died. The only sounds were our panting as we ran, and the screaming roars of the dragon up above.

If any of the zebras inside thought it was still ‘the stars’ that kept taking their kin, they were either willfully ignorant, or stupid.

“Sorry, sorry,” I whispered, kicking my way through a skeleton and sending its skull skidding across the lot. I knew I should revere the dead, for they didn’t choose their fate, but I just didn’t have time.

“Plan yet?” Rose asked.

“Hide? Big guns? Make him eat the motorwagon and blow its engine?” offered Lost, between gasps for breath. “I’ve never dealt with dragons before.” She jumped through the shattered remains of a skywagon, ducking under one of the support beams that still bridged two sections. “They’re all supposed to be dead or something!”

“Well, that merchant-” I started, jumping over a chunk of engine. “Said there was a dragon with treasure back home, remember?” My legs hurt from running. I’d aggravated old injuries at the worst time. After this little adventure, I was taking a vacation.

“He was lying Hidden!” she shouted.

“What happened?” asked Xeno. She jumped the same engine chunk I did, with considerably less effort.

Before I could answer, the sky lit up in brilliant green with a deafening roar. Flames burst before us, tearing a line through the lot and setting everything ablaze. Even so far ahead of us, it burned hotter than anything I’d felt in my life. I’d been lit aflame by magic catching alcohol on my face, and by incendiary grenades. I’d had flamers pointed at me and let loose with abandon. None of them burned like dragonfire, and even from a distance, I worried I might start to melt.

Lost reared up and turned away. She screamed, spun and ran behind me. After what she’d been through, I didn’t blame her. We all stopped, and I shielded my sister from our greatest foe.

“Come on!” Rose yelled.

The flames died as quickly as they’d started, with help by Fine Tune bombing the dragon’s side once again. Everything he’d scorched still burnt, lighting things up around us like some sort of macabre celebration of death. Shadows from the skeletons danced all around us, twisting in the green light of the burning remnants of a world that didn’t exist anymore.

Fine Tune and the dragon toppled sideways, as the changeling finally managed to land a good hit on the monster. It only stopped him from breathing flames though, and with a powerful flap of his wings, the dragon threw the changeling away.

Fine Tune sailed through the air, his eyes wide and hooves flailing. Though his wings flittered, he couldn’t stop himself from falling. Flying past us, he slammed into the wall of the mall, hard enough to crack his carapace in several places and splattered his green blood onto the sides of the mall. With a groan-like chirp, his eyes went dark.

The dragon laughed. “Finally,” he said, his wings flapping gently and lowering him from the air. The ground shook as his claws slammed down. Caps and bits clattered to the ground, clinking softly as metal hit the shattered pavement. He started after us, sending the burning wreckage bouncing in the air with every weighty step.

Fine Tune fell to the ground, and without hesitation, we turned toward him. Lost said we were in this together. She meant it. Thick or thin, we weren’t leaving a single member to get taken or killed by that monster. I knew just how important it was that we stayed together. No treasure was worth the death of my friends or my sister.

“Grab him!” yelled Lost.

Rose tossed the grenade rifle into the air, her telekinesis disappearing and instead wrapping around the changeling’s body. She lifted Fine Tune’s limp form from the ground and pulled it through the air after us. He was breathing, but only barely. Blood trickled onto the ground, seeping from the shattered sections of his natural armor.

I grabbed Rose’s gun from the air with my teeth and kept moving. We only had to go a short distance before we reached the corner. That wasn’t near enough time to outrun a dragon that could travel the same distance we could in a fraction of the time.

“Dodge him,” Lost yelled. She took a sharp turn around one of the flaming wagons and got behind it.

As we ran past, following her lead, we split apart and each dodged behind another one. It became somewhat of a game, moving from spot to spot like I’d done in Idle. Behind us, wagons and skeletons flew through the air and came crashing back down. Fire burst through the lot, but missed us by inches. One blast nearly caught Xeno, but through her freaky luck, she managed to roll behind a wagon by the skin of her hooves.

“One at a time!” yelled Lost. She pointed a hoof to the corner of the building, where I could see the Solaris Energy building just around the corner. “Go, go!”

Rose went first. She ran from her cover.

“You!” shouted the dragon. He reared back and opened his mouth.

Before the fire could come, I slung Rose’s grenade rifle up and fired. Holding the gun in my hooves and not with a battle saddle felt more awkward than usual, given the size of it, but the mechanics were the same. I pulled the trigger.

With a muffled ‘fwump,’ a grenade flew through the air. It sailed, almost gracefully, through the flame-scorched lot and landed right in the dragon’s mouth. He’d better not spit it out.

It exploded, right as Rose rounded the corner and pulled Fine Tune past.

The dragon leapt into the air, roaring in pain. Eyes? Not weak. Mouth? Perfect target. Fire filled the sky as he bellowed and writhed. The flapping of his wings blew the burning wreckage toward us, and Lost’s plan fell apart. We turned and ran as fast as we could. Xeno brought up the rear, but both her and Lost quickly gained on me. I pushed myself, ignoring the old wounds that fought to slow me enough to get captured. They both ran past me, with Lost slowing to offer help.

“Go!” I yelled. “I’m fine.” I dropped to the ground after rounding the corner, feeling like I couldn’t move. Too much, too fast, and my legs were burning. I swore to never take another Buck in my life, if I could avoid it. Oh who was I kidding, I’d use it at the next chance I got. I reloaded the grenade rifle and aimed at the sky.

Seconds dragged on like hours while I waited for the dragon to circle around the corner. I expected to die, either by being eaten or burnt to cinders, but that’d be okay. The others were nearly to the Solaris building. I could hear Lost yelling something to the others, about engines and explosions, but I couldn’t make it out over the pounding in my ears. Damn Buck, a blessing and a curse.

Almost silently, the dragon approached. Were it not for the shadow of his legs cast by the fires of the wagons around the corner, I’d have thought he’d given up. For such a big sonuva bitch, he moved quietly when he needed to. He poked his head around the corner, near the roof, and looked more over the mall than around it. He looked side to side, before resting his sights on the Solaris building.

L.A. and Rose were gone, disappeared into the Energy station. Xeno though, still stood at the door.

The dragon smirked and dropped his bottom jaw. When he inhaled, I fired.

Following the muffled fwump, the grenade arced through the air and caught right in his mouth. I didn’t wait for the explosion. The second the grenade left the barrel, I scrambled to my hooves, dropping the gun, and broke for the building. The grenade went off once I’d turned around, and the explosion sent me skidding across the road.

I rolled onto my side as the dragon roared in pain and smashed the corner of the mall away. I forced myself forward, pushing through the pain. The second I got to the wall of motorwagons, sitting in their parking spots, I ducked and rolled. Persistence dug into my side, and I felt the lever underneath bend inward and dig into my back leg.

Fire lit the sky up, turning night to day for just a moment. “You little animal!” yelled the dragon, before letting out another blast of fire. The wagon atop me burst into flame, and the deck of it began to sag.

I swore under my breath and forced myself to my hooves. Ducking under the axle, I scrambled away from the slowly melting engine block. I ran for Xeno, who held the door to the station for me.

“Hurry, Hiddenpony!” she yelled, waving a hoof to beckon me faster.

I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, under the awning and out of sight of the dragon.

It didn’t stop him. He smashed several of the wagons, including ours, into the air and pulled his claws through the awning. It shredded to pieces and fell around me. With one massive lunge, he drove himself into the station.

I jumped in at the same time, a hair ahead of him, and slid in on chipped tiles like the ones at the mall across the street. I barely had time to see the surroundings, with a half-dozen aisles of empty shelves and a counter covered in garbage before the ceiling collapsed.

Everything went black, and all I could hear was the stone and mortar breaking apart and falling in on us. Screams of pain and fear echoed, but were overtaken by the smashing of bricks into the ground.

I huddled against the counter, praying to the Goddesses and to Xeno’s luck that we’d be safe, and not killed by the building falling in on itself. Bricks and chunks of stone landed on me, and I yelled in pain. I could take it. I could. I smashed my hoof against the counter, to remind myself I’d been through worse. Blood ran down my face and back, soaking my coat, but none killed me.

The dragon kept attacking, breathing fire and roaring in frustration. After an eternity, his roars silenced, and the ground shook. The sound of beating wings filled the air, and one final roar echoed through the night, distant, but still terrible.

I found myself in a small pocket, caught between rubble and the wall of the counter, with my rear legs pinned down by a support beam from the ceiling. I fought for breath, annoyed at just how cliché it was to be trapped under a wooden beam, but I’d be okay. I couldn’t feel anything broken, and I’d come to know the feel of a broken bone far too well. “Everyone okay?” I asked, weakly. I fought the urge to just pass out.

“Mostly,” answered Lost. “Fine Tune’s hurt, bad.” She sounded close, but her voice was forced. She must have been hurt badly too.

“Rose?” I asked, praying again.

“Where’s my gun?” she asked. At least she was alright. Flickers of light filtered in through the broken stones nearby, casting long lances of light through my little safe zone. “Ow, fuck!” she shouted. “Where are you?”

“Xeno?” I yelled, having not heard anything from her yet.

When no answer came, I yelled again, “Xeno!”

“I think we’re down a zebra,” Rose said quietly.

* * *

We sat in a small clearing, right in front of the ruins of the energy station. Wrecked wagons lined the lot, and the awning pieces lay all around us. Rose had lifted the rubble off my legs, and I took care of digging myself the rest of the way out. It took quite a while to get enough room open that I could crawl out, but I was just lucky to not be crushed.

After I got free, we dug out a bigger spot so Fine Tune’s unconscious body could be lifted out with magic, and then Lost crawled out herself. She tried to hide it, but I caught her limping and favoring her right hind leg as she crawled out. When she got into the clearing before the station, she sat down and covered her leg with her forehooves.

I stared off at the clouds in the sky, praying to the Goddesses. I’d looked, as hard as I could, but hadn’t been able to find Xeno. The second everypony else was accounted for, I turned the station upside down. There wasn’t a single trace of her, anywhere. Not a strand of her mane, nothing. It left a hole in my heart, but maybe, just maybe, she’d been taken and not killed.

I hoped, at least.

Rose walked over to me, her breathing ragged. She’d spent the past ten minutes sealing up the cracks in Fine Tune’s carapace. It took a lot out of her. Healing something she wasn’t used to couldn’t have been easy, but the former Ministry of Peace pony didn’t stop until she’d gotten every single crack taken care of and he was back in stable condition.

The changeling’s eyes were still dim, but he seemed alright for the moment. I knew how he felt, having been thrown into my share of walls as well. He stayed a changeling, and just laid his head against my sister’s lap.

“So, how does it feel having a building fall on you?” asked Rose with a raspy laugh. She forced a grin, then slumped down onto her haunches and started to heal me.

“Same as every other time,” I answered. “This is far from the first time I’ve been on the losing end of a building’s destruction. How about you?” I rubbed both my forehooves against my nose, holding it in place as she worked her magic around it and fixed the damage. I could feel, deep down inside, the strange-but-pleasant knitting feeling of flesh mending back together.

“I’m alive, aren’t I?” she asked, smirking. She moved her horn down and started on some of the smaller cuts and bruises I’d gotten. The process took only a few minutes, before she’d healed up the majority of my wounds. “There. Done.” Exhausted, she collapsed onto the ground and groaned.

I looked at Lost. “Plan?” I asked.

L.A. now sat on her haunches, leaned back against the collapsed remains of the awning. Idly, she petted the changeling’s head while he rested over her hind legs. “I have no idea, Hidden,” she said softly.

Fine Tune shifted slightly, chirping and looking up at her. The bright spots on his eyes flashed brighter, before dimming once more.

Lost winced when he moved, groaning quietly. She was covered in green blood, which matted her coat down and made her look almost alien. At least it covered up the sacrificial markings painted on her.

“Where’s my gun?” Rose asked again, now that we weren’t in immediate danger.

“Over there, somewhere,” I answered, waving a hoof blindly toward the edge of the mall. It hurt to move, at all, but all I could think about was finding the strength to get up and go get Xeno back.

“Alright, let’s get our shit, and go kill something,” Rose says. Every word came forced, as she gasped for air between them. She dragged herself to her hooves and walked off. She seemed more pony than clone, now, having proven herself. Maybe she wasn’t just a blackmailing bitch, after all.

“Good plan,” I said. With every ounce of strength I could muster, I pulled myself up to standing and limped over to Lost. I offered her a hoof. “Now or never, sis. Xeno’s not going to wait for us forever.”

“Alright. We can do this... right?” she asked, taking my hoof and pulling. She patted Fine Tune once, and he moved right away. With my help, she stood, leaning hard to the side and lifting her right back leg ever so slightly.

“We don’t have a choice,” I answered. “We’ll get your leg looked at, too.” I pushed against her side, and helped to keep the weight off that leg.

“Don’t worry about it,” she asked, sounding far too innocent for her condition. “I’m fine. Once you and Fine Tune are back in shape we can worry about me.” It wasn’t the best situation, but with Rose pulling healing duty for all of us after that, she had a point.

Fine Tune chirped, smiled, then waved his hoof. After what happened last time, it was probably a ‘does that make me Lost’ joke, that he gave up on.

I reached a hoof down and helped him up too. “Up, on my back,” I ordered. With a little more help from me, he managed to crawl his way up there and got comfortable. He wasn’t heavy, but the added weight wore on my already sore everything. I could handle it, though; I was the strong earth pony, right?

Rose returned, her grenade rifle slung over her back. “I like your plan. Right now, I want to kill all of them,” she said, still sounding far too gone to actually do it. Her eyes were half-closed, and she still breathed in ragged gasps.

“Only one deserves it,” I said. I started forward, pulling my sister along with me and carrying Fine Tune. The short walk took ages, but was worth every step. I kicked on the blockaded door when I reached it, and kept pounding until a zebra’s face appeared in behind the glass.

The purple-striped mare with the dreadlocks pressed her muzzle against the glass. Her eyes went wide and she backed away.

“Open!” I shouted, kicking again. Instantly, I regretted it. I wouldn’t let her see that, though.

She yelled something back in her native language, but it sounded to me like a ‘no.’

I kicked again, despite the ache. “Now!” I shouted. That felt like enough warning. “Blast it open,” I said, turning to Rose.

“My pleasure,” she answered. With her hooves, not her magic, she reached around and grabbed the grenade rifle from her back. She held it up with one hoof, holding it to her shoulder and aiming with the aid of her telekinesis.

The mare inside’s eyes widened further, and she waved her hooves back and forth. Twice she tapped on the glass, then pointed off to the side. After several nods, she disappeared from view.

“Well, that’s no fun,” said the clone. She dropped the grenade rifle to her side and walked in the direction the mare had pointed.

“Better this way,” Lost added. She limped along next to me as the three of us followed Rose to the far door in the massive doorway. Four glass panels later, and we reached a small opening in the blockade.

The door popped open, and the striped face of the mare popped out. There was terror in her violet eyes, but she said nothing. She waved her hoof a few times, then pulled back through the doorway.

Getting inside took a bit of work, given our injuries, but after lots of shuffling and juggling of the changeling, we got inside. The mare kept talking, her mouth running faster than I could understand, until Lost finally held up a hoof to silence her. She shook as she talked, looking back and forth between the four of us, before turning and looking down the hall. She looked like she wanted to take off and run for her life. Every time she shook or turned, her giant golden earrings would sway back and forth and hit her in the face.

“Fine Tune, what’s she saying?” L.A. asked.

The changeling looked at her and chirped. With a sigh, he lit his fires up and transformed into a zebra mare identical to the one before us. With her dreadlocks falling in her face, she repeated, “Survived, sacrifice, shouldn’t be, umm. Uhh, I don’t know that word.” The changeling mare took a few deep breaths. She said something in the zebra’s language.

The local started talking again, her eyes darting back and forth between Lost and me. The way they jerked back and forth, she was looking at the jagged painted sigils on us. With every word, Fine Tune nodded. They shared a few words, which was quite strange, but apparently it worked.

“Okay, umm,” she finally said. “She says, something, umm, the chief shaman said we were the offering, and we should be dead. She’s scared, thinks the stars will strike again. Heard noises... probably us fighting.” She smirked. “Me fighting... I, I actually fought!” Even through the zebra mare’s voice, it was obvious Fine Tune was quite proud of what happened outside.

“Anything about Zorana or Zolera?” Lost asked.

“Or our negotiations?” added Rose. She glared at her, her eyes flicking back and forth between the zebra and her gun.

Fine Tune asked something in the zebra’s language again. After a few seconds of back and forth, the changeling looked at us. “Zorana and Zolera are fighting. No, no, arguing,” she explained. The two had another back and forth. The zebra on my back laughed, though the laughter quickly turned to a hacking cough. “She wants to know why I look like her. And umm,” she said, going back to the other language. “She wants to know if we’re going to kill her.”

“Rose, stop threatening her,” I said in my most authoritative voice. I might not want to kill the zebra, but she needed to know I could if I wanted to.

“Tell her no, Fine Tune,” Lost added.

Fine Tune said something in the zebra’s language, and the two had another back and forth. The same phrase was repeated over and over from the mare, before she finally ran off down the hallway. Her hooves clacked against the tiles, as she rounded a corner and disappeared.

“She just thanked me repeatedly,” said Fine Tune. With a deep breath, she lit herself aflame again and transformed once again into the usual f-holes cutie-marked stallion form. “Can I die yet?” He sagged on my back, and his hooves hung limply.

“Buck up, soldier,” I said, jumping a little and forcing him back up. “No deaths yet.” If I wasn’t allowed to die, then no one was. “Gotta find Xeno first, then we’ll see about it,” I joked.

“Not funny, Hidden,” Lost said. “We’re running low on time. Let’s go find Zorana and get some answers.” She pulled herself from me and walked down the hall, limping slightly with every step.

“How long until you can heal her leg?” I asked Rose. Seeing her try and hide how bad her injury was hurt more than the physical pains I had. I’d hidden wounds like that from her whenever I could, and I knew just how much damage trying to downplay the severity could do.

“Soon,” she answered. Already she was looking better than when she’d fixed me up outside. All the practice over the past hundred years must have helped. With a curt nod, she followed after my sister.

I forced myself to move too, ignoring the dull ache in my legs that burned with every step. What a hypocrite I was, my legs aching so badly and me not mentioning it to any of them...

The walk was slow and empty. No zebras were out this late, and they were probably all hiding from the commotion outside. All it did was help the four of us get through the halls faster. No questions to answer and no harassment from locals. We made our way to the office, and even down the hall we could hear the yelling of two zebras in their native language.

Zolera’s deep voice cut through the silence with all the grace of a sledgehammer. He shouted something, and the blinds behind the glass windows shook. He must have been pissed.

Zorana’s voice answered with just as much rage behind it. With every word she spoke, the thin lines of light breaking through the blinds flickered, as if her anger alone were keeping her candles alight.

“They’re yelling about where Xeno went,” Fine Tune explained for us. “And I think I can walk now.” He slid off to the side on my back, opposite Persistence, and dropped to the ground. “Ugh,” he said, chirping once and groaning. On wobbly legs, he moved over toward Lost and pressed himself against her. “Are you alright, my Queen?”

“I’m fine. You did well,” she said. She patted him once, then banged her hoof against the office door.

The voices inside silenced. A half-second later, the door flew open and Zorana stared down at us. Her face scrunched up, going from relief to shock, then finally to pure hatred. She stomped her way out into the hallway, looked once down to see if any of her tribe were watching, then back to us. “You!” she shouted. “Where is my daughter?”

“If I were to guess,” Lost said, tapping her chin in the same way Rose had when preparing her sarcasm, “I’d say the fucking dragon got her!”

Zorana paled, so much that I thought the sigils painted on her coat might turn white themselves. She turned and screamed something in her native language, then looked back at us. “You little murderers, first you take my sons, and then you get my daughter taken from me?!” She jabbed Lost with a hoof, stepped forward, then jabbed her again. “You have the gall to come in here and talk to me. Why are you not dead? What pride do you have? Was it not enough to murder the ones I cared for, but to lose my daughter?”

I put a hoof up, blocking the third jab of her forehoof. “Touch her again and I’ll kill you,” I said. If Amble’s whispering voice wanted to call me a murderer, then I’d let her be right this one time. I put my mouth on my battle saddle’s bit to show I wasn’t joking. Persistence wasn’t loaded, but I didn’t think she’d dare to call the bluff.

It wasn’t needed. Zolera walked from the office right as I bit down, and pushed his wife out of the way. “I think, is time for shutting up,” he said.

“Finally, somepony says something sane,” muttered Rose. She trotted around behind Lost and lowered her head to her hind leg. With the distraction, she started to heal her back leg.

Lost eeped and looked down at her, but said nothing. She stared back at the two zebras. “We need our things, now,” she said.

“You think I’m going to give you anything? You’ve ripped my family apart!” shouted the shaman.

“I have things, will return them. Tell me,” Zolera said, staring daggers at Zorana. “What happen outside?” He lowered himself to our level, which had him nearly lying on the ground. “Xeno?”

“It’s not the stars, it’s a dragon,” Lost answered. She winced, closing one eye as Rose’s magic healed her leg. “He took her, after doing this to us.” She pointed to the blood splattered all over her back half, and the blood covering the rest of us.

“Green?” asked the stallion, his ears twisting forward and his eyebrows rising.

“His,” I answered, pointing at Fine Tune. “Don’t ask. We need to do this fast.”

“Tell me. I get what you need,” he answered.

Zorana shoved him over and put a hoof on his side to hold him down after he hit the ground. “No. We’re not going to help them. If the stars’ messenger took her, then she’s the one they needed. That’s the way things are,” she said, her voice cracking. She looked like she was trying to keep from crying.

“It’s not the stars,” I yelled. I stomped a hoof. It hurt, but I bit back against the pain. I needed a Med-X or something to deal with this. Maybe, maybe I’d just cut my legs off and... No. I was not ending up like that monster in my dreams. This recurring pain wasn’t going to stop me. I’d just push through it.

“You have no clue what you’re dealing with! Whether directly or indirectly, there’s more going on here than you could ever know,” said the shaman. She glared at me. “You’ve done enough damage. I won’t let my tribe suffer for my pride.”

“This is not about you,” said Lost. “This is about our friend, our family. If you truly cared about your tribe and your family, you wouldn’t be sacrificing your foals!”

Zolera looked up at his wife and shouted something while she stared at us in silent indignation. He rolled back onto his hooves and sent the mare toppling to her side. “Come. Your things,” he said. He turned and pushed the office door open all the way.

We walked in, and found our saddlebags sitting in a small pile under the chairs on the far side of the room. Atop the saddlebags were our sets of barding, and my jacket, too. A few minutes later, they were back where they belonged. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get the sigils to come off our coats. Instead, we covered them, leaving only the lines drawn on our faces showing. We turned, ready to leave and gather up Xeno back from the dragon.

Zorana stood in the doorway, blocking our path. She snorted and lowered her head, spreading her legs to block us from getting around her. “You were meant to perish, not the last of my foals,” she spat at us. “Your lot is cursed. I see it in your past and I see it in your future.” The sigils painted on her seemed to slide, as if they were slipping from her coat. “You can’t save her. She is of the stars now. Your interference will doom my entire tribe. I won’t let you leave.”

“Wife. Move,” said Zolera. He shoved the mare out of the way and pushed past her. Stepping between us and his wife, he held a hoof out. “Come. Supplies await.”

“The stars will have their revenge,” said Zorana. She stood in the doorway again, blocking our exit. “You cannot go!”

“Fine Tune, how does rage and hatred taste?” Lost asked the changeling.

“I’m not a Windigo, so horrible. I could use a boost right now, even if it’ll give me an upset stomach later,” he answered. He looked at Zolera and asked something in the zebra’s language.

“Is safe?” asked the stallion. At Fine Tune’s nod, he backed away. “Yes. Feed,” He glared at his wife. “I think is best. Time out.” He moved out of the way to let the changeling through.

“What? No! Don’t you even,” screeched the mare. Hooves scrambling, she pushed back away from the approaching unicorn stallion.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. Flames billowed from his hooves and enveloped him in green fire. A half-second later, they fell away, revealing the freshly healed shell of the bug pony. His horn lit up blue-green, and his eyes began to glow. He grinned wide, a needy look crossing his face. A tiny arc of green aura bridged the gap between him and the zebra shaman.

Her eyes began to glow, their normal green color lighting up bright enough to cast shadows across her face. She threw her head back and screamed in agony. Having been in her situation before, I felt terrible letting this happen, but she needed a moment to cool off. Her forehooves flailed before her, as the aura of magic pulsed.

The changeling backed away, cancelling the spell and letting her fall to the ground unconscious. He turned toward us, chirped, and let the flames cover him again. When the unicorn stallion reappeared as the flames faded away he said, “I feel much, much better now. I’ll feel it later, though.” With a spring in his step, he walked past us. “Let’s go, we don’t have much time.”

* * *

With Zorana safely stashed on her makeshift bed in her office, we left for Zolera’s home. I didn’t feel good about what we did, but the mare would’ve hurt herself otherwise, trying to stop us. She could believe whatever she wanted, but I didn't believe in the stars’ power any more than the next sane pony believed in them. While I wouldn’t knock her beliefs as wrong just because I could, I believed that she talked up every detail to give herself that edge against anyone she spoke to.

Still, with what she said, about the stars’ grasp and being caught between life and death. After that dream? I wasn’t really so sure. With her out cold, she couldn’t do anything to stop us. If she really cared about Xeno like she did Zahi and Zaki, then she’d forgive us for throwing her beliefs to the side to rescue our friend.

“I brew,” said Zolera, as we entered the Starbucked shop. “Not good with potion brew. My specialty? Alcohol.” He hopped the counter, landing with a heavy thud that shook the tables and chairs, and toppled things from the counter itself. “Give me moment. I make... something. Not bad, will work.” He ducked out of sight, and started tossing bottles, vials, and pieces of brewing equipment up and all over the place. Pieces clattered on the shelves behind him and over the counter, falling to the floor. He muttered something to himself in his own tongue while he worked.

Fine Tune twisted his ears forward, listening. Flames lit up the room as he transformed, only to fall away and reveal a perfect copy of Zolera, down to the massive size of the stallion. However changeling magic worked, I was extremely jealous. Cheater. He sat down and whispered to the three of us. “He says,... Hold on. Paraphrasing... This what I get. Dropping out of alchemy. Crazy tribe.” The zebra-formed changeling stopped and listened, leaning closer. “Damn mare. Heart. Umm, I don’t know that word. Love? I think.”

“Sounds like he’s regretting his marriage,” Rose muttered. She sat down in the nearest seat and rested her head against the wall. “I’m too damned old for this.”

“Yeah, me too,” I agreed. Fighting mechanical monsters, armies of clones, and dragons? Not how I expected to live my life. While we had the few minutes of rest, I got my battle saddle sorted. Bending the lever back out went quickly, thankfully, and I managed to get Persistence reloaded.

“You, Lost one,” said Zolera, poking his head from behind the counter. “Have magic, yes?”

“Not right now...” Lost whispered, looking down. “Xeno gave me something last time, an elixir that tasted terrible. It fixed the problem.”

“No good. Rose one, you have magic?” he asked, looking over at Rose. “Come. Help.”

“Why should I? You nearly broke my grenade rifle,” she spat back. Forgiving grudges didn’t seem to be one of Rose’s strong points. After a stern look from the rest of us, she finally gave in and trotted over to the counter. One hop later, and she made it behind with the gigantic stallion.

The two worked on something we couldn’t see, but from the clinking of glass and the muttering coming from back there, it had to be useful.

Lost nursed her horn, slowly trying to cast more magic from it. The tip sparked, but only glowed dimly each time she tried. She still winced in pain whenever the spell failed, but it took longer and longer each time before she would.

I dug through my saddlebags for something, instead. The ache in my legs was really starting to get to me, so I pulled out one of the syringes of Med-X I’d snagged before we left to pass the mountains. I quickly checked to make sure nopony was looking, then jabbed it into my leg between the joints in my armor, and pushed. A wave of relief washed over me as the drug pumped through my veins. I slumped down and pulled the syringe free, then flicked it down into the bottom of my saddlebags.

Zolera poked his head up from behind the counter and beckoned the three of us. When he spotted Fine Tune, still in the form of the zebra, his eyes widened. “You. You are me? Why!” he demanded, pointing a hoof.

Fine Tune pointed the same hoof, and made the exact same face as the stallion, answering in the same bewildered voice. “I am. Changeling. Translating!” he yelled.

“Stop. Strange changeling. Do not mock,” said the stallion, leaning against the counter and glaring at Fine Tune.

“Fine fine, if you want to take all the fun out of it,” Fine answered in the same deep voice. He leaned forward and glared back at Zolera, as the fires of his changeling magic overtook him. Through the breaks in the flames I could see him picking a new form, and when they finally faded, a ‘normal’ looking zebra stood there. This one had the black stripes on white coat I expected, with a mark on his flanks that made me twist my head to the side. It looked almost like the f-holes of his unicorn form, but with strange lines and symbols around them.

“Come. I have supplies for you,” said Xeno’s father. He beckoned us over with a wave of his hoof.

Below the counter were more of the machines, each with little pipes pouring various liquids into different jars and vials. He stood up and pressed a few buttons on the equipment on the counter with the very tip of his massive hoof, and stood back. One hissed as steam was blown out from a split seam near the top, but it tapered off after a second.

“I made drink. Good for relaxation. Wife good at alchemy,” he said, pointing at the vials below. “I not so good. Know enough. Potions, elixirs. They help.” As one of the pipes stopped draining he grabbed the jar in his fetlock and passed it to Lost. With his other hoof he twisted a knob to shut it off completely. “You drink. Magic might work. Might not. Best test? Real life experiment.”

“It won’t kill me, will it?” she asked, taking the jar from the stallion in her forehooves. Slowly, she swirled the liquid around. It didn’t move like water or booze. There were chunks in it.

“Drink. Will not kill,” said the stallion. “Xeno is in danger. My daughter. Go, find her. No time.” Angrily, he reached down and snatched up another of the vials. He slid it across the counter toward Fine Tune. “Basic recipe. Difficult to go wrong. Drink.”

Both L.A. and Fine Tune did as instructed, lifting the jar and vial up to their mouths and pouring the contents in. Lost grimaced, retching slightly at it. She slammed the jar down and forced a swallow. Fine Tune’s went down easier, and he smiled afterward.

“That was horrible!” she shouted, pushing the jar away with one hoof. With the other, she scraped at her tongue to rid it of the taste. “It’s like the time Xeno made me drink after my... Oh...” Realization hitting her, she reached up at tapped at her horn.

“Smart pony. Try spell,” instructed the massive buck. He grabbed the jar and tossed it back underneath the machine and turned it on again. “Lift vial. Push hard.”

Lost closed her eyes and tilted her horn in the direction of the vial Fine Tune drank from. Her face scrunched up as she focused, and a faint blue outline appeared over her horn. It sparked repeatedly, and each time she visibly flinched. After several creeping seconds, the vial tilted over, and fell onto its side. Lost’s eyes shot open and she stared at it. “Still not working,” she said, dejected.

I grabbed her with my forehooves and pulled her close. “Not true!” I nearly shouted. “You made it move, that’s the first step right?” I squeezed her tight, then reached over and set the vial up again.

She smiled and nuzzled my cheek. “I’ll try again,” she said. Moving over, she switched places with me to be closer to her target.

I looked at Zolera. “What about something for me? I’m all sorts of banged up,” I said. I waved a hoof up and down, showing the extent of my damage. It wasn’t obvious without knowing about what the steel hooves held beneath them, but the cuts and bruises covering me that Rose couldn’t quite heal were still very very visible.

He looked at me, then ducked down behind the counter. Several glass vials and jars rattled around, and he passed things to Rose, who grabbed them in her magic. As they were set on the counter, the zebra passed more to her, and finally reappeared. “Remind me. Hooves. Flesh or steel inside?” he asked. Slowly he lowered himself to my level, and pressed his muzzle against mine.

I flinched. The bone was still broken, even if everything had been set right when it was healed. It was still sore. I looked down at the steel hooves. “Both. One flesh, one steel,” I explained.

“None. Zebra medicines not work with your kind,” he said, pulling the vials away from me.

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” I asked, slightly offended.

“You are unnatural. Not of flesh,” he explained, sliding the vials and jars away. “Wife holds beliefs high. Do not mean incorrect. Dangerous for you.”

“This is for your daughter. I can take whatever happens. I’m already in pain,” I reached out and snatched the one that looked like what Lost had drank. “What’ll happen if I take it?”

He said something in his native language and placed a hoof over the top of the jar. “Worst? Death,” he said. “Least? Less death.”

“I vote she drinks it,” Rose said, and snickered.

“I think no. But...” he said, trailing off. Slowly, he lowered his hoof from the jar’s top. “Is meant to heal soul. Not body. Drink only half. Xeno not saved by your death.”

“Deal,” I said, grabbing it in my forehooves. I tipped the jar up and downed half the chunky liquid. It went down badly. I coughed several times, feeling as if I’d poured it into my lungs and not my stomach. Losing my grip on the jar as I retched, it fell and shattered on the ground. I lost my balance and fell off to the side, clutching my belly. Several coughs later, I found myself surrounded by Lost, Fine Tune, and Zolera from over the counter.

“Did it kill her?” asked Rose. At my next groan, she whined. “Aww, she’s still alive... Oh well. Let’s hurry up.”

“Hate... you…” I muttered through the pain. Every little twitch, every breath I took shot pain through me, down my legs, tail, and up my neck. A headache blossomed in seconds, and every muscle tried to flex at the same time. Memories of when Fine Tune fed off me surfaced, where something deep inside me felt like it was being crushed. Only, instead of my heart and soul taking the pain, my body did. My legs fought against themselves, shaking and twitching.

Around me the others moved, but the sound of their hooves on the ground didn’t match their hooffalls. Everything felt like it was spinning, where the ceiling suddenly became the floor, and everypony stood upside down.

“Hidden, are you okay?” Lost asked, grabbing me and pulling me close.

“Miss Hidden?” asked Fine Tune. He transformed again, flames wreathing him and falling to reveal the unicorn. “Are you alright?”

“Just give me space,” I said weakly. “No time to worry. We need to get Xeno.” With a wobbly forehoof, I pulled myself up against the counter, and shoved the others away. As much as I appreciated their comforts, I felt enough like the walls were closing in, and all I wanted to do was get out and run. I sat down and covered my eyes with my hooves. “I’m listening. You do the thinky pony thing you do and I’ll chime in when I think I need to.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lost asked.

“Lost Art. Xeno’s life is on the line. Stop worrying about me!” I shouted. It took everything I had to not break down and cry.

She stepped back, going by the sounds of her hooves on the tiles. “Alright,” she said finally. “Well, we have no idea if or when he’ll come back. We need to be quick, but quiet. Right?”

“Makes sense,” said Rose.

“Those two don’t go hoof in hoof. You either go quick, or quiet,” added Fine Tune. “I’ve tried, trust me. That gets you caught.”

I half-listened to their discussion, trying my best to focus on it over the pain in my legs. The sense of my body fighting against itself faded slowly, but still I didn’t trust myself to deal with it. I just twisted one ear forward and listened to get through it.

“Dragons can fly,” Lost countered. “If we try a direct approach he could see, but we need to get there fast.” She held her head in her hooves. “Gah!”

“What we need is fast and unseen... and to know where he is,” said Fine Tune.

“Stealth cloaks,” said Rose. “Zebras in the War used them all the time. The right enchanted gem and we can sneak anywhere.”

I opened my eyes and moved my hooves away. The twitchy, clutching feeling started to fade, and I felt safe to look around again. I watched the four others, with Rose sitting on the counter and Zolera leaning against it. Lost stood next to Fine Tune, lifting a jar into the air and spinning it in little circles. The aura around her horn looked faint, but it was there, and that was what mattered.

I fought back a groan. A few more minutes and I’d be back to normal.

Zolera laughed. “Yes. I go. Ask Caesar for old-time equipments. Will only take weeks. Only short walk!” he said, laughing again.

“Sarcasm is my bit, zebra,” snapped Rose. “Any dark cloaks will do; it’s night.”

“If the merchant we talked to a while back wasn’t completely full of it, then we best head toward the mountains,” Lost suggested. “That’s supposed to be traditional ‘dragonhome’ places.”

“We’re in a valley, though. Which mountains?” asked Fine Tune.

I swallowed and forced myself up to my hooves. I felt okay to walk again, as the floor had righted itself where it belonged. With nothing spinning, I could stand. Headaches sucked, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from saving the mare who risked her life for us. “Center, of the emptiness,” I forced out. “Lost, you’re a thinky pony, you can figure it out.”

“Plan is enough. I gather cloaks. You go, now,” said Zolera. He turned, but stopped only a step away. Turning around, he pulled the striped combat knife Xeno always carried from behind the counter. “Take this. Give to her.” He passed the knife to Lost. “She is strong. Will be there. Wait here, I return soon.”

With supplies on the way, a rough plan set up, and my legs no longer threatening to rip out of my flesh, it felt pretty good. All we had to do was survive a dragon...

* * *

Despite arguments that my leather jacket would be more than enough to keep me blending into the darkness of the cloud covered night, I found myself wearing a cloak like the others. So what if my haunches were a blinding white and could be seen even in the dark. Only Fine Tune managed to get by without wearing one, by transforming into a version of his unicorn stallion form with a black coat instead of a blue one. My jacket was more than enough to keep me covered. Zolera stood behind us, at the door to the mall, seeing us off on the journey.

All the cloak did was mess with aiming Persistence. I pulled the hood of it up over my head, which mashed my mane down over the side of my face. The cloaks were nice, at least, once I got past all my protests. They hung just to the ground, after being cut to size for mine and my sister’s smaller size. Rose’s was the proper size, given that she was slightly taller than the two of us. Hopefully all this preparation wouldn’t be needed, and we wouldn’t see the dragon in the sky at all.

Fine Tune lit the night sky up again, casting a green light on the mall behind us. When it faded, he’d darkened his normally red mane to black as well, and even with the dark brown barding he wore, he blended into the darkness completely. Were it not for his eyes, glowing slightly, I would have lost sight of him. He turned away from the mall and started walking.

“So, you can see in the dark, too?” I asked. My headache had died down right as we walked outside and got the cloaks fitted. Surprisingly, the pain in my legs and everywhere else had faded. I felt better than I ever had before. Whatever Zolera made, he should start selling it as a cureall. The pain was worth feeling like a million caps afterward.

“Yeah, one of the perks of being a changeling,” he answered with a grin. “Aside from my good looks and fighting skills.”

We all laughed.

“Go. Be fast. Be safe. Bring Xeno back,” Zolera said, turning back to the mall. “I stay. Watch wife.” He pulled the door open and walked inside. A second later, his head poked back out. “Please, save daughter. I have faith. Trust. Be safe.” With a muttering in his native tongue, he pulled his head back.

“What’d he say?” Lost asked Fine Tune. She tugged at her hood and then adjusted the cloak around her leg so she could get to Loyalty easier.

“Good luck,” the changeling answered. “Which direction? I’ll lead the way.”

Lost looked back and forth in the darkness, slowly taking in the details. She moved back and forth a few times, before sitting on her haunches. “Given what I saw earlier,” she said, more to herself than anypony else. “It’s a big half-circle, from there...” She pointed off into the darkness. “To over there.” She pointed in the other direction. “So... most likely? It’s that way.” She pointed forward, to the highest peak’s outline in the distance.

Rose grunted. “Sounds about right, if that’s the mountain I think it is. I’ll tell you more when we get there,” she said.

“Let’s go then,” said Lost. “The mares in Idle aren’t going to- Wait. Rose?” She turned to the mare as we all started walking.

“No, I didn’t get hold of her,” answered the clone pony. “I tried for hours to find somepony, but none of the usual places had any signs of life. At all.” She shrugged. “It’s been a decade and a half, at least, since I’ve been around. They might have just moved.”

“I wouldn’t blame them, with a dragon flying around,” I muttered. Sidestepping gravemarkers, I kept up by watching Fine Tune’s flank.

“Mmm, he shouldn’t be enough to get them to move,” she answered. “There are standing orders for all of us.” Her horn lit up, glowing under the hood of her cloak. With a flick of telekinesis, she pulled her grenade rifle out and started to reload it.

“Standing orders?” asked Lost. She gave the mare a strange look and raised both eyebrows above her glasses’ rims.

“Yeah, to stay the fuck put. Let’s hurry,” she shot back. With her rifle full, she dropped it over her back and started to gallop. Her horn dimmed, bringing everything around us back to darkness.

“Yes, ma’am!” I shouted. I sped up, running after her at the same pace.

Fine Tune and L.A. both got the hint, and sped up to keep going at the same speed. The changeling pushed himself and got out in front. Whenever he dodged to one side, we did as well.

The trip went smoothly, which was strange for me, but I couldn’t ask the Goddesses for a better run. The cool air felt nice on my face and through my mane. All I had to do was keep in the line we formed, and everything would be alright. Fine Tune led us, weaving back and forth around the few most distant grave markers, and calling out whenever we needed to sidestep the remains of a house or the basement holes left by the dragon snatching everything up.

I kept one eye on the sky, just in case. If the dragon flew by, we’d need to stop right then and keep from getting seen. One mistake and the whole thing would go up in smoke... hopefully not literally. Every shadow I saw across the sky sent a chill up my spine.

“Stop,” said Fine Tune, before chirping loudly. He twisted on his hooves and skidded to a stop. It sent a cloud of dust up around him, as he crouched down and closed his eyes tight. Rose slowed to a walk and then stopped. Lost and I did the same.

I looked to the sky. Something passed overhead, something big.

Holding my breath, I reached up and pulled the hood of my cloak closer. With my white muzzle the most noticeable thing in the vast nothingness around us, I dared not look up. I waited, barely breathing. “Is it safe?” I whispered.

“No,” whispered Rose. “Stay still.”

From above came the beating of wings, powerful but distant. The sounds got louder and louder, as the dragon flew by. Minutes dragged on, before the noise began to quiet again, and the dragon finally passed overhead.

I risked a peek. I pulled the cloak back just enough to get a view at the sky, but saw nothing.

“We’re good,” whispered Rose. She stood up and looked back to where we’d come from. “We’d better hurry; he’s going to turn around at some point.”

So we ran. Hooves thundered against the dirt, kicking up dust behind us as we put every inch of distance we could between us and the dragon flying through the sky. I stared at my sister’s haunches, not daring to look at the sky again.

At least an hour went by, and nothing went wrong. Somehow, acknowledging that felt taboo, like it would jinx our run. No matter how far or how long we went, the mountain didn’t seem any closer. Right next to us, basement holes and little bits of wreckage and rubble passed quickly, but the distance between us and the mountain was so extreme I felt like we’d never make it.

If only I could just fly there like the dragon could.

Then I’d get there alone, without a gun that could get through the scales or armor, and no plan. Best to stay with the group.

“I see lots on the E.F.S.,” Lost yelled. She looked back and forth, the hood of her cloak waving in the wind. “Nothing red yet!”

“Don’t trust that thing,” I yelled up to her. I’d had enough bad experiences, and Gunbuck had shot her when we weren’t hostile to him. “What about behind us?” I yelled, hoping to not deal with the dragon again so soon.

“I don’t see any...” yelled Fine Tune. His voice trailed off, lost somewhere between the front of the line and the back.

“I don’t thi- DUCK!” L.A. yelled. Without bothering to stop running she dropped to the ground. Rolling end over end, she pulled the cloak tight around her and curled up.

I didn’t bother to look back. I dropped to the ground and pulled my legs up under me. Ahead, I could see Fine Tune and Rose doing the same. The dim blue glow of Fine Tune’s eyes disappeared, and suddenly everything was black again.

We waited. Around us was nothing. There wasn’t any reason for the dragon to land or take a break. I watched from the corner of my eye as he casually flew through the sky. He swooped down, close enough that I could see one claw clutching rubble and the shattered form of a motorwagon.

He stopped in the sky, great big golden eyes staring down at us.

“Please please please,” I whispered, “Luna, Celestia... Don’t let him see us.”

“Shh!” hissed Lost. She shot me a glare from across the dirt field, but didn’t dare move. With dedicated slowness, she looked back up. Her eyes widened so much I thought they might pop out of her head.

The ground shook, and I was bounced into the air. A low rumble filled the air, followed by snorting. The dragon folded his wings back and walked past us, coming inches from stepping on Rose and crushing her. He moved on three legs, still clutching the junk in his claws. I could see the Solaris Energy sign between two of them.

I held my breath. If he heard, or smelled, or anything... We could end up flattened in an instant.

He looked around once, and his lips pulled into a smirk. Did he know we were there and just wanted to toy with us? Without a word, he leaned down and stuck his free claws into the ground. Digging around, he pulled out a small taped-up box. Setting it with his other prizes, he pulled out two more nearly identical boxes. “Missed some,” he rumbled. With one last look around, he flapped his wings and took off into the sky.

I shut my eyes tight and bit my tongue, trying not to make a sound as my cloak fluttered around me from the force of his take off. It wasn’t until I felt a hoof on my side that I opened an eye a crack.

“Come on, we need to hurry,” said Lost. She offered a hoof, and when I took it, pulled me up.

“We’re making good time, let’s go,” said Rose. She looked in the direction the dragon had taken off. “I don’t trust that thing.”

I looked over where he’d taken something from the ground, and saw the faint outline of a house’s basement. If his eyesight was that good in the dark, how hadn’t he seen us? “I agree, he’s toying with us,” I said.

We took off galloping again.

* * *

Time went by quickly, and even as I kept an eye out for the dragon, I let myself wander off into my thoughts. The run was good exercise, and my legs felt wonderful. All the horrific aching and tension from before was completely gone, and for the first time in days, I felt comfortable and able to just gallop the way a pony should.

I looked around in the darkness, remembering all the places I’d seen as we crossed over from the mountains. Plants growing? A massive lake? Plus all the towns Gunbuck had been to before. I needed the PipBuck back so I could dig through them. I might learn a bit more about him, and find out exactly who the stallion I’d killed was.

Maybe he had family nearby? A mare or a stallion I could ask, I could apologize to... I could show them the grave I-

“Ahh!” I yelped, tripping and tumbling face first downward. I slammed into something hard and dark and very solid. Groaning, I wobbled and fell forward, toppling down onto my back. “Ow ow ow...” Patting around, I checked to make sure I hadn’t lost anything in the process. Cloak, saddlebags, steel hooves, Persistence... okay everything accounted for. I rolled up onto my hooves, feeling fine even after the fall. “Hello!” I yelled as quiet as I could while still calling it yelling. I didn’t need the dragon being the one who found me. “Anypony!” I really wished I could see in the dark.

I looked around. I’d fallen into the basement of what used to be a house. A few odds and ends were tucked into the corners, but for the most part it was completely barren. Well, there was an open door at the far wall, and a wooden staircase that led downward. A cellar maybe? I wondered why a pony would need two basements.

I walked closer, my desire to find something I could call treasure from the past overtaking my sense of urgency to find my friends. I called up out of the basement just in case, “Hey! Somepony! I fell and...” I didn’t see anything worth taking down there, not that I could see anything at all. Turning away, I quickly checked the sky to make sure I wasn’t calling down a dragon. Seeing nothing ominous, I did another pass at the basement. The staircase that once led to the main floor was gone, with only the bottom few steps still in place. “There’s no way up from down here!”

Doing one more circle around the room, I checked in the darkened corners for anything I could use. Most of my checking involved digging my hooves into the darkness until I smashed my sore nose against a wall. Finally, I turned around and jumped onto the remains of the staircase up. “Hey!” I yelled. I jumped a few times, going up to the top-most remaining step and trying to reach the edge to the ground.

Several jumps and lots of hoofwaving later, I managed to hook my fetlock onto the edge, just barely. “Lost! Dammit! I need help!” I yelled as I tried to pull myself up.

“Hidden!” yelled Lost back, her voice quiet and distant. The sound of hooves on the dirt filled the air.

“I’m back he-ahh!” I said, yelping as my grip fell. I slid down the wall, landing hard on the stairs and shattering them. I slammed into the floor, sending wood everywhere with a loud crash. “Ow, FUCK!” I screamed. “Good job Hidden,” I whispered to myself, “Fall on your back so the dragon can pick you up easier...” Steel hooves were not the best for grabbing. Stupid, numb, worthless things.

Lying on the ground, with a chunk of wood digging into my back, I took a moment to reevaluate the choices I’d made in my life. Well, I tried to, until I heard a sound coming from the open cellar. It sounded like changelings, but hundreds of them and far far away.

“Fine Tune, is that you messing with me?” I asked through a groan. Rocking slightly, I rolled onto my side and stood up. I didn’t feel anything broken or any bones poking through, just sore. The pile of wood lay there completely unusable, not that the stairs were completely smashed. I took one step toward the cellar. “If that’s you, come out- EEP!”

Dozens of tiny little things flew from the cellar, chirping much like changelings but looking unlike them in any way. They had withered skin, were covered in white spots and had blotches of orange-and-white balls all over them, with pockmarks covering their bottom halves. Their heads had beady eyes, and were covered in scraggly fur that seemed to be falling out. Tiny wings of leather stretched between bones flapped so fast I almost didn’t see them, and they screeched their little chirps constantly with every new one that came from the cellar. One alone was quiet, but dozens nearly deafened me.

“Bloodwings?” I asked myself, backing up against the wall. The feeling of my blood running dry came back full-force, as if I could ever forget something like that. I pushed myself as hard against the wall as I could, watching as the little winged monsters flew into the sky, trying to be as small as possible.

With so many flying from the cellar, they toppled over one another, with several being knocked from the air. When they stood still, lying around on the ground, I could tell they weren’t bloodwings. They looked similar, but at the same time looked like some of the fruits and vegetables I’d found before in houses, ones that hadn’t been preserved in tins or jars for centuries.

Rotten bats?

More flew from the cellar and into the distance, disappearing beyond my field of vision outside the edge of the basement. This was bad. Very bad. Of all the things that could happen this was the worst possible thing. The little bat-things were the equivalent of a big flashing ‘RIGHT HERE’ sign for the dragon.

The few on the ground flapped their wings, one rising into the air after another as the main group finally dispersed into the distance and disappeared. The screeching and squeaking finally quieted, and I could hear my sister calling for me again.

“Down here!” I yelled, praying she’d get there before the dragon did. My bellowing got the bats’ attention, and they took to the air after me. “Oh, fuck me,” I whined. The first to get to me got a steel hoof to the head, and then stomped clear into the floor. It splattered underneath, squishing grossly and making the air smell foul.

Others latched onto me, little claws at the tips of their wings digging through the fabric of my cloak and teeth biting sharply. None broke the skin, but I wasn’t going to let them tear me apart like that. I twisted, grabbing the cloak with my teeth and pulled. Flinging it through the air, I caught two more of the bats in it as they flew for me.

Not stopping, I swung the cloak around hard and slammed it into the wall. Several squeaks and chirps came from the cloak, and three of the multi-colored bats fell to the ground. I slammed myself against the cloak, shoulder first. My barding made short work of those still trapped inside, squishing them like the over-ripe fruit they really were. Blood oozed along the wall and soaked through the cloak.

“Lost! Hurry!” I yelled through the cloak. I didn’t dare shoot Persistence, just in case the noise would alert the dragon. Instead, I jumped to the side, dodging as one of the rotbats flew at me.

It swooped around and latched onto my now-exposed flank. I bucked, trying to throw it off. Tiny claws dug into me, but weren’t enough to hold on when I kicked. I flung the cloak back about, knocking several more from the air. Just how many stopped to try and eat me? I kicked one of the few who fell to the floor before, smashing it clean in two. They were tiny and vicious, but two centuries of ‘rotting’ hadn’t left them particularly strong.

I stomped again, killing another rotbat. In the darkness, I started to lose track of them. My eyes had adjusted long ago, but I could only see so much while stuck in the darkness under the cloud cover. They moved too fast to follow easily. I kept looking around, trying to find the few that escaped me so far.

Another latched onto my side, but bit into the barding under my jacket. I threw myself against the wall again, since I couldn’t reach. Hitting it didn’t hurt too much, thanks to Zolera’s elixir, but it still knocked the wind out of me.

“Hidden,” said Lost. The basement lit up with light from Rose’s horn as the two unicorns reached the ledge. “The dragon’s comi- Oh, Goddesses what are those!” She leaned back, covering her nose.

She had a point, they smelled horrible. I slammed my cloak into the ground several time, smashing the remaining rotbats within it until I felt that nothing could survive. Breathing heavily, I dropped the cloak. “Hey, nice timing,” I said, gasping. “Just finished cleaning up a mess. Can we get out of there? Right now.”

“Are you alright?” she asked. When I nodded, she lit her horn up and wrapped her telekinetic field around my neck. “Don’t ever do that again!” she shouted. She turned to the other unicorn. “Rose, help me get her up.”

A second haze of magic wrapped around me, at my hind legs. I bit down on the cloak I’d been made to wear, and pulled it up with me. When my hooves touched solid ground, I trotted away from the basement. “Trust me, I never want to do it again,” I admitted. “That wasn’t a fun experience.”

Lost hugged me and said, “Just stay sa-”

I pressed a wet hoof against her to silence her. In the sky behind her, I saw the outline of the dragon against the clouds. Ignoring the disgusted look my sister made from being smeared with rotbat goo, I pulled us to the ground, slowly. With my other hoof, I caught my cloak and pulled it flat around my legs and haunches. I ducked my head under my sister to keep out of sight.

Rose followed my lead. Fine Tune wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

The dragon stopped above us. “You’re being too noticeable, my future pets... I know what you’re doing,” he said, his voice shaking me to the bone. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re there.”

I didn’t breathe, and neither did Lost. We just held onto one another, and I prayed. “Please Goddesses,” I whispered. “Please...”

“Shh,” whispered Lost back. She wrapped a hoof around my head and squeezed.

“All you’re doing it making it easier for me,” he rumbled, flying past us. “I’ll have you all eventually, my little ponies.” He laughed. “Thank you, for doing all my work for me.”

The air filled with the sound of his wings flapping. None of us moved until the sound faded from the sky.

Lost released her grip on my head, and looked to the sky. “I think we’re okay,” she whispered. She pushed herself to her hooves and shivered.

“This is...” I said, unable to find a word to properly describe how I felt. Xeno better love us forever after this. Or maybe, just maybe, count us even for all the trouble she went through to save our flanks back in U Cig.

I stood up and grabbed my cloak from the ground. Throwing it into the air, I ducked underneath and let it fall back on. It landed softly, but felt wet and sticky from all the blood or... juices... or whatever those things had in them. Bits of splattered rotbat pieces smeared across my coat, and I felt the fangs and teeth of the remains catching. The cloak bulged and something darted across my skin. “Eee!” I yelped, feeling little claws digging in and pulling a wet spot across my back.

Lost smacked me in the side, trying to flatten the rotbat underneath, but it crawled away. She swore under her breath and swatted the new spot. Welts started to rise on my side, but it kept dodging away, over my haunches and to the far side away from Lost.

Clinging onto my flank, it bit me right below my cutie mark on my left side.

“Ow!” I yelped. I pulled the cloak back, only to find a rotten red-bodied bat clinging to me, with its fangs sunk right into my skin.

A muffled gunshot went off, and the head of the bat splattered into pieces. The body fell to the ground, and Fine Tune trotted over. “You okay?” he asked, smiling wide.

I nearly had a heart attack. “Don’t sneak up on me!” I shouted. The changeling blended into the darkness far too well. I held a hoof over my heart, still trying to catch my breath.

Lost stared at me, her jaw near the ground. “Hidden!”

“Well, I don’t feel like it sucked any blood out. I’m fine,” I answered. And really, I did feel perfectly fine. I really needed to thank Zolera for that zebra brew.

“No, I’m Fine. You’re Miss Hidden,” joked the changeling. Seeing my deadpan look, he sheepishly grinned. “Sorry, I had to...”

I facehoofed.

“Ew...” I groaned, realizing I’d just smeared rotbat goo all over my face. I wiped my forehoof off in the dirt until it was reasonably clean, then tried to wipe as much as I could from my face. Once I’d gotten the majority off, I turned to the group. “Okay, can we please just go?”

We all started running, Fine Tune leading, Rose following. I was third, with Lost behind me for emergencies. I prayed to the Goddesses I wouldn’t run into anything like that again.

* * *

I stared at the mountain in the distance, annoyed it wasn’t getting any closer. We’d run in silence since the issue with the rotten bats, and the disgusting ooze they had for blood made the others keep their distance from me. It stank something fierce. There wasn’t much to talk about anyway. Galloping as fast as we could kept the wind in our ears, and it took all my focus to keep in line and not fall into another basement.

Fine Tune made quite the skilled leader, given he was the only one with any skill at seeing in the dark. With clouds covering the moon and stars above, I could still only barely see the outline of old basements and wreckage as we passed them. I liked to think of myself as well-adjusted for moving in the dark, especially after all the practice we had with mom, but without cheater magic keeping a dim light... Well, the situations were very different.

I wished Lost and Rose could light things up for us. I really did. I didn’t like running blind. The lack of control over where I could go reminded me of the shackles on my back legs. Instead, I tried to think about what we might find when we got there. Would there be a trail up toward the mountaintop? Would the entrance be at the bottom of the mountain itself, like the cave we found Stables Twelve and Twenty One in?

“Anything on... the E.F.S.?” I asked, yelling loud so Lost could hear me. I felt just a hair more comfortable raising my voice, with the knowledge the dragon wasn’t going to swoop down and snatch us up the second he saw us.

“Lots of... green!” she yelled back. She sounded as tired as I felt. The sooner we got there, the better. “One red!”

One red? A hostile? I felt my lips twist into a grin. Good, something to break up the monotony. “Enemy ahead!” I yelled to Rose and Fine Tune.

Rose repeated my call, and Fine Tune whistled his acknowledgement.

I slowed down, nearly heaving. We needed a break and this was a good excuse. Together we all slowed, moving from a flat gallop to a trot, and finally slowing to a walk. Forming a little circle in the darkness, the four of us all took the time to gather our breath. Crouching down, Lost passed a bottle around, and we each took a drink between pants. “Good run, everypony,” she said.

“So, what’s on the E.F.S.?” I asked after taking a drink. I passed the bottle to Rose.

Lost looked around, doing a complete circle. There was nothing there. No sound, no bats in the air. Fine Tune hadn’t warned us about anything, either. “Just a red marker, it’s in the same direction we’re heading,” she answered with a shrug.

“That thing needs a distance indicator,” I complained. “Whatever it is, it could be on the other side of the mountain and we’d never know...”

“I haven’t seen anything up ahead,” said Fine Tune. He took the bottle Rose offered and passed it back to Lost. “I check each basement we pass. They’re all nearly empty... Sometimes I’ll see some boxes, but nothing anypony could live on.”

I looked back the way we came. The mall sat in the distance, so small and insignificant with how far we’d run. It stood out, a marked contrast to the terrifying emptiness around us. I spun in a circle to orient myself, and once again found myself amazed. This must have been a suburb or a town at one point, but now? Now it was barren. I did a second pass around, and found myself in awe at how flat it looked. I expected to see the holes of more basements from removed homes, but we’d gotten so far that even those fell away. All that surrounded us was old dirt. Were we really so far out?

Fine Tune was right, nothing normal could live here. We just had to play it safe.

“How much longer?” asked Rose, changing the subject.

Lost lifted the PipBuck and checked the map. “We’re more than halfway,” she said, holding her other hoof over the screen to dim the light from it. Clicking the PipBuck screen off, she took the last drink of water and stuffed the empty bottle back into her saddlebags with her magic.

“Glad to have your horn working again?” I asked, trying to sound pleasant about it.

“Yeah, even if it’s just the levitation. I don’t think I’ll be trying any more fire spells for a while,” she answered. “Let’s go. Xeno might be hurt.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for anything that looks dangerous,” said Fine Tune. He turned away and ran off, pushing to a full gallop quickly. We followed, in the same order as before.

As we ran off, the ground began to shake. Dust filled the air, as did the muffled voices of ponies I couldn’t see. Ahead of me, Fine Tune toppled over. He rolled head over hooves and slid to a stop.

Rose jumped at the spot he fell, and when she landed, she spun around. Her horn glowed aquamarine, as she lifted her grenade rifle from her back.

Before I reached the same spot, the ground erupted. Dust filled the air as ponies appeared on either side of us. L.A. backpedaled and pulled Loyalty from its holster on her leg and spun around. Yells carried through the air as raspy-voiced ponies screamed and hollered gibberish. Deafening thuds drowned those out as the ground fell back into place, throwing more dust and dirt into the air.

Hooves grabbed me in the chaos and threw me to the ground. Others did the same to Lost.

Rose didn’t let them take her. With a cry of rage, she smashed the barrel of her grenade rifle into one of the attacking ponies, cracking it across the mare’s face and sending her to the ground. She bucked, hitting another in the side and knocking the wind from a pony.

I followed her lead, and hit the stallion holding me down as hard as I could. His scream of pain didn’t stop me, and I rolled onto my back and bucked him up and off me. Coughing from the dust in the air, I forced myself up.

Looking around, I couldn’t make hide nor hair of what was actually happening. I saw Rose beating a pony to death, while Fine Tune scrambled away from the group. Lost struggled against another mare, holding the mystery pony’s head in her hooves and pushing back.

Others that I didn’t recognize ran around fighting, but not with us. They looked more like they were going after one another. But, who should I attack then?

The choice was obvious. I charged and rammed the mare on top of Lost. Throwing her off, I turned and offered a hoof to help my sister up.

The ponies around us looked ragged, even for Wastelanders. They wore no armor and had no weapons, and I could see their ribs through their coats. Given the rasps, I thought they might be ghouls, but the solid hooves that grabbed me didn’t feel like it, and they didn’t look to be rotting. It answered how anypony could live out here: barely.

I backed up against Lost. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Who cares, kill them!” shouted Rose. She rammed the barrel of her grenade rifle into a pony and forced her to the ground. When the pony tried to bite her gun, she fired it.

The mare exploded, sending blood and gore everywhere. Some splattered on me, but given that I’d already been covered in the remains of the rotten bats, I didn’t even flinch.

“Good idea,” Lost said. She pointed Loyalty at two others, who were busy fighting with each other and pulled the trigger. With a blinding green flash, and an ear-splitting B-KEW, the two disappeared. A green, glowing puddle of ooze remained on the ground where the two ponies had been. “Get Fine Tune, I’ll back Rose up.”

“Do you need to fire?” I asked. The dragon worried me. All this noise, light, and fighting would bring the bastard down fast. We needed to get out of here. I ran from my sister, letting her handle the others. Jumping over the splattered-open torso of the mare who ate the grenade, I made it to Fine Tune. With both steel forehooves out, I hit the stallion on top of the changeling as hard as I could.

He didn’t even scream when he died. His throat collapsed and he crumpled to the ground, his neck snapping loudly under the force of my steel. The unicorn mare across from me looked up from Fine Tune, and smiled.

Several of her teeth were missing, and her eyes didn’t quite seem in focus. She licked her lips once and pounced, flailing her hooves at me.

I braced myself. When the mare hit me, I barely felt it. She was weak, but she attacked my friend. Old conditioning rose in my mind. Kill when necessary. She attacked my friend. I reared up and stomped as hard as I could.

The sound of her spine shattering sang like music in my ears. I hit her again. And again. I slammed my forehooves down on her back until I broke through and her ribs flew into the air on either side. With the feeling of bloodlust raising in my mind, I turned to the others. Two down, a half-dozen left to go.

Ignoring Fine Tune, I bit down on my battle saddle’s bit and fired off three shots. They tore through the stallion sneaking up behind Rose. The hungry look in his eyes faded in an instant, replaced by feral terror. Dropping down, he looked up and wailed in pain. I put another two bullets into his head.

“Murderer,” whispered a voice in the back of my mind as the stallion’s head exploded.

“Damn right,” I whispered back. I had a good reason to kill these ponies. They attacked us out of nowhere. In my mind, that equated to raider. I fired another two shots, not aiming any more than necessary to not hit Rose or my sister.

“Miss Hidden?” Fine asked. He placed a hoof on my leg.

I raised it, a kneejerk reaction. Glaring down, I looked at the unfamiliar all black stallion below me. Were it not for the fearful look in his pupilless eyes, I’d have stomped him dead right there.

Instead, I hesitated.

Murderer. Necessity. He wasn’t a threat.

My leg flinched. It tried to attack, all on its own. I pulled back, fighting it. A sudden bolt of pain lanced through me. From my non-existent hoof to the back of my head. While my sister and Rose fought around me, I fought with my own body to keep from killing somepony I knew to be a friend. Somewhere deep down inside, conditioning pushed me.

I’d killed those I cared about before. What was one more? If he hadn’t tripped, we might not be in this mess. He got us into this danger, and that was enough. If Lost died because of him, then how could I justify letting him live?

It would be quick. Painless. Snarling, I lunged forward.

“Please, don’t do it!” he yelled.

I stopped my hoof an inch from his face. I could see myself in him. I heard my own voice, begging Vice Brand and Slipstock to stop.

Despite the fighting around us, it felt like time had stopped. “What did- did she call you?” he asked. His voice broke halfway through, and even though his eyes glowed unnaturally, I could see his fear. I could see mine.

“Miss Fortune,” my mouth answered for me. I wasn’t under orders to keep a secret. Something inside me started to hurt, a dull ache that not even crazy zebra elixirs could fix. Just saying the words made it feel like I’d ripped my own heart out.

“Miss Fortune,” he whispered, gulping after. “Please don’t kill me.” The black stallion lowered his head and covered it with his forehooves. His ears pinned back and he closed both eyes.

I looked up, at my sister and the clone. Two more shots rang out and a stallion fell to the ground, his hind legs now useless.

A blast from Loyalty finished him off, leaving only a glowing pile of goo.

The fight had continued around me while I stared at the changeling, my friend, and thought about ending his life. I thought I’d gotten past this, past the desire to just obliterate anything that I felt might be an enemy. After what I’d done to Rose’s other copies. After that breakdown.

With a swing of the grenade rifle, the last of the attacking ponies went down. Her jaw hung in an unnatural way, and blood drained from her nostrils. But she was still breathing. Sloppy.

Rose and Lost both turned and looked at one another. They shared a nod, then walked over toward Fine Tune and me. Rose casually swung the grenade rifle around with her magic, smashing it into the still-living mare and caving her skull in.

“Why are you crying?” asked Lost. She raised a hoof and tapped it against my muzzle.

I felt something wet on my cheek, and raised my own hoof to feel. Cold steel pressed against me, but it felt nothing. I pulled the hoof away and in the dim light of Rose’s magical aura, I saw the steel was wet. When had I started crying?

“Everything’s fine,” said Fine Tune. He pushed himself up from the ground and walked over to stand behind Lost. “Right?” He sounded desperate.

“Right,” I agreed. I shook my head, clearing the memory of what just happened. I didn’t want to think about it. Ever. Suddenly, the freaky nightmare had a tinge of hope to it. I’d just replace every part of me Amble had a hold on...

L.A. gave me a scrutinizing look. When I forced a smile, she just frowned. “Alright, okay. Let’s go. We’re running out of time,” she said. She walked off, away from the scene of the fight. As Fine Tune and Rose took off toward the mountain, my sister looked back at me, her face filled with concern.

I ran past her, as fast as I could.

* * *

After ages of thundering hooves galloping along the plains, Lost yelled, “We’re almost…. there! PipBuck says... we’re entering... the Starswirl Caverns Campground!”

Ahead, the mountain loomed, much much larger than it had been the last time I actually looked up. It made me feel incredibly small. The thought of climbing up that thing without wings or some way to actually get to the peak terrified me. I prayed to the Goddesses the entrance was at the ground. Last time I ran up a mountainside, I’d been nearly killed by two snipers taking potshots at me.

What would I have done if I’d met Amble before we went to Pommel Falls? Would I have killed Xeno just like we killed Zahi and Zaki, just because of how she looked? Would the conditioning have told me to view her as a threat, because the other two zebra with her were, even though all she did was sit there quietly staring at the distance?

We didn’t bother to stop running as we entered what must have been the campground. Aside from a subtle change in the way the ground felt under my rear hooves, I didn’t notice anything different about it. With no markers, no buildings or signs, it all just looked like the same barren Wasteland to me. I still wanted to thank the Goddesses that we were close.

I slowed to a walk. Pushing my thoughts and fears away, I focused on breathing. With a glance back the way we came, I again found myself in awe at how much ground we’d covered. I could barely see the mall in the distance. It looked so tiny, like a foal’s toy from Equestria before the war. Turning, I looked up at the massive mountain.

I didn’t want to climb that thing. At all.

Lost walked up beside me and pressed herself against my side. “Feeling any better?” she asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I answered. “The conditioning popped up again. That’s all.” I looked back up the mountain. “Do we go up there?”

“Yup,” answered Rose.

I slumped, turning back to the others. “Okay, so... how do we get up there?”

“Well, the PipBuck said this was a campground. Is there a path up?” L.A. asked Rose.

Rose walked over with Fine Tune. “Yeah. This place was pretty popular back in the day, a nice getaway. It used to be a tourist spot for anypony who lived this side of Ponyville,” she explained. Cocking her head up to the side, she looked up and pointed a hoof at the peak. “I visited once. The entrance is up at the peak, it’s a cavern system that runs through the whole mountain in a big spiral. They named it after Starswirl.” She added under her breath, “Along with everything else.” Clearing her throat she continued. “That was two hundred years ago. I don’t know if a path up even still exists.”

“Well, we’re going to have to get up there somehow,” Lost muttered.

“What’s the path look like?” asked the changeling. “I can go look for it.”

“I haven’t been here since before the War broke out,” said the clone pony. “I don’t remember every detail, especially since all the old landmarks like which tree is what, and which rock was where, were all blown to shit by Balefire.”

She had a point. All around us was a whole lot of nothing. Even the mountain towering above us didn’t have any defined features like it would have when Equestria was around. In the darkness, all I could see was the massive outline against the clouds. I sighed.

“Let’s just hurry before the dragon finds us,” I said solemnly. I looked back at the sky behind us, skimming over it, praying to Celestia and Luna both, that I wouldn’t see the dark outline of wings flapping their way close to us.

“If we find the path, we’ll follow it with the PipBuck. Let’s get looking,” Lost said.

Fine Tune saluted, and his eyes began to glow brightly. He turned and trotted off toward the mountain’s base.

* * *

“Fuck!” I hissed, trying to keep my voice down. I pulled my hoof back from the edge and stared down. Were it not for the fact that I could feel ground under me, I’d have thought I was back in my nightmares, floating in a sea of nothingness. Gently, I set my hoof down and looked ahead at the darkness.

The wind had shifted the clouds above. Less light got through, making it impossible to see ahead of me. “I don’t like this path,” I said quietly, more to myself than anypony else. My side was pushed against the rocks, and I had to put one hoof directly in front of the other to keep from falling off the edge. I missed the lower parts of the pathway we were on, before it had thinned out to a narrow ledge covered in fallen rocks I kept slipping on, or the larger rocks I had to clamber over.

Through a combination of Fine Tune’s night vision and Rose’s vague memory of the old hoof trail up to the cavern entrance, we’d managed so far. Every step I took felt like it could be my last, since I couldn’t see anything in the darkness all around me now. Stupid wind, stupid pegasi, closing off the sky and blocking out all the light.

“I don’t either, but I can’t control rockslides that happened who knows how long ago,” said Rose. “If you don’t want to take this path, you can wait at the bottom of the mountain for us.” Well, the bottom of the mountain meant less chance of falling off the edge.

Every step brought my heart to a stop as I felt the rocks shift underneath my hooves. Having steel ones that couldn’t feel more than ‘you hit something, stop moving’ scared me to death. It wasn’t like I could go up the mountain backward.

Wind whipped around us, furling cloaks into the air and sending a chill up my spine. Nights in the Wasteland were always cold, and were it not for a safe spot to hunker down in, or a campfire to keep one warm, there was a the fear of not waking up the next morning. But this wind? This wind cut me to the bone, more so where the now ice cold metal of my steel hooves met my flesh.

If I could see at all, I’d have sworn my breath was frost.

“So, how much longer?” I thought out loud. I looked up and saw a whole lot more nothing. Miles above I could see the peak, a tiny little outline of darkness against clouds that let through only the tiniest specks of light.

“Not much,” answered Lost. Her voice was carried by the wind, and sounded like it was coming from all directions at once. “And be quiet, we’re running from a dra- Eep!” she screamed. Rocks shifted and clattered down below us.

“You okay?” I asked. My ears skewed side to side, listening for a thump or any noise indicating that she wasn’t perfectly fine.

“Yeah, I- I just slipped,” she answered. “I think we need a light...”

“No, you said it yourself. Dragon. We’re close. Just follow the mountain edge,” said Rose. Her voice carried, echoing against the mountainside in the moment of calm from the wind.

We kept walking, going terribly slow. I kept myself sane by counting the steps between each slip. The highest I got was three.

“Rock,” called back Fine Tune. He tapped the side of the mountain a few times with a hoof. The hollow sound echoed around, and I couldn’t quite tell where it came from.

“Be more specific?” I requested, yelling above a sudden gust of wind. It whipped my cloak around me, snapping the fabric against my sides and leaving it half above my head. “I can’t see shit!” I leaned hard against the rocks to my side, crouching down to keep from being blown clear off the side of the mountain.

“None of us can,” said L.A. Rocks skittered against rocks in front of me, followed by a grunt. “Dammit.” I heard the sound of hooves on loose stone, running.

“Sis?” I asked, pulling the cloak back down over my head. My weight shifted... “Fuck, fuck!” I yelled, my rear hooves sliding out from under me. Toppling sideways, I scrambled my hooves for something anything.

Ground!

I jumped. My hooves clattered against pebbles. I kept jumping, praying the next time I landed I’d find my balance. Every landing, I pushed back off. The ground shifted under me. My balance went wide and I felt myself sliding off the path. “Lost. Lost! Help!” I yelled, shifting my weight hard to the other side. I prayed to the Goddesses I’d feel the rock wall against my side and not fall to my death.

The warm glow of my sister’s magic wrapped around me. “Hidden... Don’t move,” she said. Her eyes were wide, but I couldn’t see whether she was afraid or angry, since the dim glow of her horn put a glare on her glasses. Drops of sweat formed on her brow and she clenched her teeth.

I held perfectly still, not daring to disobey her. Slowly my balance returned, as she righted me back on the path. Before her horn cut out, I looked down.

“Thank you Celestia and Luna, for cheater magic,” I whispered. “I’d not be here right now without it.”

I looked down and prayed to find a way back down to the campground below. Instead, I only saw the jagged rocks of the cliffside fading to blackness. For the first time in my life, I wondered if there was a way to staple a pegasus’ wings to my back so I wouldn’t ever need to worry about falling off a cliff.

On the other hoof, I could just never go near cliffs again. That struck me as a much better plan. This entire adventure was absolute madness.

Following my brush with death, we moved slower. Rose spent most of the time grumbling, but she slipped the least. Her falls were the most obvious, because her horn would light up and she’d swear loud enough to cause an echo.

“I can transform and fly you up one at a time,” offered Fine Tune. He looked back at us, his eyes betraying his position. The two glowing orbs seemed to dance when he talked, slowly moving up and down with every word. “It’ll only take a minute or two.”

“Only if somepony falls. You catch them and fly them back up. We are trying to hide from a dragon, remember?” Lost asked. “We’re doing okay for now.” She took another few steps in the darkness, and sent more rocks down the mountainside below. “Just be ready to be the hero if we fall, then you can save us.”

“As you wish, my Queen,” he agreed, reluctance heavy in his voice. The glowing blue of his eyes disappeared as he turned around.

Ice cold wind sent my cloak up again, and I shivered as it cut through even my jacket and armor. I’d personally take the quick flight if he offered again, but Lost was my big sister and that meant she was in charge. Pushing the cloak back down with a hoof, I looked up again. I could barely see the edge of the mountain’s shadow above me. It just seemed to blend into the sky, stretching higher and higher the longer I looked. Despite all the walking, all the slips, and all the wind, I couldn’t tell if we’d made any progress. It still looked so far away. Leaning against the wall of stone beside me, I looked out at the landscape beyond.

Far off in the distance, I could see specks of light, dotting the landscape. They seemed so small, off in the distance so impossibly far away. Some were faint and flickering, most likely camp fires set by ponies who didn’t have real homes. The C-building, on the same edge of the valley as us, showed the most life, with the flashing lights on the edge of the sign giving off the most light around. It was too bad we were now behind it, and the light didn’t go far enough. Darkness still surrounded me, as if it wanted to choke the life from me. What I wouldn’t give to turn the PipBuck on so I could see just a little.

I suddenly felt sick, realizing just how isolated from everything we were. If one little thing went wrong, we could die and nopony would even find us. I tried to comprehend just how much space sat between us and the closest thing to civilization, and I couldn’t. There was so much emptiness all around, miles and miles of pure black all around where the only thing left was the open pits that used to be basements, full of feral ponies and rotten bat-things.

The silence around me sent a chill down my spine. Were it not for the whisper of the wind and the hooffalls nearby, I would have felt lost in the void.

I looked back at the mountain, at the size of the peak looming overhead. Once again, my legs went weak underneath me. Sitting down slowly, I stared out at the Wasteland before me. Even entering Buckatello, I wasn’t able to appreciate how truly small I was in the great big expansive world around me. It could have been miles that we traveled so far tonight, and I’d never be able to tell exactly... I just knew that the lights from the mall we’d left, even the lights from the ‘closer’ landmarks were just miniscule and so incredibly far away.

The mountain that towered over me might reach to the sky, but I was just one tiny little pony. One little pony trying to go somewhere that no others had traveled, by hoof, in two centuries. How many more hours would it take to walk up? I turned and started up the trail again, pretending to think about something, anything, else.

“There’s a turn up here,” said Fine Tune. He clopped his hoof three times against the rocks. The glowing blue of his eyes appeared and he cocked his head to the side. Then he disappeared completely, around the curve of the mountain and out of sight.

“Thanks,” whispered Lost, walking off behind him. Her faint outline disappeared completely. Thank the Goddesses Rose and I could follow the sound of their hooffalls against the stone.

I followed, behind L.A. and Rose, stepping over stones and resting my hooves gently down to keep from slipping. I kicked rocks away to find solid ground, and looked ahead. My ears skewed forward, I followed by sound.

Rose rounded the corner and the sound of her hooves faded. She screamed, “Fuck!” The sound of rocks and hooves on the stone clattered noisily.

I rounded the corner in time to see the cloak-covered form of the clone mare topple off the edge of the mountainside.

“Rose!” I shouted, ignoring the need to keep quiet. Running and jumping, I dropped and reached off the edge. My hooves flailed, as I tried to grab her from the air.

She stared up at me, her eyes wide and full of terror. Against all the things we’d decided, all the stealthy hiding, not using spells or PipBucks for light, to stay hidden... Her horn lit up and she threw the grenade rifle into the air.

I grabbed the barrel of the gun in my forehooves and held on as tightly as I could. I slid, my belly dragging against the jagged little rocks between me and the stone path. Clenching my eyes shut and biting back against the pain, I curled my hooves and held the gun in my fetlocks.

“Thank you,” whispered the clone.

I opened my eyes and looked. The strap she used to hold the gun on her back was hooked around her foreleg, just barely twisted at her curled hoof and caught in the fetlock. She hung at my mercy, and with a single flick of my hooves, I could drop her to her death and we’d be free of her blackmailing and her escorting. I nodded, and held on for dear life.

A sound that shook me to my soul carried its way across the wind. The beating of wings, slowly getting louder, overtook everything. In the distance, against the dimly lit cloud cover, a massive shadow approached. Great golden eyes looked over the horizon, casually scanning before looking down at the claws only he could see. His voice carried across the winds, “...promise I’ll treat you well. Just call out to me.” Was he talking to himself?

“What’s going- Oh, fuck,” whispered Lost. She stared at Rose and me, but tore herself away the second the dragon’s voice hit her ears. She dropped down to the ground, curling against the stone wall and pulling the cloak tightly against herself. In the distance, Fine Tune did the same.

I followed her lead, shaking my head so the hood fell to cover my face and muzzle, and stared up through a small gap where the fabric folded. Every shake terrified me, as the subtle shift might be all it took to make me slide off the edge of the world with her. The gun shifted and slid in my hooves, still slick from the ooze and blood from the ponies and rotbats I’d killed, making me grip it tighter and pull as hard as I could to keep from losing her forever. I looked down at Rose and said, my voice barely audible to even myself, “Sorry...”

The dragon flew by, forearms up and counting his treasure in his claws. Little flecks of gold reflected the dull glow of his eyes, as he picked up the pieces with his claws and dropped them back down. It seemed more like he was taunting me, daring me to go after it. Had he seen the look of desire I had when he first appeared?

“I know you’re coming,” he said, his voice rumbling and carrying across the distance. Still he flew closer. He didn’t look up at us, and simply passed by in the air. “You can make this go faster.” He moved to another spot on the mountain, far on the other side from us. “Wherever you are, I’ve been around a long time... I know what your kind is like.” He landed at the campground below.

The steel of the barrel slipped. Metal hooves weren’t the best for holding against metal guns. The band that held the wooden stock to the barrel caught in the joint between hoof and leg, and I squeezed my legs together.

Rose whispered something to me. It was too quiet to make out, but I knew she’d begged me not to drop her. Why shouldn’t I though? She’d lived a longer life than most ponies could ever dream of, and she was the copy of a mare who had us by the tails. One ‘slip’ and we’d be free of the little problem... We could run back to Idle and save the mares and be done. No more Rose, and no more jagged rocks digging into me.

I looked down, watching as the dragon walked around the old empty camps below. He stopped every now and then, lifted his snout up and snorted smoke. “Come now, my little ponies. My cave isn’t so bad,” he teased, growling between each word. Wings flapping, he took to the air once more, and circled around the mountain above us. His movements were slow, as he looked through the darkness for us. “Life as property is nice. I promise. I bring presents, you sort them for me.” He flew upward, turning to look over the plains we’d just run through.

Did that mean he kept them alive?

I didn’t have time to think about that right now. I pulled as hard as I could, working my hind legs side to side to pull myself back up. I looked over at my sister. “Please,” I whispered. “I need help...” My legs didn’t ache from the weight. In fact, I couldn’t really feel anything in them from all the exertion.

Frantically, Rose looked back and forth between me and where I’d looked at Lost. Bending her leg, she pulled herself up, and hooked her other fetlock into the strap. It made the gun shift, and I lost my grip. Her eyes widened as the strap moved and her fetlock fell free.

I imagined her falling, hitting the ground, as if it were actually happening before my eyes. Gritting my teeth, I pulled my numb hooves closer together and squeezed the gun. I couldn’t drop it. She might be a bitch, but she’d become a friend in the time we’d known her. She wasn’t that bad.

We needed her to help stop the dragon anyway. If Xeno really was alive, if she’d survived the collapse of the Solaris building, we’d need Rose’s help to get her free. And maybe others were trapped too, and better four of us save them than three.

But how would we stop a dragon?

“Sneaky little pests,” mused the dragon, one claw going up to scratch at his throat. “I’ll get you yet... I always do.” He flew off, the dark shadow across the sky getting smaller and smaller. As he disappeared into the distance, he started his speech again, “I know you’re coming. You can make this...” His voice faded, but he probably meant for the speech to be heard wherever we might be.

The second the dragon turned away, Lost jumped. She waved to Fine Tune, who followed her. Lost stood to my side, her horn glowing and wrapping the blue aura of her magic around Rose, just past her forelegs around her barrel. “We need to hurry,” Lost said, her voice straining. “We don’t know if he’ll turn around again.”

“Umm, umm, okay!” answered Fine Tune. Rather than add his magic to the group, he instead transformed. With a blinding wreath of green fire, he did the riskiest thing possible. Transforming back into his changeling form, his thin wings flittered, and he dove off the edge of the pathway. He grabbed onto Rose, and together the three of us pulled and lifted until I could wrap my legs around her. With the scrambling of hooves and the shifting of bodies, we managed to get her back onto the ledge.

“I should have stayed in Idle,” rasped Rose through her teeth as she hyperventilated. Taking the grenade rifle back in her hooves, she hugged it so tight her legs started to turn white. She nuzzled it, before looking up at the three of us. “Thank you,” she said, sounding truly sincere for the first time since I’d met her.

“It’s what friends do,” I said. “Kindness, right?” Offering a hoof, I pulled her back onto her hooves.

“Let’s just get up there as quick as we can,” she said as she righted herself. Throwing the grenade rifle back over her shoulder, she started forward again, but this time much, much slower.

“Better late than never,” Lost sighed.

* * *

“How long has it been?” I whined, quietly. While my hooves and legs hadn’t started to ache from the long climb up, I’d gotten more than tired of running the same hoofful of worries about whether Xeno would be okay or not through my head. Eventually I settled on the fact that I’d find out when I found out, and not a second sooner. That didn’t do much to silence the worries in the back of my mind. I was actually surprised the little nagging claws and whispering voices weren’t toying with my emotions about it. I wasn’t about to ask them to start, either.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re nearly there,” answered Lost. She spoke just above a whisper, and looked over the edge of the path toward the darkness of the field beyond.

I did too, just in case. If the dragon decided to arrive now, it could spell disaster.

“I can see the cavern entrance!” said Fine Tune, chirping loudly afterward.

“SHH!” Lost and I both hissed at the same time.

“Finally,” Rose whispered. She hadn’t said much since her brush with death, and to hear her actually talk with us was a relief. The remainder of the trip she’d kept her head down, moved slowly, and muttered to herself about clones and the original Rose. Out of privacy for her complicated ‘life,’ I decided not to eavesdrop.

The four of us walked up the last few yards to a flat ledge. On the one side was the massive entrance to the caverns within, and on the opposite side lay the ruins of a wall. At one point, it had been used as a lookout for ponies sight-seeing, but now the mechanisms lay shattered and without the wall. Standing too close to the ledge could only lead to another scare like the one we’d had down below. The best part though, was the fact that we could see and stand on a flat surface.

Light shined from inside the cavern, dull and soft. It cast no true shadow, but came from deep within and out of sight. The four of us trotted forward and into the dim glow of whatever lit up the inside. The floor of the cave was trodden smooth, with only the slightest of steps at long intervals that led down a twisting corridor. Lining both sides of the cave walls were what could only be the homes from the valley. The fronts of each building faced us, with the window glass missing and the doors jammed shut. Through holes in the sides, and through the windows, I saw mountains of trash and old-world possessions more than likely pilfered by the dragon over the past few decades.

We walked past the houses slowly, and I gently lowered by steel hooves to keep the noise down. None of us spoke, instead listening both forward and back for any signs of life, or for the dragon’s return. From deep in the caverns came the quiet echo of something. It sounded almost like voices, but whatever they were, I couldn’t make them out.

Once there’d been guardrails to keep ponies safe and within specific areas, but they now lay on the ground, flattened by dragon claws and smashed so far down they’d become a part of the floor, only shown by their differing color. The light seemed to shine from everywhere and nowhere, and I wondered exactly how it worked. I figured the dragon probably snatched up unicorns and had things enchanted with their cheater magic to produce light.

What I really wanted was to pry one of the wedged-shut doors off one of the smooshed homes and dig through. It was obvious the dragon had just pushed and shoved until the side walls splintered, leaving what should have been homes that housed entire families of ponies as thin slivers of their former selves. It left us with lots of room to walk through, but felt eerie all the same. I could see all sorts of things inside the houses through the windows and gaps where the siding had broken off. Beds, the legs of chairs or couches or tables, clothing, and a myriad of other household items poked through, held in place only because there was just so much stuffed into such a small place.

I wanted to dig through it so bad. It was all I could do to keep myself from drooling onto the floor. I could practically smell value here. While the dragon was certainly trouble for us, he had good taste in that he snatched up everything. Surely something valuable passed his gaze. I could dig for months and never see the end. At one point I tried counting the number of homes smashed together against the walls, but lost count once I passed fifty.

“Does the map say how deep this cavern goes?” I asked, finally snapping myself back to reality.

“No, it just shows Starswirl Caverns,” L.A. answered. She looked at the PipBuck, then shook her head. “I found a Local Map setting, but that just shows what it looks like around us, zoomed in really close. So all I see is the outline of the mountain.”

“If memory serves, these caverns go through this whole section of the unicorn mountains,” mused Rose. “Now, the last time I was here was two and a half centuries ago, and it wasn’t even really me.” She shrugged, finally pulling down the hood of her cloak and shaking her mane free. “There were three main caverns that branched out from the entrance. They wind around for miles though.”

“So... We could be down here for weeks searching?” I asked nopony in particular.

“Let’s just say the guardrails were there for a reason,” answered the mare. “If a pony got lost down here, they might never find the surface again, without help.”

We rounded another corner, only to find more old Equestrian houses smashed up against walls and filled to the brim with things that were centuries old. I could see down the tunnel a short ways that one of the walls disappeared.

“We might be able to see something from there,” Fine Tune said, having seen it as well. He pointed a hoof in the same direction I was going. He looked down at his extended black hoof and rolled his eyes. Green fire flashed around him, casting a tint to all the lights around us, and turning the entire cavern green for a split second. When it faded, the blue-coated unicorn stallion with the spiky red mane looked at me. “Let’s go!” he said happily.

The four of us trotted down, and the sound of murmuring voices echoing along the walls got louder and louder. With a spot to look down below in our reach, it became clear that we just might find Xeno and end this without a problem.

What we would do with any other survivors of the dragon’s, well, I had no idea.

Clambering to the ledge, the four of us looked down. A smile formed on Lost’s lips, and Fine Tune let out a celebratory chirp. Even Rose looked happy at our discovery.

Below, surrounded by a cavern with several branching caves, lay a massive pile of gold and bits. Mixed in with the gold were gems and other treasures I couldn’t even identify from where I stood. The hoard reflected the pale light back up at us, and looked so incredibly magnificent. Were it not for the fear I’d break my neck landing a jump from so high up, I’d have dived in and swam through the bits.

“Xeno!” yelled Lost at the top of her voice. It echoed across the cavern walls, coming back and repeating several times. She held a hoof to the side of her mouth and yelled again. “Xeno!”

The quiet echoing of voices below went completely silent. Seconds later, from the various caves, and even from some of the houses pressed against the wall, emerged ponies, zebras, and all sorts of other creatures. I recognized one changeling, and even saw a few buffalo. As a group, they looked up, and gaped at us. From one of the caves walked Xeno, limping slightly. A large group of foals surrounded her, each with stripes tinted ever so slightly by the light coming from the caves themselves.

They bowed to the ground, pressing their muzzles down and closing their eyes. Only Xeno stood, staring up at us. She waved a hoof, before one of the foals latched onto her and pulled her down to the ground.

“About time,” rumbled a voice behind us. “Welcome."
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Explorer – Wait. You call yourself a treasure hunter, and you're just now getting this? We went over this with the Scrounger perk ages ago! Look, you gain +10 to Survival, and you get a bonus to finding 'special encounters' and hidden places. Don't spend it all in one place.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Shadowtrot – You have mastered silent and subtle movement, allowing you to move quickly while still remaining quiet and unseen. You gain +5 to Sneak and you can Sneak at full speed with no penalties. You gain additional bonuses to Sneak when in poor visibility conditions, up to a maximum of +5.

“Lost, I want it. I want it all.”
“No, Hidden, we’re here for a reason.”
“I know but I want it. Look at all the treasure. We could be rich forever! We’d never have to adventure another day in our lives.”
“You like adventuring, and do you think it’s a good idea to steal from a dragon?”
“Depends on the dragon, the ones in the War would fuck you up. You need to catch them while they’re asleep.”
“Okay, how do we give a dragon a nap?”
“Hidden, NO!”
“Crii... I liked the idea of treasure, we could buy all the slaves and free them.”
“See! Perfect plan!”
“Except for the dragon part...”

Chapter 21: What's Truly Precious

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Chapter Twenty One: What’s Truly Precious
“Now do you see what we’ve been fighting for?”

Pray.

Hearing the voice behind me, all I could do was pray. Without daring to move, I looked at my sister from the corner of my eye. The look she had on her face said it all, and it was a look I knew very well. Lost had her ‘well, fuck’ look going on. But if she wasn’t freaking out, then we had a chance.

After all, the dragon must have wanted us alive, otherwise he would have killed us already. With all the trouble we must have caused him, making him fly out at night and search through the skies, plus the whole ‘shooting him repeatedly’ part, I’d have expected a swift and silent death.

“Let’s go down,” he said calmly, without the hint of a threat in his voice. Leaning his head forward, he looked at those bowed down in the lower cavern. “You might want to move.” Without waiting, he extended the claw full of whatever junk he’d brought with him, and released. A torrent of everything from caps to uprooted trees fell down, crashing against the massive pile of gold and bits in the center of the room. Trash cans and mailboxes bounced in one direction, kitchenware in another, flying about the room and making quite the mess.

As the four of us watched, the ponies, zebras, buffalo, and everyone else there scrambled forward. Xeno stood watching, her head canted to the side and one eye squinting with her other eyebrow raised.

“Leave some for my newest,” rumbled the dragon. With his tail wrapping around to block our exit, he pointed down the tunnel. “Go. That way. I’ll explain your new place, my little ponies.”

Without much of a choice, the four of us began to walk down.

“Very obedient of you, coming so quickly,” said the dragon as he lumbered past us. Now that we weren’t in the darkness of the cloud-covered night, I got a good look at him. The dragon himself was actually just green, with lighter-colored scales on his underside, starting from the base of his jaw, down his underside, and ending at the tip of his tail. Thick ridges of lighter-colored scales formed eyebrows that seemed locked in a scowl.

What I’d thought before to be just a part of him — the gold that coated much of his back, the outsides of his legs, and his claws — weren’t really scales. They looked similar, but were caught in a strange flux between armor and scale. They moved with him, clinging tightly to his skin, but wherever they ended, there was just the slightest gap to betray that they weren’t actually attached to him. Either he’d gold-plated his hide in an effort to armor himself more than he was naturally, or something else was going on.

I looked up as we walked, and caught a glimpse of the eye that I’d shot. I expected to blind him in that eye, but he didn’t seem to notice at all. The eye itself had taken no damage whatsoever, and wasn’t even bloodshot. When he opened his mouth, I checked for damage from the grenade I’d fired at him, but saw none. Even after the onslaught from both Rose and I, he didn’t have a scratch.

“Hey, Rose,” I whispered, hoping he wouldn’t hear me trying to gossip.

“Be quiet. We’re nearly there,” he said, giving me a sideways glance and a nudge with his powerful claws.

I fell flat on my face, toppled over, and ended up on my back. Looking up, I could feel my eyelid twitching. “That wasn’t necessary!” I yelled as I scrambled to my hooves. Rubbing my nose a little, I glared up at the dragon.

“Go down the path and to the main cavern. I’m tired, and I’ll be taking a nap. Once I finish, I’ll humor all the accusations I’m sure you have pent up,” he answered, rolling his eyes.

“Just listen to him for now, Hidden,” Lost said, grabbing onto me and holding tight.

Grimacing, I did as she asked. The dragon led us further down the tunnel and around a wide corner. The hallways down here were also lined with the remains of old houses, stuffed full just like those near the entrance. I couldn’t tell, in only the few seconds it took to pass each one, but it looked like these were stuffed even more full than those I’d seen before. The deeper we got, the more stuff I saw everywhere. Whatever ‘organization’ he’d been using, it obviously hadn’t been going on long enough.

We rounded the corner and made our way into the main cavern. The pile of treasure I’d seen from above looked even bigger when I was standing right in front of it. It rose high above my head, forming a mountain I couldn’t see around. Atop it scrambled the captives, grabbing onto things like the Solaris Energy sign, or the trunks of the massive dead trees brought in. The zebra foals dove through the bigger piles, their smaller bodies squeezing between bigger chunks and then returning with bits and smaller items to carry off. Watching was somewhat fascinating, as they seemed to have a sort of ‘organized chaos’ to their methodology.

Foals weaved around the adults, dropping off bits in one pile, and gems in another. A few of the smaller foals, obviously too young to be diving through potentially dangerous piles of junk the dragon dropped, instead worked as cleaners around the pile. Little hooves skittered back and forth, grabbing onto whatever they could, before running back onto the pile and depositing it. When the small group of foals passed, the ground before us lay bare, with a precise edge to the pile. Not a single piece of gold or a single gem went past the invisible line that made up the furthest reaches of his pile.

“As I told you before,” rumbled the dragon above us, “I bring my treasure, my possessions back, and my little…” He trailed off, looking away for a moment. “My pets sort them for me.” He reached out and plucked a large ruby from the pile, one almost as large as my head. He tossed it into the air, then snatched it between his teeth. With a few crunching chews, he lowered himself back to where he’d been. “As long as you don’t try and leave, you can do whatever you want.” Stepping over us, he pushed what little was left of his night’s haul to the side and did a circle around the treasure pile.

He laid down with a thump forceful enough to make every pony, zebra, and buffalo in the room jump into the air, and rested his head so he faced the exit tunnel. “I’ll explain your place after a nap, but don’t bother trying to leave,” he said, his eyes closing. He cracked one open just a sliver, and the slit pupil of his gold eye focused directly on me. “I’ll know if you do. Go.”

* * *

I sat and watched in awe while Lost and Rose tended to Xeno and the few foals not working. Even though the dragon lay atop the pile of gold and gems, the others kept their work going around him. He didn’t even flinch as they crawled atop him and collected the remainder of his treasure.

The teamwork, despite the different species, made mine and my sister’s cooperation seem like we weren’t a real team at all. Buffalo, without batting an eye, would lift the zebra foals up, and the foals scrambled atop the dragon to dig things out. Their hooves were the only ones tiny enough to fit between his scales, and they spent their time pulling caps, bits, and smaller treasures from between the green scales and gold plates. One of the older foals stood between the dragon’s wings and unhooked the massive chains that made up his necklaces. I couldn’t imagine where the dragon had gotten the jewelry he wore, as there couldn’t have been a pony alive preparing to make that sort of thing. He had tons of gold and could breathe fire, though, so there was a chance he’d just made it himself.

“Okay, slowly,” whispered a light brown unicorn mare. Her horn lit up a pale green and she lifted the dragon’s claws with telekinesis to slide his rings away with the help of another unicorn mare. With practiced care, the two set each one next to one another, forming a row of massive gem-encrusted rings near the entrance tunnel to the outside.

Atop the dragon skittered the colt who’d unhinged the necklace latch. He lowered the chain down to the waiting others below.

“Got it,” said a confident-looking blue earth pony stallion. He and a group of buffalo pulled the chain the rest of the way down and set it out, making a line from under the dragon to the floor beyond the edge of the treasure pile. They repeated the process, with unspoken commands to fill the language barrier between buffalo, pony, and zebra. Each chain was laid carefully on the ground, though whether they wanted to keep him from waking or just not damage the metals, I couldn’t tell. Once all the necklace chains were resting in their places, the buffalo and ponies moved around the tail of the dragon, to his far side.

They worked with such precision, I couldn’t not watch.

At the same time, it took every ounce of strength I had to not run out and try to snag something for my own. The dragon was gigantic and sleeping, surely he wouldn’t miss one little ring or crown would he? Of course he would. He counted repeatedly while he was chasing us around the Wasteland, his claws always digging through his pile and making sure nothing was lost. Even in battle, he stopped to pick up the pieces he’d dropped, before trying to capture us. We could get away, the gold, caps, and other junk couldn’t. Was he really so obsessed?

I could just look. Try them on. I’d find a mirror or something, see how I looked wearing something regal-looking. Then I’d put it back. I promised myself. Just a little look, only a few minutes. That was more borrowing than stealing, right?

I looked back and forth, watching the others work. A quick glance back confirmed that my sister, Xeno, Fine Tune, and Rose were all busy tending to the few foals too young or hurt to help with the dragon’s cleanup. I gulped.

I was only borrowing. As long as I put everything back, it would be okay. The coast was clear, and the others were all busy on the far side of the dragon. Nopony, no one, would see me.

It was the perfect crime.

I rose to my hooves. This could work, I just had to do it right. I needed to be quiet... cunning. Stepping forward and gently resting the steel of my prosthetic hoof down on the ground, I looked toward the dragon’s head. So far so good. No clanking, no extra noise. Just grab the gold and tur-

“Hidden!” Lost yelled.

I swore under my breath and turned around. “Yes, sis?” I asked, with the fakest fake smile I could ever hope to fake. Really she’d probably just saved my life. Slowly, I walked back, resisting the urge to turn and look at the treasure again. We had time. I could steal- borrow some later.

I just needed to be patient and persistent. The right moment would come. It’d be mine before the night was through. All this meant was more prep work.

“Hello, Hiddenpony,” said Xeno, a lopsided smile across her lips. She sat on her haunches, running her hoof through the mohawked mane of one of the foals. “Itis good to see you, but I wouldnot advice taking from the dragon.”

“Did he hurt you?” I asked, cutting to the chase.

“No, Iam healed. The injury I took came from the collapsing building,” she explained. Aside from the slashes the splinterwolf had left across her face, I couldn’t see any damage. “My mother?”

“She tastes terrible,” said Fine Tune. Opening his mouth wide, he stuck out his tongue and poked his hoof past his teeth a few times. “I’ll leave negative emotions to the windigo.”

A shiver ran down my spine. If having my love eaten felt like my heart getting crushed, I could only imagine what it would feel like to have my hatred eaten. Then again, if eating love left me feeling crushed, maybe eating hatred would leave me feeling happy? Blowing through the corner of my mouth, I sat across from my friend and tried not to think about it.

“Oh, by the way,” Lost said. She reached back and dug through her saddlebags for a moment, producing the striped knife we’d been given by Zolera. She offered it to Xeno. “This is for you.”

The foal in front of my friend looked up, her orange eyes wide. She said something I couldn’t understand, earning a pat on the head from Xeno, who answered in their language. She took the knife with her other hoof and slid it into her satchel.

“Thank you,” she said graciously. “Whatis the plan to escape?”

“My recommendation; we put a fuck-ton of grenades along the top of the cavern, tell everypony that gives a damn to get the fuck out, and then we blow the place apart,” Rose suggested. She held up her grenade rifle and checked the drum. With a satisfied nod, she turned back to the group. “I’ve got enough to give us a running start, at least.”

The foals around Xeno started to talk amongst themselves. Xeno translated for us. “They fear you will kill them, and they donot wish to leave.”

“Why wouldn’t they? Their families are out there, the dragon holds them under threat of death!” L.A. argued. She stuck a hoof out and pointed at the offending gigantic creature that could eat a pony in one bite. “We can get them all out of here. We came prepared for this sort of thing.”

That was a lie and she knew it. We barely had enough for ourselves, let alone to fight through that barren emptiness, the feral ponies, and the rotbats, with a full group following us.

As if to illustrate my point, a buffalo walked around to our side of the dragon. His coat was nearly black, and his horns had been shaved down, leaving them blunt. Behind one horn hung a twisted feather that looked as if it had been snapped in half, and the bottom left to hang limp. He lumbered over to us, his fluffy coat swaying with every step. Though he looked gruff, he was smiling, and had a kind look in his dark eyes. “Newbies?” he asked with a grunt. “What’re your names?”

I’d never seen a buffalo at all before, much less one up close. Though I’d heard about them, meeting one felt just like when I’d met Xeno for the first time. All the little differences stood out so drastically, and I noticed things I hadn’t been able to see from above. He was massive, and while we stood roughly eye level, his bulk towered over me. I couldn’t get over wondering how his tiny legs managed to hold him up.

“Umm, Hidden Fortune?” I finally answered. Luckily, I managed not to gawk at talking to a buffalo for the first time. I hoped what I said wasn’t offensive or something, since the most I knew about them was what mom read to me, from a Stable-Tec history book about the founding of Appleloosa. I hope he didn’t catch me staring...

The buffalo nodded a few times, without saying anything. He looked over to Lost and waited patiently.

After a moment, and a look of confusion, Lost finally answered, “Lost Art, her sister.”

“Oh for,” Rose said, rolling her eyes. “I’m Rose Shimmer, the blue unicorn is their pet... thing, and the zebra’s name is Xeno.”

Wait, Rose Shimmer? What a terrible name.

“I’m not a pet,” grumbled Fine Tune, kicking his forehoof against the ground. “And, my name is Fine Tune. The only one who can call me ‘pet’ is my Queen.” He looked at Lost and smiled.

Lost facehoofed.

The buffalo snorted, and chuckled quietly. “Alright, well... come with me. I’ll introduce you and we can find where you’d prefer to be,” he said. He turned away and walked off. “And you can take the weapons off. You won’t need them here.”

“No,” argued Lost, “we’re not leaving our friend. I don’t care what’s going on down here, but we’re not going to take part in it.” She stomped her hoof. “We’re taking our friend, and whoever else wants to come, and finding a way out.”

The buffalo turned and sighed, looking very tired. “They all say that at first, but... well, let’s go get some food in you and have a little chat. We’re a community here, even if we’re all owned by the dragon.” He motioned to the dragon, who let out a puff of smoke from his nose. “I’m Stormheart. Like I said, I’ll introduce you to the others, then you can find a place and make your plans. Just... try not to get hurt.”

I looked at Lost and shrugged. “At least we can get to know everyone?” I asked. It would be interesting, at least. Plus I could plot my stealing of the dragon’s treasure better if I knew who my competition was. I rubbed my forehooves together.

All around us, the sound of ponies working quieted. Foals jumped from the dragon’s back and slid through a cascade of gold bits and jewelry from eras long past, sending up a shower of coins before hitting the ground. Any treasure knocked away from the pile was quickly pushed back in. Others came from around the dragon, and they all talked in quiet whispers. The groups didn’t walk toward us, and instead all made for one of the tunnels deeper into the cave system.

“Yes, there are very nice ponies, zebras, and buffalos here,” answered Xeno. Noticing the others all moving toward the far tunnel, she turned to the foal and asked her something. A short exchange in their language later, she turned back to us. “Itis time for dinner, then sleep.”

“Dinner? But it’s been night for hours,” I said.

“I’m sure we’ll get answers from the buffalo,” Lost reasoned.

Xeno ruffled the mane of the foal and stood up. She beckoned to the others to follow her, and together the group of us followed Stormheart and the others to the far tunnel. It was strange to see her so comfortable around her own kind, given how reserved she’d become near her mother. Strange but... nice.

* * *

I counted six total tunnels leading off the massive circular cave, including the one that led back to the entrance. It would have been like a star or the spokes of a motorwagon wheel, except I could see them twist just past where they branched off.

As requested, I removed Persistence and my battle saddle. Really, if explosive rounds and shots to the eye hadn’t damaged the dragon, there was no way Persistence would be able to scratch his hide. Plus, it was more polite to go to dinner unarmed if dealing with friendly Wastelanders, be they pony, zebra, buffalo, or anything else.

We followed Stormheart at a distance, wholly unsure of exactly what to expect. Never once did he turn around to make sure we were following, as if it was expected that we would. Maybe he just didn’t care if we went hungry? When the foals jumped up and ran for the food though, we followed. Xeno led the way, a small smile on her lips.

“Do you know any of these foals?” I asked, pulling my jacket tight out of habit.

“Yes, some. Many are young, and were born after I left with my brothers,” she answered. She carried the filly whose mane she’d been petting on her back, as if they were old friends and it was the most natural thing in the Wasteland to do.

“You know why they’re here, right?” asked Lost.

“Sadaka,” Xeno answered. “Letus focus on food, and learning. Wewill find a way to return the foals to my tribe after. They wouldnot make the journey while hungry.”

“You act like we have all the time in the world to do this,” snapped Rose. “We’re on a time limit, and getting captured by a dragon? Really fucking up my timetable.”

“It’ll take longer if we go without a plan, and while everyone’s hungry,” I countered. “Shouldn’t we at least get some information on what we’re up against?”

“Look, I’m not the one who’ll be punished if we’re late,” Rose said, frowning. “I’m trying to help you, here.”

“Hidden’s right,” L.A. interrupted, stepping between us to stop the argument. “We’ve been bitten in the haunches far too many times by rushing ahead with no idea what we’re up against. I don’t think we can scrape out a victory this time though; we’ve never been up against a dragon. Let’s just go see what’s going on with the others here, and come up with a plan on how to get out, okay?”

We walked the rest of the distance in silence. The foals trotted on ahead, looking far better than when we’d first arrived. We all walked into one of the larger of the tunnels, which curved off to the left and down deeper. Even here, the unnatural soft lighting kept everything glowing weakly. Just out of sight of the main cavern was a large building that wasn’t completely smashed up against the wall.

Some of the captives, two ponies, a zebra, and the other changeling we’d seen earlier all ran back and forth in and out of the building. They each carried stacks of plates, bowls, cups, and a myriad of other kitchenware. Small servings were piled on the larger plates on their backs, making it obvious that they were the cooks.

Much like the atrium in the Stables, several smaller tables were set up right in front of the not-smooshed building. Around all the tables was a makeshift fence, obviously put together out of scraps of wood and metal salvaged from the dragon’s hoard. For a creature so obsessed with his possessions, didn’t he care that his captives had co-opted his things?

Stormheart looked up at us, his eyes half-closed and a tired expression on his face. He waved a hoof at us, beckoning us over to the table he stood next to. Sitting at the table were two other buffalo, one so old that his coat had patches of grey spotting the light brown, leaving him looking almost like a well-tended brahmin. Next to him was a female, her coat similar to the buck’s, with a white streak going from between her eyes all the way down her back. She wore glasses like my sister, but they were broken, bent, and hung from her horns.

As a group, we walked over. The zebra foals disappeared into the group, mingling with the others around the tables and blending in easily.

“I see you removed your weapons,” he said, as we arrived at the table. “Thank you.” Turning to the two sitting at the table, he raised a hoof. “This is Grandhooves, and his wife Fairhorns. They’ve been here the longest, and it’s tradition to introduce them first. Until I took over, Grandhooves was in charge.”

The older buffalo buck just blinked.

With a sigh, Stormhooves repeated himself. “I said, this is Grandhooves, and his wife Fairhorns!” he shouted, holding a hoof up to the side of his mouth.

The... um, mare? I didn’t know the proper term for a female buffalo... She frowned and smacked the buck in the side.

He jumped, jostling his coat around and shaking his head. “Oh, right... Hi,” he said, staring off in the wrong direction.

“You might notice why he’s passed the torch to me,” whispered Stormheart.

“Nice to meet you,” said Fairhorns. She smiled. “How long until dinner, Stormy?”

“Right now,” he answered. “I just wanted to get introductions out of the way.” He turned back to my group. “We’ll find a table for you, and then answer any questions you have about our community.”

“Nice to meet you,” I yelled, hoping they’d hear me.

“Eh?” groaned the buck. He looked off to the side, near me, but not quite.

Xeno said something in her language and bowed her head. Rose just rolled her eyes.

Fine Tune chirped a greeting, then turned to Lost. “Umm, my Queen? Can I go meet the other changeling, please?” he asked. Dropping to his haunches, he put his forehooves up, pressed them together, and begged.

“Yes, go. Just stay nearby, okay?” Lost said, allowing him to go. By the time she’d finished saying ‘go’ the changeling was gone, transforming with a flash of green fire in midair. “Alright, so. Tell us what’s going on please?”

“Of course, come with me,” answered the buffalo. He tapped a hoof on the table where Grandhooves and Fairhorns sat, then walked off. Leading us through the tables of ponies and zebras, he eventually stopped before an empty one at the far side of the fenced-in area, a short distance from all the others.

Several seats surrounded the table, with one massive bench taking up the majority of the far side. Aside from that, the table was nondescript, but in good condition for its age. Initials were carved into the top, with so many overlapping that I couldn’t pick out which initials could be from one name and not another. Stormheart sat down on the bench and motioned for us to sit.

Lost sat on one chair, and I took a seat next to her. With a sigh, I leaned against her. She patted me on the head with a hoof and leaned back. Xeno sat next to me, and Rose took a seat opposite Stormheart.

“So, ask whatever you wish. I’ll answer the best I can,” said the buck.

Lost raised a hoof and we all looked at her. For a long moment, she scrunched her face up and looked back and forth from the table to the buffalo. “Okay so,” she started, but stopped. “Wait, I can word this better.” For a moment she chewed on her lips, before blurting out, “Where does the food come from?”

The buffalo just laughed. He laughed deep and warmly, chuckling for a moment before wiping a tear from his eye. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been asked that,” he admitted. After another little laugh, he calmed down. “Our food comes from many places. The dragon has brought in homes, boxes, stockpiles, and all manner of things, for longer than any of us have been alive. When I first arrived, there were many others, and food was always found. There are times of feast, and times of famine, but the dragon provides.”

“So you dig through the houses he smashed into the walls until you find enough to survive on,” I summarized. I had lots of experience doing just that, what with being a treasure hunter and all.

“That’s one way of putting it,” he answered.

“How long have you been here?” asked Rose Shimmer. The name still made me want to snicker.

“As long as I can remember,” he answered. “I was brought while traveling with my herd several years ago, though I’ve lost track of how long ago that was. It’s difficult to count days in here, and leaving is expressedly forbidden.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Two reasons, Miss Fortune,” answered the buffalo.

I twitched.

Without noticing, he continued to explain, “The first is that the dragon does not like to lose his possessions. So long as nothing leaves the cave, he’s quite amicable and allows us to do as we want. We’ve built a community from those he brings in, and since the beginning, have accepted all who arrive. Whether they are buffalo, pony, zebra, changeling, we don’t care. The only ones who cause trouble are the cannibals, and those are either reformed, or dealt with.”

As Stormheart explained, a red unicorn mare with polished hooves trotted over. In the green glow of her telekinetic aura, she carried several plates and set them down at the table before us. “Here ya go, sugar,” she said in a sweet twangy voice. Leaning in, she planted a kiss on the buffalo, then trotted off. “Tell me when you finish orientation.”

“Of course,” said the buffalo. Turning back, he cleared his throat.

Lost snapped back to attention, her eyes having wandered to watch the curly aquamarine tail of the mare as it swayed past her haunches. “Huh? Oh. Food, right,” she muttered. Pushing it away, she shook her head. “I’m actually not hungry, but thank you.”

The plates the mare left were covered in bare bones rations of ancient food. Beans covered one edge of the plate, and slivers of canned watermelon covered the other half, with something I didn’t recognize separating the two. Never one to pass up a meal, I dove in muzzle first and started eating. It wasn’t a ladylike way to eat, but with both forehooves unusable thanks to being made of, or covered by, steel, I had to make do. Honestly, it didn’t taste bad.

“You should eat,” suggested the buffalo. Lifting his hoof, I noticed it had a split going down the middle. Grabbing a fork between the two halves of his hoof, he began to eat.

“So, what’s this about cannibals?” asked Rose as she twirled her own fork around her plate. She stabbed a piece of the watermelon, and slid it back and forth without ever actually eating anything.

“In the valley below are ponies left for too long in the abyss,” said Stormheart between bites. “Every so often, the dragon will bring one, snatched up during a fight for territory or food. The ponies below are beyond help, and often eat the first thing they can wrap their teeth around.”

“That explains what those ponies were down there,” L.A. said, a hoof covering her mouth. She gulped, winced, and pushed her food further away. With her ears drooping, she continued, “I mean, I’m fine with meat... but eating another pony is where I draw the line.”

“A sad state, yes, but often unavoidable,” added the buffalo.

“What happens to them?” asked Xeno, not bothering to touch her own plate.

“Usually the dragon burns them to a crisp,” he answered, before taking another bite. He looked to the floor and muttered something in a language I couldn’t understand. “Rarely, we teach them our ways and they accept real food. Most don’t last long. Once a pony has the taste of another’s flesh, it’s difficult to return them to normal. As we must ration what we have, they often lapse in times of famine. The dragon doesn’t like his prized possessions to be killed, and will gladly remove one lost pony to save the rest of the herd.”

“That’s morbid, does he eat them then or...” I asked, trailing off to let the buffalo answer for me. I lifted the plate with my hooves, and licked it clean.

“No,” he said, setting his fork down. “Usually there’s nothing left when he’s finished. The dragon is quite protective of us.”

“Is that the second reason?” asked Xeno. She turned and looked at the foals at one of the other tables far behind us.

“Correct,” said the buffalo. He waved a hoof in the air. “The dragon has collected us for whatever reason he may, whether as a messenger of the stars, as your kind says, or simply for greed. We don’t know, and many don’t question. Often times, stubborn newcomers will attempt to escape, and the outcome is never pretty. He treats us well, we are always fed, even if the portions are meager.” Rolling his eyes, he waved his hoof again. “Miss Bloom!” he shouted.

The red mare trotted over again. She sidled up next to the buffalo. “Whatcha need, sugar?” she asked in a sultry voice. She sat down next to him, bumping him with her haunches as she did. I caught a glimpse of her cutie mark, a set of blue and green explosions.

“Is it so bad, down here with the dragon?” he asked, while wrapping a hoof around her side.

“Nah, once ya get used to it,” she answered. “Get ta meet interestin’ ponies.” She looked at Lost and licked her lips. “Protection from the elements, I got a roof over mah head all the time. Never gotta worry about raiders, unless ‘e picks up onna them cannibals. Don’t happen too often though.”

“He abducts foals!” Lost yelled, slamming her hooves on the table. “How can you act like that’s okay? None of you should be here. Ponies don’t deserve to be locked in a cage, even if it is a gigantic cavern they have free reign of! You’re just as bad as the ponies in Skirt, living in a fucking gilded cage.”

“Lost, he’s a dragon, there’s not much we can do,” I said, pulling her back down.

She jerked her leg free and glared at me. “We came here to get our friend back, not to be stuck in captivity again. We did that already, and we’re not doing it again. Either we fight our way out, or we reason our way out.” She turned to the others. “Look! We’re going to find a way out of here. If any of you want to come with, just tell me. We’ll find a way.”

A few of the others looked up, and a few just laughed. Only Fine Tune seemed interested, at the far end of the eating plaza. He waved repeatedly, a big smile on his face.

“They don’t want to leave,” said Stormheart.

“Can’tcha see it’s safer here anyway?” asked Miss Bloom. She gave the buffalo a peck on the cheek. “Anythin’ else ya need me for, sugar?”

“No, thank you. Please make sure Grandhooves gets a second helping, though,” he said. Patting the red mare on her rump, he sent her off.

“Sure thin’,” she called back.

Lost slumped back into her seat and pressed her forehead against me. Her horn poked me in the cheek, but I ignored it. Gently, I grabbed her and squeezed.

“We’ll find a way,” I whispered.

“Dumbasses,” muttered Rose. She pushed the plate away and hurled the fork into the depths of the tunnel.

* * *

Lost stared at my jacket with the most intense look I’d ever seen. In the pale blue haze of her magic, she held a needle and thread, borrowed from one of the ponies in the tunnel. The needle lazily floated through the air, twisting somewhat, before finally stabbing into the leather of the jacket. Lost scowled and moved her horn closer to the jacket again. As long as we’d been in the Wasteland, Lost had always been the one to keep our possessions in the best condition she could. Another perk of her cheater magic, but with what happened in the mountains... She dragged the needle back out and stabbed it toward the jacket again, but missed. Lost threw her head back and let out a frustrated groan, her magic disappearing and dropping the needle through the still-open hole.

“Still not working right?” I asked, still staring at the wonderfully tempting gold hoard. Sticking my hooves out, I grabbed my jacket back and held it close. It wasn’t made to be worn as armor, and if it wasn’t repaired soon, I feared I might lose it. It’d be a shame, to have something last for two centuries or more in a box, and be shown so much love, to be patched up like it was, only to lose it because I was reckless.

“It’s a simple spell I’ve known almost my whole life and I just... Levitation works, but it doesn’t work the way I want it to. If I don’t have the same minute dexterity I did before, what happens when I need to aim a gun straight?” she lamented, still groaning. With a forehoof, she tapped at her horn. “Work properly, dammit.”

“Once we get back, we’ll see about getting more of that potion or whatever it was that Xeno made to fix your horn,” I said. With a bit of fancy hoof-work, I slid the jacket up and over my barding and pulled it on tight. Once everything was back where it belonged, I turned back to the gold. It would be so easy to steal...

“Roho upya,” Xeno explained. Catching the blank looks from both Lost and me, she coughed. “Iam sorry, speaking with the foals has gotten me to speak in my tongue again. It is a potion of spirit renewal. Itis designed to help heal the soul, but it works to fix magic, too.” She smiled. “A lucky side effect.”

“How do you make it?” Lost asked. “Your father made something for me, and it helped, but...” She tapped at her horn again. “As you can see, not perfect.”

Xeno chuckled. “Heis a stallion of drink that dulls the mind and warms the soul. Crafting that which heals and strengthens is not his specialty.” She sighed happily. “A good fighter, and a sturdy traveler, heis. Skilled in crafting potions and elixirs, heis not.”

“Trust me, I know. It was chunky,” said my sister. She gagged a little, then shot my jacket a glare. “I’d appreciate it, if you could make me something that actually works when we get back.”

Given the way things looked at the moment, she might be able to get her magic back just by waiting it out. The dragon hadn’t woken up after we finished the introduction with Stormheart. The buck left us to wander once we finished, warning us that if we tried to leave, it wouldn’t go well. Lost pressed him for details, but he only shook his head. In the end, we ended up sitting against the walls of the massive cavern behind the dragon and off to the edge of one of the cave tunnels.

Fine Tune still hadn’t come back, and when we tried to get him to return with us, he only chirped, transformed, and flew off. The other changeling went with him. In their natural form, I found it hard to tell the two apart, aside from the fact that the frill-thing the other changeling had for a mane was longer and in nicer-looking shape than Fine Tune’s was. Maybe that was how one told the difference between a male and a female changeling? Or maybe he’d just gotten his cut down during his time in U Cig.

“So, what now?” I asked after a short silence. Sitting around without moving had me agitated, and I couldn’t place why. “I’d offer to shoot my way out, but even I know better than to shoot a dragon again.”

“Given that my grenades didn’t even scratch him, I’m not quite sure either,” answered Rose. She sat next to Xeno, across from me, and spent her time cleaning the barrel of her gun. Even while her hooves polished it with the fabric of her cloak, she never took her eyes from the dragon.

“Mmm, I shot him in the fucking eye, and the mouth, and that didn’t slow him down even a bit,” I added. “It still boggles my mind about that. I get it, according to myths and legends, dragons are supposed to be tough, but we put a lot of lead and explosions into him. He doesn’t even have a scratch.” He did have lots of gold, gold that I wanted to put into my saddlebags. I could see rings in the pile, ones that would look perfect over my metal hooves.

“It’s probably the armor,” Lost said. She pointed at the gold plating on his scales.

The gold would make nice armor. Would I look better with golden hooves instead of polished steel ones?

“Doubtful,” argued Rose. She set her rifle down and pulled her cloak over it. “The zebras used dragons in the War, they had bargains with them and sent them after us. They were their heavy hitters, since it’s not easy to take down a dragon. In all my time working for the Ministry of Peace and since the world ended, I’ve never ever seen a dragon in armor. I don’t think any dragon would ever use his own hoard of gold as armor.”

“Gold would be a bad armor anyway,” said Xeno. “Itis soft, and in a thin layer can be bent by a pony of decent strength. Were the armor the dragon wears made of gold, it wouldnot have survived Rosepony’s assault.”

“Then what in the Goddesses’ names is it?” I asked nopony in particular. Inside, I felt something deflate. Maybe I could find some paint that hadn’t dried up, and paint the hooves white so they’d match me, if gold was out of the question. I looked down at them and dug at the red paint inside the etchings.

Before an answer could come, a changeling’s chirp cut through the air. Fine Tune fluttered down through the cavern, with the other changeling hot on his tail. Or maybe it was the other way around? From the angle they came in from, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two when they weren’t in the form of a pony or zebra. The two bugponies landed in front of us. Green fire filled the room, as the two transformed at the same time. When the flames fell, I saw Fine Tune in his standard blue unicorn form. He’d actually been the one I thought was him, which I counted as a small victory.

The other changeling finished transforming, and as the fires died away, a honey-color coated mare remained. She towered above us, nearly as tall as Rebar. The pony was beautiful and had a luxurious mane with gentle curls through it, colored as white as Lost or my coat when they were clean. The mare smiled and looked at Fine Tune. “Are these the ones?” she asked, her voice sounding almost like Crème Brûlée’s, with that same silken feel to it.

“Yes!” he answered enthusiastically. With a hoof out, he pointed to each of us in turn. “That’s Rose Shimmer, she’s new. Xeno is the zebra, we work together to collect things for her to make into potions and elixirs and stuff, it’s a lot of fun. The mare with the steel hooves is Miss Hidden.” Without introducing Lost, he darted to her side and nuzzled her cheek. “This is my Queen, Lost Art.” He sounded so proud.

The mare raised an eyebrow and snorted. “She doesn’t smell like a changeling,” she muttered. She squinted, her blue eyes boring into my sisters. Unlike Fine Tune’s bad habit of leaving his eyes fogged over, hers didn’t seem hollow and colorless, but had pupils as black as the night outside. “Do you not have a real queen?”

“She holds the crown,” answered Fine Tune. He sulked next to Lost, fidgeting his hooves over one another. “My hive’s Queen was killed, in our captivity, and umm. Well, a pony took over. Any of us drones who attempted to become a new Queen to save the hive, umm. Most of my kind were killed for supersedure.”

“Oh...” said the mare with a gasp. She reached out and grabbed Fine Tune with a hoof. Pulling him close, she hugged him so tight his eyes seemed to bug out. “Well, I’m sure we can start our own little hive here,” she cooed. “We haven’t had a new changeling in ages, and together...” Hugging Fine Tune tight again, she looked up and smiled. “We could have all the love we ever wanted, without the worry of another killing the queen.”

“Wait, does that mean you’re a mare or a stallion?” I asked. Changeling culture and anatomy and all that nonsense had me quite confused.

Setting Fine Tune down, the mare changeling looked at me. “Oh honey, it doesn’t matter,” she whispered.

That just confused me more.

“I don’t even want to know!” I shouted, throwing my hooves up.

The others all snickered, laughing quietly.

“Here, I’ll give you a tour to take your mind off it,” she said, offering a hoof to help Lost up. “You know,” she said, pulling Lost up. “I can sense the love between you and, ah, Miss Hidden. Are you two a couple?”

Lost turned bright red, and not just in a little stripe across her muzzle. Her entire coat flushed. She looked at me, her eyes wide, then back at the changeling. She stammered and coughed, before finally shouting, “We’re sisters!” She turned away, but I could hear her muttering something that sounded suspiciously like ‘thought about it.’

All I could do was stare, my jaw hanging loose below.

“They would make a nice couple,” said Rose. When the five of us turned to stare at her, the changelings included, she leaned back. “What? What! It’s not like they’re going to have crazy inbred foals. Love is love. It’s not like I’ve never done anything iffy like that. It’s not sex, it’s masturbation.” She stood up and trotted off.

“Ponies are very strange,” Xeno said. She stood as well and walked toward the honey colored mare. “Iwould love a proper tour. What did you say your name was?”

“We don’t have names normally,” she said with a sly look to Fine Tune. “The others here simply call me The Convert.” With a shrug, she turned to walk off. “This form though, you can call Honey Drip. The tour starts here. This is the dragon.”

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Fine Tune asked in a whisper.

We followed, disregarding the dragon that slept in the center of the room on his gold hoard. The Convert pointed at the tunnel we’d been in to eat at. “That’s the main tunnel, where most things are taken care of by us little people. Food is served there, obviously, at the café, and sleeping arrangements have been set up beyond that. We don’t segregate, but the others tend to group together.” She laughed. “I’ve been integral to setting up a few of them.” She winked. “Our community is very tightly knit, with, mmm... plenty of love to go around.”

“I take it you drain the ones with the most?” I asked callously.

Fine Tune stared, his jaw dropping much like my own had just moments ago. Shaking his head furiously, he begged, “Please, don’t make her mad.”

The Convert laughed. “When I need to, but I follow the same rules they do. Feast and famine. Rations,” she explained. Walking off, she turned to the next tunnel in the set. “This tunnel and the one over there,” she said, pointing to the one nearest the entrance, “connect in a short loop. If you’re looking for somewhere to ‘get away’ and have private time, that’s where I recommend. Be careful though, it can get quite messy back there.” With a girlish giggle, she trotted off.

We slowly walked past the dragon, who opened one eye to look at us. As we passed the line of his rings, and the tunnel that lead back up to the entrance, he snorted. A bout of smoke billowed from his nostrils, and he closed his eye.

I couldn’t help but jump away, startled by the sudden movement. The others had similar reactions, with Xeno eyeing him and Fine Tune transforming. As the pegasus mare, she flittered away and only returned once the smoke had cleared. Rose grumbled, but said nothing. The Convert didn’t so much as flinch. Apparently, this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

“He tends to know when one of us wants to leave,” she explained once we passed him. “None of us know how he does it, but when you have a massive dragon protecting you and bringing you food, while giving you a roof over your head, it doesn’t do to question him.”

“I said it once, I’ll say it again. You’re still a captive and still living in a gilded cage. Even if you have freedom to do whatever you want, he’s holding you hostage,” Lost said, rage barely contained in her voice.

“Well, if I weren’t here I’d be with my queen,” answered the mare. “Sadly, things aren’t meant to be.” She trotted off to the next tunnel from the main hub. “This will take you down into the depths, there’s much much much more junk down there, and we often leave it abandoned. Even the dragon doesn’t travel this path often, as the cave end is blocked off with his earlier treasures.”

“Itis a dead end?” Xeno asked.

“You have a queen?” asked Fine Tune. She transformed back into a unicorn stallion after asking.

“Yes, to both,” she answered. Her eyes glowed a moment and she leaned down to nuzzle Fine Tune. “Don’t you worry about any other queens, I’ll be the only one you need.” Grabbing onto him, she stood up on her hind legs and squeezed. “We’ll start our own hive in the caves, matching ponies together and siphoning off their love a little at a time. It’ll be wonderful!” She set him down, then pushed Lost and me together. “These two can help to feed us, as will Stormheart and Fire Bloom, and the old couple. All else fails, the dragon has such love for his treasure we’ll never starve.” She let out a happy little sigh and dropped to all four of her hooves. “The next hall is another storage hall,” she said, trotting off.

“Little single-minded, isn’t she?” Lost asked, a bit of an edge in her voice. She glared at the back of The Convert’s head. “I don’t like her,” she whispered.

The mare’s tail snapped behind her, and she walked with a bounce in her step. She looked back, over her shoulder, and smiled. “Come on, the tour’s almost over.”

“I’d rather learn more about the dragon and the, umm, ‘town’ here, than the cavern layout,” Lost said, stopping in her place.

“Given how often we travel to new places without knowing anything about them, I find that hard to believe, Lostpony,” Xeno said with a chuckle. “I agree. Thereare foals to return to the tribe, I would like to return them alive, so that none may feel the pain my mother and father had to.”

“We’re trying to learn from our mistakes,” countered Lost. “And we’ll save everyone, if we can. I promise.” Waving her hoof for us to follow, she walked over to the changeling. “So, what happened to others who tried to escape?”

“Well, let’s see,” she muttered, sitting down and tapping her chin with a forehoof. “The pegasus that snuck down from the clouds tried to fly away. He got burnt to a crisp. A family of buffalo decided they needed to roam to ‘ancestral lands.’” She rolled her eyes. “They got stomped, I think. Two of them did. The third gave up. Stormheart makes for a wonderful buck to introduce newbies though, doesn’t he?” She looked back at the tunnel where the others were still gathered.

“Were there other changelings?” asked Fine Tune. He walked around her, practically bouncing. “Any that mentioned a place called U Cig?”

“Sorry, babe, I’m the only one in ages,” she answered with a wink. “You’ll make a good little drone though.” She ruffled his mane even as he bristled at her, and turned back to us. “Where was I? So Stormheart’s family got smashed. Usually the dragon just puts the pony, zebra, whatever, back with the rest of us until they give up. He’s an extremely light sleeper, so walking out isn’t the easiest. Just stay with us, you two pair up and we’ll have ourselves a love-feast.”

“I’ve been fed on once already, and I’ll never let it happen again,” I spat. Even though it made Fine Tune’s ears droop and his bouncing walk turned sluggish, I stood by it. I never wanted to feel that again. I’d rather give up my entire body to Praline than let that happen.

“So what weaknesses does the dragon have?” Lost asked.

“None,” came the quick answer. The Convert looked up at the dragon from the corner of her eye, then turned away. “We’re almost done with the tour.” She glared at Lost a moment, waved her hoof, and trotted toward the tunnel that lead deeper into the mountains.

“We’ll find something, blow it all to shit, then leave,” muttered Rose.

“Perhaps the direct approach isn’t the best one,” offered Xeno. “We need to escape with the others, rather than through violence. We could hurt the foals...”

As we rounded the gentle curve of the tunnel down toward the deeper parts of the cavern, The Convert stopped. She looked back at the dragon and then toward us. In a hissing whisper, she demanded, “Are you trying to get us all killed?” Throwing her hooves into the air she bared her teeth to Lost. “I get it. You want out. We all do, but most of us are smart enough not to ask how to get out right in front of him. What’s wrong with you?”

“Is that why everyone here acts all happy go lucky at the fact that they’re hostages?” asked Lost.

“Yes... and no,” answered the changeling. “It’s not a bad gig, but most of us have families outside that we’d really like to get back to.” Her shoulders slumped and she hung her head. “It’s easy to get complacent. He brings us food, he keeps us safe, but...” Sighing, she pushed the white mane from her face. “I miss the feel of the wind in my mane, and I’m sick of the same love. It’s stale, tasteless.”

“That explains why you pushed Lost and me together,” I muttered, taking a step away. The last thing I needed was to have Rose make another joke at my expense. By the look on her face, she already had something in the works. I shot her a glare to keep her from saying anything.

“Partially,” she admitted. “The serious answer? He has no weaknesses. We’ve tried. There’s stories whispered when he’s gone about those who’ve tried. It never ends well.”

Lost raised a hoof.

“And before you go asking why we don’t just leave when he goes out,” she continued, not letting my sister get a word in. “Tried that too. He’s a lot smarter than you might give him credit for. Yeah, he’s greedy and entitled, but he knows his hoard like the back of his claws and if any of us get out, he knows where to get us back.” She shuddered. “It’s uncanny, that he can do it.”

“There has to be a way,” I said. “There always is.” I looked at my hooves. Often I’d lose something in that process, but if we just gave up...

“I’m telling you, we collapse the ceiling and we can get out easy,” said Rose smugly.

Xeno shook her head. “Thereare foals that could be hurt,” she argued.

Rose snarled. “If we do it right we won’t have to-”

“Shut up,” hissed The Convert.

She pointed down the tunnel to the main cavern, where we could hear sounds of the dragon slowly waking up. As a group, we trotted around the curve of the tunnel so we could see.

The dragon’s wings lifted from his back and flapped. He pushed himself from the ground and stretched, his claws extended and twitching a few times. As he yawned, smoke billowed from his mouth, smelling horrid even from our distance. It wafted out through the hole in the top of the cavern that lead to the entrance. Once awake, he scratched at his underside several times, then turned to look at us. Baring his fangs, he smiled.

“Where are you, my little ponies?” he rumbled. “Are you ready for our chat?”

* * *

Green fire filled the cavern. The dragon blew a controlled flame through his claws, melting one of his many rings. With a careful eye and subtle movements, he twisted it until the entire head of the ring was barely held together in its shape. With his free claw, he dug through the gems underneath him. After a moment of searching, he pulled free a massive ruby and pushed it into the ring. A snort later, he flapped one wing at it, cooling the heated metal and sealing the ruby in its new setting. He slid the ring down over his claw and looked at it. With a little smile, he rumbled, “Perfect.”

As we walked back from the tunnel to the main room, I found myself drawn back to the hoard. The moment I caught sight of it, I couldn’t focus on anything else. The forging of his ring was fascinating, and confirmed how he managed to find massive jewelry in his size, but it paled in comparison to what I wanted. I wanted to take it, every last bit and every last gem. I knew it was greedy, and stupid, and probably deadly, but deep in my soul, I felt a need I couldn’t ignore.

Lost danced on her hooves slightly as we approached. She looked agitated and antsy, and I knew she wanted to have her questions answered. She wanted to goad the dragon into revealing weaknesses so we could leave. She was a thinky pony, after all. If anypony could get tidbits of information we could use, it was her. Unfortunately, we had to wait until the dragon finished his vanity project.

“What will you ask, Lostpony?” asked Xeno. With a worried look in her eye, she glanced to the other tunnel where the foals were.

“I’m going to ask why,” Lost answered.

“He already told us,” I said absently. “I asked already... He said ‘why not’ and blew smoke in my face.” Just thinking about it brought back the acrid stench in the back of my throat. “I don’t think he knows why, he just does it.”

“Good luck,” said The Convert as we stopped before the dragon. She grabbed Fine Tune and hugged him tight. “I’ve been through this scene already. But you, my little drone, come see me, when you’re done...” Winking again, she set him down and trotted away.

Fine Tune just blushed, his eyes going crossed. He stammered something and slumped onto his haunches.

The cavern lit up with green fire again, and the dragon’s wing flapped furiously. He slid the last of his rings on and looked down at us. The look in his eyes reminded me of several of the ponies, zebras, and others that we’d met. They had the same gloating ‘I’m in charge’ look that Zorana and Star Paladin Jazz had both worn. “Now then, do my new little ponies have any petty little questions?” he asked as he looked over the group of us. “Any accusations you wish to spit at me?”

“Why are you doing this?” Lost asked calmly.

“Why not?” he asked back, smirking.

“Told you,” I muttered, shuffling a hoof. I took a single step forward. Just a little one. I just needed to get a little closer to the hoard. A crown sat, half-buried, nearby. It looked like it would fit me perfectly.

“I want a real answer. You have to have some motivation behind snatching up all this,” Lost countered. She raised a hoof and waved to the far side of the cavern, toward the cave where the others lived. “I could understand the gold, every story and myth tells of dragons and their hoards of riches. But why take buildings, why take food, why take living creatures?”

The dragon considered her a moment, before lifting his ringed claws. Several times he dragged them against the bottom of his muzzle, as he thought. A few coins clinked down, rustled free by the scratching of his claws. The sound of them hitting the massive pile echoed off the walls of the cavern. “I have lived for two centuries, slept for decades, and seen what your kinds do. Both pony and zebra,” he said, pointing a free claw back and forth between Lost and Xeno. “I was given anything I asked when I was a hatchling. I have wanted for nothing. As I grew, I simply took.”

Raising both his claws up, he looked to the ceiling of the cavern. His wings spread out behind him, and he lifted from his haunches to standing. “There is nothing that can stop me. So why would I stop myself?” he asked. “It’s all mine anyway. From mountain to mountain, from sea to sea. If I want it. I take it.” He lowered himself back down, pinned his wings to his side, and looked Lost in the eye. “Why shouldn’t I take whatever I want?”

As the dragon moved closer to Lost, I moved closer to his treasure. He wasn’t paying attention to me. While he was distracted, I’d just slip in and take one thing. One little bit of treasure to prove I was the best damned treasure hunter around.

“Because these are ponies, these are zebras, buffalo, changelings. You’ve taken foals from their homes,” spat Lost. “You know, the stories I heard growing up made me think dragons were supposed to be noble, and have some sort of code of honor. They weren’t petty thieves.”

The dragon laughed. “Petty?” he rumbled. “Surely you’re kidding. Thievery is for those who must take the belongings of others. None have ever kept my desires for me, from the day I hatched until tonight. Even you, after escaping, managed to become a part of my little town.” The dragon shrugged and lowered himself onto his pile of treasure. “You run so willingly to my side, at what point did I need to steal you?”

I looked down at the red paint covering the etchings in my steel hooves, and the lines that ran down my sides past my coat and barding. “You didn’t,” I said, a harsh realization hitting me. “We were offered to you.”

“Very good,” he said. “You were mine the moment I laid eyes on you. Not because I thought it best to simply snatch you where you stood. You were given to me; a bribe, a present.”

“Sadaka is offered because of you, not the other way around, dragon,” said Xeno. She said something in her native tongue, and even if I couldn’t understand, it sounded bad. “Ihave spoken to the foals. They tell me the stories of times I missed. The stars’ messenger came, and only then were they given to you. Had you not stolen from my tribe, youwould be offered no gifts or bribes.”

“Incorrect,” whispered the dragon. He once again lifted his claws, this time to inspect his rings. With a frown, he blew a small stream of fire directly across his claws. The gold simmered and liquified. Taking a deep breath, he blew on them again to cool them back down. When the gold hardened again, he smiled. “Perfect again,” he said more to himself than us. Lazily he looked down. “I told you, from the very moment I hatched, I was given what I wanted by the zebras. They wished me a weapon, like my brethren. Were I older, I’d have gladly fought by their sides and taken the spoils of war.” He laughed. “Such a shame your little world ended. So many of my prized possessions disappeared, destroyed or taken to hiding.”

“Egotistical, isn’t he?” I whispered to the others. It reminded me of several others we’d dealt with. Others I still needed to kill so they couldn’t harm others. But ponies like Jazz or Amble I could handle myself. How was I supposed to kill a dragon, or convince him to give up his quest for ownership. Please Luna, Celestia... Let Lost have a thinky-pony plan.

“So, you were their secret weapon?” asked Rose. She sat on her haunches and looked the dragon up and down. “I’m not impressed. They were right to go with balefire.”

“Secret weapon?” asked Xeno. She wore a confused look on her face, either at the revelation the dragon was a weapon, or that he accused her kind of making him. “My kind didnot support the Caesar, wewere from the pony lands.” She looked up at the dragon. “Their stripes. What color?”

For a moment the dragon mused to himself. “I’ve lived for two centuries, I do not busy myself with the details of the little kind. They looked more akin to you, than the foals,” he answered. “Who they were didn’t ever matter, what they did mattered to me. They gave me what I wanted.” Without warning, he laid down into the hoard and wriggled back and forth, a happy smile crossing his muzzle. From the force of him landing on the pile, a shower of gold and gems rose into the air, flowing like a wave. The sound of metal hitting metal echoed through the cavern. Pieces scattered around us, so close I could almost snatch one. “I’ve humored your petty concerns enough. Go.” He reached out with one claw and swiped the scattered treasure back, the razor sharp claws coming so close we had to jump back to avoid being sliced open.

Rose snickered. “So, you’ve got everything you could ever want, but don’t want to waste your time with us ‘little ponies,’ eh?” she asked. A wicked little grin cross her lips. “Why take us here if you don’t even want us?”

“Hah, don’t think that hasn’t been tried before,” growled the dragon. “Mind games don’t work. I care none for what you do, only that you’re mine. That’s all that ever matters to me.” He pointed idly toward the tunnel where we ate. “Go and spend time with the others, and don’t leave.”

“The big bad alchemy dragon of the zebras, all grown up and still alone,” said the clone mare. “You take things to fill that hole inside you.”

“I have all I could ever want,” he shot back. His claws grabbed the treasures of his hoard and he lifted them up, only to let the bits, jewelry, and gems fall back to the pile.

I could feel myself salivating. I fought against walking forward. I only needed one piece. He had more than he could ever need, he had homes and servants and everything else. What was one little gem, one ruby, sapphire, or emerald. I saw a diamond drop to the pile and roll toward me. Fighting it, I bit my lip hard enough I could feel blood trickling down my coat.

“Yet, you always seem to want more,” whispered Rose in a seductive voice. She looked at the four of us and nodded a few times in the direction of the dragon. “Go with me on this,” she whispered to us.

Fine Tune perked up and blinked several times. “A mate!” he shouted. Realizing what he’d said, he covered his muzzle in his hooves and turned red again. “Sorry,” he squeaked. Poor thing must have been lost in thought over The Convert.

I couldn’t blame him, finding a pony worth liking in the Wasteland was hard enough. I’d only just been coming to terms with the fact that maybe, just maybe, I wanted something like that too. Before any thoughts of stallions or anything else could pop into my head, I caught sight of the diamond again. Oh, how I wanted her more than any pony in the Wasteland.

The dragon leaned back, squinting and looking at the stallion. “Hmm,” he rumbled, before rolling over onto his back in the pile of gold. A great cascade of gems and bits flew into the air, crashing down to the side of the pile and covering the floor. The noise drowned out everything, even my own thoughts, as the bits of metal clinged and clanged against one another. “A mate,” he said, his eyes closed and claws in the air.

Rose motioned for us to follow and took a few quiet steps back.

I reluctantly followed, tearing myself away from a ring just a few inches from my hooves. It wouldn’t have fit around the steel hooves anyway...

Once we’d walked away, she whispered, “Okay, so I know exactly who this dragon is now. You were right, the gold on him isn’t armor. It’s part of him.”

“Just how do you figure?” I asked.

“Because I spent nearly a decade smuggling drugs across the border to sell here,” she snapped. “We’d have gone through Stalliongrad bu- It’s not important!” She took a deep breath. “Crash course in the War. The zebras were a lot more advanced than we gave them credit for, and those potions and elixirs her tribe can make...” Rose pointed at Xeno. “Those aren’t the biggest or the best of what zebras during the war were capable of.”

“A mate,” rumbled the dragon thoughtfully. “Another dragon...”

“Nice distraction at least,” I said.

“Shut up. He’s the stuff of legends, and not the kind that involve a nice pegasus talking a dragon down for being mean to her friends,” she said. “How I wish we had Fluttershy here now...” She shook her head and looked back to the dragon. “Grenades are useless, guns are useless. Collapsing the roof on him would only make him angry.”

The dragon laughed. “I could get her hoard too, make the pile even bigger...”

“Alright, context, please,” Lost said. “You were all for dropping the ceiling before, what changed?”

“Right,” Rose said with a nod. “Near as I got it from listening to our smuggler friends talking, the way zebra alchemy works is that the stronger the ingredient, the more powerful the spell.” She looked at Xeno. “Sound about right?”

The zebra mulled it over for a moment, a hoof going to her chin. “A good poison can be made from the stinger of a scorpion, but the stinger of a manticore will induce a more potent one,” she said after a moment.

“Exactly, stronger is better. What’s the strongest living thing around?” Rose asked. She pointed to the dragon several times.

“A dragon?” asked Fine Tune.

The clone groaned. “No, okay. Which is stronger, your carapace or your egg?” she asked sarcastically.

“The egg, it must keep the unborn strong, even if we have to mo-- Ohh...” he said, realization hitting him. His eyes brightened when he understood.

“But then I’d need to share,” mused the dragon across the cavern from us. He reached down and grabbed a chunk of his hoard with his claws. Holding them at length, he let the treasure rain down upon him. The sound of gold hitting his scales sounded strange, almost hollow, and echoed against the walls.

“Okay, so the zebra I knew, kept telling me the Caesar wanted the strongest protections around,” she explained. “They made a bargain with one of the dragons, Brimstone’s mate or some stupid shit like that. A single egg, the hardest shell around. The best shield an alchemist could hope for.”

“But he’s here now, so something obviously went wrong,” said Lost. She always was a thinky pony...

“The spell backfired?” I asked, trying to figure out exactly what they were going on about. “Instead of an impenetrable shield, they got an impenetrable dragon?”

“Something like that. He hatched during the process, and every part of the magic they wanted to use him for, went right back,” she answered. “Kinda like a science experiment gone wrong. He was supposed to be a part of a whole, instead he’s the whole and it’s all a part of him. I heard bad things about failed experiments in the Ministry of Arcane Sciences from Trusty, but... They don’t hold a candle to how bad the zebras fucked this one up.”

“And he became their ultimate weapon?” I asked, trying to figure out exactly how dangerous a dragon who only cared about stealing things could be. All he wanted was his gold. Then again, I wanted all of his gold and I could be pretty formidable when I needed to. I was a murderer, after all.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Balefire did. Because they could mass produce bombs and missiles. A hatchling isn’t a-”

“NO!” shouted the dragon, his voice full more of surprise than rage. With a flurry of claws and wings, he righted himself and glared at us. “I will not share with another. I do not want or need for a mate. If I ever see another dragon, I will sooner kill her than share my treasure. A mate is not worth the chance of theft.”

Well, there went that.

* * *

Not wanting to enrage the dragon with more suggestions that might lead him to think we wanted his hoard to be lost or stolen, we retreated to the tunnel The Convert had told us was used for storage of older treasure. The dragon left us with a glare, and returned to his treasure. He seemed quick to anger and quick to forgive, as shortly after Rose profusely apologized for ever suggesting such a thing, he backed off. Now calmed, he passed the time sifting through the pile of gold and letting it rain from his claws upon him.

I sighed. He was like a foal, just... one in a body so massive he could bully others.

Rather than return to The Convert or Stormheart and the others, we made sure to stay by ourselves. The fear of getting caught in the group-think, that it was better to stay complacent than to search for a way to freedom, tasted of poison. Once we were out of sight and in the slightly darker hall, we broke to make plans again.

“So, that was a bad idea,” I muttered to Rose.

“Call me pessimistic, but what are the chances of him happening to have snatched up an anti-dragon battery and put it down here, really?” she asked, ignoring my comment. She looked at the ruins of his hoard all around us, where the walls of the tunnel were lined in the same way as every other tunnel we’d seen. “He’s got enough shit down here...”

Lost deadpanned and rolled her eyes. “I doubt the, what was it you called him, big bad alchemy dragon... I doubt he’d keep something to kill him in the cavern he lives in,” she said, barely holding back sarcasm. With a cautious glance backward, she moved toward the walls. “But really, tell me every last rumor and every minor detail you know that might help us here.”

“You know what? I’m actually going to dig around. The sight of that treasure has me antsy,” I admitted. “I need to... I don’t know. I need to find something to stare at instead. Not being able to do my whole treasure hunting thing is starting to get to me.” I turned and trotted off before they could argue. I couldn’t get the thought of his gold out of my head. I’d spent most of my life trying to find something like this. My whole world was based around searching for treasure, and the rumors of a dragon hoard got me here in the first place.

Seeing it right in front of me, and not being able to snatch it up was almost painful.

“Just stay safe Hidden. You heard what she said earlier, about getting lost,” my sister yelled to me.

“I know,” I yelled back. I’d stay within the nearest few smashed houses. I just needed to do something. If the dragon just smooshed everything against the walls, he must not care too much about them. I stopped at the closest house and pulled the door open as far as I could. It would be a tight fit, but I could make it. I dove through.

“What’s her problem?” asked Rose as I wriggled my way through the closest doorway.

I stopped just inside and peeked out through the doorway to watch. Hearing what my sister thought of me when she didn’t know I was listening might be a bit insightful.

Lost looked over to the house I’d crawled my way into, and sighed. “Hidden’s a good pony, but she lives in a fantasy world half the time,” she explained. She lifted her foreleg and showed Rose the PipBuck attached to her. “The only reason we have this, and the only reason we ended up meeting you, was because somepony told us a rumor about dragon’s treasure in a cave. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen that it was just a rumor. In the end, it sent us on a nice little adventure, and made us new friends.” She placed a hoof across Xeno’s back and smiled. “That said, she treats scavenging like its a game. It’s how she copes with living in a world like this.”

“Really?” asked Rose. “She acts like a hardened murderer, from my perspective.”

“You're not so innocent yourself, Rose. She does what she needs to, and she’s got another pony in her head telling all sorts of terrible things,” Lost continued. She lowered her hoof from Xeno and nodded toward Fine Tune.

“Miss Hidden got the same conditioning my kind did,” said the changeling. “Maybe worse...”

“Anyway, ever since our mother died, she just does what she can to cope,” L.A. said. “Lucky for her, the one thing she’s really good at, aside from smashing heads, is finding stuff. Let her loose in an empty building for an hour, and she’ll somehow manage to find an entire pantry full of food, or a wardrobe stocked with guns. It’s almost uncanny.”

“So, you let her stay in her little fantasy treasure hunter mindset, because...” asked the clone. As they talked, she pulled her cloak off and slid it away.

“Because it’s what’s right for her. She knows the world we live in, she’s got the scars to prove it,” Lost said. She shifted uneasily. “It’s more fun to hunt for treasure than to scavenge anyway. I like her methods.”

The dragon snorted off in the main cavern, a sound that echoed through the tunnels.

“We should focus on what’s important though. You said you knew about him from rumors?” Lost asked.

I ducked away from the door, not sure how exactly I felt about that little exchange. On the one hoof, Lost understood the way I worked, but on the other hoof, she’d been talking about me behind my back. Well, both hooves were steel anyway now, so who cared?

“... infuses whatever they use as an ingredient,” said Rose’s voice. “Just like the M.A.S., there were backfires...”

The building looked far worse on the inside. To get through, I needed to crawl back and forth over and under all sorts of trash and rubbish and other things that weren’t actually gold. It looked like a storm had blown through and trashed the place. Twice. Hunks of wood littered what little space I could move through, from where the building had been smashed up against the wall. Whatever the layout might have been at one point, all that was left was one single room split up by the remains of walls and floors. All sorts of little tidbits of pre-War life made up the remainder. Furniture, clothing, electronics that had been rent into scraps.

“...cannot be,” said Xeno’s voice. She sounded agitated. “Itis not how the brewing process works!”

Rolling my eyes at the limited prospects, I jumped up onto the makeshift platform of wooden remains and climbed up to the second floor. I saw a nice wardrobe lying with the front toward me. I could open that, maybe it would be stocked with guns just like Lost said. Grabbing onto the door’s handle with my teeth, I pulled as hard as I could.

“...centuries of difference, different tribe, different method, different ingredients,” argued the clone. “Do you want to know what I know or not?”

It stuck. I tugged several times, digging my hooves in to open it. I flicked an ear, listening to the others talk through the shattered window.

“Fine Tune, you remember what The Convert said about his love of his treasure?” asked Lost’s voice. “Do you think you could just drain him into unconsciousness?”

The changeling chirped several times, letting out a loud ‘crikiki.’ “No,” he said. “He’s far too big. It would take a whole hive feeding all at once to drain something like that. He’s...” There was a pause. Hoofsteps clopped against the stone floor. “He doesn’t even have love for it, he has-”

I didn’t hear the rest as the door to the wardrobe finally gave way. With a quiet ‘eep’ I fell backward and rolled down the wooden planking. Landing hard on my rump, I looked up. No guns. Just- Ow! A memory orb fell from inside and hit me right in the face. Lying there, I looked up to see a pretty green sundress hanging inside, looking just as nice as the day it’d been worn last. I grabbed the memory orb and stuffed it into my saddlebags for later. I couldn’t see what was in it anyway. I jumped up and pulled the dress from its hanger. With a cursory inspection, I decided the dragon wouldn’t ever miss little things like these and stuffed the dress into my bag with the memory orb.

I grumbled about how in my nightmare I had to have some menial job and couldn’t have dreamt about being in a pretty dress at a party or something. I pushed the thought from my mind and kept digging. The process went slow, as I had to squeeze myself between broken floorboards and over shattered furniture to get through the tiniest of spaces to get anywhere. The kitchen had nothing of use, aside from a nice open area where somepony had opened every drawer and dug through it.

“Everything’s killable,” said Lost. I must have missed something between falling and moving to the kitchen. “You told us earlier about ponies taking dragons out during the war.”

I did keep an ear out just in case the others called for me, while half-listening to their conversation. The problem was that, unlike now, back then they actually had the numbers and the weapons to do it.

“Yeah, and it took Rainbow Dash herself, with teams of elite fliers and our best weapons. Do you see any of those things here?” asked the clone mare. She sounded like she was getting mad. We didn’t know any pegasi, let alone the ‘best fliers.’ Last time the only anything we knew that could fly went head to head with the dragon, he ended up splattered against a wall.

Fine Tune whined.

I pulled myself from the building and walked to the next one, my saddlebags feeling far too empty. The ponies, zebras, and buffalo who lived here had already stripped all the decent finds out of the building, and I didn’t have the patience right now to spend hours digging. I wanted something with instant satisfaction, much like the dress. It was nice, but not enough. I looked over to the others as they talked.

“...the scales he has. Two layers and one made of crazy zebra alchemy,” said Rose. “They might look like gold, but I’ve seen what an enhanced zebra soldier can do. I can only imagine what a dragon literally born from alchemy can-”

“What about a poison?” I interrupted, remembering how badly it knocked us out. “Go at him from the inside and bypass the armor and scales?”

“I donot have any,” answered Xeno. “If I did, it wouldnot be enough.” That made sense. If the dragon was too damn big for a changeling to drain, then he was probably too big for a pony-sized dose of poison. It wouldn’t even leave a bad taste in his mouth.

“Just an idea,” I said with a shrug. Reaching the next smashed home, I wriggled my way into the door, only getting stuck twice. This house looked the same as the other, with the walls splintered and ruins of furniture and other trash strewn about. I dug through the house as thoroughly as I could, crawling up rickety piles to get to closed doors and pull them open, and sliding down to get back to safety. The house didn’t have much, but I managed to find a partial carton of cigarettes for Xeno. She had complained about running low, so this would be a nice gift for her. I stuffed them into my saddlebags and left the house.

“What if we convince him he doesn’t need any of the treasure?” asked Fine Tune.

Rose shook her head. “It’s not something about him in particular,” she said. “Dragons hoard treasure. They have for as long as... forever. Nopony knows why, they just do. Being greedy bastards is their thing.” She laughed. “When I was little, there was a story about Twilight Sparkle’s dragon, Spike, in Ponyville who went through a greedy phase and grew huge in mere days. It’s ingrained in their very nature.”

“Is that not normal? This dragon seems pretty damn big to me,” said Lost.

“It is, but not that fast. Like I told you, this dragon wasn’t hatched the same way normal dragons are,” Rose answered. “At least according to the rumors. The ‘rules’ for dealing with dragons won’t work on him. They’re smart, too.”

I rolled my eyes as I walked by. None of that helped us, and the treasure hunting was keeping me far happier than listening to them talking.

“Find anything good?” asked Lost.

“Not really. They’re mostly stripped clean. I did find a present though,” I answered with a smile. I trotted back and dug through my saddlebags. Unceremoniously, I pulled out the carton of cigarettes and offered them to Xeno. “Here. You said you were low.”

Xeno’s eyes went wide as she reached up to take the carton. She smiled warily and stuffed them into the satchel she wore. Lunging forward, she wrapped her hooves around my neck and squeezed. When the dams broke on her restrained personality, they really broke. “Thank you,” she whispered.

I hugged her back. “Just... Do that cheaty light trick you do and we’ll call it even,” I joked. I still wanted to know how she did that.

As I let go of the hug, Lost stepped up to me. She placed a hoof on the side of my head and leaned in close. “What happened to your head?” she asked.

“This hit me in the face,” I said, pulling the memory orb out. I passed it to Lost.

“You’ve got the right idea, but you can’t just smash it into your skull. Memory orbs don’t work that way,” Rose said with a smirk. She clapped her hooves together slowly.

“I wasn’t trying to, it fell out of a wardrobe,” I snapped at Rose Shimmer. “Just let me know if you come up with an idea. I’m going to go hunt until I find something good.” Digging through these houses was fun, even if they didn’t have much in the way of treasure.

“Please be careful,” Lost said. She held the orb up and stared into it. “Thanks, by the way.”

“Welcome.”

The next house I entered actually had a door that opened completely. The inside was filled with boxes, rather than the same rubble of furniture and house parts like the previous two. With a shrug, I started through. I ripped off the tape and flipped the box’s lids open, then dug into them. The first was full of old books, covered in dust and smelling like they’d started to rot. Flipping one of the books open, I watched as the pages crumbled to dust. I turned from the box and dug through another. Several times I came up short, with nothing worthwhile. Several had more stacks of old books, which meant somepony had a lot of time to read. Most of the rest had clothes full of all sorts of holes.

Frustrated, I decided I’d try one more and then give up and check the kitchen. I ripped the tape off and opened it.

My jaw dropped.

Staring back at me from the box was a pile of jewelry. I stuck my hooves in and scooped up necklaces and rings and all sorts of gems. They were beautiful, and shone like- Wait. I dropped them all and held up one of the rings.

I smashed it between my hooves. It cracked and splintered. It wasn’t real, just a cheap fake.

“Gah!” I screamed, flopping back. How dare the ponies before the War. Teasing me with the chance at something great and it being just a toy. I pushed myself back up and stuck my head in the box. Underneath the play jewelry were toys. Lots and lots of toys. Wonderful, why couldn’t they label their storage?

Annoyed, I left to go into the kitchen. There might be something worthwhile there, instead of digging through what ended up being a wild phoenix chase. The kitchen, instead, was nice and rummaged through. I’d expected that, but I kept looking anyway. The drawers and cabinets were empty, but atop the counter sat an old knife holder. Sticking from it was the handle of a knife, upside down.

“What’s this?” I asked nopony in particular. I hooked the metal in my fetlock, and pulled the knife free.

It slid out perfectly, without sticking like I’d expected. Once it came free of the holder, I twisted it to look at the blade. The flat of the blade was perfect, clean, and reflected the image of my eyes back at me. The only thing to mar the perfection was a little inscription. Squinting, I read it as ‘Try it and see - R&D.’ What in the what?

Well, the knife told me to try it. I hacked into the knife holder as a test. The blade cut clean through, splitting it into two pieces. Only afterward did I notice the writing on it. ‘View memory orb first,’ it said. The two halves of the knife holder wobbled, then fell apart.

“Wow!” Eyes wide, I realized why it was left upside down. It could have cut through that thing from gravity alone. I slid it into my saddlebags, upside down, and turned away. Shame there was only one. Maybe Xeno or Fine Tune could find a use for it. Given the advice of the ruined holder, I dug around for another memory orb. Sadly, no matter where I looked, I came up empty.

Feeling that I’d snatched enough treasure from under the dragon’s nose, I walked out of the building. I trotted over to Lost and the others. Stopping short, I interrupted their conversation. “Do you know anypony with the initials R and D?” I asked.

Rose scrunched her face up. “Umm, Rainbow Dash?” she said sarcastically. “She was a hero during the War? I literally just told you about her and how she defeated Brimstone over Hoofington like, an hour ago.”

“Think this was hers?” I asked, before sliding the knife out.

“Let me see that,” demanded the clone. She grabbed it with the aquamarine haze of her magic and pulled it from my mouth. She looked at the side of the blade and slammed her hoof so hard into her forehead I felt it. “R&D means Research and Development!”

“Oh...”

Lost wrapped a hoof around me and squeezed.

“This is probably something from the M.A.S.,” Rose suggested. “Looks like their work. Somepony must have brought it home for some field testing.” She shrugged and passed the knife back. “Where’d you say you got it?”

“I snatched it from the house back there,” I answered, pointing back.

“You stole it from under the dragon’s nose? You know he’ll probably kill you for that,” said the clone.

“I won’t let him,” said Lost.

“Technically, I’m just rearranging things until I leave with it,” I countered. “He probably doesn’t care about a little knife like this anyway. He’s pushed it back into a corner and basically abandoned it.”

Something clicked in my head. If there were other dragons who died during the war like Brimstone, what if their abandoned treasures were still sitting, unguarded. “Wait I have an idea,” I said, waving the others to come closer.

Maybe, just maybe, for once... I could be a thinky pony.

* * *

“Hey!” I yelled, trotting back into the main cavern.

The dragon lazily opened one eye and looked at me. He pulled his snout from where it was buried in the pile of treasure. “What?” he asked in a not-too-happy voice.

“I’ve got a question for you,” I announced. I stopped right in front of him, a few inches from that glorious beautiful pile of gold and gems. The others stopped behind me, but said nothing. This was my plan, and I would be the one to convince him. Lost might be better with this sort of thing, but I wanted to be the one who did it. After all, if I could convince myself that I was right, I should be able to convince the dragon.

“I’ve answered your questions already,” he rumbled. Raising a claw, he pointed opposite the entrance tunnel. “Go.”

Lost stepped next to me. “Hidden, you don’t have to-”

“I can do it, sis,” I whispered to her. I nodded a few times and took a step forward. Gently I picked up one of the bits with my teeth.

The dragon’s attention snapped to me instantly. His eyes widened while the thicker ridges of his eyebrows lowered. I could practically feel the heat rising in his chest.

I dropped the bit onto my hoof. “Just, just listen. Okay?” I begged, holding the bit up toward him.

He hesitated for half a second, which was all I needed.

“I know where there’s more,” I lied. “More, just like this one.” I dropped it back into the pile and pointed at a crown. “More of those.” I pointed to a ring. “And those.”

The dragon’s demeanor changed. He lowered himself back down and unfurrowed his brows. The slightest of grins appeared on his muzzle, showing off the gigantic teeth.

I gulped.

“Go on...” he said, his deep voice making the massive pile of gold vibrate.

I took a step back and looked at the others. I had him in my hoof, but I didn’t know if I could go through with it. I wasn’t a skilled talker, I was better at hitting things and fucking up... everything. If this went wrong, we could all end up roasted.

“Just do it,” said Rose. She pushed my haunches, making me step forward.

“What you’re saying is completely true, Hidden,” Lost reassured me. She was right. It wasn’t a lie at all. We’d seen bits and gems and crowns and rings before. Just... Just not in the flesh before tonight.

“There’s another mountain. It’s in the other ridge, a ways from here,” I started, carefully watching the reaction of the dragon. Since he didn’t seem to hide his feelings, and Fine Tune was there to tell me if he truly became mad, I figured I could tell if he was interested. When he nodded, I continued, “A merchant told us, he promised, that there was a dragon’s cave a ways out. He never said the dragon was still alive though. So, umm, he could have left his hoard there-”

“And?” he asked.

“Miss Hidden,” whispered Fine Tune, his voice shrill. “Impatience...”

I nodded and continued. “So I thought, you don’t want to deal with another dragon trying to steal your treasure, but, umm,” I stammered. “If there’s no dragon to fight. Couldn’t you just go steal the abandoned treasure? Nopo- No one else would be taking it.” I gulped and looked down at his treasure, the bits piled up around his mouth. Slowly, my vision drifted up toward- I tore myself away, refusing to look at his teeth. The last thing I needed was to lose my resolve. I focused on the treasure. The beautiful treasure that would be all mine the very second he left.

I’d swim in it when he disappeared into the sky. I’d just crawl in and bury myself and forget any of this ever happened. We’d all be together and we’d have all the time in the Wasteland to get free. It’d be perfectly fine.

Right?

I whispered a silent prayer to Celestia and Luna, one after the other. I’d need both of them watching over me to pull this off.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, his voice calm and disinterested. His claws slid through the mountain of shimmering bits, shifting the pile and making four ridges and sending more bits cascading down toward me. The dragon’s eyes flickered back and forth, looking from me to the others, and to his gold. “Why would you tell me?” he demanded.

Oh no. I hadn’t considered that. I just figured a dragon would jump at the chance for free treasure. I knew I would; that was how I lived my whole life. If dragons were supposed to be big greedy monsters, why was he arguing so much? I needed a plan.

L.A. cleared her throat. “You have very well trained, uh, pets,” she said. She took a step forward and stood next to me. “We saw how well they kept everything organized, and we heard how well you treat them. You keep everypony here safe, fed, and with a roof over their heads. They told us we should try to make good with you, and not try to escape.”

“Why’d you think I told you to find a mate?” added Rose. Quickly, she caught herself. “I wasn’t trying to tell you to find another dragon for competition, I just figured everyone needed a little ‘pleasure’ in their life.”

The dragon snorted, flinging gems, bits, and jewelry into the air and letting loose a foul-smelling cloud of smoke. He pushed himself up, and treasure rained back down. It was beautiful, with the tumbling coins and gems reflecting the soft light of the cavern back.

If only I could reach out and grab them all. I’d hold them so tight and never let go...

Rolling his wings and shoulders, the dragon sat and regarded us. As before, he dragged his claws along the underside of his muzzle in thought. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said after a moment. “Why are you telling me this? What do you gain from it?”

“Trust?” I offered.

“A place here, without fear?” suggested Lost.

“More chance to watch you eyefuck your treasure?” said Rose.

Collectively, the rest of us facehoofed. Even Xeno and Fine Tune joined in. There simply weren’t words to describe how stupid that was.

The dragon chuckled. With each laugh, the cavern shook, making little chunks of rock and dust fall from the ceiling down onto us. After a moment, he raised a claw and flicked a massive tear from the corner of his eye. “All admirable,” he said.

“He’s happy at least,” whispered Fine Tune. “And not just from laughing. This might work!” His eyes lit up, glowing even through his disguise.

“There’s a cave across the mountains. That’s where its supposed to be,” I said.

“Why didn’t you just go take it?” he asked. A good question. “Or... did you?” He squinted, making the glowing golden eyes into slits. “Empty your bags.” The look he gave us didn’t leave any room for argument.

Saddlebags were poured out, littering the cavern floor with our possessions. Please don’t let him think we were hiding treasure from him. Everything from guns and ammo to my shovel, to- Oh shit. The dress fell from my bags onto the floor and the knife clattered to the ground on its side atop the dress. Please please please don’t let him know I stole those.

“What’s that for?” asked Rose. “You don’t really look like the type that wears frilly dresses. Saving it for your special somepony?”

Groaning, I rolled my eyes. Her teasing was really starting to get old. “No, I just... I like dresses okay,” I admitted. I turned away from her, not wanting to see that stupid smirk.

Lost emptied her saddlebags as well, letting the memory orb I’d stolen fall free as well. As if to drag things out, a small bag of bits fell from Lost’s saddlebags dead last and landed atop everything else.

“Then wear it,” said the dragon calmly. He pointed a claw at the bag. “I don’t care what you do with my possessions so long as you stay here. Gold, however, is mine.”

Sheepishly, Lost lifted the bag of bits we’d taken from the grocery store the other day in her magic. The blue haze around the bag glowed bright, and the bag opened. Floating it over to the pile, she turned it upside down and let the hoofful of coins clatter down into the main pile. Without a word, and never daring to look the dragon in the eye, she stepped back.

“We didn’t take that from you,” I said. It was true at least, and really, the bits were mostly useless. Ponies who traded bits for caps were few and far between, since the Wasteland hadn’t bothered to keep the old currency. They were more shiny baubles than anything valuable to us. Of course, I just happened to like them because they were still treasure, even if not worth much now-a-days.

“We did find the abandoned hoard, but we couldn’t carry any more than this,” Lost said, getting us back on topic. Her lie sounded convincing.

“Mmmm?” rumbled the dragon. He reached down and picked up the small pile of coins Lost had added. Somehow, he managed to pick up every one she dropped, and not a single extra. Lifting them up, he examined them. “These are too clean to have been sitting in a dragon’s hoard, abandoned.” He tossed them to the pile, scattering them with loud clinks among the surface.

“Theywere taken from the bottom,” said Xeno, joining into the lie for the first time. “They care more for appearance, when the coinis worthless to us.” She shrugged, shaking her head and swaying her mane to the side. “Itis a badge of experience, of skill in tracking. Itis not meant to be spent.”

“Why did you hide it from me?” demanded the dragon.

“You... never asked?” said Lost meekly. She took a few steps back and pressed herself against me.

A deep rumble came from the dragon, but he said nothing. We should have known better, sure, but a single bag of bits meant little to us when we were so busy trying to stop a Goddesses-damned slavery ring.

“Where?” he asked. His wings extended and he flapped them a few times, blowing our manes back from the force of the wind. Turning, he looked at the hole we’d first looked down through, then back at us.

“A cave in the mountains, across the next ridge,” I answered. “It’s past the white... spike... thing.” I lied, not wanting him to go anywhere near the Stables where the Steel Rangers were waiting. Those were the only caves I knew about, and sending him there could be an even worse disaster than we were already in. “You can’t miss it. Fly past it, and it’s just on the other side. Big cave at the base of the mountains.”

“There’s only one a dragon your size would fit through,” added Lost, filling in little details. That might keep him from trying the cave the Stables were in, since the entrance was so small.

For what felt like an eternity, the dragon sat there. He said nothing, his only movement coming from the occasional scratch at his scales. He dug his claws beneath the gold plating on his scales and then raked them across his stomach. Finally, he nodded. Before giving an answer, he leaned down and squinted at us. “How do I know you won’t try to leave once I go off to find this supposed abandoned hoard?” he demanded.

Lost didn’t answer right away. She looked back toward the rest of us, then to the dragon. Slowly, she took a deep breath. “You left to get us, and nopony here left. Why would we?” she asked.

The dragon seemed placated by that. He looked to the tunnel where the café was and rumbled to himself.

“I want to see the hoard again,” I said cautiously. “But, umm, that means I’d have to wait for you to bring it back. So, we won’t be leaving.”

The dragon laughed. “It is glorious, isn’t it?” he asked, once again dragging his claws through the gold and leaving little trails. He grabbed a small chunk of the treasure and let the bits, gems, and jewelry fall down from them. It was absolutely, undeniably, beautiful.

He needed to just leave already. If he kept teasing me with it, I wasn’t going to be able hold myself back. I would not be held accountable for my actions. My hooves fidgeted, and I fought back against jumping forward to lay in the gold.

“Cave across the mountains,” he said, more to himself than us. Lifting his claws, he weighed the pros and cons while looking back and forth at them, ignoring us.

“Is there a problem?” asked Rose. She tapped her hoof impatiently.

“Be quiet,” snapped the dragon. Lowering his claws, he walked from the pile of treasure toward the door. “I’ll be quick, I have duties to attend to here.” Turning away, he ducked into the tunnel. A few seconds later, his tail disappeared past the curve that lead back up.

Collectively, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

“Above,” Xeno said, pointing a hoof. At her suggestion, we all looked up toward the hole we’d first looked through.

The dragon’s massive form passed it, without so much as a second look. The cavern shook, and chunks of dust and rock fell from the ceiling from his weight as he lumbered past. It lasted only a moment, before he finally vanished from sight. We were finally free of him, if only for a short while.

I couldn’t wait any longer. I dove forward and buried myself face first into the cool metal of the bits, jewelry, and the gentle edges of the polished gems. It felt absolutely perfect. I twisted around onto my back and pulled as much of the treasure as I could hold onto me. I’d lay in it, and put it in my saddlebags, and take it back. I’d have Praline make me something nice with it, maybe plate my hooves. I’d pour every last bit onto my bed and just sleep under it. Everything would be perfe-

“Hidden!” yelled Lost. “Get out of there!” She grabbed my tail in her teeth and pulled. The warm familiar haze of her magic wrapped around my rear hooves and she dragged me away from the pile. “You’re going to get us all killed!”

“You idiot!” shouted Rose.

Xeno facehoofed next to her.

Fine Tune seemed to be holding back a laugh. Was I really that funny?

“I am not,” I snapped back. “He’s gone. I just need a minute with it.” I put my forehooves together and begged. “Please Lost?”

“No.”

I grabbed a ring from the pile, and a crown. I didn’t care what she said. I’d waited my whole Goddesses-damned life for an opportunity like this, and I wasn’t going to pass it up because somepony was scared. I was a big mare and I could face whatever consequences there were. But for two minutes I was going to enjoy dressing myself up like a princess and not a single pony out there could stop me.

I tossed the crown up in the air and caught it on my head. With a little nudge, I had it exactly where I wanted it. Sitting, I looked at the ring I’d grabbed. I needed to find a way to put it on over the steel hoof. If I popped it off, I could just slide the ring onto my... stump. From the corner of my eye, I saw the golden bits jump slightly and slide from the pile to the cavern floor.

“Hidden,” said Lost.

The ground shook.

“Hidden!” she yelled.

Setting the ring down, I poked at the steel hoof, looking for whatever little secret Praline used to pull it off. I could do it with one hoof, probably.

“THIEF!” shouted a voice so loud I thought my eardrums might split. It echoed through the cavern several times.

“Oh no,” I whispered to myself. It was all I could get out before the ceiling of the cavern exploded.

Rubble, rocks, and a torrent of ruins toppled down from the hole where the dragon stood. He smashed himself against it, breaking chunks away and giving him a larger hole. Fire filled the top of the cavern from his rage, and he finally managed to break through completely. Huge boulders landed at the far side of the pile from us, sending everything into the air and making a mess of the treasure.

We didn’t wait to find out what he would do. The locals at the far end of the cavern, in their tunnel, watched with horror on their faces as we scattered. Lost, Xeno, and Fine Tune took off. I heard Lost yelling for me to follow, but I couldn’t make out what she said over the sound of roars and rocks smashing to the ground.

I pushed myself to my hooves and bolted. The crown toppled from my head, rolling across my back and clattering on the floor behind me, completely forgotten. I dashed in a straight line toward the cave I’d been looting in before. Beside me, Rose followed as fast as her hooves could carry her. The others were nowhere to be seen. Had they gone down a different tunnel?

She looked at me. I couldn’t tell whether she was furious or terrified. Probably both. My own expression must have matched it.

I wasn’t a big enough mare to deal with a dragon, and I’d probably just gotten each and every one of us killed. Whatever luck or Goddesses’ blessings I had left, I prayed for them. Behind me, I could hear the thud, I could feel when the dragon landed. It shook the ground so fiercely, my hooves left the floor. Beside me Rose flailed her hooves, trying to get traction as we fell back down.

“Oof!” I coughed, hitting hard. Without time to think, I kept running. The sound of our hooves echoed on the tunnel, but were quickly overpowered by the sound of the dragon behind us. Why he hadn’t just turned me into roast pony already, I didn’t know, but I was thankful for it.

The whole mountain shook as we rounded a corner. The dragon’s claws on the ground stopped. He roared, and green flames filled the tunnel, billowing around the ceiling above the roofs of the smashed houses. If this was an old tunnel of his, maybe he didn’t fit anymore.

The mountain shook again, and one of the houses collapsed, shaken loose by the dragon’s struggling. The sound of claws digging into stone filled my ears, as did the distinct sound of something cracking. No, no no no. If he broke through...

“Was it worth it, you stupid fuck!?” hissed Rose. She glared at me as we rounded a corner and went deeper into the tunnel.

“Sorry!” I shouted. I could barely think, I could barely breathe. I felt my heart pounding in my throat. This was bad. I didn’t have a plan for this. Lost couldn’t help me. I didn’t know what to do.

So we kept running. We ran through the shaking of the mountain, through the roars of frustration and pain as the dragon tried to follow us.

“These tunnels are mine!” he roared from behind us. “I’LL FIND YOU NO MATTER HOW FAR YOU RUN!” Everything shook around us. “Finally!” he shouted. He’d gotten through, and we were fucked.

The level of fucked rose as we rounded another corner and found a dead end. The tunnel went on further, I could tell over the roofs of the houses, but there was so much stuff smashed back here, that we couldn’t get through. Houses were piled atop one another, stuffed haphazardly by an inexperienced hoarder. They weren’t nice and out of the way against the walls, but instead looked like they’d been thrown there by someone who didn’t have the time or energy to deal with it.

To us, it was a death sentence.

I deserved it. I wouldn’t give up though. I was terrified, but I was stubborn, I always had been. The houses here were just... just something I needed to get over or get through. “Come on!” I yelled, running forward. There were holes and doors, we could get through. I ripped one of the doors open, only to be met with a wall of shattered furniture. “Help me!” I said. I pushed as hard as I could, trying to get just a little space we could slide through.

Rose grunted and shoved her way in next to me. Together we pushed as hard as we could, but nothing so much as budged. “Different spots. Hurry!” she yelled, moving to another door. We didn’t have time for this, not with the thundering of the dragon down the hall behind us.

Despite trying a half dozen spots, none worked. Any opening was too small to fit through, and every door opened to another pile of smashed debris. The dragon made a good wall, even if he hadn’t meant to.

“Arg!” shouted the pink mare. She grabbed me by the shoulders with her forehooves and stared me right in the eyes. “WHY!?” she demanded. “What two braincells rubbed together to give you that stupid-”

Fire erupting through the tunnel shut her up. The dragon was close.

“I, I don’t... I couldn’t help it!” I stammered, tears rolling down my cheeks. “It’s been my goal for years. I... I waited until he left!” I clenched my eyes shut and dropped to the ground. I knew I wasn’t a thinky pony, but this was my worst fuckup ever. I’d killed us all because of my greed.

I expected a beating from Rose, or at least to get cracked in the skull once by her grenade rifle. She’d be justified, getting one last hit in, since I’d doomed her. She’d opened up to me, told me her fears and... And I’d just gotten her killed. It cut deep, knowing that she’d die the same as the Rose clones I’d killed, with nothing waiting for her... It wasn’t fair, and it was my fault.

When she said nothing, I opened an eye.

Rose stood there, her eyes closed and breathing calmly. “We can’t go through,” she said, “so we’ll go over.” Her horn lit up, and she slid her grenade rifle from her back. She set it across my hooves. “Hold this. I’ll get you over, then you find a way to help me through.” The aquamarine haze of her magic wrapped around me, and she clenched her eyes shut.

I nodded a few times. “Right, right... If I try from the other side,” I agreed as I felt myself lift off the ground. Instinctively, I grabbed the gun to keep from dropping it. I sniffled, trying to calm myself down. Rose had a plan, like a good thinky pony. This could work.

The ground shook around us. The whole tunnel shook three times as the dragon thrashed through the small tunnels. One of the houses against the walls shifted. It crumbled forward, the front face of it smashing down. The smashed furniture and rubble fell into the tunnel behind us. He was getting closer.

“Don’t fucking try. Find something. We don’t have the time for trying,” she snapped. The warm haze of her magic tightened and she lifted me into the air, much like my sister had before. “And hurry!”

I slung the grenade rifle up onto my back. “I will!” I yelled back. As I floated slowly up and over the pile of houses, I couldn’t help but look at the tunnel where we’d come from. I found it hard to believe we’d gotten such a lead from the dragon.

Apparently we hadn’t. One of his claws grabbed onto the tunnel wall and his snout snaked into view.

“Rose!” I shouted. “He’s-”

She dropped me.

The warmth of her magic around me cut out completely and I slammed into the roof of the top house in the pile. Hitting hard, I toppled head over hooves out of sight of the tunnel and off the edge. “Eee!” I screamed, clasping my hooves over my mouth to quiet myself as I landed. Groaning, I flopped onto my side.

I didn’t have time to lay there in pain. I forced myself up and threw the grenade rifle away. Everything on this side of the pile was dark, without the magic to keep everything lit. Blindly, I grabbed at whatever was in front of me. Luckily, the walls of the buildings on this side had collapsed. I used what little light leaked through the gaps to find my way as I scrambled up the rotting and destroyed wood.

“Where is she?” bellowed the dragon. The shaking of the rubble made it hard to dig through, especially since I couldn’t tell what was what. My steel hooves didn’t help the situation. “TELL ME, NOW!” Everything shook as he slammed his claws down.

“Who?” asked Rose. The cockiness in her voice was quite obviously forced.

“Tell me or you die with her!” shouted the dragon. Through the holes, I could see him, breathing heavily and full of rage. He gnashed his teeth, obviously fighting back incinerating her on the spot.

“Who said she came down this tunnel?” asked Rose. Her voice waivered, she sounded terrified. Barely visible through the gaps, I could see her turn and look back.

I worked faster, pulling some massive box-shaped thing away and jumping over it. Feeling around with useless hooves, I couldn’t get an edge or anything to grab on. I needed something. “Oh, I am not a thinky pony!” I said to myself. Turning on a hoof, I made my way for the grenade rifle. I moved as fast as I could, stumbling around smashed furniture and rubble I could barely see.

“Your stalling will not save you!” he shouted.

“Didn’t think it would,” answered Rose, her trademark snark back.

I tumbled down the last of the ruined house and right into the grenade rifle. “Thank you,” I whispered. Grabbing it, I ran back into the pile of houses. I’d only have a few seconds for this.

The dragon didn’t bother with trading snark. A low rumble filled the air.

“DUCK!” I shouted. Aiming at the darkness, I prayed it was the right spot. Bracing against a wall, I pulled the trigger.

The wall in front of me exploded in a flash of light and a deafening boom.

I threw the gun back and ran. The hole was big enough for me to get through with ease. Rose stood, staring back at me just a few feet from where I’d blown the hole in the wall. She looked far from pleased with how close I’d come to doing the dragon’s work for him.

The dragon stared as well, his mouth hanging open and a mix of confusion and anger across his face. It took him a split second to regain his composure and breathe fire at us.

I grabbed the clone pony and pulled. “Come on!” I shouted. I pulled back right as green flames surged around us. Rose followed, a half-second behind me. It wasn’t fast enough.

She screamed in pain as her coat burst into flame. She might not have been a real pony, but she felt it just like a real one.

I pulled harder, ignoring the pain as my steel hooves heated to unbearable temperatures. All around us the ruins burst into flame. I could see around me now, which helped little. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I muttered as I dragged her burning body through. A support beam broken ages ago crashed down in front of me, and I recoiled.

Rose thrashed in my hooves. Her breathing came in forced gasps. All the while she screamed in pain.

The pile of houses lurched to the side. The top half collapsed and slid backward. A mixed blessing. It knocked the way clear, but now the dragon could get over. Behind us, he roared in frustration and smashed at the houses again.

Unable to get any further dragging her, I twisted and pulled with my teeth. The heat was unbearable, but it wasn’t anything compared to what Rose was going through. This was my fault... No, I’d get her out. Everything would be fine. Put Rose’s smoldering coat out. She’d heal herself. We’d escape.

I was not going to lose her.

With a final tug, I felt the floor collapse under me. Together, Rose and I toppled to the tunnel floor, free of the flaming wreckage. Not wasting a second, I pulled my cloak off and threw it over her. With a wary eye to the shaking buildings, I rolled her back.

Even as the flames around her went out, she still thrashed and screamed in pain. Suddenly, the thrashing stopped and she went silent.

“We’ll be fine,” I told her, terrified she’d just died. “You’ll be okay!” Tightening the cloak around her, I grabbed her and pushed her onto my back. Why couldn’t I have fucking cheater magic like my sister? I couldn’t even feel her breathing on me.

There wasn’t time to check if she was okay.

I prayed, and ran for the darkness.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Progress: 50%

“Fuck...”

Chapter 22: Treasures Not Gold

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Chapter Twenty Two: Treasures Not Gold
“You can’t bargain with life. It wasn’t made to be traded.”

“Smoke.”

I stared at the darkness, unsure of just how long I’d been sitting there, hoping for some sign that Rose hadn’t died. It struck me as... odd, almost. Hyperventilating in the dark and trying not to cry over a pony who so recently had blackmailed me into traveling away from everything I’d ever known? What happened to me. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, not that it made much difference. So deep in the tunnel, it was just me and...

She couldn’t be dead.

Once I’d gotten far enough that I couldn’t see any of the light from the dragon’s hoard, I’d finally stopped. I’d rolled Rose onto the ground and just stared at where I’d set her. There wasn’t anything I could do. I didn’t have cheater magic like Lost, I couldn’t heal her. I couldn’t even find her anymore. I knew if I took even a few steps away, I’d lose her forever and probably die in the tunnels, unable to find my way back.

“Did I really fuck up this bad?” I asked nopony. If only we hadn’t been forced to dump our belongings to the dragon, I might have had a spare healing potion or... something. Anything would help at this point. I didn’t even have the PipBuck to use as a light so I could see how bad it was.

“Smoke,” rasped a voice.

I coughed, hard. Smoke... It had to be fire again, didn’t it? My back itched at the thought of it, a little reminder that I’d been in the same position before. It wasn’t right of me to compare to the two... A grenade compared to dragon’s fire was nothing. Idly I reached out a hoof, only to gingerly pull it back when it hit something.

I couldn’t feel it, but I could imagine just what I was touching. I rested my hoof on the clone mare again, and very gently rubbed at the cloak she was wrapped in. I hoped she was still there. The other clones I’d killed, they just faded away, dissolving into black nothingness when they died. What if all I felt was the ground. Lost in the pitch black of the tunnel, I couldn’t even tell anymore.

The uncertainty hurt.

Fuck me for being so greedy. I couldn’t have waited just a few minutes longer for the dragon to be completely gone? No. I was a stupid mare and I jumped at gold the very first second I got. It almost made me want to laugh, almost. I was probably the only pony ever to think it was a good idea to steal a dragon’s treasure. Given everything I’d heard my entire life, I should have known better.

And it...

I collapsed onto the floor and bawled. We’d had close calls before. I’d gotten ponies killed before. None of them were truly friends though. Covering my face with a forehoof, I sobbed into my coat. Stupid fucking mare. Sniffling so I could breathe again, I rolled onto my side and curled up. Somewhere deep down I wanted to slam my head against the stone floor to try and knock some sense into myself. Not that it would do anything for me.

Tears rolled down the side of my face and over my muzzle, pooling in the corner of my eye. It really was best to let Lost make all the decisions. Like Amble said, I couldn’t be trusted.

“Murderer,” whispered that little voice in the back of my head. For once she was right... That wasn’t true. She was always right. Only, only this time it actually mattered to me. There were dozens of faceless ponies I’d killed, proving her right. This one mattered though. Even if she was a bitch. Even if she was blackmailing us.

She’d opened up to me. She told me her fears. She let me see her cry. And in the end she didn’t even sell me out to that Goddesses-damned dragon.

I stomped a hoof on the ground as hard as I could. A metallic clang echoed down the tunnels. Immediately I felt stupid. The last thing I needed was to make her sacrifice be in vain.

Unless she’d survived?

Slowly, I pushed myself back up to a sitting position. Twisting my ears forward, I leaned down and nosed at the coarse material of the cloak. “Rose?” I asked hesitantly.

The cloak moved slightly, but without being able to see I... I couldn’t get my hopes up.

Something shifted. An eerie scraping filled my ears. A rough and broken... thing wrapped around my neck. It stuck to my coat, feeling almost slimy. Wetness dribbled down my side and into my barding...

I screamed.

Kicking back, I pulled away. I twisted my neck, shuddering hard at the sticky slimy feel of whatever held onto me. With a hard tug to the side, I broke free, tearing some of my coat out in the process. I could still feel it on me, matting my coat down, making my skin crawl. It was like somepony had poured Sparkle~Cola onto my coat and tried to rub it into my skin while it was fizzling.

I looked back and forth in the darkness, eyes wide and heart pounding in my throat. Several deep breaths later, I finally closed my eyes and sat back down. “Please tell me that was you,” I whispered again, suddenly afraid that I wasn’t alone in the dark.

“Give. Me. A. Smoke,” rasped the clone pony, her voice hoarse and gravelly.

“Oh, thank the Goddesses,” I said, feeling tears start to form again. “Rose... Are, are you okay?” I scooted closer to where her voice came from. I hoped I was moving in the right direction.

“No,” she snapped. “Smoke.”

I reached back for my saddlebags, only to remember we’d had to dump everything and I’d never gotten the chance to put my stuff away. Gulping, I whispered, “I don’t have-”

“Ear,” she muttered. A slight gust of air hit me, most likely from a hoof waving around and trying to grab at me.

It dawned on me what she meant. I’d forgotten about it. “That’s still there...” I whispered in amazement.

Reaching up, I wrapped my steel forehoof around the cigarette Xeno had offered me on the motorwagon. Goddesses, that felt like a long time ago. Pulling it from where it’d gotten tangled in my mane, I held it up and stared at my hoof in the darkness, unable to see it even in front of my eyes. It’d managed to survive splinterwolves, a fight with a dragon, a collapsing power station and cannibals. I couldn’t seem to go a day without having my ear shot off, yet a little cigarette survived unscathed. Damn zebra luck.

I stuffed the little thing into my mouth and worked it into the corner. “Where are you?” I asked, trying to ignore the absolutely disgusting taste. “Can you use your magic? I can’t see...”

“No, not yet...”

That was enough. I leaned down and twisted the cigarette back around. When I felt a tug on it, I let it go. “How will you light it?” I asked. It was a silly question. Of all the things that mattered right now; how she was doing or whether she would even survive what happened? I had to ask how she would light a cigarette.

“Smells enough,” she rasped. Her voice still sounded terrible. The sound of rustling fabric echoed quietly in the darkness. “It’s a mental thing.”

Looking around in the dark, I couldn’t think of how to answer. She was alive. She was... “You’re alive...” I finally whispered, finding myself staring straight down. I sniffled and chewed on my lip. Maybe, just maybe... I wasn’t a murderer.

After what felt like an eternity of silence, she finally said something.

“Where’s my gun?”

* * *

Rose took a deep breath. She’d spent the past... I didn’t know how long, just breathing. It wasn’t the same ragged hysterical gasping I’d done while lying on the floor earlier. She breathed in slowly, wetly, through her mouth, before snorting it out through her nose. She said nothing during the process, and every time I tried to ask her something or strike up a conversation, she would shush me with a sharp clearing of her throat.

Eventually I just resigned myself to waiting. It couldn’t have been a long time that she lay there, taking those deep breaths, but it felt like an eternity. Sitting in the dark, with nothing to distract me, I had to focus on whatever little noise I could. I didn’t want to fall back to my own thoughts again. At the moment, I didn’t think I was capable of dealing with them.

Either Amble would whisper something into the back of my mind, or... I shook my head to clear the thoughts away. There were other things to worry about, like my sister and friends.

“Do you-”

“Nu-uh,” Rose chided before taking another deep breath. The sound of her breathing out through her nose filled the darkness again. A few seconds later she inhaled and let out a little groan of happiness. “Smells good...”

“The cigarette?” I asked, hoping to get at least something out of her.

“Mmhmm,” she grunted, answering the barest of an affirmative. It was a start.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, sulking some.

My only answer was silence. I couldn’t blame her, saying ‘sorry’ was never going to make up for what happened. If it hadn’t been over something so stupid, maybe it would hold some weight, but that wasn’t the case. Hopefully, after I’d saved her from falling to her death on the outside of the mountain, she’d have a little patience with my greed.

Another eternity of darkness passed, and I didn’t dare say another word. She’d talk to me when she was ready. With Rose alive and, hopefully, well, my worries turned to other places. I hoped Lost was okay. I fidgeted, unable to sit still. If only we could go back and find her, or find Xeno or Fine Tune. I needed to be sure that the dragon hadn’t decided to go and take his rage out on her instead of me.

Lost was the thinky pony though, she’d be okay. Xeno and Fine Tune were both crafty and knew how to take care of themselves. They’d be fine without me and Rose for a while. It wasn’t like they could leave without us.

“How long?” Rose asked, her voice still sounding like somepony set a grenade off in her throat.

I winced. I’d done that to another of her copies before.

“I don’t know...” I muttered. Without the PipBuck, I had no idea how long it’d been. Not to mention, I didn’t know what she was asking. How long since when? “It might have been ten minutes or an hour? I don’t have a clock.”

She just groaned at me. The cloak rustled softly. The sound of hooves moving slowly on the stone of the tunnel echoed around us. Something heavy thudded down, followed by another groan. This time she sounded pained, rather than just annoyed.

“Are you okay?” I asked sheepishly, hoping for a real answer.

“Better,” she admitted. After a slight pause, she added, “but...”

“But what?” I asked, wide-eyed and staring at the blackness around me.

“You need to rip the cloak off me,” she answered gravely. What in Celestia and Luna’s name did she mean rip it off her? “It’s fusing to me.”

“Oh Goddesses,” I whispered, sitting back and holding my hooves to my muzzle.

“Don’t you fucking ‘oh Goddesses’ me,” the clone mare snapped. I could practically feel her glare. “If you hadn’t tried to steal from a fucking dragon’s hoard, we wouldn’t be in this mess. You got off easy, okay. You aren’t charred to the bone and barely holding yourself together. And even if you were, you can... You...”

She never finished her rant. Instead she broke down. Surrounded by pitch black, with nopony to see her, no zebras to gawk as she opened up, she cried and ground her teeth, fighting to keep together. It was worse than in the mall. Even though we couldn’t see one another, I could hear it, and it broke my heart. Between sniffles, she’d mutter little whispers to herself, pleading and forcing her own body to keep from falling apart. Whether it was from pain or fear of death, I wasn’t sure, but it was something only she could do for herself. She coughed a few times, before sniffling hard again. Even without every word, I knew what she was saying.

For a mare that remembered life before the War and had personally been walking the Wasteland for more than a century, she wasn’t any stronger than I was. In a century of living, there was no way I could ever understand how much she’d gone through. But I’d taken her to the brink of death, and knowing just how much that terrified her, and knowing just how terribly it must have hurt...

I reached out one of my steel forehooves, scooting closer to the sobbing, struggling mare. Before I could even reach her, she smacked my hoof away and snarled at me.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she snapped. Even in the darkness it felt like she was staring daggers at me. “Don’t... fucking... touch me...” Her voice was weak, even the raspy grating tone seemed to faded and resigned. Another rustling of the cloak followed, only to be accompanied with pained whimpers.

Lowering my hoof, I leaned back. Really, the only thing I could do was give her her space. If she was as good a healing unicorn as I knew she was, she’d be fine eventually. It would just take time. I moved away from her and closed my eyes. “Just tell me when you’re ready,” I said softly.

“It doesn’t matter...” she said, laughing quietly. “Ha.. ow. Hah... ow...” She sighed once more. “Alright, better now than later. Otherwise it’ll just be a lot worse. Come here.” She stomped her hoof a few times, sending a hollow echo through the dark tunnel.

I did as she said, not daring to argue. This mare knew what she was doing, and I was fairly certain she’d just kill me if I argued. I’d already pissed her off enough. This was not the time to push my luck. I had to make it right.

With my forehooves unable to feel anything, I lowered my head to the ground and searched with my muzzle. Even this deep in the caves, the stone floor was smooth and flat. I found the edge of her cloak fast enough, and bit into it. To let her know I had it, I sat up and gave a sharp tug.

She groaned and sucked air through her teeth, hissing at the pain. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a little claw dug into the guiltiest part of my brain. She felt pain, and that meant every other clone I killed did too. Maybe I was a monster...

“Okay,” Rose said. “Okay, on three...”

I nodded.

“One.”

Praline had done it on two... The surprise helped. Like tearing a bandage off, it was best to go quick. The sooner it was over, the sooner she could heal herself and be back to the obnoxious hateful mare I knew and cared about.

“Two.”

Biting down as hard as I could, I threw myself back and pulled. The cloak tore free with the most horrific tearing sound I’d ever heard.

Rose screamed. Her earsplitting cry of pain echoed down the halls, so loud I could have sworn it would wake the dead and alert the dragon. She collapsed to the ground with a heavy, wet thud.

Her sobbing started again, broken by little gasps as she sucked in air and choked on it. “W-why...”

Shrinking back, I dropped the cloak. That hadn’t gone the way I wanted it to, at all. Muttering, I admitted, “I... I thought-”

“Stop fucking thinking!” snapped the clone mare. She groaned again, louder than before. “Every time you think. Somepony else gets fucking hurt.”

“I’m sorry, okay!” I yelled. Wait, why would she even assume that? She’d known me for a few days at most. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean, anyway?” I demanded. I’d made one mistake. I knew that much. I already felt terrible for it. She didn’t need to rub it in. “You’ve known me for what, two days? Three tops.”

“I know enough!” she yelled. “I may not be the mare that personally watched your stupid ass ever since you killed Wirepony, but I know plenty about how stupid you are!”

“I’m not stupid,” I said defensively, my ears pinning back.

“You tried to steal from a dragon!” she spat.

“Don’t you think I know that was a bad idea?” I spat right back at her. “I get it! I’m a fuck up! I feel bad already, despite the fact that you’ve been blackmailing us this entire time.” Clenching my eyes closed, I resisted the urge to reach across the darkness and hit her as hard as I could with my steel hoof. She might be right, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to give her a good thwack upside the head for chewing me out so much.

She huffed, snorting loudly. “Maybe if you didn’t run around pretending to play he-Ow!”

My eyes shot open, not that I could tell the difference. My anger faded almost in a moment, replaced by worry. I didn’t want to be alone down here.

“You’re a stupid mare,” she finally said, her voice quieter but with the same rasping hooves-on-gravel sound.

“I just don’t think ahead...” I whispered, ears drooping again. “And I’m not pretending to be a hero. I’m a treasure hunter, no more, no less.”

Rose didn’t answer. Instead we sat in silence. The only sound around us was the quiet rasping of her breathing, echoing faintly in the darkness.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. Only a few seconds had probably passed, but dammit it felt like longer. “I thought about dropping you,” I said quietly. “When we were climbing up the mountain path and you slipped? I thought about it.”

“Why didn’t you?” the unicorn mare asked, not so much as missing a beat.

I sat back on my haunches and looked back and forth. There wasn’t anything to look at, but I couldn’t help it. It just helped me think. I didn’t know why I hadn’t. It was a good idea in every sense, because we’d have been free of her bitchiness and holding us hostage. We could have stormed Idle again, killed the original, and saved the mares, without anypony to warn her ahead of time. But deep in the back of my mind, in the same place Amble’s little whispering voice lived, in the same place the claws liked to dig around and make me worry about things I didn’t need to, I knew why.

“You’re my friend,” I finally answered.

Rose chuckled. “Finally learning what kindness is, are you?” she asked.

“When we were back at the Stables, and I left to talk with the Star Paladin, we discussed kindness along with a few other basic staples of friendship. Loyalty and Generosity, that sort of thing,” I explained. “He said I should take them to heart. You opened up at the mall, and you saved us when the dragon showed up. So... Why shouldn’t I have given you a chance?”

“To spare me getting burnt alive?” she asked sarcastically.

“Oh come on, I thought we were having a moment here!” I shouted, flabberghasted. We could actually be friends if she wasn’t going to be so snarky about it.

Then again, she’d pointed out not long ago that I’d been treating her like shit for the entire time I’d known her. She told me she didn’t want my pity. So, did she think I was just repeating the same thing as before?

Closing my eyes, my shoulders slumped and I took a deep breath. “I’m trying to extend a hoof in friendship here. This isn’t guilt or pity or... whatever you might be thinking. You’re not as bad as I thought you were at first,” I admitted. “And, I’m willing to actually be friends.”

“Alright.”

“I mean it!” I said, standing on my hooves and staring intently at the blackness around me. “A pony once told me it was the most important thing! And that if we’d focused on it instead of killing one another, we might not be living in a Wasteland right now!”

“I said alright,” Rose chided. “I wasn’t being sarcastic.” The sound of hooves walking along the stone floor echoed hollowly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anypony say that. It’s just as naïve as it ever was. You’d like Trusty, if you believe that.” It wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned that name.

I ignored the dismissal. It was good enough that we were on decent terms again, and not ready to snap and go for each other’s throats. I just hoped it would last. The sooner we got back to Lost and the others, the better. Rose might slowly be becoming my friend, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to butt heads a lot, if where we’d been before was any indication.

“How long until we can go back, do you think?” I asked hesitantly. As much as I liked being alive and not worrying about the dragon getting to us... We were far into the caverns, where she’d mentioned ponies used to get lost. I didn’t want to chance never find our way back out.

I’d only run as far as I needed to to get us into the darkness where it was safe. I prayed to the Goddesses there weren’t any forked paths that would trap us forever.

Rose didn’t answer right away. She walked slowly in a circle, her hooves clopping against the stone floor quietly. They echoed slightly, making it hard to figure out exactly where she was moving to. After a moment they stopped. To my side, a tiny little mote of light appeared, the faintest haze glowing just enough to show the very tip of her horn. It disappeared only a second later and Rose groaned in pain. “A while...” she barked through gasps.

“You’re not burnt out are you?” I asked, unsure of what else I could say. She wasn’t a normal pony like my sister, and I had absolutely no idea how her magic worked. I didn’t know how any magic worked, but she opened up a ton of other questions about it.

She groaned again, and stomped her hoof several times on the floor. “Not exactly,” she finally answered.

I raised a hoof toward where she was standing in the darkness. “Anything I can-”

“No,” she interrupted. “This is just... I have to focus. This sort of thing takes time.”

“Will explaining it to me help?” I asked.

“Umm,” she muttered, not giving a real answer. The sound of her hooves echoed around me as she paced. A few times she paused and took a few deep breaths, before continuing again. The third time, her horn lit up again, this time on the other side of me. Just like before the aquamarine haze of her magic was just as faint, barely illuminating even the tip of her horn. “Alright. It’ll give me something to focus on...”

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said encouragingly, rolling my hoof toward her. When I realized she wouldn’t be able to see it, I slowly lowered it, careful to not let the steel clang loudly against the stone of the tunnel floor.

“I’m weak right now,” she said, once again starting to walk back and forth. Her pacing brought her in a little half-circle around me, never quite passing back behind me. It was the only thing I had to guide me on where she was so I could pretend to look at her while she talked. It was the polite thing to do, after all. “You know very well that I’m not a real pony like you, or your sister, or... anypony else really.”

“I know.”

“Because of that, it’s...” she explained, stopping before she could actually tell me what that even meant. “I don’t know how to put it into words, because it’s always just been something I understood without needing to explain it. I’m made of magic, the real Rose just casts a spell and we’re created out of magic and nothing. That magic holds me together. Magic and my own... force of will. And that means my magic is a part of that and if my magic goes out completely, so do I. Because it’s all willpower and... whatever. Magic is confusing okay.”

“I’ve tried to learn about it, all it did was make my head hurt.”

“That’s because you’re not a unicorn,” she chided. “If you were, well, it’d still make little sense, but you’d learn how to make it work.” She paced back around to the other side of where I sat, only her hooffalls betraying her position. “So, the original Rose casts her spell to makes us copies. We’re formed of her magic, and given bodies made like how she views herself. She doesn’t see herself as a fat blob stuck on a bed, after all. Then we get a copy of her consciousness... but we’re made to be more obedient, I guess? To follow orders. At first we’re just like the short lived mail-runner copies we-she, she could make back before the Ministry of Peace and all the megaspell testing.”

“What’s the difference now?” I asked.

“Well, before it was like making a copy of a letter. You write it up, you make a copy of it. It doesn’t have it’s own identity because it’s just an exact duplicate, it knows what it’s for and sticks to the plan it was made for. That one copy can be sent somewhere else and when its job is done it ‘disappears,’ and you keep the original,” she said, pausing every so often to find the words for something. “There’s not an easy way to explain this. The first copies she could make were very crude, like a foal making stick pony drawings. Like, I don’t know, an imaginary friend. Except real. She’d run around with her playmate until she lost her focus and they’d pop and disappear when it was over.”

“Was she lonely, as a foal?” I interrupted. I slapped a hoof over my mouth, realizing that might have been a bit personal. “Ow!” I yelped, forgetting that steel really hurt my recently healed nose.

Rose paused for a moment, I expected she was staring at me. Or maybe glaring. “Shut up and let me finish explaining,” she ordered.

“Yes ma’am...”

With a sigh, she continued her story. “At first, if she wasn’t staying focused we couldn’t keep existing. I- she, got better at it as she grew up, and before we were recruited into the Ministry of Peace, well, she used them as letter carriers. I told you this before,” she lectured. “It was basically. Make. We’d run off to take such and such letter to so and so. By then she could keep us around until we’d done what she needed, even if we were out of her sight. Letter would get delivered, and then the spell would fade since our job was done. No more pony needed, so no more pony around.”

I nodded a few times, not that she could see.

“But now, since she needs us for a lot longer, she can’t just poof up an autopilot body for a single task,” the clone mare continued. “We need to be able to think, and cast magic, and adapt to things because even after we do whatever she made us for initially, she always needs more. So, when we’re fresh copies, we’re more or less the same as every version she’d ever made before, same personality as her, and able to follow orders. We’re blank until further notice. Some never get past that point, those mostly stay as her food and cleaning copies.” She paced back across the black expanse in front of her, walking faster than her previous pass. “But for some of us, she does something... special. I don’t know, but we stop seeing ourselves as tools the more we experience, the more we learn.”

Rose stopped pacing, but I couldn’t see why. “Sorry, I’m getting off topic. Need to fucking focus,” she said before taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “What it comes down to? I’m not flesh and blood. When you cut me, I don’t bleed the same way you do. I’m made of the same magic I use to cast spells, so if I’m damaged to the point of failure I fade. If I cast too much and use everything up, then I fade because there’s nothing to hold me together. My magic is tied to my body, you take one away, you take both away.” She paced back across the black expanse, walking faster than her previous pass. “Right now, I’m right on the edge of holding myself together.”

“How do you get it back?” I asked, somewhat fascinated.

“Time to build my reserves back up,” she answered. “Talking about it is keeping my mind off the incredible amount of pain I’m in. It’s either this or I just... melt. And dammit I am not giving up without a fight!” She stomped her hoof on the ground, hard. “Ow! Fuck.”

“That means no healing spells for a while, doesn’t it?” I asked.

“Correct. I need to let whatever magic I’ve got left work on rebuilding my body,” she answered.

“Okay, okay... Keep explaining then. Talking is good,” I encouraged.

“There’s not much else to say. My magic and my body are one and the same. The reason I couldn’t heal your sister’s leg before? I’d run out... If I’d forced it and tried to heal her past that threshold, my body would start to fall apart.” She stopped, and I could feel her staring at me.

“What?” I asked defensively.

“Not like, legs falling off. I mean melting, the same way the other copies that die go,” she said.

“I know, I’ve seen what happens...”

“Mmm...”

“Sorry.”

“Why? They weren’t me, and it just means there’s less competition out there.”

“Competition?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and squinting my other eye. The Goddesses’ names did the mean competition?

A haze appeared in front of me, aquamarine and brighter than before. It glowed just enough to show off the top half of her horn. “That’s more than enough,” she said as the light cut out. “Ready to find a way back?”

“I suppose, but what did you mean?” I asked.

“You may have noticed, but I’m somewhat of a bitch,” the clone mare explained. “I don’t like other copies if I can avoid it. The more of them that are around, the less indispensable I am.”

“Oh,” I muttered. I had no idea what she meant.

“Now, let’s go get my gun,” she said, purpose in her still gravelly voice.

* * *

Slowly, I followed the flickering light of Rose’s horn. She’d decided she was feeling well enough to cast the light spell she knew, which illuminated a small stretch of the tunnel directly in front of her. Since her magic was still so weak, it sparked off and on constantly, and was only bright enough to light up the her horn and the ends of her frayed, burnt mane. In the darkness around us, I still couldn’t see how bad off she was.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

If she was in such terrible condition that she had to focus on keeping her body from dissolving or melting or whatever it was that they did... there was absolutely no way it could be anything worth looking at. I shuddered.

“You sure this is the-” she asked, her voice rasping and catching partway. She cleared her throat, a sound that reminded me more of a house collapsing than a pony’s body, and tried again. “You sure this is the right way?”

“No, I’m not,” I answered. Given how many times she’d turned around and paced back and forth in front of me, I wasn’t sure anymore. Either we were going further and further into the endless twisting tunnels that led to nowhere... Or we’d be coming right back up to where the dragon burnt Rose alive. Neither option was really the best we could get, but if my choices were to remind Rose of what happened or wander forever, I knew which I’d take.

If only I had the PipBuck. Lost always seemed to have it when I needed it the most. Then again, I even when I did remember I had it, I tended to only use it for E.F.S. and the radio.

“It won’t be too far, though. I ran just long enough to get us past the light, where the dragon couldn’t get to us,” I added. “If we don’t find the houses soon, we can just turn around and go the other way and we’ll know.”

The clone pony’s horn dimmed, plunging us into complete darkness again. The sound of hooves on stone echoed around me, getting closer. The horn lit up again, glowing bright aquamarine and making me squint at the sudden brightness.

The tip of it pressed into my forehead, and I saw Rose’s eyes squinting right in front of me. She practically growled.

“If you got me lost,” she said, her gravelly voice raised, “I will rip your spine out, and choke you with it.” Her eyelid twitched as she threatened.

I couldn’t tear myself away from them. Normally quite pretty and piercing, the aquamarine was now gone and replaced by an almost completely white haze. My own reflection stared back at me, my white coat glowing almost blue in the reflection. I looked far away, like we were staring at each other through frosted glass in the Wasteland’s worst winter.

I took a deep breath and stepped back. “I’m sure somepony will come looking for us before something happens,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. I wasn’t sure if I was reassuring myself, or her, though. If I didn’t come back, Lost would come for me as soon as she got the chance. She’d tear the tunnels apart if she needed to.

My special talent was finding things though, and if that meant I needed to use it to find a way back, then I’d do that. If only I knew how to control it.

Rose backed off. Her horn flickered and dimmed, sparking a few times and making her groan before going out completely. “I sure fucking hope so,” she muttered, her voice sounding forced. She trotted off, her hooffalls echoing into the tunnel.

“Will a healing potion or something work to fix you?” I asked, walking after her.

“Nope,” she answered curtly.

With a defeated sigh, I fell in line behind her, following by the sound of her walking. We said nothing more as our trip through the darkness continued. The only thing to accompany my thoughts was the sound of our hooves and the occasional pained grunt Rose would try to hide. Without running, it felt like a much much longer journey than it had when I was frantically running for my life while begging both Celestia and Luna by name to not let the dragon find a way through.

Had I really gotten that far down into the tunnels?

Then again, I’d been running while there was a massive fire behind me, so it was entirely possible I’d just been able to see farther. The idea that I’d run too far and missed something, gotten turned around or... Goddesses, I needed to turn my brain off.

Every so often, Rose’s horn would flicker back to life for a few seconds, before dying again. I watched with a mix of frustration and amazement, as she continued to try and force it. It felt odd that I should be the one following her, but she was the only one with any light, even if it was barely there and intermittent. I stared at her faint outline in the darkness, barely able to make out the line where her tail met her haunches.

Wait, staring at her haunches?

My brain must have been playing tricks on me.

I kept staring at the phantom mare in front of me, trying to take in the little details. She walked slowly, matching the hooffalls, with the slightest of limps on her right side. Her coat didn’t look right... far too smooth in some places, and sticking out in others.

I stopped in my tracks.

“Rose, I can see something,” I announced.

The clone mare in front of me turned, her outline shifting ever so slightly as she looked back. I couldn’t make out the expression on her face, but I saw a crease in her muzzle clear as... well, not pitch black.

Bolting past her, I galloped over the stone floor and further down the tunnel. As I did, the dim light outlining everything grew brighter. I could see the ceiling and the floor, with a wall to the side, cutting the light off completely past it. Skidding to a stop, I looked back at the darkness toward Rose. “Come on, this has to be it,” I yelled, waving a hoof in her direction, encouraging her to catch up.

Without waiting, I rounded the corner wall and stood facing the tunnel beyond. In the distance, a faint sliver of light shown over the charred, burnt-out ruins of houses that blockaded the back end of the tunnel. Little lances of light shown through the windows and the doorway, and where I’d blown the walls of the building apart to get Rose through. It may as well have been Celestia’s radiance itself.

It was beautiful.

Rose followed slowly, just off to my side. She stopped next to me and stared down the same path I was, still hidden in the shadows while I stood in one of the beams of light. “My rifle?” she asked.

“Let me find it,” I answered. It only took me a few minutes to locate it, hidden in a shadow, left right where I’d thrown it after the chaos with the dragon. With a smile to the shadow-covered mare, I pointed.

Rose trotted over, grunting in approval. She collected the weapon in her teeth and turned to follow me as I walked toward the blockade of buildings that kept us from the soft golden glow of the dragon’s tunnels.

Luckily, we’d been gone long enough for the dragon’s fire to burn itself out. Walking over the brittle boards, one crumbled beneath me, making me falter. Looking around, I reached out with a forehoof and kicked the nearest beam to make sure the whole thing wouldn’t come down on me. It groaned loudly and the building shifted, but after a creak, it settled. “I think we’ll be okay...” I muttered, unsure of myself. Slowly I walked through, careful of where I set my hooves and focusing more on the floor than on what was in front of or behind me.

Every step made the floor shift, with dust and soot crumbling away. It wouldn’t be a long fall if we fell through, but that didn’t mean I wanted to. After all, I was more worried about what would fall onto me if something happened. After ages of careful hoofsteps, I finally reached the door I’d pulled Rose through. I jumped free of the wreckage and stared down the hallway. A smile crept across my lips, seeing no dragon waiting for us. Sure, the hallway looked like... well it looked like a dragon had torn through it in a rage, but it was beautiful for not having him there waiting for us.

I turned to the blockade of buildings. “Hey Rose, do you need any he-”

The smile fell away, and I took a step back.

For several long seconds, Rose stared at me. “How bad is it?” she asked in her raspy, hooves-on-gravel voice.

The mare standing there looked like my friend. Looked like, but she was so horribly different I had to choke back to keep myself from throwing up. Her normally pink coat was almost white, and... running. Skin hung from her, not broken off but almost like the remains of Wirepony. She looked melted. Blisters had formed on her neck and back, then burst. They oozed black, something that reminded me far too much of the other copies I’d killed and how they melted into blackness and disappeared into nothing. Her eyes were still glazed over, the aquamarine normally there faded and hazy, making her squint to block out the ambient light. Most of her mane was gone, burnt away in the panic as we fled. What remained was as black as the tunnel we’d just come from, frayed and kinked and looking so brittle I swore a light breeze would turn it all to ash.

One of her ears twitched; what was left of it. She pulled her mouth into an awkward but hopeful smile, making what was left of her face twist almost like the Glowing One we’d met before. Black rings surrounded her hazed eyes. Were she wearing the cloak, I’d have mistaken her for death herself.

“I-I, umm...” I stuttered, unsure what to say. I swallowed again, biting back at that sick taste of my food trying to come back up. “I’ve seen worse...” I finally muttered, trying to ignore the flashes of the burned filly in U Cig that kept popping into my head.

The clone mare glared at me for a second, before reaching down to grab her grenade rifle by the strap. She hoisted it up and threw it at me.

“Ow!” I yelped as the gun hit me right in the face. Falling back onto my haunches, I clenched my eyes closed to block out the pain. I really needed to get somepony to fix my nose. “What was that for?”

“I don’t like being lied to,” Rose said. She slumped down and jumped from the smashed house. Faltering when she landed, she groaned. “And I can’t carry the damn thing because I don’t want it to fuse to me while I’m regenerating.”

“Right,” I said, grabbing the gun and tossing it onto my back. “Do you need any help?” Standing, I turned toward the path we’d taken to get down to the blockade, back where the dragon had chased us. A chill ran down my spine, remembering the view of him rounding the corner and just how terrifying it was. I shook it away, trying not to dwell on it. We needed to get back to Lost and the others and figure something out.

Maybe Lost’s magic would be back and she could help Rose heal faster.

“No, we just need to go slow,” she said as she limped past me. Turning slightly, she shot me a glare. “And whatever you do, don’t go running into the main cavern when we get back. The dragon might still be pissed off and being burnt alive one time is more than enough for me. Understand?”

Suddenly I felt like a filly, being lectured by mom again over doing something stupid and almost getting somepony hurt over it. Like the time with the raiders, or the slavers, or... I sighed and nodded. “I’ll stay behind you, okay?” I offered, worrying just as much about the dragon as she was.

Her hazy eyes looked me over a few times, still squinting. “Everything’s too damn bright,” she grumbled absently. “Fine, that’s good. We’ll figure out what to do once we get back, but until that dragon is taken care of one way or another, we’re not risking it.”

If only we hadn’t had to drop all our belongings before my...

Before my greed took over.

I might have still had that knife. It cut through its holder without the slightest effort, and who knew, maybe it would do the same for the dragon. I’d never know now, though. I didn’t dare touch anything that belonged to him, even if he said he didn’t care before.

Rose turned away from me and started down the hallway. We walked slowly, and neither of us talked; there wasn’t anything to say. There was a long way to go, and just like before in the black tunnels past even where the dragon would go, I found myself amazed at just how far we’d gone. When something that could eat us whole, or worse, was chasing after us, the distances just felt a lot shorter.

I sighed. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my sister again. As much as I’d be happy to know she was alright, and Goddesses did I hope she was, I was worried what she’d say. Just a few days ago in Idle she’d shown she didn’t trust me to act on my own. And so far, all I’d done was prove her right. That’s what hurt the worst, to know that she was right not to. When I went out on my own in town, I’d spent the entire time having my haunches given to me on a platter in damn near every way possible. The drugs, getting beaten in a fight, being taken advantage of by a salespony, and then shot repeatedly. It was like everything I thought I was capable of doing I wasn’t, and...

I just wanted to stop and slam my head into one of the walls next to me. I was such a stupid pony sometimes. Stopping for a second, I pulled my jacket tighter for what little comfort it could give me. At least I could do one thing right...

“I’m sorry Rose,” I whispered.

“Yeah, I know,” she said, not bothering to turn to look at me. “Nopony’s perfect, and I’ll forgive you because no matter what, that’s what I was taught to do.” She rounded a corner and I followed quickly behind, not wanting to be left alone with my thoughts. “There were a lot of talks back in the Ministry of Peace, and not everypony was on board with the decisions given by the Ministry Mare herself. Fluttershy was always very meek, she was a quiet pony who just wanted to help. The thing is, she wanted to help everypony. No, she wanted to help everyone. Even though the zebra were our enemies, she didn’t want to see them killed. There was one time...” The clone mare shook her head a few times, looking toward the floor. She kept limping forward, never missing a step. “Let’s just say that we might have done more damage by healing the zebras, too.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused as to just where she was going with the half-story.

“I mean that you need to forgive everypony, regardless,” she answered. “So... I forgive you. Despite the fact that I’m in pain I can’t even begin to describe, and despite the fact that not even this morning was I telling you what would happen to me if I died and just how fucking terrifying that is to me. I’m going to give you a second chance, and a third chance, and probably more and more after that, even if I know it’ll probably bite me in the ass. Because that’s just... That’s what she would do. And if there’s any pony in the entirety of Equestria or the Wasteland that I look up to, it’s Fluttershy.”

“Were you good friends?” I asked, hoping to get off the subject of just how many chances I would need.

Rose didn’t answer right away. She looked up, flicked an ear, and shrugged. “I don’t think so,” she finally answered. “Not because she wasn’t a good friend. She was amazingly patient and incredibly polite with every pony she ever met, but she was a bit... I don’t know, reclusive? Others tended to walk all over her, even her pet rabbit. With the way the War over everything, she didn’t have much time for anypony on a personal level. There was always too much to do. More planning for resources, new facilities to open for reintegration for mares and stallions coming back from the battlefield. The only time I got to interact with her directly was during the testing for the spells, and that didn’t give us time to socialize.”

“Mmm...”

“Being in charge of a Ministry didn’t give much time for friends, I guess,” she added, shrugging. “A shame...”

I didn’t really know what to say after that, but the conversation did make me remember that I’d wanted to go to The Cinch after we finished helping Xeno with her family, and now I wanted to go all the more. To learn a little bit more about Rose and to learn more about the Ministries. Assuming we all survived this, of course.

I trotted up to walk next to Rose, feeling that we were back on better terms. I really needed to stop thinking of her personally as the mare that was blackmailing us, and think more of her fat original as the bad mare. I might not have been trained as a healer in the Ministry of Peace, but I could still learn a thing or two about giving other ponies second chances. If Rose Shimmer was willing to give me a second chance after I got her nearly killed by dragon fire, then I could give her as many chances as she needed.

She looked at me from the corner of her eye and nodded slowly, a small smile forming on her lips. Already the color was returning to her eyes. The black rings that put Lost’s to shame were fading slowly, and she had stopped limping.

Still, we slowed down, getting closer to where the dragon would be waiting. I recognized where we were, back at the buildings I’d looted while Lost and the others talked over the options for what to do with the dragon.

Rose raised a hoof, stopping me mid-step. She was still sticky and damp enough to make me shudder. “Let me go,” she said, pushing me back.

“I’ll wait here,” I agreed.

The clone mare lowered her hoof and walked closer to the smooshed-house against the wall. She peeked her head around the corner, then blinked several times and furrowed her brows.

When she said nothing and didn’t back away, I couldn’t help it. I walked over behind her and peeked out from behind the house as well. Doing so made Rose roll her eyes at me.

In the center of the room lay the dragon, his nostrils smoking. His eyes were practically crossed, staring at something resting on the tip of his snout, obscured by the smoke. All around were the others he held captive, working the same as they had when he returned with the treasure earlier in the night. They looked miserable, removing the rubble and boulders that had fallen when he chased after me. Lost, Xeno, and Fine Tune were nowhere to be seen.

My ears dropped and my heart sank. I needed to find my sister.

* * *

The dragon wasn’t after me anymore, at least... not yet. There was no way to know if he’d decide I was worth the effort to chase and kill if he saw me again. It didn’t matter though, it was a risk I had to take. My sister was, hopefully, somewhere safe. She’d run off in a different direction and I could only pray to the Goddesses that the dragon didn’t decide to take out his rage on her instead. If he did... it might have been better that he find me.

I took a deep breath. I’d need to find her, but if the dragon caught sight of me, there was no telling what he might do. Crouching, I pushed past Rose and started across the tunnel to get a better vantage from the far side. I’d find her one way or another.

A hoof stuck out and grabbed me, sticking to my coat. The clone mare pulled back, demanding, “What are you-”

“Getting a better look!” I hissed back at her. Putting one steel hoof down as quietly as I could, I pulled hard to get free of the clinging stickiness of her hoof. With a cautious glance to make sure the dragon wasn’t looking toward the tunnel, I darted across.

Something dark lanced through the air, just barely visible from the corner of my eye. It stopped in mid-air and turned. “Fine Tu-” I started, before the changeling slammed into my chest and sent me reeling back into Rose.

The three of us tumbled, making Rose yelp in pain. She pulled away as I went head over hooves with the black pony-shaped thing atop me. Skidding across the stone floor, I groaned and looked up. A flash of green made me squint and turn away. When I looked back, I found a honey-colored unicorn mare pinning me down, her white mane hanging down over her face.

“Are you insane?” demanded The Convert. She stomped a hoof over my mouth to keep me from answering, and pushed hard.

I felt something in my nose crack, probably the same break from earlier. I winced and kicked my hind hooves, trying to get her off me. I knew I made mistakes but, dammit, I didn’t need everyone constantly harassing me about it! And I still hadn’t heard from Lost... My ears drooped. I knew how bad that would be.

“I know you don’t want to be here but,” she said, sighing. “Haven’t we been good hosts? Invited you into the community? Offered you what little food we have? I even tried to set you up with a pony I can sense you share a lot of love with.” She glared at me, moving her hoof off my mouth to adjust her mane. “And this is how you repay us?”

Leaning back, the changeling waved her hoof back to the main cavern, where a team of other captives were working to move one of the larger boulders that had fallen from the cavern ceiling. Dust still fell around them, trickling from the roof whenever the dragon moved too much.

“I didn’t mean-”

“You didn’t mean what? To take us all down with you?” she demanded, finally stepping off me. “You know how the others feel about you now?” She half-laughed, snorting. “Honey, you do not want to be seen again. You’re a pariah, now. You brought the world down around them, and I’m pretty sure you won’t need to be a changeling to tell how they feel about you.”

I looked over at Rose, hoping for a little help. All I got in return was a glare, as she went to collect her gun to keep it safe from the two of us.

“I’ll tell you though,” the changeling continued. “Normally this is a sweet little place, lots of love to go around from the dragon and his hoard, and plenty from the others that I’ve set up. Sure there’s always a bitter taste because things are tense, but normally it’s real nice and calm. Now? Now! Makes me sick, the fear? The anger? Even the sadness... It’s nauseating. That’s how powerful it is. Enough that I’m having trouble not having it all come back up. You’re lucky that they’re not the murdering type.

I gulped.

“And the dragon, right now?” she continued. “He’s been staring at the crown you tried to steal since he got back. He hasn’t moved from that spot and won’t take his eyes off it.” She leaned in close to me and bared her teeth. “I recommend you steer fucking clear. Because the way he feels right now, the rage and annoyance, the bloodlust and everything else... I’m pretty sure, for you, he’ll kill on sight. The others wouldn’t care either, after the stunt you pulled,” she added.

“What about my sister?” I demanded.

“What about her?”

“I need to find her. I need to make sure she’s okay,” I explained, glaring back at the mare. She was dangerously close to finding out just how hard I could slam a hoof made of steel into her face.

“You don’t listen very well, do you?” she asked me, before turning to Rose. “She doesn’t listen very well, does she?” she repeated, asking the clone mare.

Rose chuckled.

The Convert turned back to me. Deflating somewhat, she readjusted her mane and turned back to the cavern. After a few nods to herself, she looked back at me. “She’s fine. The dragon chased after you, yelled a whole bunch, and after a while he came back. He just... flopped down onto the gold, grabbed the crown off the floor where you left it, and set it on his nose. He’s done nothing but fidget and stare at it since.”

“At least he didn’t hurt anypony...” I muttered, thankful he hadn’t turned his rage on my sister, my friends, or any of the innocent bystanders that might have been caught in the mess.

The glare Rose shot me could have killed.

Shrinking back, I stared at the floor. “Anypony else. I meant... after he came back,” I whispered, feeling like a foal.

“Alright look, I pride myself on being nice,” said The Convert, ignoring the exchange between the two of us. “I give tours and I set ponies up with each other and, in times of duress, I get loved ones and bring them together.” Quietly, she added, “Even if it’s for my own benefit because their love is tasty...” Looking back up to me, she smiled. “I’ll go get her and whoever she wants to bring with her. You. Stay. Here.”

I nodded, not daring to say a word.

A big part of me wanted to crawl into the remains of one of the smooshed houses and hide forever, or at least until the dragon died and Rose was better. Somewhere far away, I was sure Amble was sitting and smiling smugly, just knowing I’d made a decision on my own and gotten others hurt. Just like she said.

The Convert looked to Rose. “Anything you need while I’m out there?” she asked in a far more polite voice than the one she’d used to talk to me.

“A lighter?” Rose asked. She held up the cigarette I’d given her earlier. Wait, where had she even kept that?

“Gotcha,” said the changeling. With a salute, she encased herself in a flash of horrible green fire and transformed. The second the flames faded, the bug pony jumped off and disappeared into the cavern.

Rose and I shared a look, but I couldn’t face her. Though she was already starting to look better, I just couldn’t.

“You’re really lucky I’m not a normal mare, you know that?” she chided. With a hooftip, she felt across her lips. Satisfied with it, she stuck the cigarette in her mouth and inhaled sharply.

“Yeah,” I muttered. Really, just how else was I supposed to answer that. I stared at her, hoping that was the answer she wanted. Luckily, The Convert returned with my sister and Xeno, ending the awkward few moments.

The minute Lost saw me, she ran over and tackled into me. Her hooves wrapped around my sides and she buried her face into my neck, forcing her glasses off her nose and onto the floor. Together, we tumbled down and she landed on me with an ‘oof.’

I wrapped a hoof around her and squeezed, whispering, “It’s okay... I’m here. I’m alive.” There wasn’t much I could do to comfort her, so I just held her and let her cry it out. I could only imagine she felt like I did when I finally saw her in U Cig, unable to believe it was real and just wishing the moment would never end. She whispered little things, choking on her words and whimpering.

After long enough for it to feel very awkward, she pulled back and looked at me. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she said, “I thought you were dead.” She smacked me upside the head with a hoof, so hard I could have sworn I started to see stars. “Goddesses, I thought you were dead!” Glaring furiously, she grabbed her glasses in her magic and returned them to the bridge of her nose. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”

“I... I’m sorry Lost,” I muttered, going limp underneath her.

“No, you don’t get to say sorry,” she snapped, her lip quivering with a mixture of anger and worry. “It’s not that easy. This...” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “This isn’t like before. We- we’re not playing your little treasure hunting game. You can’t.” She choked back more tears, then opened her eyes.

The mare that stared at me wasn’t sad or worried, upset at the possibility that she’d lost something special. No, the mare that stared at me now was pissed. She shook, as if fighting against herself the same way I once tried to fight against the violent urges Buck gave me. All I could do was stare up at her, waiting. She still sat on me, pinning me down under her weight and I could see past her glasses, that the gears were turning inside her head as she tried to figure out what to say.

“Honey Drip?” she finally asked in a casual voice.

“Yes, doll?” asked the changeling mare.

“Can you go get Fine Tune from the tunnels and tell him he can stop searching for my sister?” Lost requested, still sounding so calm that it had me worried.

The changeling nodded and let out a shrill whistling chirp. “Of course, I’ll go find the little cutie,” she agreed. With a flash of green flame, she returned to her natural form and darted off the same way Rose and I had come.

Xeno took a few steps forward and looked down at me. She looked worried, sad... far more than my sister was. I’d really fucked up big this time to have both so cross with me. When I met her gaze, she just shook her head.

“You know, you’re really lucky I don’t have any rope,” Lost said, reaching down and pushing my muzzle back to face her. She glared down at me, still shaking slightly. “If I did? I’d have you tied up and thrown over my back to keep safe until we got back home.”

“Lost, I’m not-”

“No, Hidden, you are,” she interrupted. “You run around like this is a game. You remember what happened in Idle?”

“I certainly do,” Rose added.

Lost looked up at Rose, as if noticing her for the first time. Her eyes went wide. She turned back to me, then looked to Xeno, who looked just as lost for words. Raising a hoof, she waved it impotently at the clone mare, before turning back to me. “What the fuck happened down there?!” she demanded.

“We- Wait a minute,” Rose answered, cutting herself off. “That bitch didn’t give me a lighter!”

Xeno slowly walked over to her, looking far paler than normal, as if the color had been sucked from her normally dark coat. She raised a hoof. “Rosepony, allow me,” she said, her voice wavering slightly.

“S’wrong zebra?” Rose asked, offering the cigarette.

“Iam not sure...” Xeno answered, putting the cigarette into her mouth. Twisting it to the corner of her lips, she shook her head again. “I cannot place it, but what I see in you... I worry my mother is right.” With a shiver, she raised her hoof to the cigarette and when her hoof passed, the tip was shrivelling and glowing ablaze.

Was that how she did it every time? The same trick she’d used in the tunnels under Leathers that one time? Zebras...

As Xeno passed the now lit cigarette back to Rose, Lost turned back to me.

“Tell me exactly what happened!” she ordered.

“The dragon came back and I ran, without thinking, down the first tunnel I could. When I looked back, only Rose was with me. I didn’t see where you and Xeno went,” I explained, talking as calmly as I could. “The dragon didn’t stop chasing, I thought if we went far enough we’d get somewhere he couldn’t follow, but we ended up trapped at a dead end. We couldn’t get past... and the dragon wasn’t stopping...”

I gulped, feeling like absolute shit over what happened. How was I supposed to explain it...

“Rose saved me. She threw me over the dead end and faced down the dragon herself,” I continued, stopping only to take a deep breath. “And I... took too long to save her. And now she’s...” I didn’t finish, I just weakly waved a hoof toward the disfigured mare.

Groaning, Lost turned back to Rose. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’ll be fine in a few hours, once my body finishes rejuvenating,” the clone mare answered. She took a long drag off the cigarette and blew the smoke out through her nose. “I’m not a ‘normal’ pony, remember?”

Seemingly placated with the answer, Lost looked down at me. “Alright, Hidden. New rule,” she said. “When we’re out and about, you’re not allowed out of my sight. And you... Just. No more pretending to be a treasure hunter. This isn’t a game anymore. Do you understand me?”

I nodded, fighting back tears. I was a big mare and I could handle this. I deserved it after what happened.

“I was pissed off at you in Idle because you went berserk,” she continued, her shaking finally gone. “I was worried about you killing others, and not... not for the right reasons. If you need to survive, then you need to, but this? Goddesses Hidden, you’re going to get yourself killed! And I’m not ready for that. I can’t go on if that happens. Okay? Do you understand?”

Biting my lip, I nodded. “I do...” I whispered. I felt the same... if I’d gotten Lost killed...

“I’m not ready to be out there on my own. And I’m not going to let my sister be the one who kills herself,” she added, sniffling again. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. Reaching down, she wrapped her hooves around me and pulled me into a hug so tight I feared my ribs might crack.

“And if you ever do something like that again,” she added, whispering into my ear. “I’ll find a way to follow you to Tartarus and drag you back. Understand me?”

“I understand, Lost.”

She took another deep breath and squeezed me again. She didn’t let go until The Convert returned with Fine Tune.

The minute the changelings got back, Fine Tune jumped into the hug. He latched his hole-filled legs around both my sister and I and chirped happily. Blinking several times, he let go and took a few steps back. After transforming in a flash of fire, he latched on again and buried his face between us, ruining what could have been a nice moment.

Goddesses, he really was like a little pet. Still, it broke the tension well, and I couldn’t help but laugh through the tears that had started to roll down my cheeks. Stupid bugpony.

Lost giggled too.

Releasing me from her grip, she patted Fine Tune on the head. “Good job, Fine Tune, we got her back,” she said, smiling.

“Of course my Queen, I’m only sorry I wasn’t the one to find Miss Hidden,” he said, looking down. Behind him though, his tail wagged back and forth feverishly.

“She’s back, and that’s what matters,” Lost said in a reassuring tone.

“Lostpony, thereis still the dragon,” Xeno reminded us, looking at the cavern.

“Don’t you dare do something to ruin things here,” added The Convert, glaring down at me back in her unicorn form. “You’ve done enough already...”

Lost finally got off of me, and offered a hoof to pull me from the ground. As I grabbed on to hoist myself to my hooves, she smiled. “I’ve got a plan, one that doesn’t involve getting anypony killed,” she said, giving me a look.

“Whatever your plan is, it better be a fast one,” Rose added, her voice sounding much better than it had before. She sounded almost like herself, without the hooves-on-gravel scratchiness. “I might be on your side on this, after what happened, but my original might not be so understanding...”

“Knowing he didn’t kill my sister was more important,” Lost said, adjusting her glasses. “Xeno, Fine Tune? Can you go collect our things? Hidden, Rose... You stay back here just in case. Honey Drip?... Will you come with me?”

“Sure...” answered The Convert warily.

“Of course, Lostpony,” Xeno said, a small smile forming on her lips. She waved to Fine Tune. “Come Bugpony, we have much work to do. I will collect the little ones, too.”

“Good idea, it’s time to get to work,” Lost said, grinning.

* * *

I gulped. Lost was already standing in front of the dragon, with the changeling next to her. The dragon hadn’t acknowledged her; he was still too busy staring at the crown that I’d tried to take from him. This could go very bad, and I was worried. It’d only been a few minutes, just enough time for Lost and The Convert to slowly walk up, hesitant and ready to run if something went wrong.

Even though the stakes were beyond anything we’d dealt with before, including Wirepony, Lost still had a smile and looked incredibly confident. She waited patiently, one ear flicking back and forth, for the dragon to notice her.

The Convert looked far more uneasy, her honey-colored coat seeming greener than normal, as if she truly were feeling as nauseous as she said before. Goddesses, if the dragon was upset enough to make her visibly ill...

I looked over at Rose. “Think it’ll be okay?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” she answered, still puffing at the remains of the cigarette. She’d worked it down to almost a nub, and had almost the full length’s worth of ash hanging from its end.

I grunted noncommittally and looked back at my sister. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Lost...” I whispered. Twisting my ears forward, I scooted closer to the ruins of one of the houses, trying to get as close as I possibly could while still staying out of the dragon’s line of sight. I needed to hear what was going on. Lost was a thinky pony, and I knew she’d get through this, but it felt terrible to be left out like this.

Not that it wasn’t my own fault.

Lost cleared her throat, staring at the dragon.

He didn’t respond. He just lay there, eyes crossed and staring at the crown between his smoking nostrils.

Warily, Lost and The Convert shared a look. I could see my sister’s eyes dart toward us, looking worried. She took a deep breath and turned back to the dragon. In an assertive voice she said, “You’ve been brooding for some time...”

After a moment, the dragon turned his gaze away from the crown. He didn’t answer, he just stared at my sister.

After another moment, Lost looked to The Convert. She whispered something I couldn’t hear, and The Convert answered. Straining, I tried to listen, but my hearing simply wasn’t good enough.

“Why did it upset you?” Lost asked, again speaking loudly and clearly, her voice stern but not pissed off. She shifted slightly, spreading her legs and standing the same way she did when she was being strict with me.

The dragon just growled, bearing his teeth and blowing smoke from his nose. Raising an arm, he reached forward and grabbed the crown I’d taken between two claws. He lifted it up, closer between his eyes, and pinched. The gold bent in, twisting and snapping in half. Carelessly, he tossed it away to the back of the hoard.

“Why do you think?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes and staring down at the two in front of him.

“I don’t know,” Lost answered. “That’s why I’m asking. You didn’t seem to care when she took a dress, or the memory orb. Even among all the other things we had in our saddlebags, you somehow knew those were yours... So why did it matter when she tried on the crown?”

“I cannot use the memory orb, I cannot wear the dress. Why should I care for them?” he asked, humoring my sister. He relaxed though, resting his arm back at his side and digging into the pile of gold underneath him.

Xeno and Fine Tune returned, both of them with saddlebags draped over their backs. Behind Xeno, several of the foals from the zebra tribe followed. The orange-eyed filly who’d been with her before held the dress I’d taken, with the fabric wrapped around her and draped over her head, pushing the mohawk of her mane down over the side of her face.

She looked so happy to be helping us. It was hard not to smile at it, because we were supposed to be here helping them to get back home. Not the other way around. As long as Lost could work her thinky pony magic on the dragon...

“Thanks Xeno, Fine Tune,” I said. Resisting the urge to get up and help, I waited for them to get closer to collect my things. They weren’t going to be going anywhere. I turned back to my sister and the dragon.

The dragon stared forward with wide eyes, digging at the side of his face with his claws. He looked quite thoughtful, busy mulling over what Lost was saying.

“She wasn’t trying to steal it from you,” Lost added, slowly starting to calm down. She still spoke with the same assertion, the same careful force, but she looked far more relaxed. The dragon hadn’t taken her out the minute she asked, and that must have been enough to show they could have a real conversation.

“She wouldn’t have stolen from me,” the dragon said, smiling wide and baring his fangs. “Had she made off with it, I’d have not given up my chase so easily.”

“You might want to go help her, Xeno,” I suggested. She’d finished setting our things down, and was sitting next to the zebra foals, talking quietly to them in her native tongue.

“Hiddenpony, what is it you want me to do?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“He was made from zebras, right?” I asked. I expected an answer from Xeno, but Rose grunted affirmatively instead. Nodding, I motioned for her to go forward. “He might be easier to talk to with your help... Someone he knows, right?”

“Itis worth a try, Hiddenpony,” she agreed. “I wish to leave with the foals, to return them.” She stood, turning to the others around her and held a hoof out. “Kusubiri hapa,” she ordered them. With one look over the group, she nodded and walked off to the center of the cavern.

I’d missed whatever Lost said while I talked to Xeno. My sister stood nodding when I looked back, her confident smile almost completely gone. Still, her lip curled ever so slightly at the edge, which was a good sign. She hadn’t given up.

“The gold, the bits... even the gems, they have no value to our kind anymore. We use caps, trash... Nopony wants to steal your valuables anymore,” Lost explained. She hesitated a moment as Xeno walked over, but continued after the two shared a look. “Nopony would come to take you or your golden scales. We just want to survive with what we have.”

When Xeno reached the three of them, she stopped and they shared a few quiet words. I flicked my ear forward again, trying to catch what they were saying, but the words didn’t make it far enough. Groaning, I looked back at Rose.

She just shrugged, playing with the cigarette between her lips. At least she was still looking better. The color was almost completely back in her coat, even if it still looked like a strong breeze could shred it from her bones.

“Dragon,” Xeno said, looking up at him.

He shifted slightly, blinking before looking at the zebra mare. “What?”

“You think any would steal from you? Youhave been given all, as long as you have lived,” she continued. “Made of finest alchemy, by the most skilled of my kind, why would any dare to steal what you deem valuable?”

“None would,” the dragon rumbled, chuckling slightly. More dust fell from the ceiling of the cavern as he laughed, his deep voice shaking everything around him. Including me. “None would be so stupid.” he added.

“None can,” Lost corrected.

The dragon pulled back and sat up. After a moment’s look of confusion, he leaned down and propped himself up on his claws and rolled one at my sister. “Continue,” he ordered.

“You said it yourself, didn’t you?” Lost goaded. “You own everything, and everyone. You don’t care if we use your things. If we’re your property, using your property, then how can we steal it? Both us and the item are still part of the whole, and that whole is still yours.”

“It’s good to see that some can learn,” the dragon said, smugly. “Few seem so smart as to figure that out. The zebras I found myself with as a hatchling knew. They were smart, they knew how to treat a dragon.” He smiled, puffing out his chest and flexing his claws. He seemed very pleased with himself.

“But they are gone,” Xeno said. “You’ve none to give you what you want. Is this why you terrorize and take from my tribe?”

“I do not take,” barked the dragon. He glared at her, but snorted out a little ‘hmph’ rather than make any moves. “I survived where your kind did not. I came here as a hatchling, taking my small hoard.” He smiled, reminiscing. Laughing, he continued, “How naïve I was, content with what I had. Your kind had destroyed your world. If only I’d known then what I know now.” He laughed and dug a claw through the pile of gold, leaving deep trails through the jewelry, bits, and gems.

Lost, Xeno, and The Convert all shared a look. After a moment’s confusion, Lost looked back up at the dragon. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What do you know now that you didn’t then?”

The dragon closed his eyes and snorted smoke from his nose again, then smirked. “Much,” he answered. “I was content with what I had for a time, and I slept. When I awoke, I’d grown, I found my hoard far too small for my liking. Much time had passed, and for a time I feared there was nothing left of value.”

“What changed?” Lost asked cautiously.

“I was given everything,” the dragon answered, smiling wide and baring his teeth again.

I looked over at Rose, confused. “What in the Goddesses’ names does he mean by that?” I asked, before looking back. I didn’t expect she had an answer for me, and given her muttering, I was right.

“More of my kind?” asked Xeno. I could see the gears turning in her head as she tried to figure out if there might have been any others that might have survived to sic the dragon on the Wasteland.

“No,” rumbled the dragon. “One of her kind.” He jabbed a claw toward my sister. “I was reminded that all is for my taking. That everything I see belongs within my claws, and whatever the zebras had given me was but the beginning. From mountain to mountain, I could keep it all. That nothing could escape my grasp.” He snapped his claws together to emphasize his point.

“You were asked to guard the mountains...” Lost said, barely loud enough for me to hear. The dragon didn’t seem to notice her comment. My sister looked back and forth, before she finally adjusted her glasses. She looked up at the dragon. “Who was it?” she asked calmly.

“She only said she was a pony of virtue,” answered the dragon with a shrug. “I care not for your kind’s names.”

“What!” Rose demanded, sounding quite shocked.

Shifting uncomfortably, I looked back at the clone mare to ask her just what she meant.

Rose stood against one of the smooshed houses’ walls, staring past me. She wasn’t looking toward the cavern with the dragon though, she was looking behind me. Her face was twisted up in a mix of confusion and contempt, and with the way her body was still healing, it made her look quite the sight.

I shifted, gently moving my steel hooves to keep quiet, and turned to see what she was staring at. Behind me were all the zebra foals, sitting in a little group and staring at Rose’s melted form. None really seemed scared, in fact they all looked fascinated, their eyes wide and their mouths open. Had they never seen a pony who’d been caught by dragon fire before?

That was a stupid question.

“Where’s Fine Tune?” I asked warily. He hadn’t gone up with Xeno when they returned.

One of the zebra foals, a little colt with bright blue eyes, raised a hoof and waved repeatedly. That answered that.

I turned back to Rose. “You okay?” I asked, hoping this wouldn’t be an issue. I wasn’t very good with foals myself, but they weren’t going to be around forever and I could forget this whole escapade happened as soon as we dropped them off at the mall with the rest of Xeno’s tribe.

“I’m not a fan of foals,” she muttered back, twisting the remainder of her cigarette between her lips. “Never had one of my own... Got bitter.” She shrugged. “Being stared at isn’t really my favorite thing in the world either.”

“Fine Tune?” I whispered, twisting back to look at the group of foals. “Can you take them to get their things? If... if they have any?”

“We’ve got everything already,” he answered, his voice breaking mid-sentence.

“Well, can you get them to not stare at Rose?” I demanded.

The zebra foal saluted. “Can do, Miss Hidden!” he announced.

Leaving him to his methods, I turned back to my sister. I wanted to be there with her, helping to deal with the situation with the dragon, but that wouldn’t work. There was no way of getting out there without being seen and potentially burnt to a crisp before I even got close.

Lost had sat in front of the dragon, smiling. She seemed far more comfortable, no longer on edge and on her hooves, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. That had to be a good sign, if she was that confident in her skills to talk the dragon down. I just wished I knew her plan in its entirety.

“I’m just trying to understand, because,” Lost continued as I turned back to her. “Nopony, noone at all can steal from you. We’re all your possessions and everything around us is your property, even the pile of gold. So why should it upset you if one of your possessions touches another possession?”

The dragon squinted at my sister. Pointing a single claw up at her, he opened his mouth and bared his teeth. “Because-”

“Because if you think about it, you let the others around clean the pile of gold up,” Lost mused, placing a hoof to her chin. “They take your necklaces and rings off, they separate and sort everything. Plenty of them touch your gold, your jewels, your gems. None of them ever hurt anything, and you can fix it if they do... what with that fire of yours. There’s nothing wrong with mixing things up every now and then.”

The dragon’s eyes opened wide. Furrowing his darker brows, he stared down at my sister. “Oh,” he muttered, the rumbling deepness of his voice suspiciously absent. His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to relax. “You’re right...”

“So if you own everything from mountain to mountain, why bring it all here?” Lost asked. “Isn’t that just more work on your part?”

Xeno seemed to catch on to what she meant, and added, “Those of my tribe. Theyare all of your profession, here or at their home. Why take them, why split up families?”

“Why should I not?” the dragon asked. He didn’t sound defensive... It almost sounded like he was curious to what they meant. That was a sentiment I shared.

“The trees, the houses around us, the ponies, all of it. Is it all yours, or just what you bring to your cavern?” Lost asked. “Why take it if its already yours? You’re not protecting any of us to be seen as a savior, so it can’t be that. None of us can stand up to you, you’ve proved that already. That fight before? Nothing affected you, so... you can’t be scared of us. Is it power? Making our kind fear you?”

The dragon laughed, and his deep voice rumbled in echoes off the wall. “As if it mattered to me whether you fear me. I don’t need to prove myself to you,” he answered, smiling smugly. “I own all that I set my eyes on, whether in my hoard or out there.” He hooked a claw up, pointing to the now-destroyed hole he’d used to get back in when I stole his crown.

“Okay, so if everything you see you own... What threats are you so worried about?” Lost asked calmly. She shifted slightly, looking over to The Convert. When she got a nod, she continued. “You got angry before because you didn’t want to share your hoard with a mate, correct?”

The dragon grunted, glaring at her.

“Hear me out, please,” my sister continued. “Think about it for a second. If you had a mate, and that mate was yours. Then even if they lay in your hoard, the hoard is still yours, and she’s just a part of it. You don’t have to worry about her taking it, because she’s yours. You didn’t care when we took a dress. It’s the exact same thing.”

“It is not the exact same thing,” the dragon argued.

“But it is,” Lost corrected. “All you’re doing right now is keeping yourself from having more. By saying ‘this is mine and nothing else can be near it’ you’re keeping away all the other things that you could own.”

The dragon sat up, his eyes wide. After only a second, he looked down at my sister past his snout and squinted. Reaching up, he dug his claws against his jaw in thought. “Explain,” he demanded.

“Ponies, zebras... our kind,” Lost started, waving a forehoof between herself, Xeno, and The Convert. “We don’t own everything. We keep what few things we have of our own within our homes. That’s how we know what’s ours. But if we owned everything, we wouldn’t need to. Because that would mean we only wanted what we could fit. We’d be giving away everything else to another. You don’t want to be giving up your things to anyone else, do you?”

The dragon rumbled, answering with a deep growl from his throat, “No.”

“So you should be out there. Be the master of it all,” Lost said, lifting her forehooves and spreading them both wide. “Your things will be here when you return, and whether they’re here or out there, they’re still yours. If I walked out, would I stop being yours just because I left the tunnels?”

“No, you are mine regardless. Alive or dead, here or out there,” the dragon answered. He scratched across his underside.

“Exactly. And wouldn’t that be better for all of us?” Lost asked, one ear flicking slightly. She looked over at the tunnel toward me. “To be out and happy?”

“You assume I care about how you feel,” the dragon answered, chuckling. Without another word, he flopped back onto the gold pile. Bits and jewels flew into the air, cascading forward and covering the floor around him. He wriggled about for a moment, getting comfortable, before finally staring at my sister and the two flanking her.

Lost looked stumped. She scooted back a few steps and sat down again. For quite a while she sat silently, staring at the dragon. Her look wasn’t returned, as the dragon seemed to be done with her. He’d closed his eyes and decided to pay no attention to the three in front of him.

My heart skipped a beat. Had Lost’s plan just failed? I knew she was a thinky pony and able to get herself out of most situations, and this one didn’t even involve a gun being pointed at her. “Come on Lost...” I whispered, scooting inches closer and barely letting my steel hooves touch the floor.

Rose snorted behind me.

“You know what’s out there, don’t you?” Lost finally asked. Before the dragon could answer, she continued, “There’s hundreds of ponies, zebras, changelings... There’s ruins as far as the eye can see, and treasure beyond anything I could imagine. But... Do you know what I’ve never seen in my life before?”

Slowly, the dragon cracked one eye open. He stared at my sister, raising his ridged brow questioningly.

“We suggested you find a mate but... I’ve never seen another dragon in my life,” Lost said. “You’re probably the only one left. There’s nothing out there that can compare to you.” She looked the dragon up and down once, tilting her snout down and looking over the rims of her glasses at him. “Nothing to compete with.”

The Convert turned to my sister, she said something quietly, but was shushed quickly by Lost. The glare she gave said it all.

“You’re the top of the ownership chain,” Lost continued, slowly turning away from The Convert. She cleared her throat. “I think, rather than stay in here, with a hoard that’s obviously too small... Do like the pony who said she was a virtue told you... Go get all of it.”

Growling, the dragon smiled. He snorted smoke from his nose and bared his teeth. None of his movements seemed hostile, in fact he looked quite pleased with himself. As if my sister suggesting the same thing that had motivated him once before raised some need within him, he pushed himself to his claws and looked out toward the outside, through the hole in the tunnel that overlooked the cavern.

“She said everything was mine,” the dragon mused, his eyes closing slightly, as if he were reliving a long-forgotten memory. “I could have had it all, flown from peak to peak, collected what I wanted. Been worshipped or feared, taken as I saw fit... Instead I grew complacent, returned to my home. How I loathe this place sometimes.”

“I think it’s time you went to your domain,” Lost suggested. “You belong out there, so that you can see and experience everything you own, not locked in this gilded cage you’ve made for yourself. Whether I’m here or out there with you, I’ll still be yours. Go, enjoy what you own.”

Xeno nodded. “My tribe view you as a messenger of the stars,” she said, closing her eyes. “Youare much more, and also much less. The foals belong with their family, even if theyare yours.” She lowered her head toward the dragon.

He smiled, a pleased rumbling coming from his throat. His wings opened, flexing behind him, and he clasped his claws in front of him, before stretching toward the air. He looked so very happy with what they’d said, so much so that even the gold covering his scales seemed to be shinier. Lowering himself down, he stepped over my sister, my friend, and The Convert. With a single glance, he walked off.

“Know that wherever you go, I will know,” he rumbled as he walked through the tunnel to the outside of the cavern.

For several tense minutes, I waited, watching as he walked through the tunnel and appeared in the hole that led up and out. His legs passed by it, and it wasn’t until the tip of his tail snapped though the air and disappeared past that I finally exhaled. I still laid there, not daring to get up until my sister came and got me.

Lost looked back and forth between Xeno and The Convert. With one massive sigh, she flopped down onto the stone floor, her legs giving out from under her. She smiled, and looked over toward me.

I couldn’t help but smile back at her. She always was such a thinky pony.

* * *

Even with the dragon gone, things seemed to continue as normal. The buffalo, the other adult zebra, and the ponies didn’t seem to do anything different. Most continued cleaning up what was left, having nearly finished while Lost was talking to the dragon. Honestly, it’d amazed me that none of them bothered to interact with the scene as it unfolded. None so much as glanced over, they just kept working in the background to clean while Lost talked the dragon into seeking out his entire domain.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Even now that I could sit freely in the main cavern and not have to worry about being burnt to a crisp by the dragon, I just found myself staring forward. I looked past the gold, which now left a sour taste in the back of my throat, toward the others. Stormheart stood with a group of unicorns, spotting for them as they removed one of the last few boulders that’d fallen from the ceiling.

Every so often I glanced back at the hoard of gold and gems. A small part of me wanted to go for them again, but I didn’t dare move my hooves. A little digging in the back of my mind kept me thinking about what happened. Even though Rose and the others were busy discussing how to deal with the others, how to get the foals back safely, and all the other thinky pony things, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

A shiver ran up my spine, thinking of how Rose looked when I first saw her. If a little more bone had been showing, I’d have sworn she was a ghoul just like The Glowing One we met before. It’d always been different, when I got other ponies killed. Gunshot wounds were something I was used to. Goddesses, the fact that I could even think that was horrifying.

I was used to ponies being shot.

I was used to me being shot.

Heaving a sigh, I pressed the cold steel of my forehoof against my head. It helped a little, but I could feel the metal shaking. This had gotten far too stressful for me. Thank the Goddesses Lost was able to keep her head on straight.

Slowly, I rose to my hooves. Walking carefully over to the hoard, I sat in front of it, with the closest of the golden bits resting just in front of my forehooves. I stared down at them, taking in the little gems and jewels. If I could find it...

Looking around, I leaned to see more, but didn’t stand. The hoard was bigger than I was, and it could be anywhere. Not seeing what I wanted, I forced myself up again and started to pace the pile. I weaved through the parts that were knocked free by the dragon as he left, not yet cleaned up by his captives.

“Excuse me,” I whispered to one of the other ponies as I shuffled past, looking at the ground. I remembered all too well what The Convert had said, and I could feel the glare I was getting even as I said it.

The pony I’d past said nothing to me, he just stepped aside. He stomped his hooves on the stone floor and moved to watch me. Others around stopped their work and did the same. None said a word, but Goddesses I knew the looks they were giving me.

Sheepishly, I sped up and tried to get past them. Just as I thought I was free, I bumped into something big and fluffy.

Stormheart turned and stared at me. “When you were first brought here,” he said sternly, “I offered you food. I welcomed you into the community. Do you understand the gravity of what you’ve done?”

I nodded slowly, looking away. Unable to find an excuse, I said, “I’m sorry, I ju-”

“I don’t care for your excuses,” the buffalo answered. “You’re very lucky that your sister is good with words. Things could have been much worse.” He leaned in close and used a forehoof to pull my face toward him. Squinting, he stared into my eyes. “Think before you act, next time.” Dropping his hoof from my face, he pointed away. “Go. We need to finish cleaning so we can rebuild.”

Nodding slowly, I sidestepped him and kept walking. I just needed to find that Goddesses-damned crown, and then I’d be gone. The last thing I wanted was to start more trouble. As quick as I could, I worked my way past the remainder of the ponies and buffalo, until I was at the far side of the hoard. I looked up at it. This had to be where he tossed the two parts...

I stared up at the massive pile. If only I were taller, if only I had wings so I could get a better vantage. I should just ask Fine Tune. He always wanted to be helpful, and I was sure if Lost told him to, he’d do it for me. I stared at the pile.

I still really wanted to take all of it.

I’d settle for the crown though. The two pieces would be a good reminder of what happened, even if they were worthless now. Knowing better than to climb up atop the hoard, I turned away. I walked the opposite direction around the pile, scared to deal with the others who lived here, after that talk with Stormheart. At least he’d been nice. I probably deserved a good smack across the face, at the very least.

After a long walk around the far side, I found myself back where I’d started. I headed down the path where we’d all been before.

“...pretty sure that we won’t need to deal with- Oh, Hidden,” said Lost. She trotted over to me and wrapped her hooves around my neck in a tight hug. Releasing me, she stared me in the eyes. Past her glasses, I could see the worry. She opened her mouth to say something, but it seemed to catch in her throat. “Stay next to me, please,” she finally requested.

“Okay,” I agreed with a nod.

The others all stared at the two of us. After my agreement, they turned back to one another. The Convert and Fine Tune were both in their changeling forms, chirping and chittering back and forth between the two of them. The zebra foals had formed a small circle around a large box and were talking quietly to one another in their native tongue. Xeno had one ear twisted back, listening to them, but she and Rose stood facing my sister and me.

Rose looked a lot better. She wasn’t back to her normal self, but the sloughing of her skin seemed to be almost completely gone. Only a few pits and pale spots remained. Her mane hadn’t grown back yet, not that I was sure if it would, and her eyes were back to normal completely. She stared at me through half-lidded eyes, just shaking her head.

“What’d I miss?” I asked.

“We’re trying to figure out the best way to move...” Lost said, pausing. She lifted a hoof and started pointing it toward the foals. “Oh Goddesses, there’s like a dozen of them.” Facehoofing, she stared at Xeno with wide eyes and a ‘help me’ look on her face.

“Theyare good foals,” Xeno said calmly. “A long walk willnot hurt them. The dragon is not a problem, we only need to worry for the ponies under the ground.” She looked down at the foals and smiled. “Theywill behave...” Raising her voice, she addressed the foals. “Sahihi, watoto?”

The vast majority of them answered, “Ndiyo!”

“Theywill behave,” Xeno repeated, turning back to my sister.

“They’d better,” muttered Rose. She waved a hoof toward me, beckoning me over to her. “My gun,” she requested when I walked over.

“Yeah, sure... Want your cloak too?” I asked, before leaning back to start digging them out.

“I think I can wear it now, without it fusing to me,” she answered.

“Just how bad was it?” Lost asked.

“If you ever really want that answer, I’ll find a dragon to light you ablaze,” Rose answered, grabbing her grenade rifle for me with the haze of her telekinesis. The aquamarine glow was brighter than before, but still far dimmer than it’d been before she’d been scorched. Juggling the gun away, she snatched the cloak from my outstretched hoof and wrapped it around her. Once it was to her liking, she slid the gun strap over her shoulder and settled the weapon over her back. “I’m just glad it’s over. I should be back to full soon.”

“It’s a good thing you’re not a normal mare,” I said, forcing a smile.

“Don’t you ever say that,” she spat back at me. “Being a copy might help me survive sometime, but I’d gladly take being a real pony if it meant I had something to look forward to after I finally kick it.” She turned to Xeno. “And you. You’re lucky I didn’t kill that bitch of a mother of yours... I don’t need a reminder about what I am, y’know.”

“Iam sorry,” Xeno said, her ears drooping and her tail lowering. “At one time she was not so full of hate for others. I left because we could not get along, but she has not always been this way.”

“Let’s just hope she changes,” Lost added. “I understand her being a grieving mother, but we’ve fixed the problems with her and her sadaka, so there isn’t any reason to send foals off to a dragon anymore. You can explain that to her, right?”

“I... Iwill try,” Xeno answered.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked, turning and walking back to the pile of our things. Xeno’d placed it all in her satchel earlier, but now came the task of sorting everything back to what belonged to whom. I took a seat behind it and began to organize things with my steel forehooves.

“I think that depends on who all wants to come with us,” Lost answered.

“We’re not going to force them all?” Rose asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Do you think we can make everyone here come with us? There’s only five of us...” Lost answered, shrugging. “If we force them to come with us, are we any better than the dragon.”

“Yes, yes we are,” shot back the clone mare. She paused, bringing a hoof to her chin. “But not by enough.”

“Convert?” Lost called out, looking at the two changelings at the far side of the tunnel.

Both looked at us, their blue eyes glowing brightly. Twin flashes of bright green fire erupted around them, and after only a moment, Fine Tune and Honey Drip stared back at us.

“It’s The Convert, thank you,” corrected the mare. “What can I do ya for?”

“Will you talk to the others, and find out who wants to come with us, back to civilization?” Lost asked, smiling weakly. She shifted on her hooves, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Well, I don’t think they’ll want to go... This place is safe and has food, but I’ll ask. Worst case they say no,” she answered. Reaching over, she booped Fine Tune on the nose with her forehoof. “C’mon, cutie. Let’s go do some diplomancing.”

“Oh! Before you go?” I said, hoping to catch them before they could leave.

The two changelings stared at me, with The Convert dropping her hoof.

“Yes, Miss Hidden?” asked Fine Tune. He smiled wide, his tail swishing about behind him happily.

“While you’re over there... Will you keep an eye out for the two halves of the crown the dragon snapped?” I requested, glancing up at my sister.

“Hidden!”

“I just want it to remind me!” I yelled defensively. “I won’t touch any of the other treasure, and if the dragon shows up I’ll make sure to give it back to him!” I clenched my eyes shut, fearing the reaction.

“I say she takes it,” Rose chipped in, “Let her feel what it’s like to be burnt to cinders.”

“I have!” I yelled, opening my eyes and staring daggers at her. “I’ve been nearly killed more times than I can count, thank you very much. You can get the fuck off my back already. I said I was sorry for what happened and I’m sitting here feeling miserable already.”

Lost placed a hoof on my shoulder. She looked down at me reassuringly and said, “Hidden, I think-”

“No. I feel bad, okay. I know what I did was stupid and I know I fucked up. I don’t need to be constantly reminded about it,” I snapped, pulling away from my sister. “You don’t trust me, she hates me, and I’m sure Xeno has her reservations. The only one I don’t think has issues with me is Fine Tune, and that’s just because he seems to love everything.”

The whole group stared at me. The Convert snorted, closing her eyes. Fine Tune just chirped happily. “I like everyone,” he said calmly. “Well, except the old Queen. She was kind of a bitch.” He laughed.

“Kind of? She was a huge bitch!” Lost said, laughing too. “But we’re nowhere near her. And Hidden will behave in the future.” She looked at Rose, over the rims of her glasses. Her ears pinned back and she snapped her tail once, obviously agitated. “If anypony needs to give my sister a lecture about how she acts, it’ll be me. Do you understand?”

In front of me, Loyalty slid forward, not lifting off the ground. It aimed toward Rose.

The two unicorns stared at one another for a moment, before Rose finally smiled. “Just keep her in check,” she said.

The blue glow around Loyalty faded completely, and my sister nodded. “I will,” she said back.

With the tension broken by Lost’s promise to deal with me when I acted up, things relaxed. Fine Tune and The Convert walked off, chatting quietly to one another as they did.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the zebra foals creep up next to Xeno. He rattled some things off to her in their native tongue. Xeno answered back, leaning down to talk to him at his height. After a short back and forth, she nodded and turned to my sister. “Go give it to her,” she said to the foal.

The little zebra skittered back to the group and collected something from the box that they foals had all been sitting around discussing. Whatever he had, it was wrapped in cloth and quite small. Trotting to my sister, he held it up in his mouth and presented it to her.

The blue haze of her magic wrapped around it and she took the gift he had for her.

Once the little treasure had left his mouth, he whispered a few things in his language, before running back to the group sheepishly. As soon as he got back, the others all started talking to him as fast as they could. Whatever they were saying, it made little sense, not only because of the language barrier, but because they seemed so excited.

“He says itis for saving them, and that sheis very bossy,” Xeno translated, looking back and forth between the group of foals and my sister. “I donot know what that means...”

Lost’s eyes went wide behind her glasses. She lifted one edge of the cloth and looked at whatever it was, but didn’t show the rest of us. After only a split second, she wrapped it back up, tucked the little treasure into her saddlebags and smiled. “I do. Tell them I said thank you, please?” she requested.

Xeno nodded and turned to the foals. She said something in her native tongue, and the foals turned to my sister. They said something with far too many syllables to keep up with, and that seemed to appease our zebra friend.

“How long until we can go?” I asked, finishing my sorting of our things. Before getting an answer, I scooped up what I could into my hooves and stuffed it all into my saddlebags. The PipBuck could sort it later. What I couldn’t grab with the steel hooves, I picked up with my mouth and tossed in there. Looking to the foals, I decided to let the filly keep the dress.

As the others grabbed their things in their magic or with their hooves and teeth, Lost shrugged. “As soon as Fine Tune and The Convert get back, we’ll go,” she answered.

“I miss Blackhoof,” I muttered, wanting to go home and be done with this fiasco...

“We’ll be back soon, I promise,” Lost reassured me.

“First things first,” Rose interrupted. “We’ve got zebras and drugs to deal with.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Lost whispered to me, looking at the clone mare.

* * *

I sat at the edge of the cavern’s observation area. Out in front of me, I could see for ages. The sun was just coming up, and still hidden behind the mountains that made up the far edge of the unicorn range. It cast a beautiful shadow, leaving the entire valley dark, while the clouds above were bright. They seemed a little less ominous; fluffy and white, rather than their usual dour grey that constantly threatened rain.

“Makes you feel small, doesn’t it,” Lost whispered. She leaned against me and closed her eyes.

“Kinda. I felt that way seeing the valley the first time, too,” I answered. All around us and the mountain it was barren. In the slowly growing light of the morning, I could make it out better, but that didn’t change anything. The outlines of long-forgotten roads crisscrossed through pits where ponies’ houses used to be. Some larger plots stood out, where a store or something had been. A strange ring sat off a ways in the middle of the emptiness, strange because it was almost a perfect circle without any building outlines or basement holes. “What do you think that was?” I asked, pointing at it.

My sister cracked open one eye and looked down the length of my foreleg. “I don’t know, maybe a market square?” she offered. “Or market ring? Ponies before the War were weird about names...”

Nodding, I rested my head against my sister. There were so many places in Buckatello that screamed to be searched through. The large C-building that faced away from us not far from the caverns. The reservoir past that, and definitely whatever made that massive overgrown... thing, past it. I also wanted to search for the Stable we’d been born in, plus all those little places where Gunbuck might have been but... Most of all?

I wanted to go home.

I turned my brain off and just watched the sunrise with my sister.

It didn’t take too long for somepony to disturb us. “Whatcha waitin’ up here for? Ponies inside’r ready ta go,” said a mare, who’s accent I recognized as belonging to Fire Bloom.

“How many are coming?” Lost asked her as she pulled herself up.

“Not me, that’s fer sure,” the red-coated mare said with a laugh. “But plenty wanna go find families, so... Sugar, I think ya got yer work cut out fer ya.”

“Alright... Just have them come up when they’re ready. Once we have everypo- everyone together here, we can go down,” Lost said, her eyes starting to roam over the mare. “The mountain!”

“Alrighty, sugar,” answered Fire Bloom. She smirked, winked, and turned to walk away.

The second she disappeared into the cavern, Lost slumped and leaned into me. “I’m far too tired to deal with cute mares,” she muttered.

I could only laugh. If only she knew. Patting her on the side a few times with a steel hoof, I pulled myself up to wait with her. This wasn’t going to be a fun trip, at all, and I dreaded starting. If only there was a way we could just teleport from here to our home. Actually... “Sis, you need to learn how to teleport,” I suggested, only half-joking.

“You find me a book on how to do it, and I’ll give it a try,” she answered. “But no more learning with mint-als. That had my head throbbing for hours.” She licked her lips. “Worth it though...”

Before I could chide her on the dangers of drug abuse, the others started to file out of the cavern entrance. Xeno and Rose led the group, with our zebra friend herding the foals in front of her. The one filly she’d been with the most was sitting on her back again, holding onto her neck with her forehooves and looking between mohawk and ear to see where they were going.

Behind them, a huge swath of others followed. All sorts were there, zebras, ponies, and buffalo. The group was markedly smaller than how many I’d seen in the full community. None of them I particularly recognized. I’d never learned who the vast majority of them were. Aside from Stormheart, and Fire Bloom by association with him, I really only met The Convert, Grandhooves, and Fairhorns.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to keep it that way.

“This everypony?” Lost asked, her voice loud, clear, and assertive. “Sorry, everyone?”

“Itis,” answered Xeno.

“What about Fine Tune?” Lost asked, looking around. “Fine Tune, are you here?” Our changeling friend was nowhere to be seen in the huge group, nor did he transform and appear. “Where in the Goddesses’ names is he?” Lost asked, suddenly sounding very worried. Sidestepping a few times, she looked through the throng of ponies, zebras, and buffalo. Coming up empty, she turned to me, her eyes wide behind her glasses. “He’s not staying, is he?”

“Looks like somepony got attached,” I said, smirking. “How about this... You give the rundown here, and I’ll go find him.”

My sister eyed me for a second, before finally nodding. “Alright, but only if you promise to stay out of trouble,” she said, her tone warning me that she was not kidding.

“I’ll behave, I promise,” I reassured her. “Good luck with them.” Before she could change her mind, I ran off. Getting a chance to see the treasure again, if only for a second, had me practically shaking. I cantered down the smooth path, glancing at all the houses the dragon had smashed against the wall. I slid around the corner, my steel hooves catching the railing that barely stuck up from the floor, and angling me around. At the end of it, I jumped and kept running. This would probably be the last time I’d not be under constant watch from my sister, and I wanted to enjoy it.

Deep down a part of me wanted to take the treasure, at least a little piece. I knew better. It didn’t stop my legs from shaking in excitement though.

As I made my way into the main cavern, I held a hoof up to my mouth. “Fine Tune!” I yelled. “Where are you?” Only my voice echoing off the ceiling answered. “Well, that’s not good...”

Slowing to a trot, I made my way around the pile of gold, pointedly not looking at it. I didn’t need the reminder. Instead, I walked toward the tunnel with the dining area. Beyond the makeshift fence, Grandhooves and Fairhorns sat chatting quietly. Maybe they’d seen him...

“Hello, Miss Fairhorns?” I asked as I walked up. “Have you seen Fine Tune?” Realizing she might not know who that was, I changed tactics. “Umm, I mean, have you seen either of the changelings?”

“Eh?” they both asked at once. Well, now I knew why they were staying...

Stormheart walked into the dining area from the building behind it. The moment he saw me, he stormed over and jumped between me and the two older buffalo. “What do you want,” he demanded with a snort.

“I just wanted to know if they saw the changeling that came in with us,” I answered defensively, my ears twisting back. “I’m not going to try and make them leave, or hurt them.”

“You’d best not be trying that,” he said, lowering his head and aiming his blunted horns at me.

“I may make bad decisions, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make the right ones if I’ve got a few minutes to think,” I said to him, as calmly as I could. “I can tell that they’re too old to make a long long trip across that emptiness out there, not without slowing everyone down.”

“A rude way to look at it, pony, but still, it’s safer for them here,” Stormheart answered. He seemed to deflate some, the fluffy coat he had shrinking slightly.

“Is that why you’re staying?” I asked.

“They’ve been like parents to me, after my own were killed by the dragon,” he answered. “They took care of me. Now it’s my turn to take care of them.”

“Good luck,” I said. I offered a hoof to him. “And I meant what I said... I’m sorry for what happened.”

The buffalo looked at my hoof, but didn’t take it. Instead he raised his own and pushed mine back down. “It’s good that none were hurt by your recklessness. I’ll be happy to see you leave... If I see your changeling, I’ll tell him to find you.”

“Okay, thank you,” I said, slowly backing away. It was the best I could do for him. Rather than continue looking, I made my way back through the cavern, past the shifting pile of- Wait.

Why was the gold pile shifting and moving around? My eyes went wide, and I backed away to press myself against the wall. My legs shook, this time not from excitement, but from fear. Was the dragon back? Did he change his mind and decide he didn’t want to leave his hoard for any reason?

An eruption of gold shot into the air. Gems and jewelry rained down, clinking and clattering along the bits to scatter along the floor. In the center of the little gold explosion, a changeling poked halfway out of the hoard. In his forehoof, he held one half of a badly mangled crown. His eyes glowed brightly, and even through the fangs and carapace, I could tell he was smiling.

An eruption of green fire lit up the gold, making it reflect the sickening glow everywhere. When it faded, the blue unicorn with the f-holes cutie mark looked at me. “Found it, Miss Hidden!” he announced.

When my heart finally dropped back into my chest, I found my voice. “Thank you,” I muttered as I pushed myself from the cavern wall. “Please, for the love of both Celestia and Luna, don’t scare me like that...”

“Who?” he asked. With his free hoof, he pulled himself out from the hoard and rolled his way down toward me. We met just at the edge. “Here you are.” He presented me with the half-crown. “I could only find half... Sorry.”

“That’s more than enough,” I said. Grabbing the half-crown in my teeth, I stuffed it into my saddlebags. “You’re coming with us, right?”

He didn’t answer right away, instead he looked off to the side, then back to me. “I... Yes,” he finally answered. “The Convert is very nice, but she is... a bit too forward.” He blushed. “I don’t think I’m ready to start up a hive yet.”

“Lost’ll be happy to hear that,” I replied. “Let’s go see if she’s got the others ready to leave.”

“Of course! I cannot wait to see my Queen,” he said with a little chirp.

“I’m gonna miss you, cutie.”

Turning around, we both stared at The Convert, once again in her Honey Drip form. She had a weak smile across her face, but still she had tears forming in the corner of her eyes. “I can’t do it, if you don’t love me back though...” she said to the changeling. “I’ll stay here with the others, just in case.” Raising a hoof, she wiped the tear from her eye before it could fall. “So you know where to find me?”

“If I ever think I’m ready...” Fine Tune answered. He trotted over to her and gave her a hug. “For now though, my place is with my Queen.”

The Convert closed her eyes and pursed her lips. For only a moment, it looked like she wasn’t going to let go of him. She took a deep breath and her grip tightened. Finally, after a tense moment, she nuzzled him, leaned in close, and whispered, “Just... Don’t forget about me, please...”

* * *

Given how much trouble we’d had with the run toward Starswirl Caverns, the walk back was surprisingly... boring. Without having to dodge the pits and basements in the dark or watch out for psychopath ponies coming up from hidden places under the ground, the trip went extremely fast. Together the big group of us weaved around very obvious ruins of old buildings at a pace that, despite our running last night, probably took less time.

The trip was still hours long, and still incredibly dull, but it seemed like it was faster.

That might have been because there were so many others with us this time. The only hard part had been getting down the mountain, but that was a lot easier than getting up it. We could just slide down in slow controlled bursts as long as we kept our hooves in the right places, and there were enough unicorns around with fully functioning, not burnt-out telekinesis to make sure nopony fell to their deaths. Everything was easier in the light too.

Several of our group broke off the further we got. Goodbyes were said quickly, and with little in the way of heartbreak. The few buffalo that all came with us left toward the Casino, which was apparently what the building with the huge ‘C’ on it was. They told me it’d been some attraction before the War, but since I knew we wouldn’t be going to it, I didn’t really listen much. The PipBuck would probably know where it was if we ever wanted to come back. Not that anypony could miss the flashing remains of the sign.

Others left for their own homes too, with a couple of zebras sneaking away to do whatever it was zebras did, while the group of ponies headed for their own home. It wasn’t until after they were nearly out of sight that I thought to ask about Gunbuck, but by that time it was too late. I could find out later.

The real reason things seemed to go quickly was that I couldn’t quite turn my brain on. Sure, I had half of the crown from last night, but it was a little thought in the back of my very empty head. I was tired, and dragging my hooves without thinking was probably the best thing I could do. By the time we did get back to the zebra’s mall, I’d managed to clear my head completely. I couldn’t even remember the last hour of the trip.

As we walked past the false graves, the cenotaphs Zorana and her tribe had made, I finally managed to switch everything back on. Amazed that we’d made it back, I looked at the group around us.

Several adult zebras of all shapes and sizes all stood around my sister and me, with Xeno now in the lead. The gaggle of foals that she’d managed to befriend were all behind her. They seemed tired, heads hung low and hooves dragging. The only one who didn’t seem exhausted was the filly who kept trying to hitch a ride on my friend’s back. She’d only walked half as far as the rest and, apparently, they’d delegated that she was to carry their box of... whatever it was.

“What’d I miss?” I asked Lost groggily, under my breath.

“The walk,” she answered. “The zebra are nice though, a shame you were lost in your thoughts the whole time.”

“Sorry, brain needed a breather,” I answered, forcing a smile. My hooves were aching again. No part of me was looking forward to the moment when the rest of my legs were going to start hurting. The chunky soup of a potion that Zolera had given me worked wonders though, so if I was lucky, I could get a perfected version from Xeno. This pain was different, too... A weird twinge that only hurt when I moved my legs a certain way. Each time I moved them they’d scream at me, like millions of tiny voices attacking the spot that moved, only to quiet down when I moved something elsewhere.

Had my legs fallen asleep while walking?

An echoing, hollow set of thuds tore me from the question.

Xeno stood on her hind legs, one hoof outstretched and resting on the glass of the barricaded doors. She pulled back and slammed her forehooves into it again, thudding several times to get the attention of whoever was inside.

Two nearly identical-looking mares showed up after a minute or so. I recognized them from the marketplace we’d run into only a day before. One pushed open the door with her rump, a tray of earrings and necklaces balanced on her back. She was saying something to the other mare in her native tongue, most likely about sales. They looked perfectly ready for a trade caravan, carrying their wares out and on display. The other mare, an amulet ready for show already in her mouth, followed.

She stopped in her tracks the minute she saw us. Her jaw dropped and the amulet fell to the ground. Before her twin could finish her sentence, she bolted past, her goods forgotten. Tears already forming in her eyes, she slid to a stop and scooped up one of the zebra foals in her forehooves. The poor thing squeaked when he was squeezed, and despite the embarrassed blush from the noise, he wrapped his own hooves halfway around the mare and held onto her for dear life while she assaulted him with kisses and whispers in her language that I could only imagine were words of joy at seeing the foal again.

The other mare furrowed her brows in confusion. Her gaze strayed from the display to look over the rest of us. Her eyes went wide and she looked back and forth several times. Carefully taking the tray of goods off her back, she took a few tentative steps forward, matched by a stallion from our side. The two slowly walked toward another, the mare’s lower lip trembling. She muttered what even in another language sounded like disbelieving half-words. When the two finally met, she gently prodded at the stallion, almost as if trying to figure out if he was real.

The stallion smiled and grabbed onto her. Wrapping his hooves around her tight, he practically pulled her to the ground in a cuddle.

Xeno, meanwhile, turned to one of the foals. She leaned down close, and whispered, “Kwenda, kupata wengine.” As the foal ran toward the door, she added, “Kuwa kubwa.” By the time the colt disappeared, we could hear his voice yelling and echoing through the halls and out the door toward us.

I backed away after that. It wasn’t my place to be there and I didn’t want to ruin the reunion of all these nice zebras. Over the next several minutes, more and more of them showed up and similar scenes played out in front of me. A mare would run to a foal or two, collect them up and hold them so tight they’d never escape from her sight again. Lovers would be reunited, and families got back together.

It wasn’t all happy. As I sat and watched, I caught no less than a half-dozen of the zebras come out, their eyes wide and hopeful, only to find their loved one wasn’t there. It hurt worse than my legs, to see them stop short and look around, before the realization hit that not everyone made it back. The dragon had kept the vast majority alive, but that didn’t mean that he had all the zebras that’d been given away or disappeared over the past few years. They’d burst into tears, or instead walk calmly like the dead back inside. A few would wander aimlessly through the growing crowd, looking in vain. One instead joined with what must have been another portion of her family. While she hadn’t gotten her loved ones back, she instead made sure that the others knew she was happy for them.

One zebra that had been milling around the crowd with a concerned expression on her face walked over to where I was sitting.

“Umm, hello?” I asked her tentatively, not sure if she even understood me.

“You pony that broughts back zebra?” she asked in an accent so thick that it took me moment to realize she was speaking my language.

“Umm, yes. My sister and I helped.”

“You see two zebra, colt and filly, they...” She said some things in her language, trying to find the word. “Umm, twine, twin? One blue?”

Thinking back, I didn't recall seeing any blue zebras, or any that could be twins. I hadn’t spent that much time picking out who was who. “No. Sorry, haven't seen them. Maybe ask Xeno?” I offered, pointing in the direction of my friend.

The mare frowned, but looked in the direction I was pointing. She nodded to me, and walked off.

In the back of the group, standing in the doorway, I saw the mare with the purple dreadlocks who’d let us back inside after the fight with the dragon, after we’d been used as their ‘sadaka.’ She stared forward, her face a mix of terror and awe. Every now and then she’d glance to the sky, searching for a dragon we knew wasn’t there.

The sky was clear, now, even if the clouds kept on blocking out Celestia’s sun.

Xeno hung off to the side, watching the group. Zorana and Zolera hadn’t yet shown up, which surprised me. I’d expected the leader of their tribe and her husband to be the first to show. Going by the look on Xeno’s face, she’d thought the same. Or she was terrified, and dreading dealing with her mother.

What really surprised me, was the fact that Lost hadn’t decided to sit next to me. “Where are you?” I asked, trying to look past the throng of zebras in front of me. I could see Fine Tune, weaving around back and forth and looking as if he were feeding. Though he didn’t return to his changeling form or do the crazy horn-press-vortex thing he’d done to me, the bounce in his step was there after the long trip. I couldn’t blame him, even I could tell that emotions were running high. Good ones, too. So many smiling faces.

Rose walked up and took a seat next to me. She leaned back against the grave marker to my right and looked over at me. With a little ‘oof,’ she dropped her grenade rifle from her back. “Not much for happy reunions?” she asked.

“It’s not that, it’s just that this is a special moment for them, not for us,” I answered, looking back at the clone mare. Her coat was back to normal, crisp and incredibly clean for having spent several hours trudging through the dirt and what passed for grass these days. What was left of her mane had started to regrow, the frayed and burnt ends that were left regaining their dark pink coloring. Sadly, the new shorter cut looked better suited for a stallion than a pretty mare like her.

“Well, we’re the ones that went and rescued them,” she replied. “Doesn’t that mean we should get special treatment?” She raised a hoof and waved it at the group still having their reunions. “I mean look, your sister’s over there chatting up the little dreadlocked mare from last night.” She leaned closer to me. “I know I give you shit about liking mares, but damn does she move fast.”

I grumbled. That couldn’t be what Lost was doing, especially after talking with Crème Brûlée. If she was, I was going to need to give her a stern talking to. Rolling back, I lurched forwa- “Ow!” I yelped. “Ow. Ow... Fuck, ow....”

“What?” Rose asked, her eyebrows raising.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. My legs had decided to lock up and any time I tried to move them even a little, the screaming ‘I’m asleep’ gnawing inside got worse and worse. I was afraid to move my legs. “Legs locked up,” I muttered. Not wanting her to use her limited magic and slow down her healing, I weakly waved one of my steel forehooves. “Just too much walking. I’m fine. I’m fine... I’ll talk to Lost later.”

The clone mare looked me up and down once, as I set my legs down slowly. “If you say so...” she said, her voice actually concerned for me. “If that keeps up, let me know... I did work for the Ministry of Peace after all.”

“You should go find Zorana...” I whispered, biting back against the tingling feeling that kept trying to shoot little lances of pain from hoof the withers. “We’re on a time limit, right?”

For only a moment Rose seemed to ponder that, nodding her head side to side as if weighing her options. “Yeah, because if I don’t show, she’s going to send another. I’ll go do that now,” she agreed. Hoisting herself up on her hooves, she grabbed onto her grenade rifle with the aquamare haze of her magic and walked off.

With almost perfect timing Zolera emerged from the open doorway cautiously, his wife draped over his back. He turned to look at her, making sure she wasn’t going to hit against the doorframe as he walked through. It wasn’t designed for a stallion of his height, especially not with another mare on his back. She looked better than how we’d left her, but still bore the obvious signs of a draining.

“There you are,” said Rose in a voice loud enough that I could hear it over the crowd of zebras between us.

Before she could get another word out, Zolera held up a hoof and Xeno interrupted her at the same time. The two zebras shared a look, then a smile, before the stallion turned back to the clone mare.

“You wait,” he ordered, his deep voice rumbling easily across the distance between us. “Daughter returning is far more important. Business after.” His words stopped Rose in her tracks, and she fearfully clutched at her grenade rifle until he looked away from her. Placated, that she wouldn’t try anything stupid, he looked down at his daughter. “Knife?”

With a smooth swing of her forehoof, she dug the knife from her satchel and held it up for the stallion to inspect. She answered him, but I either couldn’t hear or couldn’t understand what she said. For a moment the two exchanged words, never managing loud enough to get over the sound of the other zebras. The exchange looked nice though, and several times Zolera would motion toward Zorana with a hoof and they would include her in the conversation.

I felt a little pang of relief, knowing that she was okay. Maybe, just maybe, Fine Tune had sucked out enough of the anger she had in her at us, at the stars, and possibly even at the world. Hopefully she could be happy. Of course, nothing we did would bring her sons back, but we returned her daughter like we promised, safe and sound.

Weakly, the shaman mare slid from her husband, smearing the red designs painted across her onto his back. It was obvious that either she was too weak to paint them on properly, or Zolera had tried to do it. The flowing lines and sharp jagged sacrificial patterns were gone, replaced with uneven strokes and large patches that seemed like a they’d been made by a zebra starving and clawing desperately for food, rather than a talented shaman. Even in her obviously weakened state, she held her head up and addressed the others of her tribe.

Whatever she said went in one ear and out the other, because of the stupid language barrier. Zolera didn’t seem to like it though, and he jabbed her once. Xeno glared at her as well. After a shake of her head and a loud haughty ‘hmph’ that carried across the silence, she continued.

“Xeno and her father decided that she needed to tell the truth about their sacrifices,” a zebra whispered into my ear.

“Ahh!” I yelled, nearly jumping out of my skin.

When I landed, he looked at me apologetically. “Sorry, Miss Hidden,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you... I just wanted to translate.”

Oh. It was just Fine Tune. “It’s...” I started, holding a steel hoof over my heart. It’d be back to normal eventually. At least my legs were working properly again. “It’s okay... Just. Yes. Translating is good. And where’s Lost?”

“The Queen went inside a bit ago,” he answered, one ear skewing forward to listen. “Okay, so. She’s explaining that, umm, the beliefs in the stars are... I don’t know that word. Kind of... old mares tales? The scare-foals-straight kind.”

“Cautionary?” I asked, taking a shot in the dark.

“I think so. They’re not meant to be taken literally, but...” he continued, leaning forward. “Something about vigilant.” He winced when Zolera nudged his wife again. “That changed her tune.” He laughed. “Guess she needed some fine tuning.” He looked at me and smiled, eyes wide.

“That’s a terrible joke,” I said, grimacing. “You’re a very silly changeling. But keep telling me what’s going on please.”

“Of course Miss Hidden,” he answered. He sat next to me and stared intently across the zebra tribe as they shifted uneasily. When Zorana finally finished her speech, he looked over at me. “Something something dragon is a messenger, but... something something stars aren’t literal, but a metaphor.” Scrunching up his muzzle, he pressed a hoof to the side of his head. “She wants them to be safe and not live in constant fear, but to still always be on guard for something like that to happen again. It might not be stars in the sky that are coming for them, but the world is dangerous regardless, and we never know what might happen next.”

“Well, that’s a lot better than what she was saying before we left...” I muttered.

Once her speech was finished, she slumped down against Zolera and closed her eyes. Looking visibly weak, she held onto his foreleg to stay steady. When he whispered something to her, she laughed and opened one eye to look up at him.

“He asked her if it was as hard as she thought it would be,” Fine Tune translated for me.

The shaman motioned for the others to go inside, and as they all filed away through the little door in the barricade, she looked past Rose, over at me and Fine Tune.

This time it was Zolera who spoke. “Come. Business time is now. Then, we feast!”

That was more than enough of an invitation. I forced myself up onto my hooves and trotted over to the family. With a smile to Xeno, I turned to Zorana. “We brought her back, like we said we would,” I informed her.

“Your fate approaches, child,” she snapped, her voice dripping with hatred. “Bring the one of arum lily, we will talk of what she wants.”

“I’m right here,” snapped the clone pony. “You can talk to my face.”

“Mother,” Xeno interrupted, defusing some of the tension. “These are my friends, and they’ve gone through much to return our tribe to its glory. Please, for returning our foals, allow her an audials?”

It might have been the stern glare from her husband, who seemed significantly less cowed. It might have been the plea from her daughter and being asked as a mother. Or maybe she was just tired of the tough-mare act, but she relented. “Yes, we will discuss a trade,” she agreed, before turning to her husband and rattling off something in her language to him.

He nodded, hoisted her up onto his back again, and started inside. “Come. We do business over food.”

No one argued. The four of us followed him inside, but not before I gave one last look around.

Far in the distance, a tiny shadow cut across the mountain range like a bullet. It disappeared behind a peak, and I felt a weight lift off my shoulders.

* * *

I refused to start talking about trade without my sister.

After what happened in Idle, I didn’t want to be going in on this alone, without any thinky friends to help keep Rose in check. The fact that Zorana had referred to her as ‘of the arum lily’ again, after all we’d done, had me worried that tempers would flare again.

I’d made Rose promise not to start before I got back with my sister, and Xeno said she would make sure the mare didn’t try to jumpstart anything. Still, I left Fine Tune with them just in case. With how Xeno was around her mother, I didn’t know if she’d be able to stop it if things started. Fine Tune was the emergency ‘OFF’ switch for the situation, and I knew I could trust him.

Adorable bugpony just wanted us all to be happy.

I ran down the hallway, looking from shop to shop. It couldn’t have been very long since Lost went inside, so where in the Goddesses’ names was she? I swore to Celestia and Luna above if she was...

Skidding to a stop, I turned to one of the zebras that hadn’t been outside with us. She’d have seen if anyone wandered by that didn’t belong. “Uhh... Have you seen a pony, purple mane, white coat like mine?” I asked, holding a hoof up to my coat for emphasis.

The mare said something to me, but she talked too fast for me to make it out. Frustrated, I just nodded a few times and ran off. “Thanks,” I yelled back, hoping it was the right thing to say. I should have known better than to ask a zebra that I couldn’t understand. Damned language barrier.

Sprinting around a corner, I looked through the windows of several more shops as I passed, but not once did I see anyone resembling my sister. There were stripes everywhere, and not a solid coat to be found amongst them. Getting frustrated, I shouted, “Lost! Where are you!”

No answer, so I moved down to another hallway, still yelling for her. “Lost! Come on! I need your help on this,” I yelled, turning another hallway. At the far end of the hall was the remains of a food court, and the bathrooms with it. It seemed like as good a place as any to look for her.

Trotting over, I pushed the door open slowly, making it creak something fierce.

A mare’s voice yelled at me, shouting breathlessly something that sounded suspiciously like ‘occupied’ to my mind. Feeling the blood drain from my face, I pulled my hoof away and backed into the hallway again. It wasn’t Lost’s voice, and it wasn’t a language I understood. Good enough reason for me to not go in any further.

Not interested in walking in on another mare using the bathroom. Instead I turned back around and ran down the hallway to find my sister. She had to be somewhere.

I circled the hallways a few times, checking any place I thought my sister might have wandered off to. Several times I tried to ask the zebras, but they only knew a few words that I understood and got me nowhere. By the time the screaming in my legs started up again, I was ready to give up.

Lost was a smart mare, she’d know exactly where we were after returning.

Limping slightly, I made my way back toward Zorana’s office. Taking a wide berth from the Mane Attraction salon and its reminder of the little mare’s voice in the back of my head, I finally found myself back in the hallway with the office.

Fine Tune and Rose were there waiting for me to return with my sister. Who I still hadn’t found. Rose sat against the wall with her grenade rifle propped up in her hooves and her cloak’s hood pulled down to her muzzle. Fine Tune just stared at her in his unicorn form, blinking absently. Thank goodness I could sit-

A clang echoed through the hallway ahead of me. Past one of the shops with covered windows, emerged Lost. With her was the purple-maned zebra mare with the dreadlocks who’d let us in the night before. Wasn’t she the one Lost had been talking to earlier?

Lost hadn’t seen me yet, and turned to the mare. She whispered something, and the zebra giggled, answering in her native tongue. Lost just shook her head and smiled. As the zebra disappeared into the hidden hallway, my sister turned away and headed toward the office.

“Hey!” I yelled, ignoring the feeling in my legs and running up to my sister. “Where have you been? I’ve been searching all over!”

Lost went rigid, then turned around to face me while she lifted a hoof over her chest. “Hidden, don’t sneak up on me like that!” she snapped. Taking a deep breath, she lowered her hoof, then turned and walked the short distance to stand in front of Zorana’s office. “I needed some time to unwind. Am I not allowed to go have time to myself?”

“You told me to stay by your side,” I argued, following my sister. “But you can just disappear whenever you want?”

She looked disheveled, like she’d run the whole time I was looking for her and didn’t bother to fix her mane. Adjusting her glasses slightly, she just smiled and shook her head. “I just had some things to take care of,” she answered dismissively. “Wanted to relax a little before dealing with...” She waved her hoof in the direction of Zorana’s office. “This fiasco.”

Oh Goddesses. She didn’t mean...

“And I need to ask Xeno what ‘zaidi’ means, too,” she added.

Fine Tune’s ears perked up and his blue eyes practically shone. With a big smile, he raised a hoof and waved it in the air. “I know!” he announced. “It means ‘more!’”

My eyes went wide.

Before I could go off on my sister, the door opened behind us. Xeno stepped out and moved into the group. “Good, sisters,” the zebra mare said. “You are he-”

I held a steel forehoof up to silence her. “Lost, were you out fucking around again?” I demanded.

Rose snorted and said, “If what she-”

“Shut up,” I snapped. “I asked my sister.”

“What’s it matter to you?” Lost asked, rolling her eyes at me.

“You’re my sister!” I yelled through clenched teeth. “And Crème Brûlée asked me to watch out for you.”

“Sisters, itis important that I-”

“I told her I’d keep an eye out to make sure you were safe. A- and the other important thing she asked,” I said, pausing for just a second. “Was to keep you from fu-”

“Iam staying here."
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!
Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Under Watchful Eyes – Seems that Good Listener perk you took was forgotten, so let's try again. In addition to getting a bonus to skills when you're being coached, you now gain a bonus to all skills as long as you're with your friends. They look out for you because you need it, and you know it, so you do your best to prove to them you can do whatever they need. Good luck out there.
Lost Art:
New Perk: Technical Persuasion – When trying to influence an insurmountable foe, you may add up to half of your Science Skill (rounded up) to your Speech or Barter Skill in an attempt to gain the upper hoof.

“Okay, ignoring everything that just happened...”
“Yes?”
“Have you been following the Tumblr?”
“Oh for the love of...”
“It’s not fair. All we have is text. They get a fancy green room and everything!”
“Yeah, but that’s not canon.”
“Is this?”

(A massive thank you to Kkat for creating, and everyone else who has helped to flesh out the universe of Fallout Equestria. And to everyone who has/will help with with editing and making this more palatable... Big hearts to Sabsy, Moth, and everypony else who helped with ideas, editing, and brushies. And of course everything is copyright their respective owners. ~Hnetu)

Chapter 23: Absence Makes The...

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Chapter Twenty Three: Absence Makes The...
“This world changes, whether you’re there to change with it or not.”

“Staying?”

Lost and I both stared at Xeno, our argument over her sex life a long lost memory. Fine Tune shared our look, his eyes wide and full of confusion, once again back at their hazy changeling-like blue. Even Rose joined in, holding the hood of her cloak up with a hoof so she could stare with one eye, with a frown on her face that rivaled the one she’d had the last time we argued.

“You’re staying here?” I asked again. “With them?”

“Theyare my family, Hiddenpony,” Xeno answered calmly. “I must stay, they need me.”

“But...” I whispered, trying to come up with an argument.

“We need you,” Lost finished for me.

She was right. Xeno was our oldest friend, even if that friendship was only a few weeks old. We’d spent our entire lives secreted away from others, and she was the only one who’d given a damn about us. She’d walked through slavers for us. And now... “You’re just going to leave us...” I muttered in disbelief.

A big part of me wanted to cry. All of me wanted to cry. The remaining little part of me that wasn’t wanting to cry was busy wondering why I hadn’t started already.

This was all too much. The chronic pain that only ever seemed to get worse. The stress of fucking everything up and almost getting a friend killed. Becoming a pariah, whatever that meant. Being told that I couldn’t be trusted and that I had to have somepony watching me at all times. My sister fucking other ponies and zebras and the fact that I was stuck in the middle between her and former lovers. I needed a break.

“Itis not what I want to do,” Xeno explained, slowly sitting and looking over our group. “Itis what I must do. My mother is weak, but stubborn. She will need help. My father cannot lead the tribe himself, heis not a leader. Heis... for comforting those in need, not keeping them strong under a struggle.”

“What struggle?” asked my sister. “The dragon... he’s taken care of. The tribe is back together, we brought everyp- everyone home. What do they need help taking care of?”

“Many things,” answered the zebra. She looked toward the doorway and sighed. “While you sought your sister, I spoke to my father... Theyhave lived the same, under fear, for many years. Shortly after I left, the thefts of zebra began, and our culture changed. Now, that fear is gone. Returning to the old ways, itwill be hard for many. He asked that I stay, to help him.”

“Zolera asked you to stay?” I asked, needing clarification. None of this made sense to me.

“I... want my family to be strong. I lost my brothers, they lost their sons. I was nearly taken from them,” she said, shrugging slightly. Taking a deep breath, she pulled herself from staring at the office door and turned to my sister and I. A hoof reached up and brushed along the scars across her cheek, remnants of the splinterwolf fight. “Iwill do what I can to make them flourish again, as a family and as a tribe. Thereare much... bigger things that me in this world, and I need to make this sacrifice for it.”

“How long will it take?” I asked, still surprised I hadn’t broken down already. Maybe my body just wasn’t ready to believe it. I knew my brain wasn’t.

“I donot know,” she answered. “I donot believe it will take long.” She smiled and stood up, then walked over and wrapped a forehoof around me, and the other around my sister. “They are strong, almost as strong as you two. They will... as you ponies say, bounce back, quickly. Then I will come back to you.”

Lost looked at me across Xeno’s shoulder, and I looked back, past her mohawk. If this was what she needed to do, than this was what she needed to do. Nothing we could say would stop her.

“Hmph,” snorted Rose. “Just get it over with and come back across the mountains as quick as your striped ass can.”

Always the realist, and always willing to ruin a mood.

She had a point though...

“You’ll come back once it’s over, won’t you?” Lost asked her, before I could.

“Yes, Lostpony,” Xeno answered, before squeezing us both in a tight hug. “Ihave many things to do here, but Ihave more waiting for me on your side of the mountain. I wouldnot miss it, even if they chained me to the dais for the dragon.”

A weight lifted from me, and despite all the other aches and pains I had, despite all the other worries that constantly dug into the back of my mind in the form of little unrelenting claws, I felt better. I squeezed back, pressing myself up against my sister and holding onto my best friend as tight as I could without hurting myself. To my side, I could feel Lost tensing up as well.

“Please, don’t take too long,” I begged the zebra mare. It wouldn’t be the same without her.

“Iwill do what must be done, then have Xylia bring me across,” Xeno reassued me. “She is silent, but very quick. The mountains and dead forests are known as the back of her hoof. I will return to you, donot worry.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, before finally releasing my grip on her.

With all of us letting go, she took a step back and smiled, tears starting to form in her eyes. Gulping, she added, “I donot wa-”

“Can we just get on with it?” demanded Rose as she threw the hood of her cloak back. “As much as I like this emotional shit, we really are on a time limit and we spent far too much time dicking around with that dragon nonsense.” She glared at me. “Now, I don’t care about the mares my original is holding any more than the next copy of Rose does, but Goddesses-damned, I thought you all did.”

“We do,” argued Lost.

“Well, you certainly don’t show it,” snapped the clone mare. Smiling weakly, she continued in a softer voice, “I just think we need to hurry. I know how impatient she can get, and I don’t want to deal with the fallout if she doesn’t get her way. So, c’mon. Lovey-dovey emotional issues afterward, please?”

“But it was so tasty...” muttered Fine Tune, frowning. He sulked a little, his ears drooping. Goddesses, he was a glutton. Fed off Zorana the night before, and all the positive emotions when we returned and he still wasn’t satisfied?

I smiled. At least he wouldn’t be feeding off me any time soon.

“Sheis right, sisters,” Xeno agreed. “Letus go, my mother awaits.” Waving a hoof to get us to follow, she pushed open the door to the office and disappeared inside.

The rest of us followed in silence.

The inside of the office might have looked the same, but it felt far different. Nopony closed the door after we walked through it, and no zebra mare stared us down as if trying to intimidate us. Instead, Zorana sat back in her chair, with her eyes closed, and the red designs she’d always had painted on her coat mysteriously absent. Smears of where they once were remained, washed away and left to tint her coat as if she’d been recovering from a long-battled wound.

Technically, that was true.

She breathed slowly, deeply, while Zolera watched her from the side. When we’d all paced our way in and sat across the desk from the leader of the tribe, he smiled at us.

“Welcome,” he said, laughing quietly. “You ponies...” He laughed again. “Best I met, And I travel much.”

“We only did what was right,” I said, looking away. After they’d tried to use us for their little ‘sadaka,’ we should have just run home. That would have been the easy way, but it would’ve left all those poor zebra, ponies, and buffalo stuck. I looked at my sister, wondering if she was thinking the same thing. Could we have left them?

“You’re welcome,” she said quietly.

“We came here for a reason though,” Rose interrupted. “I’m on a strict time limit and I’d really like to get these negotiations over as soon as fucking possible.” She shot me a glare. “This has been quite the excursion, and I’m ready to go back across the mountain where I don’t need to worry about being roasted alive again. As soon as possible.”

I knew for a fact there were plenty of other ways to get roasted alive, and none of them needed a dragon. Incendiary grenades, psychopaths with flamers, Steel Ranger forges... I rubbed at my face with a forehoof. It’d been far too busy the past few weeks.

“Then negotiate,” Zorana answered. She cracked her eyes open slightly, and stared past the little slits at the pink mare. “What are your terms?”

“First of all, the zebras I’ve already spoken to, before you tried to have us all given to your little star messenger?” Rose started, sounding agitated. “I want the same deals I got with them already. With the help of your daughter here translating, I made good deals that benefit them just as much as they benefit me. I want those previously agreed upon bargains kept in good faith.”

“Alright,” whispered the shaman mare.

Rose raised her hoof and pointed it at the two zebras across the desk, continuing, “And furthermore, I think you owe us af- What?” She stared dumbfounded, her eyes wide. Her hoof hung limply in the air, all the fire and passion suddenly gone. Lowering it down, she looked at us, then back at Zorana. “What?” she asked again in disbelief.

“I said alright,” Zorana answered. “You brought back...” She paused and took a deep breath. “Almost all of the zebras we’d lost, and the foals as well. I could see it in the eyes of my tribe, how happy and grateful they are.” She looked up at her husband and smiled. “What kind of a leader would I be if I spit in the face of the ponies they now admire so?”

For only a moment there was silence, before Rose squinted and asked, “You’re not going to call me ‘of the arum lily’ again, are you?”

Zorana exhaled and hooked her forehooves over her desk. Pulling herself up, she opened her eyes wide and stared at the clone mare. “I will offer you respect, for what you and your friends have done,” she answered. “That doesn’t change who and what you are. It doesn’t change what I see in your future.” Without moving her face, she looked toward my sister and I. “That goes for you two, as well. I appreciate you bringing my foals back, dead or alive, but you are still cursed. The stars, not the dragon, still watch over you, Lost Art. And you, Hidden Fortune, your fate is far, far worse.”

I gulped and took a step back. I’d already experienced her little prophecy once before, and I never wanted to go through that again. Still, a little claw in the back of my mind poked and prodded, reminding me that something worse was always around the corner. If anything, our trip so far since finding the Stables had proved that.

Why’d we take that PipBuck, anyway...

Not bearing to look at my friend’s mother, I stared down at my forehooves. My steel forehooves. A shiver ran down my spine.

“The stars don’t hold sway on my life,” answered Lost. “There’s a lot of dangerous things in the Wasteland. I need to focus on those before I worry about some superstition that’s already proven to be horseapples.”

Zolera rested a hoof across his wife’s back and whispered something to her. It seemed to do the trick, because she chuckled quietly and pushed herself back away from the desk. With his wife seemingly placated, he turned toward his daughter. “You picked good friends. Strong, they do not yield. Like the drinks I make,” he said, laughing to himself.

Ignoring the joke and the banter back and forth, Rose just stepped closer to the desk. “So, the bargains are in place already. How do you want to transport things?” she asked, sounding a lot less angry about the negotiations. Given that she’d already had everything she demanded given to her, it was nice to see her soften.

“The mountain pass is the only way between our cities,” Zorana answered. “I will send my tribe no further than that, unless they wish to go themselves.” She turned to Xeno. “I like knowing where they are in case of danger. It helps to keep from losing them if wounded.”

“The mountains are full of splinterwolves, it’s not a safe place to meet,” Rose argued.

“Then you will send your ponies here,” the shamam answered. “I’m not willing to risk their lives if you’re not willing to meet me halfway. Our scouts know the woods and mountains, they know where splinterwolf dens are and how to avoid them. Why don’t you?”

“Because, we hadn’t needed to negotiate with your kind since the War,” she answered. Sighing, she added under her breath. “Suddenly, I miss the Caeser’s zebras...”

“The splinterwolves shouldn’t be a problem,” Lost said. “Just stick to the road. You can even meet in the spot we fought them before.”

“I’m sure there’s more up there,” I reminded her. “Unless you plan to bring torches or someone who knows fire spells.”

“I know one who does,” said Zorana. Well, that was convenient. “He isn’t strong, but splinterwolves can be scared away if one knows how.” She smirked. “Here is the only deal I will give; clear out any more splinterwolves you find. Make them scared to travel the roads and force them to stick to the underbrush. Send one of your own when its safe. Then we will trade in the mountains.”

“Splinterwolf extermination? Fine. I’ll send ponies with flamers to clean up any we miss on the way back,” Rose agreed. She stuck out her hoof. “So we have a deal?”

“For now,” Zorana agreed. “We’ll work out the details later.” With a groan, the mare forced herself forward and met Rose’s hoof with her own. “Now leave.” She slumped against the desk, breathing heavily.

“Sorry...” muttered Fine Tune, finally joining the conversation.

“Itis what was needed,” Xeno answered, placing a hoof on his side reassuringly. “My mother can be forward. As long as she recovers...”

“She will,” both Fine Tune and I answered at the same time. I knew from experience that one could get better, and he knew from doing it all his life.

“Rest,” Zolera said to his wife. “Healing will be done in time.” With a hoof, he shooed us out.

Getting the hint, we all left, including Xeno. The five of us filed out of the little office, and the large stallion stepped into the doorway. He smiled, placing a hoof on the door.

“Go. Make your plan. I meet you when you leave,” he said as he closed the door.

“Well, that went easier than I expected,” Lost said.

Rose smirked, agreeing, “I’m just a good negotiator.”

* * *

Outside the office we could hear the faint sounds of the tribe enjoying themselves. While we’d been discussing things, they’d been celebrating the return of their loved ones. A part of me was a bit sick of it, because they seemed to celebrate every damned thing that happened. Zebras died in battle? Celebrate. Zebras return from the stars? Celebrate.

Maybe I was just bitter. My sister and I hadn’t had a chance to slow down and just relax since finding Stables Twelve and Twenty One, and before that... well... Before that there wasn’t really any reason to celebrate. We didn’t have a PipBuck before, so we had no idea what days were which, meaning that birthdays and anniversaries of things went by unnoticed. Looking down the hallway back toward where I knew the tribe would be gathered, I couldn’t help but sigh.

Actually, I was just jealous.

The few little ‘wins’ we’d had so far, we never had a chance to just enjoy ourselves. Finding our way home after escaping Amble? Fine Tune’s arrival cut anything pleasant short. And I couldn’t even...

I glared down at my steel hooves. Stupid... things.

“Alright, I’m going to go find the same zebras I already had to deal with any figure out how to make sure they actually work for me,” Rose announced, ripping me from my little internal gripes. Her horn lit up and lifted the grenade rifle from her back. In one smooth motion she ripped the cloak away and balled it up, then stuffed it into her saddlebags. Dropping her gun back down, she smirked. “I’ll meet you all outside when I finish. We’re on a time limit, so find a way for us to get back across the mountain.” The clone mare glared and added, with a harsh tone, “Alright?”

“As you wish,” Lost answered sarcastically.

That seemed good enough for the pink mare. She nodded, shaking her still-too-short mane, and trotted off.

The four of us that remained all stood in silence. The motorwagon was trashed in the fight with the dragon, and us leaving meant...

“My father,” Xeno said, breaking the silence. When we all looked up, she continued, “Hehas told me which of our tribe are skilled at dissembling your motorwagons.”

“We don’t need it taken apart, Xeno,” Lost informed her. “We need it fixed.”

The zebra smiled, pulling the splinterwolf scars on her cheek taunt. “Knowing how to take it apart, means they know how it stays together,” Xeno corrected. “Theywill know how to fix.”

“Ahh... Right,” Lost replied, realization dawning. She crossed her eyes over the rims of her glasses and looked up at her horn. “I understand perfectly what you mean. So, who are we looking for?”

“Iwill find them,” Xeno answered, slowly turning to look down the hallway Rose had left down. “I donot like it, but she is right. Thereis little time, and others are waiting.”

“It won’t be the same...” I muttered.

“Hiddenpony, I willnot be gone forever,” Xeno said reassuringly. She rested a hoof on my shoulder and rocked me back and forth a few times. Not that I wanted to admit it, but it helped.

“Please don’t be sad, Miss Hidden,” Fine Tune plead.

“I’m trying not to be,” I lied.

“C’mon, we’ll go get to work and meet Xeno out by the power station,” Lost said. “You can dig through the wreckage and find some replacement parts?” She forced a little smile. “I’ll let you use the PipBuck, too.” Before I could disagree, her horn lit up and she pulled the little fetlock-mounted device from her hoof. Floating it through the air with her telekinesis, she wrapped it around my foreleg above my steel hoof and snapped it shut.

The flashing of the E.F.S. starting up over my vision didn’t seem to distract me. “Alright, fine,” I muttered. “Shouldn’t we get your magic fixed first, though?”

“Yes, actually...” she said, groaning. “There’s too much to do.” She took a deep breath and pushed her forehoof against the bridge of her nose, pushing her glasses up against her horn. “We’ll get my magic fixed, then grab the repair ponies, and while we wait for them, Hidden, you and Fine Tune can dig for parts. It’ll be fun for everypony.”

“Thatis a plan, Lostpony,” Xeno agreed for the rest of us. Neither Fine Tune nor I argued. “Come, letus see if my father’s elixir can also be salvaged.”

Together the four of us walked down the hallway, Xeno and I in front, with Fine Tune and my sister bringing up the rear. Since we’d all been there before, I didn’t bother focusing on the shops we passed. The last thing I needed was to get my mind stuck on the Mane Attractions salon again. Instead, I looked toward my friend.

“How long do you think you’ll need to stay?” I asked, trying to speak above the distant roar of zebras celebrating.

“I donot know,” she answered. “My mother is...” She paused and scrunched her nose up. “There is a word in your language that I donot know. Mkaidi, in my tongue. Like the mules.”

“Stubborn?” I asked. I’d only met one mule in my life, and it was long ago. Well, not really met, but watched from a distance while mom taught us about them. She’d said they were stubborn, and he’d proved it right in front of our eyes. “Like one who refuses to leave anything behind, even though it’s obviously too heavy to carry?”

“Thatis close,” Xeno agreed. “Iam surprised to see her this bad, even after...” She glanced back at Fine Tune from the corner of her eye. “A few days, maybe?” She shrugged.

“It’ll be a lonely few days,” I whispered. “You know you’re the first friend we ever made. What if something happens to you while we’re away?”

Xeno laughed. “Usually, Iam the one watching you ponies,” she said between chuckles. “Iam not worried, Xylia will lead. Sheis good at moving through the mountains.”

I could practically feel my cheeks burning. I’d been worried about her, and true to form, all she did was worry about us. We really were a sorry group. Still, it left me a little relieved to know she’d have a scout who knew the area with her, and on top of that, I did know she knew how to take care of herself. She’d always been a lot tougher than I gave her credit for.

Before I could ask how and where we could meet up, we arrived at Zolera’s coffee shop. The image of the two mares practically fucking each other still hung on display, giving me no second guesses to where we were.

Xeno sped up and, with a running start, jumped over the counter. Skidding across the top, she dropped behind and out of sight, followed by a loud clang of metal as things fell over around her. A loud curse in her native tongue filled the air.

My sister and I shared a look for only a second, before we both ran in and scrambled to jump up onto the counter.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Xeno, everything alright?” Lost asked at the same time.

“He doesnot clean,” snapped the zebra mare. “Itis a mess!” She threw a glass into the air to punctuate her point. It crashed onto the floor and bounced, disappearing under a table in the corner. The mohawk of our friend appeared above the counter, followed shortly after by her eyes. She squinted and looked at us. “The brew wasnot cleaned, itwill take only a moment.”

Much like how her father had worked the night before, vials and bottles flew through the air from her hooves. She pressed buttons on the machine below the counter and kicked it a few times. Scrambling about, she grabbed different ingredients, both from his shelves and from her satchel. It wasn’t like watching her craft something with the setup she’d made back at our home, but still she worked like she’d spent her whole life with the machines. Little flaps opened here and there to allow her to pour in crushed something-or-other and powdered... stuff.

After several minutes of working, with Lost and I watching in awe, she finally pressed the same button Zolera had that made his concoction come out. Fine Tune tilted his head to the side, one ear pinning back as the same pipe hissed and the machine groaned.

Xeno stood, turned around, and bucked the machine with both back hooves.

That seemed enough to force the brewing contraption to work. The steam stopped and a ding sounded from somewhere under the counter, announcing it’s completion. Into the vial a milky liquid drained, filling it about halfway. It had a distinct lack of chunks in it.

“Thank the Goddesses,” Lost whispered, looking at it. It only took a moment, but realization washed over her face and she stuck her tongue out. “Will it taste terrible like last time?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Bluh, okay...” Lost relented. Her horn lit up blue and the haze of her magic wrapped around the small bottle. When it finally finished filling, she pulled it free of the machine and held it up to her snout. “Here goes nothing.” Taking a deep breath, she tilted her head back and poured the contents down her throat.

“Good luck,” I said in my most reassuring voice.

Once Lost finished drinking it, she coughed once and gently set the bottle on the counter. “How long until it takes effect?” she asked.

“Now?” Xeno answered hesitantly, shrugging.

“Only one way to find out,” Lost announced. She pulled herself over the counter and sat down in front of the brewing machine. Squinting, her horn lit up and she started pulling parts off it with her magic. Pipes, wires, gears, and little electronic pieces all flew into the air, followed by one massive cylinder. “Oh... Goddesses,” Lost whispered. “This thing has never been cleaned!”

“Well, the world did end two centuries ago, sis,” I replied, smirking.

“No, I mean...” she started. Rather than finishing her sentence, she unscrewed the top off the larger cylinder part and showed me. Inside was a horrorshow. When she said never been cleaned, she meant it. It looked like somepony had put a hoof in there and let it melt. “Celestia... I can feel how dirty it is.” Setting that piece down, she pulled a tightly coiled tube out and dropped it next to the larger part.

“Umm... What?” I asked, confused.

“Is this some sort of pony special talent thing?” Fine Tune asked, peeking over the counter next to me.

“Yes!” Lost answered, sounding quite stressed. “I can just... see how it all fits and seeing it like this is... it’s painful.” With a flurry of blue hazy magic, she sat back and started to clean. Scum flew from the opened cylinder piece, and from the insides of the tubes. She stuck her head inside the machine and did something I couldn’t see, but I could hear the sound of scraping from whatever she was doing. Behind her the parts floated in the air, slowly cleaning themselves as her magic did the work for her. One at a time, she’d pull parts in next to her head, slowly pulling back as she did. She said little as she worked, only muttering to herself from time to time before she pulled the largest piece back inside and tapped at it with her horn a few times. It shimmered once, and she smiled. “Okay... Much better.”

With the vast majority cleaned and put back together, she turned her attention to the electronic parts she’d pulled out. Under her careful gaze, wires unfrayed themselves back to looking like they were brand new. Screws that had begun to wear and rust became clean and perfectly threaded again. The spring that held it all together reformed, unbending from where the wires had pushed against it too hard and popped the middle outward. She sighed happily, floated the repaired piece up to it’s slot, and slowly pushed it in. With everything back in place, she returned the broken pipe where it belonged and sealed it up, her magic repairing the seam completely.

“So, magic all better?” I asked.

“Eeyup, all better,” she answered happily, her coat covered in the grim and mess she’d pulled from the machine. The bandana around her mane was soaked, and her mane hung twisted and kinked from having her face stuffed inside the machine. But she was happy, and that mattered more than how she looked.

“Happy Queen is best Queen,” Fine Tune said with a chirp.

* * *

Fine Tune and I stared at the wreckage, Xeno and my sister having left us to our devices to find the repair zebras. I was under strict orders to do whatever Fine Tune said, which stung quite a bit that Lost trusted him more than me. Hadn’t I... Just. It wasn’t worth the stress.

The Solaris Energy power station was a complete wreck. In the light it looked far worse than it had the night before. The building itself was completely trashed, with the roof having caved in and thrown chunks of all everywhere. The only spot that wasn’t covered in rubble and broken materials from the ceiling and walls was the same spot we’d rested in to get healed after climbing out. The far wall still stood, which was good? Maybe. It didn’t matter. The front and sides were gone, and more bricks and mortar lay strewn about the road we’d come in on.

The motorwagons weren’t much better. A few on the far side of the lot managed to survive mostly intact, not that it was a guarantee they actually worked... Several closer to us were either still on fire, or were left burnt out husks. The engine parts were... Goddesses, everywhere. How we were supposed to find the proper bits and pieces to get our motorwagon up and running again, I had no idea.

I sighed. “So... now or never?” I asked the changeling.

“Yes, Miss Hidden,” he answered. A flash of fire erupted around him, turning the sky green for a moment. When it faded, the green pegasus mare that I’d grown used to remained. She took to the sky and flew toward the wreckage. Once there, she floated back and forth, using her flight to keep a good vantage while she looked around. Even as a pony she seemed to fly like a changeling, buzzing around in little bobs to and fro, looping around in curls and circles without ever seeming to go in a straight line as she searched around.

Slowly, I walked toward the junked pile of motorwagons. My legs weren’t hurting too bad, so while Fine Tune covered the top section, I decided to get right into the thick of it and start digging through the remains on the ground. For the most part, I let instinct and habit take over as I worked. None of what I found was anything I wanted to keep and while all of it might be useful, the joy I normally got from doing such a mundane thing was... gone.

Stupid fucking dragon, ruining everything.

It was best to just turn my brain off.

Rather than collect things I knew we needed, since I had no idea what to look for, instead I sectioned things off into useful piles. Pipes went in one spot, gears in another, crystally parts for the power supply in yet another. Broken pieces that I couldn’t identify made a bigger pile, while the stuff that actually looked repairable or, at least, useful, I put near the front.

Still, there was one issue that I wasn’t sure how we could handle...

I’d found our motorwagon. It was easy, since it was the only one with armored panelling on the sides of the main engine. The problem I found though... It was upside down. In the fray, the dragon had smashed it onto its side and it’d rolled almost completely over. The engine was pressed against the ground and one of the wheels was spinning in the air, pushed by a light breeze overhead that I couldn’t feel from within the pile of trashed vehicles.

“Goddesses... Just what we needed,” I muttered to myself. After a moment of staring at it, I figured I’d try to flip the damn thing over. First I tried jumping onto it and pulling down, but when I finally managed to get ahold of the highest part of the deck, I found I wasn’t heavy enough to right the engine. And I lost my grip because I couldn’t feel anything with my steel hooves.

Pissed off, I ran around the other side and tried pushing. I lifted up the engine block and managed to get ahold of it, but there was no way I could lift with my forelegs. They simply didn’t bend the right way. We needed, something with claws, like a friendly hellhound or manticore. Stupid hooves.

As I struggled with trying to push the deck back upright, Lost and Xeno showed up. With them, they had two other zebras, one stallion and one mare. Both were grey with darker grey stripes that looked more like Xeno and her father than the rest of the Imani. The stallion’s stripes went up onto his forehead and made a little ring right above his eyes. Wrapped around his left foreleg were several golden rings, with little hooks dangling off each. The mare looked much like him, but without the circle on her forehead or the rings. Instead she carried a set of large saddlebags, their flaps open and overfilled with tools.

They stopped and stared at my struggling, each with different expressions. Xeno seemed confused, and the other two zebras seemed pleased, shaking a snicker between them. Lost just facehoofed.

“Hidden, what are you doing?” she asked impatiently.

“It’s stuck on its side. I was trying to push it over!” I explained, defending myself. Sheepishly, I pulled my hooves away from the deck of the motorwagon and sat down. “I was trying to get it done before you got here so we could finish sooner.”

“Hidden, there’s...” she started, stopping only to raise her hoof and point it at the several other motorwagons that weren’t upside down. “Almost a dozen other motorwagons we could use and fix without having to do that.”

Blinking several times, I leaned over so I could see past the engine block and stared at the others down the line. She was right, but none of those were our motorwagon. I frowned, puffing out my cheeks. “We don’t even know if those still work! They’ve been sitting here for who knows how long!” I argued, justifying it to myself while knowing full well I should have checked them first.

“Did you check them?” she asked.

Before I could answer, the zebra stallion with the rings said something too fast for me to catch. The mare nodded in agreement.

“He says none work. Theyhave tried many times, but never with luck,” Xeno translated. As the stallion and mare continued to talk in their language, Xeno continued to translate, “The parts arenot all destroyed, but each has problems.” She paused to let them talk more. “Yours works, itis best to repair it for...” She looked back at him, and said, “Sijui neno.”

“Okay...” Lost said, her voice calm and even. “We’ve brought help, so rather than doing it alone, let’s all work together.” She turned to Xeno. “So, how do we flip it rightside up?”

“Iwill ask,” Xeno answered. She turned to the two she’d brought with her. As she asked, Fine Tune flew back into sight and landed, then transformed back into his normal stallion form. The conversation between the zebras stopped, as the two stared at him in shock and fear. Xeno had to calm them down and steer the conversation back to normal. It didn’t look easy, but there was no way of knowing what they were saying. They spoke too fast for me to pick up on individual words.

“So...” I muttered, hoping to move things on.

Xeno held up a hoof, said one last things to the zebra, then turned toward my sister and me. “Zero said wewill use rope. Pull it onto wheels, then work to repair parts,” she explained.

“His name is Zero?” my sister asked, looking over the rims of her glasses. She didn’t seem to believe it.

“Itis a nickname. See his forehead?” Xeno asked, pointing toward it. “The large O there? He doesnot like being called O, so heis called Zero.”

“Right, that makes sense...” I said, mildly confused and looking at my sister. The response was a shrug. “So, shall we get started?”

I didn’t really want to leave, not yet, because it meant leaving Xeno and I just... I wasn’t ready to deal with that yet. But I knew the minute Rose showed up, she’d be impatiently demanding to know why we weren’t ready because dammit, we were on a time limit. Of course, she’d be right. We had other ponies waiting for us, and if we didn’t show back up there was no telling what that mare would do. Why couldn’t the original have the same view on kindness as our Rose? I looked at the others, and found that while I’d been lost in thought, they’d started pulling out ropes.

Fine Tune transformed back into a pegasus, again to the shock of the two new zebras. The ropes were given to her and she flew up and tied them onto the axles just under the wheels, then tied one around the base of the engine block itself. Tossing them over the edge of the motorwagon’s deck, we each grabbed ahold of them. My sister and I took one rope, Zero and the mare took another, and once Fine Tune landed, she and Xeno grabbed the third one.

We started pulling.

Nothing happened.

I dug my steel hooves into the ground and pulled back as hard as I could. Lost used both her magic and her teeth to wrench the ropes back, while the others used whatever they could. Surprisingly, the motorwagon didn’t want to budge. We just needed better leverage, or... something.

“Want me to go push?” I asked, releasing the rope to be able to talk.

Lost jerked forward, caught off balance by my sudden letting go. Falling down, she rolled and glared up at me. With pursed lips, she nodded. “Yeah, go do that,” she agreed.

Running around to the other side, I grabbed onto the top of the engine block just as I had before and lifted as best I could. “Ready!” I yelled across the wagon. After only a second, everything seemed to get lighter. I worked my hooves under the metal and pushed as hard as I could, struggling because pony legs weren’t meant to be bent that way. “Hold on!” I yelled...

This wasn’t working. I needed... There was a gap between the bottom of the engine block and the ground... If I could get under there I could lift with my back and then move further away to get better leverage as it got higher and higher.

“Idea!” I yelled again, ducking down onto my belly and sliding underneath the engine block. Planting all four hooves on the ground, I pushed upward with everything I could. “Okay, go! Pull!”

They pulled, and everything to lighter. It wasn’t enough though, so I kept pushing. The longer I struggled, the harder it got. My legs began to scream at me, as if begging me to give up and just stop. I ignored it, thinking back to all the other times I’d hurt myself. I could get through this easily. I just... I raised one hoof and looked at the PipBuck screen. Jabbing it with my nose, I used the little device’s built in magic to put my Buck at the top of my saddlebags. I’d never know how it did that, but it did it.

Reaching around with my steel hoof, I fished into the saddlebag and found what I was looking for. Awkwardly grabbing with my fetlock, I pulled out the little bottle of Buck. The entire time I kept pushing, balanced on three legs. We needed the damn motorwagon or we weren’t getting home any time soon. Smashing the bottle with my forehoof a few times, I finally worked the cap off. It took some doing, but I managed to grab the rim with my teeth and tipped the bottle to pour one of the beautiful strengthening pills into my mouth.

I swallowed the chalky thing and dropped the bottle. Closing my eyes, I grit my teeth and put all four hooves and my entire back into it. Everything burned. Even with the help of the Buck, I wasn’t sure I could do it. It made everything ache, but as I pushed, I felt myself slowly gaining ground. Even though every part of me screamed in protest, I kept trying.

Slowly, the engine block lifted. I clenched my eyes shut and slid along the metal of the engine housing. It hurt, but it would be worth it. Every inch I gained meant we were closer to getting the damn wagon over. I could hear my friends and the helpers struggling, and I knew it wasn’t in vain.

Then the engine block disappeared.

I shot up to full height, no longer burdened by the extra weight. Something inside me snapped, as if each of my legs were giving out all at once. Either I’d just pulled every muscle in my legs by standing too fast after struggling, or... I didn’t know. So I just fell onto my side.

The motorwagon finally tipped and fell, crashing onto all four wheels and bouncing once to my side. It rocked once before settling with a loud groan.

I just laid there, panting.

“Finally!” Lost said, exasperated. “Good job, Hidden!” She trotted around and found me lying there, legs splayed out in front of me.

“Team effort, right?” I asked, forcing a smile. “I think I pulled something...”

“What did...” she started, before noticing the bottle of Buck lying tipped over in front of me. Her eyes shot open wide and she bared her teeth, grinding them. “Hidden! I told you... I.” Her glare softened. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. I just need to sit down for a bit. You can work on the motorwagon without me...” I mumbled. “I’m no good with that sorta thing anyway.” Lifting a hoof, I nodded towards it for emphasis. “Can’t really hold tools anymore...”

Lost helped me up and I limped my way over to sit out of the way of the work. She propped me up against one of the toppled motorwagons and hugged me. “Just be okay,” she whispered.

“It doesn’t hurt,” I answered. “I just feel numb. Like I pulled a muscle and it just gave up. I’m sure in a few minutes I’ll be okay.” I wrapped my forehooves around her weakly and nuzzled against her neck. “I’ll be right here while you work.”

“Alright... I’m going to have Rose look you over when she gets out here though. Just call me if you need anything,” she said before walking off to join Xeno and the others.

* * *

It felt good to relax for what time I could. Lost and Fine Tune had magic to work their tools, and the zebras were able to do... weird zebra things like Xeno could do with hers. On the other hoof, I was pretty much useless. Fetlocks weren’t good for delicate work, and the steel hooves kept me from feeling what I was doing anyway. I could help with my teeth, but when it came to fiddling with mechanical bits, I preferred to keep my face away. Too many moving parts and all that.

Instead, I sat and watched. They had everything under control. While the stallion worked, the mare passed tools to him and took the ones he didn’t need. They rarely spoke, and when they did it was heated. At some points I wanted to laugh, while watching, because when they were in sync with one another, everything went perfect. The second one slipped and missed a tool or dropped something, the powder keg went off and they’d start yelling at one another. Were they brother and sister, lovers?... It didn’t matter, it made for good entertainment.

While the two zebras fixed the engine and all the actual moving bits, Lost and Fine Tune focused on the steering and wheels. Luckily, Lost’s special talent and her magic made fixing everything go fast. By the time Fine Tune had adjusted one of the axles, with close supervision, she’d completely disassembled the entirety of the steering column. It felt good, seeing her with her magic back at its peak. A cloud of miniature metal bits floated in a haze above her head, swirling about as she worked.

Xeno stood by the side, watching the others work. Much like me, she wasn’t quite able to help. Her skills fell elsewhere, and sadly repairing machines just wasn’t a part of that set of abilities. She offered to help several times, both to Lost in our language, and to the zebras in theirs. Each time they turned her down.

“Xeno!” I yelled, weakly waving a hoof in her general direction.

The striped mare looked my way, then back toward the others. When none needed her help, she trotted over and sat next to me. “Yes, Hiddenpony?” she asked. “What isit you want?”

“Just to talk,” I answered, forcing a smile.

“Thereis work to be done, we donot have time to talk,” she replied sternly. Still she gave me a smile, then rolled back up onto her hooves.

I reached out and hooked my steel hoof around her foreleg. “Please?” I practically begged. “They’re all doing just fine without you. I want to make sure things will be okay and... I want to talk before we leave.”

“A smoke would be nice,” she muttered before flopping down next to me. Reaching over, she grabbed a cigarette from her satchel and stuffed it into her mouth. She twisted it to the side and looked at me for a moment.

Rolling my eyes, I looked back at the wagon. She still wanted to keep that little cigarette lighting trick of hers a secret. Oh well. When I looked back, the tip of the cigarette was lit and burning dimly. “Are you sure you want to stay?” I asked.

“Itis not something I wish to do, itis something I must,” she answered, not meeting my gaze. “I... have been away for long, and much has changed.”

“Is this because of that stallion you’re supposed to be hitched to?” I asked her.

“Whatis ‘hitched?’” she asked, looking at me blankly.

“Oh, umm. Married to?” I answered weakly. “Your mother-”

She laughed. “No,” she said between giggles. “No, Hiddenpony, itis not because of Ziven. Heis the least of my worries.” Fighting back against the laughter, she took a long drag of her cigarette, then puffed the smoke from her nose. Leaning in close, she whispered to me, “I donot think he will want to, not with these.” She waved a hoof across the scars left by the splinterwolf.

“Not the type who can handle a warrior mare?” I asked, smiling wide. Seeing her laugh helped, even if the happiness was hollow. Would this be the last time we laughed together?

“Thatis a way of saying things,” she answered before taking another drag of the cigarette. The ash from the tip flaked off and slowly fell onto the broken road beneath us.

“You’ll come back across the mountain to meet us again, right?”

“Yes, Hiddenpony,” she answered. “I like you sisters, I donot wish to be away.” Pulling the cigarette away with her fetlock, she turned and stared at me, her blue eyes sparkling slightly. “You make the Wasteland interesting. I like interesting.”

I couldn’t help but snort. “If you call living like we do ‘interesting,’ sure,” I answered half-heartedly. “Our life before we met you was a lot different.” I tapped at the PipBuck on my fetlock a few times. Tapping the metal casing against my leg hurt, a lot. “Ow... Anyway. Finding this changed a lot of things, because, well... I got my head wrapped around an idea and wouldn’t let it go.”

“So?”

“Well, let’s just say I’ve gotten shot a lot more in the past few weeks than I had before that,” I admitted. “And hurt a lot more ponies, and...” Pulling my gaze away from my zebra friend’s eyes, I looked at the motorwagon, with my sister, Fine Tune, and the others slaving away to make it work again. “And we’ve made a lot of friends...”

“See? Itis not all bad,” said the zebra. She patted me on the shoulder a few times, then leaned back against the wreckage I’d been propped up against. “Iwill have Xylia lead me back. She knows the mountains as she does her hooves. It willnot take long.”

“Where can we meet?” I asked. The thought of being away from her still nagged at the back of my mind, and the sooner we could get back together as a group, the better. “We don’t really have any way to contact one another once we split up.”

“Once before, you found me,” she said, poking me in the nose with her forehoof. “You will again.”

Closing my eyes at the poke on my nose, I scrunched up my muzzle and mulled the possibilities over in my head. “Or we-”

The sky flashed brightly, lighting up the wreckage as if the clouds had cleared to let the sun in as a horrifyingly loud crack cut me off. “Eep!” I yelped, suddenly half-deaf, everything muffled by a high pitched ringing. Shuddering, I looked back and forth to figure out what in the Goddesses’ names just happened.

“It’s okay!” yelled Lost, her voice distant and hoarse. She waved a hoof in our direction. “Everything’s okay!”

Beside her, the engine of the motorwagon was on fire.

“That doesn’t look okay!” I yelled back.

“Nopony’s hurt!” she yelled to me, shaking her head. “All’s fine! Don’t get up.” Forcing a smile, she dove down behind the engine block and started banging on something.

“Goddesses,” I muttered. “I thought Praline-” Perking up, I looked at Xeno. “Ow! I mean- Praline!” Moving too fast hurt.

“Hiddenpony, youare hurt,” she said, almost disbelieving. “Isit because of my father?” She squinted, staring at me the same way my sister did when she caught me doing something stupid. Why’d they both have to have blue eyes?

“No, I... It’s not that,” I lied. I weakly lifted a hoof and waved it back and forth. “I’m fine? See. Just tired from a long night. Anyway. It- It’s not important.” Groaning, I leaned my head back against the wreckage and stared up at the clouds. Stupid fake-out thunder... It’d still probably rain later. “I just mean that you can go to the Stables where the Steel Rangers are. Praline has a broadcaster thingy in her armor and can contact our PipBuck with it. I’ve talked to her before through it.”

To illustrate, I lifted my foreleg and tapped on the PipBuck a few times. Pulling up the radio function, I leaned over and showed her the screen. “See?” I asked, poking at it with my forehoof. Goddesses it still hurt, not that I didn’t deserve it. It was stupid of me to try and pull the stunt with the buck and lifting the motorwagon. Not that I would ever admit it... “There’s an earbloom in the casing that I can pull out, and when you get back across the mountains, if you go to the Stable, they can call me up on this thing, and we can find a place to meet up.”

“I see,” she whispered, grabbing the PipBuck in both her forehooves. Twisting it painfully around, she looked at the screen upside down.

“Xeno, it’s upside down,” I corrected her. “And let go... That hurts.”

Blushing, she let go. “Sorry, Hiddenpony,” she said sheepishly. “Iwill do that. The steelponies will be my destination, I will find them and then find you.”

“Please don’t take forever...”

The zebra smiled, reached over and hugged me tight. When I weakly wrapped a foreleg around her and squeezed back, she leaned in close and whispered into my ear, “Youare not good at hiding things, for one called Hidden.” Her grip tightened. “What did my father give you?”

I gulped.

“The same thing he gave my sister,” I answered, looking away.

“What did he say would happen if you drank it?” she demanded.

“Death?” I answered. “Or... less death?”

She practically growled at me, but finally released me. Closing her eyes, she pulled the last bit of her cigarette back to her mouth, where she’d gotten it from I didn’t know. She bit the end and sucked the last of the fire away, until nothing but ash was left. Spitting it to the side, she stomped it out and stared at me. For only a moment she looked as if she were about to yell, but instead she just sat back, and rolled herself up onto her hooves. “Iwill speak to your sister now,” she said.

Without another word, she walked off.

“Fuck.”

* * *

All things considered, the motorwagon looked great. The combination of work my sister, Fine Tune, and the zebras had done on it made everything look almost as good as new. Well, as ‘new’ as a two century old piece of junk could. They’d cannibalized a ton of parts from the other motorwagons in the process though. Since they were just lying around, it’s not like anypony was going to care. The seats were now mismatched in design, but much comfier than the originals. The entirety of steering controls were different, messily merged from three other control sets. The best thing they did though, was fix the armoring around the outer edge of the deck and the engine itself. Instead of having rusted shards of metal covering the whole thing, they’d found a way to replace the housing with a solid piece that brought the whole thing together.

It felt a lot safer, too.

While the others talked, I rested on the rearmost seat, head nestled in the corner against the quietly humming engine block. It felt nice, like a little massage over my sore body. Eyes closed, it was almost enough to send me off into a nice, well-deserved sleep.

Unfortunately, a perfectly placed shadow blocked out whatever light managed to find its way through the cloud cover. I cracked open an eye and stared up, only to find the aquamarine glare of a pink pony staring back at me.

“Sit up,” she ordered.

“But I just got comfy,” I whined. The last thing I needed was to deal with Rose.

“Yeah, well, while they get all happy-go-lucky making friends with each other, I have work to do. So sit up,” she snapped, prodding my side with a forehoof.

“Fine,” I grumbled, pulling myself up to a sitting position and letting my hind hooves hang off the edge of the seat. Leaning back, I pressed against the vibrating engine block and closed my eyes again. “What’s this all about?”

“Between your sister and the zebra, I’ve been hearing a lot about how you’re acting up,” Rose answered. She squinted and leaned in close. “Hiding something,” she whispered.

“I am not. I just pulled something while flipping this heavy motorwagon back over,” I snapped. “This isn’t anything out of the ordinary, just over-exerted myself. I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” I’d been in plenty of pain over the past few weeks, this was just another part of the process. Once we got a day or two to rest, I’d heal right up and everything would be perfectly fine.

“Uh, huh,” Rose muttered skeptically. “Regardless, I’m giving you a look over. Despite the fact that you’re a fucking idiot...” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “You’re a friend. That means I’m going to do the kind thing and make sure you’re healthy.” Sitting down and lowering her horn to my hind legs, she added, “It’s what Fluttershy would have done.”

“Alright,” I said. There wasn’t really anything else I could say. She was a friend, even if begrudgingly, and if she was going through all the mental anguish to help somepony like me, who’d nearly gotten her killed... Then I’d just have to accept it. “Do I have to do anything?”

“No, just sit still and take deep breaths,” she answered. Her horn glowing, she started to pass it over my leg and to the side of my haunch, right above by cutie mark. “Before you ask, I’m just doing a diagnostic. It’s a basic spell that just checks to make sure everything is the same as a ‘control pony.’”

There went that question. It did bring up another one though... “What’s a control pony?” I asked.

Rose looked up at me, then switched to the other leg. “Training in the Ministry started with base level stuff for all testing unicorns. Before we could heal on a large scale, we had to know how to heal on a small scale, and before we could do that, we had to learn how to heal each different thing,” she explained as she moved her horn back and forth, switching to my foreleg. “So the first spell they taught was to compare a wounded pony to a healthy pony. The healthy one is the control pony.” Running her horn close enough that I could feel the strange knitting and oddly warm haze of her magic, she stopped at my shoulder. “It’s useful, because you can’t always see a wound. Internal bleeding, torn tendons, that sort of thing? Either we cut the pony open to find out, or we do it through magic.”

“I prefer you do it with magic...”

“Most do.”

Looking at my other leg, she finally finished. “I’d check your head, but I’m already sure something’s wrong in there,” she said with a stern look. “And just like I expected, there’s nothing visibly wrong, but there’s something going on under the skin. I can’t tell what it is without the proper tools right now, but the best case scenario is that you’re just extremely tense. All over.”

Biting my bottom lip, I tilted my head. “So, I just need to... relax?” I asked, confused. It couldn’t just be that...

“Either that or something solidified all your muscles,” she answered with a shrug. “Right now, I think the best thing you can do is take it easy for the trip back and let your body get some rest. I’d say that’s doctor’s orders, but I doubt you’ll listen. For the sake of your sister’s sanity, and your friend’s patience... Just sit there and enjoy the view until we get finish dealing with my progenitor, then-”

“Your what?” I asked.

“The original Rose. The fat blob of a pony,” Rose answered, deadpan.

“Oh!” I gasped. Taking a deep breath, I sat back and slumped down. “Does this mean I got the ‘less death’ option after taking that concoction Zolera made up?”

“Seems like it,” she answered, shrugging again. “When we finish, maybe we can see if the Ministry building over in The Cinch is still running. If it is still in working order, I’ll do a more detailed check up to make sure you haven’t hurt yourself too badly. Plus, while we’re there, I can get some armor for myself.” A good point, since she was the only one of us so far that didn’t have any, yet she had the most to lose.

“You’re not going to rip my skin off, are you?” I asked. Instinctively, I pulled my steel hooves close. After the last few times I’d had a doctor do anything to me, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to have a check up. Time would fix it and that would just... have to be the better option. No more cybernetics. No more compression garments. No more spikes. I was not going to turn out like Zorana ‘prophesized.’

Not if I had any say in the matter.
“I’m not even going to ask where you got an idea like that,” Rose answered, furrowing her brows and staring me down. “That’s the last resort, if it even is a medical emergency. So no, not unless I absolutely have to.”

“Whew...” I sighed. Thank the Goddesses.

“What’s the verdict?” Lost asked. She trotted up to the side of the motorwagon and reared up, dropping back down to rest her forehooves on the deck.

Smiling, I answered, “She said I’m f-

A hoof in my mouth silenced me. Rose glared at me, then closed her eyes and shook her head. Turning to Lost, she forced a smile. “Nothing definitive. She’s probably just... I don’t know, pulled every muscle she has,” the clone pony answered. “I’ve ordered her to not get up from that seat until we’re back across the mountains.”

I pushed Rose’s hoof away. “What if I have to go to the bathroom!” I demanded.

“We’ll get a Sparkle~Cola bottle,” the pink mare snapped.

“Alright, that’s... Thanks Rose,” Lost said as she pulled herself up onto the deck of the motorwagon. Walking over, she sat next to me and looked over at the mare. “A few minutes alone, please?”

“Whatever,” she said, before hopping off and walking back over to where Xeno and Fine Tune were talking with the two mechanic zebras.

“She said its nothing major,” I said to Lost. Leaning over, I pressed my face against her side. “Just tension or something. I’m fine, I promise.”

“Good,” she answered. “I hope she’s right. And, umm, you’re allowed to get up if you need to.” She smiled and hugged me. “We’ll stop by the Stables on our way back, before we head to Idle. I’d like to bring some extra firepower to deal with the original. Just in case.”

“You don’t think she’ll give us the mares back?”

“Well, they killed the slaver who was selling them for sex, and she was a major purchaser of their drugs” she said, her voice low. “She might have been doing something horrible, but she didn’t deserve to get a grenade to the face. Not when she’d already given up. All that says to me is that she doesn’t care about loyalty. If she’ll kill a pony who was giving her regular caps on a whim, then I’m fairly certain she’ll double cross our deal, too.” Shaking her head, she looked at the mountains in the distance. “So no, I don’t trust that we’ll get them free without a fight.”

“Bringing a few Steel Rangers can’t hurt,” I agreed. We’d also be able to get some of Marshmallow Sundae’s cooking. That alone was worth a quick stop. “But don’t you think we should ask Rose what she thinks first? She knows that fat blob better than anypony.”

Lost tilted her head side to side, as if weighing the options out. After a moment, she took a deep breath and nodded. “That’s actually a good idea,” she answered. “The more we know, the better.”

Smiling, I sat back and relaxed. Casually, I looked over at the mall and felt a little pang in my chest. “What do you think’ll happen here once we leave?” I asked.

“Well, from what Fine Tune and Xeno have translated for me, they’re going to set up some sister-tribe-thing with the zebras and buffalo that didn’t want to leave Starswirl Caverns,” she answered. “They had a few questions about what we found on the way there, so I’ve been answering things about our run last night for the past...” She groaned. “Goddesses, since before we finished working on the motorwagon.”

“You did a really good job on it,” I complimented.

“Thanks,” she said with a smile. “Hopefully, it’ll run as good as it did before.”

“If it doesn’t, Praline can fix it while we recruit some Steel Rangers,” I said, nodding. “She fixed it up last time, and I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to stuff her head into a new engine to do some upgrades.”

Lost chuckled, but trailed off and went silent. “I think I need to break things off with Crème Brûlée,” she said quietly. Before I could snap at her, she added, “I’m not looking forward to it, at all. I just...”

“Fucked other ponies, and zebras, behind her back?”

“Nearly lost everything,” she answered solemnly. “I keep thinking it could end at any time, and I need to get everything out of life I can before its gone.”

As much as I wanted to give her as stern a talking to as she usually gave me, I sort of understood. After everything that happened, with the shot to her throat, the loss of my hoof, everything in U Cig, and nearly losing Xeno... I- I did understand. If we were going to live this life, in this world, there wasn’t any guarantee we’d survive until the next day.

If only we lived in the old Equestria, before the world ended. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about dying in some gunfight with raiders or being eaten by a dragon. Or fighting a horrible monster that wanted to eat us. A shiver ran down my spine, and I pulled my steel hoof close.

“I’ll back you up, if you need it,” I said, wrapping my sore forelegs around my sister and holding onto her as tight as I could.

“Thanks, Hidden,” she whispered, returning the hug.

For a short while we sat there, just holding onto one another, before Lost finally let go. When I looked up to protest, she pointed a hoof.

Standing next to the motorwagon was Rose, feverishly tapping at her fetlock, as if to indicate the clock on her PipBuck. Her eyes practically bugged out of her skull from how intently she was staring. “Do I need to remind you,” she snapped. “That we’re on a time limit!”

“She’s right,” I admitted. “We don’t really have time for relaxing.”

“We’re ready,” Lost added. “Let me run inside and grab a few potions for the road, and we can go.”

“Can you send Xeno over?” I requested. “Since I’m not allowed to get up.”

Lost smirked, but nodded. She hopped down and disappeared behind the motorwagon.

“You do care about them, right?” Rose asked. “This isn’t some big ‘I want to be the hero’ moment and it’s all talk, right?...” She frowned and swallowed, furrowing her brows anxiously.

“No, I’m not trying to be a hero. I just... feel responsible,” I answered. “There’s just been a lot on my mind and...” I took a deep breath. “I keep forgetting whats important. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not a Goddess, nopony’s perfect,” Rose said reassuringly. “Once we get back, I’ll talk to the fat blob and see about getting those mares for you.”

“Then we can go to The Cinch?”

“Right, to get you looked at,” she answered as she climbed up onto the motorwagon’s deck. We really needed a staircase or something. I’d need to mention that to Lost later. “Then I’ll need to figure out what I’m going to do with myself.”

Before I could say anything, Xeno arrived at the motorwagon. “Hiddenpony, you wished to see me?” she asked before hopping herself up onto the deck right next to Rose.

“I just wanted to say bye,” I answered. Reaching out, I wiggled my steel hooves to get her to walk over. When she did, I leaned forward and gave her a tight hug. It hurt a little, and I knew it was against ‘doctor’s orders,’ but I was going to do it no matter what. “Just be safe, I want to see you in a few days when you’re back. Please don’t take too long.”

Xeno hugged me back. When I released, she pulled back and smiled. “Iwill be fast, I promise,” she said. “Goodbye, Hiddenpony. Donot die while I am away. Lostpony will have many potions and brews, gifts from the tribe. Use them.”

“We’ll survive,” I promised. “See you soon.”

“See you, Hiddenpony.”

* * *

Awkwardly, I plucked a twig from my mane. Staring at the little piece of wood held in the hinge of my steel hoof, I couldn’t help but scowl. Of course it would be me who ruined an easy and otherwise care free trip through the mountains. With Lost driving, we’d made good time. With no splinterwolves to watch out for, I’d had time to finally relax. It wasn’t until I ended up actually needing a Sparkle~Cola bottle that things went wrong.

They’d stopped to let me off, I’d quickly staggered behind a tree, and managed to find a little slope just out of sight to do what I needed to. Of course, with steel hooves and incredibly sore legs, I didn’t stand much of a chance of not falling. Stupid me. It seemed like every time I had to hurry off to relieve myself, something bad happened. First feral ghoul ponies, and then slipping down a hillside in the middle of the mountains.

I threw the twig away.

By the time I made my way back to the motorwagon, I must have looked like I lost a fight with a tree. Leaves in my tail, twigs in my mane... I’d even found a small branch pinned between my barding and my jacket. Even after a nap, and waking up to find Lost cuddled around me, they were still everywhere. It was enough to drive a pony insane!

Snapping my tail back and forth to shake free more of the stuck leaves, I curled tighter against Lost. Somewhere along the trip I’d fallen asleep and managed to, for once, rest without horrible nightmares or dreams about our mom. It was... nice. I felt like I deserved it. Of course, I woke up more sore than before the nap. I buried my face against her and smiled.

Beside me, I watched trees practically fly past. We were going a lot faster on the trip back, even with only Rose powering the engine. Whatever the zebras, Lost, and Fine Tune had done to it, they’d made it work a lot better than even Praline could. We’d already made it back through the mountains, and if I recognized the trees like I thought I did, we’d be back at the Stables soon.

“How much longer?” I asked, leaning away from Lost and whispering so I wouldn’t wake her.

“I don’t know? We’re through the mountain pass and I turned the right direction so...” Rose answered, shrugging. “I’ve only been here once... I have no idea.”

“Okay, let me check the PipBuck,” I said. Wriggling to get both my forelegs free, I earned a groan from Lost. “Sorry, sis, just stay asleep.” Leaving my leg trapped under her, I looked at the screen and tapped at the buttons with my nose. Why couldn’t I have cheater magic like my sister? It would have made the whole process easier. Several nose bumps later and I’d found the map screen. “Okay, umm...” I squinted, shifting my leg to block the light from my eyes. “We’re almost there. I think. I can’t zoom the map in or anything, but it looks like we’re close.”

“Alright, I’ll keep a better eye out. Anything I should be looking for?” the clone mare asked, not looking back at me. Instead she scanned the rocky wall in the distance where the forest turned to mountain.

“They should still have a pony guarding the entrance. So, look for a Steel Ranger?” I suggested. Twisting an ear, I looked around. Another stray twig jabbed gently, but obnoxiously, into the side of my head. “Where’d Fine Tune go?” I asked, reaching around and trying to knock it loose with my free hoof.

“He’s around back, keeping watch for anypony that might try to sneak up on us,” she answered. “We’re kind of a big target right now. Big motorwagon making a ton of noise?” She laughed. “I have no idea how you managed to sleep next to that thing.”

“Easily, I’ve been exhausted,” I answered. “And honestly, I’ve slept near weirder, louder...” I looked at my sister and decided it was best to not finish that thought.

“Well... good? You needed it. I’ll keep an eye out for a Steel Ranger,” she reassured me.

“Alright,” I muttered, shifting again and plucking another twig from my mane. Tossing it away, I closed my eyes.

It only took long enough for me to nearly fall asleep for another short nap before the ring of Rose’s voice cut through the air.

“We’re here!” she announced. The motorwagon slowed to a gentle stop right after she said so. Past her, another pony’s voice faintly past her. It sounded like the Steel Ranger guard greeting us.

Grimacing and gritting my teeth, I opened my eyes. “Yay?” I asked nopony in particular. With our arrival, I needed to get up. I shoved at Lost with my steel hooves. “Wake up, Lost. We’re here.”

Nothing. She just snored once, lifted her head up, then let it fall back over me with a thump. Now with her nose buried between me and the engine housing, she squeezed me tight. The hug was nice, but we needed to get up.

I bit the tip of her ear to get her attention.

She moaned.

My heart stopped. That was not the kind of attention I wanted from her. “Lost!” I yelled. “Wake up!” I pushed her away as hard as I could and held her limp body in the air above me.

She jerked once, snorted, and snapped her eyes open. “What? Where...” she muttered, legs suddenly flailing. “Ahh! Ground!” Bleary eyed and glasses on crooked, she stared down at me. “Hidden, put me down!”

“Sorry...” I whispered. Gently, I lowered her down, shifting to my side and letting her get her hooves onto the wooden deck of the motorwagon. When she was finally on her own four hooves, I pulled mine back and wriggled my way into a sitting position. “You weren’t waking up.”

“I guess I needed some sleep...” she said softly. The little bags under her eyes were still there, just like always. It’d been a while since I’d seen them so prominent, but after the past few days, I could understand. It was really a good thing she got a nap, too, even if it was a short one. The ear I’d bitten flicked. She reached up and touched it with her hoof, then tilted her head to the side and stared at me. “Why is my ear we-”

“Anyway! I had to wake you up, because we’re here,” I said, interrupting her and pointing toward the front of the motorwagon. The lone Steel Ranger who’d been on guard, stood next to the front wheel talking to Rose.

He caught me pointing, and waved a hoof. I recognized the dark orange stallion from when I visited with Elder Drop Scone before leaving, but I couldn’t place his name. They’d apparently made the outside into a nice guard... station... thing. A little table and a few chairs sat near the entrance to the cave. Atop the table sat pair of binoculars, wedged between the pages of a book to hold it open.

I waved back.

Rose turned and looked at me, following the gaze of the stallion. After seeing me, she turned back around. “Anyway, we’re just here for a follow up. We have to go fast,” she told him.

“We’ve got ponies waiting for us. Can you go tell Elder Drop Scone that we’re back?” I requested.

“No problem. Please pull the motorwagon in front of the entrance though. It’ll buy us an extra minute or two if anypony comes knocking,” he said, before saluting. Collecting his binoculars and book from table near the cave, he quickly looked at the page before closing it, then disappeared inside.

Rose pulled the motorwagon around while we stretched and worked the sleep out. Fine Tune appeared from the back a moment later and sat beside Lost. He’d stayed in his unicorn form, and held the silenced pistol in his magic, letting it float lazily in the air next to him. Every so often, even while he watched us with a silly smile on his face, he’d look over the side of the motorwagon, staying true to his guard duty.

“Anypony around?” Lost asked.

“Nope,” he answered. “Just lots of trees and stuff to see. Everything out here is so nice. Even the ponies who would buy us just threw us into the same chores we’d always done. I like this place.” He smiled and slid the pistol into a holster for it in his barding. “This is the best mission the old queen ever gave me.”

“Did she normally use changelings for tracking down escapees?” Lost asked him, tilting her head to the side.

“No,” he answered, still smiling wide. “I just came home at the right time. Lucky m-ahh!”

The motorwagon lurched, throwing all of us off balance. The brake squealed and the motorwagon jerked backward. Ending back in the same position we’d all started, the three of us looked back and forth from one another and laughed. Fine Tune mock shook, as if he were being thrown back and forth over and over again. With a flash of green flame, he transformed into the pegasus mare and took to the air. She stuffed the pistol away and hovered, floating back and forth, waiting for us to head inside.

Lost and I shared a shrug, then hopped down off the deck. Rose followed us a second later. We left the majority of our things set between the seats, hidden from view. There was no reason to bring every weapon we had with us.

Inside the cave, they’d set up a few lights and moved every rock and bit of rubble out of the way to make a clean path. It never ceased to amaze me how fast they worked. First the caverns where their own Stable was, now this? They’d made a hole in the wall hospitable, somehow. Inside the cavern at the end of the tunnel, lights hung from the walls, draped over the door frames for both Stables. The access console Lost had rigged to get in long ago was now nicely cleaned and with a tiny screen that glowed for anypony who wanted to access it.

“Think they changed the codes?” I asked idly.

“If they’re smart, they have,” Rose answered. “The best place in the Wasteland to hole up when bad ponies come knocking is a Stable. The only way to get in is to know the code or be really damn good at breaking their locks open.”

I looked over at Lost. “How... did you get into the Stables when we found them?” I asked.

“Well, I used two methods,” she answered, looking over at the console. Walking over, she rested a hoof on it. “I still remember the code mom said was used for opening the Stable we were born in.”

Rose laughed. “You two are Stable ponies, huh?” she said. “That explains a lot.”

“We’ve been out of the Stable a long time,” I explained. “Since before I can even remember.”

“Anyway, without mom’s PipBuck, I didn’t actually have the recording. So, I just had to fiddle around with the controls until I found the same access settings and forced it to accept the code I knew.” She smirked. “It helped that I’m good with that sort of thing.” She tapped her horn with a hoof.

“Why not just pick the lock? It’s still a door right?” Fine Tune asked, tilting his head and looking back and forth between the two Stable doors.

“The little carapace pick you have wouldn’t fit in a door like this, and they aren’t designed to have outside locks, anyway.” Lost answered. “They wouldn’t protect very well, if anypony could break into them. Plus, neither Hidden nor I are as good at lockpicking as you are.”

Remembering some of the terrible experiences I’d had with it, I nodded silently in agreement.

Walking away from it, she led the three of us past the open door of Stable Twenty One, and through the echoing metal hallways. “I’d have done the same thing for Stable Sixty, but there wasn’t any outside access at all,” she added as we walked down the well lit hallways.

“So, what’s the plan while we’re here?” I asked, hoping for a little refresher on everything we needed to do. I didn’t want to forget anything before we jumped back into dealing with things in Idle.

Lost sighed. “I’m heading straight to talk to Crème Brûlée,” she answered. “While I do that, you and Rose should go talk to the Elder and find out how many ponies we can borrow.”

Rose pursed her lips and stopped following us. “I won’t let you kill her,” she said flatly. “I mean, I’m the first to admit she’s a fat sack of shit who abuses us copies for her own gain, often...” She glared at me. “To the point of getting us killed, but... You can’t just kill her.”

We all stopped and looked at her. Lost took a deep breath and stomped a hoof on the steel floor. “We’re taking her down, no matter what,” she said. “She’s been holding those ponies hostages, and she’s been keeping the town in a drugged out stupor. Those ponies deserve to live their own lives.”

“Most of them chose that life!” Rose argued. “It’s not our fault this world is a shithole, in fact, I did my fair share trying to keep this shitty world from ever existing! Not everypony is strong enough to survive out there, and they’d rather live in a haze than deal with it” She took a step back.

“That’s not the issue though, is it?” I asked. I knew I wasn’t a thinky pony like Lost, but I’d had more time to talk to Rose and got to know her a lot better than my sister did. If she really wanted to save that mare then... “What happens to you if she dies?”

“I don’t know,” she answered solemnly.

Fine Tune and I both looked at my sister. Her expression softened and she licked her lips. After only a moment she groaned and rubbed a hoof over her face. “This is too much to stress about,” she muttered. “We’ll stop her without putting a bullet in her head,” she said. “After all, when we tried to blow her up last time, that didn’t work...”

“She’s fairly resilient,” Rose agreed. “Being able to heal herself like she can...”

Waving a hoof to urge everypony to continue down the hallway, I asked, “How can she do that anyway?”

Everypony else followed me as we winded down another hallway. “Well, megaspells require a large group of unicorns all casting spells in tandem, to create a spell matrix,” Rose answered as we walked. “She has several copies who are under explicit instructions to stay attuned to her casting that spell, so when she starts it, they all join in to make it a megaspell.”

“Can any of you do it?” Lost asked.

“No, she’s the only one who can initiate,” the clone mare answered. “And no, I don’t know why that is.

“Do you think it’s because she’s the one who has a soul?” I asked. Instantly a forehoof shot to cover my mouth. That was a stupid thing to say out loud and I knew it. It just... It just sort of blurted out on its own. I shrunk back and looked at her.

My sister stared, wide-eyed at me. “Hidden...”

“Probably,” answered the pink mare.

Before we could go any further on the topic, another set of hooffalls echoed down the hallway we were walking down. From an intersection not too far ahead of us burst the steel-clad form of a pony. Scrambling hooves not catching purchase on the steel floor, whoever it was skidded clear past us, down another hallway in the opposite direction. A loud clang echoed back, followed by a cute sounding voice groaning.

“Goddesses,” I muttered. “It’s Praline...”

Lost chuckled and patted me on the side. “Tell her what’s going on, and get her to look at your legs,” she ordered. “I’m going to talk to Crème Brûlée.” Before Praline could climb her way back through the hallways to us, Lost bolted and disappeared in the direction the crazy mare had come from.

“What about me?” Fine Tune asked, her voice sounding stressed. When Lost disappeared, she slumped down and quickly transformed back into a changeling with a flash of green fire. The poor changeling chirped once, then looked at me as if heartbroken.

I gave him a hug. “You can come with us,” I said, smiling. Leaning in, I whispered, “Once you get a taste of Praline, you’ll be glad you stayed.” Knowing just how perky she could be, he’d probably be full for weeks after an hour with her.

“Hey!” yelled the armored mare. She bounced back into view, making the hallways shake and rattle around us. When she reached us, she pulled off her helmet and smiled so wide I feared her head might pop clean off.

“Hello,” Rose said calmly.

“Hi Praline!” I said through gritted teeth, trying to seem as happy as possible. If she didn’t catch on that I wasn’t feeling well, then there’d be no reason for her to examine me. Any way to get out of that after the last two times...

“Hiya!” said the mare, still bouncing in place. “You’re back so soon! How’d the motorwagon work? Did it make it across and back? What’s it like on the other side of the mountains? Where’s your baby dragon?” She looked back and forth, dashing in and peeking around Rose and I. She stopped when she saw the changeling standing next to me. Her eyes went wide. “Fine Tune!” She latched onto him and squeezed so tight I swore his eyes were going to pop out.

“Umm, Praline...” I started, tapping a steel hoof against her. “You’re going to break him...”

The poor changeling chirped and flailed his hind legs, the bright spots in his eyes rolling back. “Kri... Kriee!” he squeaked out.

“Aww, okay,” Praline said, finally releasing him from her hug. Without moving her armored hooves off him, she sat down and lifted him into the air. “I’ve just never gotten to see him as a changeling.” She smiled. “Always hiding as that cute stallion, aren’t you?” She poked his nose and hugged him again.

He just looked over at me, a mix of confusion and fear. The tiniest hint of a smile was forming in the corners of his mouth, as it must have dawned on him just how much happy Praline had, and how much he could eat.

“He was wounded in battle the other night,” Rose interjected. “You should be a little more gentle.”

“Wounded!” she practically shrieked. “Hmm, I wonder...” Setting him down, she started to examine his legs. “I could graft a...” Trailing off into thought, she began to mutter under her breath, still roughly going over the poor changeling.

To his credit, he let her. Once he was released, the smile that’d been forming showed itself in full force, and his eyes began to brighten. A faint glow appeared over his horn, similar to the one he’d had when feeding off me so long ago.

“I think he’ll be fine,” I whispered to Rose. Turning back to Praline, I cleared my throat, “We need to talk to the Elder, can you... umm... Not put metal bits in my friend?”

She waved a hoof dismissively at me, while practically crawling across the Stable floor to get a good look at his hind legs. “I don’t think...” she muttered. Popping up into the air, she landed on her hooves with a clang and grabbed onto one of Fine Tune’s wings. “I don’t think my parts would work on him...” Dropping his wing from her grasp, she grabbed her helmet. “Let’s go see my mom!” Once again bouncing, she led us down the hallways and around the same corner Lost had disappeared behind.

A flash of green erupted from behind us, as Fine Tune transformed again. When they faded, the blue-coated stallion remained. With a dopey smile across his face, he followed us. “Delicious,” he whispered.

“So, how’s-” Praline asked between clanging bounces. “-your hooves?”

“They’re fine,” I answered. “Haven’t damaged the right one. The left is the same as it was, y’know, yesterday.” I frowned and looked down at the damn thing. “We had a rough night though...”

“Do you,” Clang. “Need me to,” Clang. “Look it over?” she asked. It was almost impossible to follow what she said through her jumping.

“Praline, stop jumping. I can’t understand you,” I complained. Luckily, it worked and she stopped, allowing me to continue. “Thank you. I don’t think I need a tune up. I’m in a bad spot after said roughness, but nothing’s broken.” To prove my point, I bucked at the air behind me. It hurt, but I bit back against the grunt of pain. Maybe I’d kicked a little too high...

“We’ll be going to The Cinch after we make it back to Idle,” Rose added. “There’s a Ministry of Peace building there that I plan to force Hidden into, so we can check on everything.”

“Ohhh? The Ministry building?” Praline asked, turning around and smiling at Rose. Her eyes seemed to light up from her excitement. “Can I come? They might have more cybernetics books! I’ve read the ones I have a million times already and while they’re really good for the basic stuff I’m sure I could do better if I just had more time to research and experiment. Maybe they’ll have a book for programming the internals. I could make them so much better!” She bounced a few more times. “Mom’s office is close. You know the layout! I’m going to go get my things!”

The moment her sentence was finished, the loud clanging of hooves filled the air, but Praline was still right in front of us. Only a half second later, the armored mare collapsed in a puff of smoke, as if she wasn’t there in the first place.

“How’d she do that?” Rose asked, looking back and forth between Fine Tune and me.

All I could do was shrug. “Praline is... weird,” I explained.

* * *

I plucked another twig from my mane and threw the thing away. After this was said and done, if we had time, I would head straight down to the showers and wash every last piece of nature off me. I sniffed. I could really use a shower anyway...

Shooting a glare at the twig that lay on the floor, I turned to the Overmare’s office door. With a pause for a breath, I rapped my hoof against the intricately designed door.

“Come in,” said the kindly voice of Elder Drop Scone.

I pushed open the door and took a step back to let Fine Tune and Rose walk in first. Once they’d both stepped through, I followed them in.

Across the room sat the Elder behind the Overmare’s desk. She looked up from her paperwork at us and waved a hoof. “Come in, come in,” she said. “Close the door behind you.” Stacking her papers neatly, she pushed them to the side of the desk. What paperwork was she doing, anyway? “You’re back much sooner than I expected. I take it everything went well?” She frowned. “Where is your sister and your zebra friend?”

“Lost is talking to Crème Brûlée, and Xeno is staying with her family for now,” I answered. “We had a rough night, but everything’s okay.”

“As long as everyone is alright,” the older mare said. “So, since you didn’t go running for my son as soon as you returned, there’s something you wished to talk to me about?” She smiled and laughed quietly, a hearty chuckle that bore no ill will. It didn’t stop me from blushing.

“Well, I... Umm,” I stammered. Stupid not thinky pony coming in without a plan... Wait, did that mean he... My cheeks burned.

“We got what we needed, so we’ll be heading back to Idle,” Rose answered for me.

“My Queen said she wanted to bring some of your Steel Rangers with us!” Fine Tune added, still sounding quite chipper after his run in with Praline. “She’s planning ahead.”

Scrunching my muzzle up, I nodded in agreement. “Lost is worried that we’ll run into some trouble when we get back,” I explained. “And as much as Rose here knows the mare we dealt with, she thinks having a little extra firepower would help us. Just to be safe.”

“I understand completely,” agreed Drop Scone. “I won’t have family running off into danger without offering any help. You know if you’d asked before, I’d have sent a few of my children to help you. You are okay, aren’t you? You look so thin, so tired.” Turning around, she tapped a button on the massive block of terminals behind the Overmare’s desk. “Marshmallow Sundae? Could you bring a meal for four to the Overmare’s office?” she asked.

“That’s okay,” I tried to argue. “We’re fi-”

The terminal crackled with static, and Marshmallow Sundae’s voice blared through the speaker. “Of course mother,” she said. “I’ll bring something up as soon as I can.”

Drop Scone turned back and looked at Fine Tune. “Actually,” she muttered. “Would you like anything from our kitchen? Do changelings eat like we do?” She laughed a little, a slight blush forming. “You’ll have to forgive me, I don’t know much about your kind.”

“No,” he answered. “I don’t need anything, I just ate.”

“As long as you’re eating,” she said to the changeling. “Anything you don’t finish, you’ll just have to take with you. I can’t have you starving out in the middle of nowhere.” Looking back at the terminal, she added, “Thank you Scribe, I’ll see you shortly.” Releasing the button, she twisted the chair back to us. “Now that that’s taken care of, how long will you be staying? I can have food packed and beds ready within...” She looked at the terminal again. “Within a few minutes, actually. You’re here right at shift change. Oh my... Is that the time?”

I looked at Rose and she looked at me. This was getting us nowhere. Lost was the thinky pony who was good at talking to others. Why’d she think leaving this to me was a good idea? “Elder, we really don’t have time,” I said. “There are mares waiting for us, and we don’t know what’ll happen if we’re late. Lunch can wait.”

“Well, in that case, we’ll talk while we eat,” she answered. “What do you expect to be up against?”

Rose took a step forward and cleared her throat. “The mare we’ll be talking to has a small army at her disposal, and she’s very stubborn in her ways,” the clone mare said. “We have what she asked for when she sent me with your... daughters?” Raising an eyebrow, she looked at me, then at Drop Scone.

“Not blood related,” I explained.

“Ah,” she said, realization dawning. “We probably only need one or two ponies to come with us. Just enough that if things do go south, which I don’t expect to happen, we’ll have somepony to watch our backs.”

“Of course,” said the Elder. She sat back in the chair and tented her hooves in front of her face. “The twins are too young to go on their own. Marshmallow Sundae isn’t in any condition to fight, and getting Crème Brûlée to come out of the security room is a chore.”

She didn’t mention Lamington, which meant he could come with us. A little smile crept across my lips. We could spend some time on the motorwagon together and- No. That was stupid. He thought Praline and I were a thing, so... Actually, that would be the perfect chance for me to talk to him and clear everything up.

“We could bring Lamington?” I offered. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind coming to help us, and with the weapons he has, nopony would be able to hurt any of us.”

“That isn’t a bad idea at all,” Drop Scone agreed. Reaching back, she held her hoof over the terminal button for the intercom. “I think he’d do well to see more of this Wasteland. He’s been so busy with heavy lifting.” She pressed a few keys on the terminal’s input, then hit the intercom the button. “Star Paladin Lamington, please report to the Overmare’s office.”

“Can Praline come too?” Fine Tune practically shouted. “She’d be great to have with us. Everypony would be happy all the time.”

“While my daughter is a good fighter, we need her here right now,” Drop Scone answered, shaking her head. “We’ve only just finished reinstalling everything to make both Stables functional. I need her to make sure they all work now that they’re hooked up.”

“Aww...” Praline whimpered.

“Gah!” Rose, Fine Tune, and I all yelped. The others took a step back in surprise, while I practically jumped into the air. Landing hurt all four hooves, jarred up by the steel floor. Only Drop Scone showed no reaction, sitting happily as if it were the most normal thing in the world for her daughter to randomly appear in a room.

“Where’d you come from?” I asked, wide-eyed.

No longer encased by her armor, the chocolate-colored mare looked at me. “Somepony said my name, so in I came!” she announced.

I looked over at the door. It was still closed. How in the- But that didn’t- I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Praline was weird and could just... do that sort of thing. Trying to think about it would only make it worse. Exhaling slowly, I opened my eyes.

“But, I really want to go,” Praline said. She dropped to her belly on the floor and grabbed onto my legs with her forehooves. With tears welling in the corners of her eyes, she sniffled. “Please?”

“We really don’t have time for this,” I complained, trying in vain to shake her free. Why’d she even latch onto me? I wasn’t the one who said she couldn’t come with us. “There’s ponies waiting for us whose lives are at stake!”

“Praline,” said Drop Scone. “You’re not a filly anymore. We need you here and you know it.”

The mare groaned and pushed herself back up. Standing, she hung her head and started toward the door. Just before she reached it, she asked, “If I finish reprogramming the Stable, can I go?”

“Once everything here is operational, we’ll contact the sisters and you can meet them somewhere,” the mare’s mother answered.

Praline’s lower lip quivered, and she looked almost about to burst into tears.“Y-you promise?”

“I do,” the Elder answered.

“Xeno’s going to return here when she finishes with her family, too,” I added. “Maybe you could be the one to bring her to meet up with us afterward?”

“Yes! Perfect!” the chocolate-colored mare yelled, jumping triumphantly into the air. “In that case, I’ll go finish right now!” Spinning around, she pulled the office door open and jumped through...

Only to slam right into Marshmallow Sundae.

The clatter of ponies and dishes echoed through the room, followed by eeps and groans of surprise and pain. A weak voice said, “We’re okay... You’re okay, right Marshmallow?”

“You spilled my food...” muttered the mare.

“I’m sorry Marshy, I’ll help fix it!”

The Elder placed her head in her hooves and sighed. “Are you two alright?” she asked, sounding more annoyed than worried about her foals.

“We’re okay mom,” answered Marshmallow Sundae. “The same can not be said for my sandwiches.”

Elder Drop Scone took a deep breath and lowered her hooves. “Sorry,” she said to the three of us. Looking out the door, she cleared her throat. “Praline, help your sister clean up and then go get to work.”

“Okay, mom,” said the mare, sounding dejected. Past the door, she and Marshmallow Sundae were already up and cleaning. The quiet echo of their hooves against the steel floor clanged back and forth, as they picked the mess up.

It felt wrong to not be out there helping them, but I got the feeling from how Drop Scone reacted, that this wasn’t the first time Praline had gotten excited and nearly run somepony over. I looked at Rose, hoping for a bit of advice on how to react, but she just shook her head.

Family matters, of course. They knew what to do and it was best I not get involved. We didn’t have time, after all. We were on the clock, mares were waiting on us.

“Praline. Next time, please, watch where you’re going,” Drop Scone said to her daughter.

“Yes ma’am,” Praline said, sounding much more professional than she had when she answered before. “You sure you’re okay, Marshy?” she asked again, hesitantly. The only answer was a grunt, followed by a curt nod from the white-coated mare. “Okay, I’ll go get programming and testing now....” Then, she disappeared down the hallway, her hooffalls swiftly fading as she ran off.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” the older mare said to us. “Marshmallow, don’t worry about lunch. Just go get cleaned up, okay?”

Her daughter closed her eyes and nodded at her, now holding a tray covered in the scraps of what were once several sandwiches. She too turned down the hallway and disappeared, her quiet, hollow hooffalls falling much slower than her more energetic sister. The echoes came in an odd pattern. She still had the limp from when we dragged the family up from Stable Sixty and into our fight...

They stopped suddenly, only to be replaced by the much much heavier metal-on-metal thuds of a massive power armor wearing stallion. Coming down the hall, toward the doorway, could only be Lamington. The hooffalls stopped short, before he could come into sight, and a static-laced voice asked, “Do you need assistance, Scribe?”

His only answer was a quiet, muffled ‘nu-uh’ from the mare.

“So,” the elder said, pulling the conversation back on topic. “Lamington will accompany you.”

“Thank you, Elder,” I said.

“Thanks,” Rose added.

Fine Tune just smiled, bouncing in place on his hooves.

“Whom will I be accompanying where?” Lamington asked, his static-filled voice carrying loudly as he finally walked through the door behind us. Slowly the visor of his helmet passed across the room, pausing only briefly at each of us. “It’s good to see you’ve returned,” he said, his voice only breaking once into static. “Was your mission across the mountains successful?”

“Eh, mostly?” I said, holding a steel hoof and wiggling it back and forth. I wasn’t really sure myself how to think of what happened. We were only there for a day, but it felt like we’d made a trip to Tartarus and back, and that nightmare... I couldn’t call what we went through a success until the mares were safe and we were through with the entire fiasco.

“You sound displeased with your results,” he answered.

“I am,” I muttered. “I think. We did what we needed to, but... It was a mess.”

“So long as nopony died, a messy mission which succeeds is still successful. Always try to keep that in mind,” he said reassuringly, though the static dampened the effect. His steel-clad hooves clanging loudly against the floor as he walked forward, only stopping to salute his mother once he’d reached the desk. “Elder, you wished to see me?”

“I did,” she answered. “Hidden Fortune and her friends here need an escort. I’d like you to go with them.”

“Ma’am?” he asked, a hint of disbelief in his voice.

“They’re requesting extra firepower in case of emergencies while dealing with a...” Drop Scone explained, trailing off. She looked to the three of us. “What exactly did you say they were again?”

“An army of Roses,” Rose answered, rolling her eyes. “The mare has hundreds more of me, with a large stock of weapons collected from various parts of the city over the past few decades.”

Drop Scone closed her eyes and nodded slowly. “Yes, that sounds sufficient to send one of my best soldiers to deal with,” she said, smiling. “Star Paladin, I’d like you to make sure they’re safe.”

He cleared his throat and sat down. Reaching up, he worked his power-armor encased hooves around the clasps that held his helmet in place. With dexterity I’d only expected from a unicorn, he undid each piece and lifted the helmet away. A quiet hiss escaped as the seal broke, and he stiffly pulled it away, twisting to keep the metal pieces from catching against his coat. Once it was free, he swept a hoof over his mane to push it back and, and looked over at me. As gorgeous as always, the only thing that marred his face was the painted cybernetic eye that didn’t seem to fit.

A shiver ran down my spine. If we hadn’t opened that Stable, he’d still have both...

“Do you feel I’ll be enough for a few hundred enemies?” he asked, his pure, static-less voice nearly enough to make me melt. “Will the family be prepared for a potential ambush by the slavers we were warned about in my absence?” He looked down at me and smiled.

“We’re born of steel, son,” the Elder answered. “With or without you here, we’ll survive. Our family cannot all hide behind walls underground and tucked into mountains forever. If ponies come to find and hurt us, they’ll leave with their tails between their legs with or without you.”

“Of course, Elder,” the Star Paladin answered. “My job is to protect my family, and I agree. I should be there for the most vulnerable of us before those who you’ve trained all their lives to fight and survive.”

“We’re not vulnerable,” I muttered under my breath.

“I meant no implication,” Lamington answered, one of his ears flicking a few times. “Merely, the difference between being in a fortified Stable with our power armor, versus traveling the Wastes? We supplied you with the best our resources would allow, but that still leaves you in a tenuous state compared to my siblings.”

“You’ve got a way with words,” Rose muttered. “Anypony ever tell you that?”

“A soldier’s duty is not only to be adept at fighting, but must be skilled with words as well,” the stallion answered, looking quite proud of himself. “Bullets won’t win every fight, negotiation is important too. I pride myself on being proficient at both forms of conflict... resolution.”

Goddesses...

“Their father always hoped we’d leave the Stable to find the world as we they wrote about it in the books we were left with,” Drop Scone explained. “With the War over, and with things like Kindness, Loyalty, and Honesty once again the most important things. He made sure our foals were well educated before he passed.”

“He was a good stallion, Elder,” Lamington said, sitting straight and once again saluting.

“Yes, he was...”

“I would like to request additional support,” Lamington added. “My missile launcher must be reloaded often, and I would prefer my...” He trailed off, looking over the three of us again. The steel of his cybernetic eye reflected the dim light of the room slightly, making me squint. “Friends... not be left unprotected for any small amount of time.”

“Understood,” Drop Scone agreed with him. “Gather your things and prepare to leave. They’ve little time to lolligag. I’ll have a Knight ready to accompany you shortly.”

“Yes, Elder,” Lamington said. He lifted his helmet and awkwardly slid it over his head, once again hiding his gorgeous face and wonderful voice behind steel and static. Sliding his hooves down along the steel power armor, he worked the clasps shut. Once it was locked into place, he rolled his neck around once, as the visor lit up and the suit seemed to come alive on its own. He stood and turned for the door, accompanied by a light buzzing from everything around him powering back up. “I shall make haste and meet with you at the entrance to the Stable.”

“Alright, we’ll meet you there.”

One job done, now we just had to wait for Lost to finish with Crème Brûlée and find out who Lamington would be bringing with us. Praline now knew that we needed her to bring Xeno to us, and I’d managed to avoid being up on the doctor’s examining table by pushing through that we were on a limited time frame. Plus, I got through all that without Rose teasing me once about liking mares, and given how much time I spent blushing in embarrassment over stupid things during that whole exchange, I was taking what I could get.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Fine Tune leaned against me and stared me in the eye. A wide smile broke across his face and he whispered, “You like him, don’t you?”

The sigh of relief caught in my throat.

“What!”

* * *

I tapped on the PipBuck screen over my fetlock idly, flipping back and forth through the screens without really looking at them. The little light on the ‘data’ button was dimmer than the rest... I tapped my hoof over it to the next screen, bored. I had to make a point not to look at the clock on it. Something about staring at the time, with how often I’d been yelled at in the past about wasting time...

I looked up at Rose, who sat at the steering wheel with her grenade rifle held in the aquamarine haze of her magic at eye level. After a moment, she cracked it open and looked down the barrel from the back. As if she knew I was staring at her, she turned her head and looked at me from the corner of her eye. “Your sister usually take this long?” she ask, her trademark snideness missing entirely.

I shrugged. “We never really had to worry about time, growing up,” I answered. “The Wasteland works on ‘am I hungry?’ or ‘am I tired?’ not that we have to eat at whatever o’clock.” I flipped the screen on the PipBuck and stared at the little clock in the corner. “It has been a while though, too long... I should go find her.”

“That’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” she answered, smirking. “The changeling and I can get the engine revved up while you look for everypony else.”

Fine Tune flicked an ear from where he lay on the side with his eyes closed. One hazy blue eye opened and he looked at Rose, then over to me. “Krii?” he chirped, sitting up.

“I’ll try to be fast,” I reassured her, before hopping off the motorwagon. Adjusting my jacket over my armor, I trotted toward the cave and wormed my way through the tiny opening. I wasn’t really looking forward to the extra walking, because all I wanted to do was sit down and rest, but dammit... we were on a time limit. I’d been yelled at it enough over the past two days and I wasn’t going to let the others get me in trouble again.

Moving swiftly down the cave path, past the Stable door, and down into the hallways, I swiveled my ears forward to listen for anypony talking. If I could hear Lamington’s or Lost’s voices, echoing down the hallways, I might be able to speed things up.

Surprisingly, I felt good moving so fast. Since I’d gotten up from my nap, my legs had been feeling much better. Aside from the few stinging jolts I got, thanks to Praline, everything was going okay. Maybe I had just pulled something when lifting the motorwagon onto it’s wheels again. Sure, I had the nagging little claw feeling picking and poking at me, suggesting I had done something seriously wrong. But without the screaming staticy feeling running from my hooves to my spine, they were a lot easier to ignore.

The halls were amazingly empty. So many ponies had joined the ranks here, but after three hallways I hadn’t seen anypony. With the shift change that the Elder had mentioned when we talked to her, the only place I could think that everypony had disappeared off to was maybe the Atrium for a mid-shift meal?

At least I didn’t have to worry about interrupting anypony while I searched the halls. Stopping at another intersection, I looked left and right. The Steel Rangers had made the halls so pristine, without the grime of years going by without maintenance. I walked down the left hall, still listening and checking every open door I saw. Why couldn’t every treasure hunt be like this? There weren’t any crumbling ceilings, mangled support rods, or collapsing floors to leave me busted and bruised.

Caught in my thoughts about the difference between Wasteland hunting and hallway running when searching for things, I found myself at a dead end. “Okay, not this way,” I muttered to myself. “I’m going about this the wrong way...” Spinning on a hoof and sitting down on the cold floor, I looked at the PipBuck. “I’m not just looking for whatever shiny thing catches my interest...” Though, Lamington’s armor would be something to find. I did need to get him, too...

The Elder had said Crème Brûlée wasn’t coming out of the security office. I scrolled through the pages of the PipBuck until I found the map. “Security, security,” I whispered under my breath, looking around. Tapping the screen with my hoof, I finally found the office on the map. “Finally.”

Looking up from the little screen, I stood and started moving. Trotting slowly, I found myself back at an intersection. On the wall were several arrows, All pointing in different directions. The Overmare’s office was to my right, as was the Armory and... I blanched.

“Goddesses! Dammit!” I shrieked. The signs had been what kept me from losing my sister. How could I have forgotten that, at every hallway intersection, there were directions to everything a pony could want. Resisting smacking myself in the forehead with a steel hoof, I let my tail hang low and my ears droop, and walked down toward the Security offices.

Before I even reached the door, I could hear Lost’s and Crème Brûlée’s muffled voices from behind a doorway. Slowing to a careful walk, I placed my steel hooves quietly on the floor to keep from clanging, and walked up to the door.

Whatever they were saying, neither was happy. Lost’s voice wavered, and Crème Brûlée sounded like she was trying to verbally rip my sister a new one. Shrinking away, I pinned my ears back.

Maybe I should just listen a little...

No. I’d done that enough when it came to my sister and her relationships. I had other things to worry about. I still had to find Lamington, and now I knew where she was. I could come back if she wasn’t finished by the time I got the Star Paladin and whoever else the Elder wanted to go with us.

Leaning toward the door, I pressed my ear against it.

“-just don’t fucking-” screamed Crème Brûlée, sounding much clearer with my ear against the cool metal door.

No! I pulled away. I just told myself not to listen in and... Groaning, I forced myself to walk past. I’d hear about it later. Biting on my lower lip, I leaned- Dammit.

“Lamington, yes. He’ll distract me from this,” I told myself in a low whisper. Finally pulling away from the door, I walked away and toward the Armory. It wasn’t a long walk, but... that made sense. Probably build that way in case security ponies needed to deal with an emergency. Rounding the corner to the open door, I found myself face to face with the power armor wearing Star Paladin and the guard pony who’s name I couldn’t remember.

“Miss Fortune,” he said, a bit of static cutting through my name. Awkwardly, he paused and said nothing. After clearing his throat once, he looked to the other pony in the room with him, the stallion who’d been guarding the entrance when we arrived. “Were we taking too long?” he asked, a bit of worry in his voice.

“No, we’re still waiting for Lost,” I answered, lifting a hoof and pointing down the hallway toward the security offices. “Our sisters are fighting. But, umm, yeah... We are on a time limit and we have a long drive ahead of us. So I came to see where everypony was...” Raising my hoof from pointing, I rubbed it behind my mane a few times. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to rush you and... umm-”

“Nonsense,” he answered.

“So, what are you two doing back here?” I asked, shifting on my hooves.

“Well, come in and I’ll explain,” he said, beckoning me with a hoof. Once I’d stepped inside and sat down at the desk with the schedule on the wall behind it, he continued, “I mentioned while speaking with the Elder the fact that bullets cannot win every fight. Well, the same can be said of high explosives. Adaptability is important in all strategies.”

“Uh, huh?” I muttered, idly looking back and forth between him and the posted schedule. Which shift was it? I looked back to Lamington, finding him shifting and standing sideways in front of me. Beside him, the stallion looked just as annoyed at the Star Paladin moving away from him as I was about forgetting his name.

“You told us that there was a small army of ponies, and as I said there, my missile launcher is less than a perfect weapon for dealing with an army,” he continued explaining. “In light of that, I spoke to Tim Tam here and he sug-”

“Tim Tam!” I yelled, sitting up sharply. A jolt shot up my legs and back, making me twitch.

The two stallions stared at me, Lamington’s power armor tilted slightly to the side, and Tim Tam raising an eyebrow in confusion.

“Yes?” he asked, looking back and forth between me and Lamington.

“I... sorry, I’d forgotten your name and he reminded me and...” I stammered, trying to look like I wasn’t a complete idiot. Failing horribly, I just turned to the desk and slammed my head into it.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “We only met once.”

“I’m sorry, I’m an idiot.”

Clearing his throat, Lamington cut me off. “How about, instead of that, we teach you how to swap out my guns?” he offered, his voice only slightly staticy.

I tilted my head and cracked one eye open to look at him. “Are you sure I won’t just fuck that up, too?” I grumbled from the desk.

“It’ll be a learning experience. Who knows, you might need to do it in the field one day,” he answered. Beckoning me over again, I could practically feel his smile through the armor. “I’ve seen your rifle, I understand you have an appreciation for big guns. It would be a pleasure to let you examine mine.”

I’d love to check out his bi- My cheeks burned. Slipping from the chair, I slinked over and sat down next to Tim Tam quietly.

The dark orange earth pony nodded. “Don’t worry, it’s not so difficult,” he said reassuringly.

“Our power armor is designed to be sealed and protective against every threat, but malleable for the battlefield,” Lamington explained as I looked at the half-disconnected missile launcher. “Not every tour of duty requires the same tactics, nor the same weaponry. We’re designed to be modular.”

“And I need to know this why?” I asked, still a bit confused.

“You’re a part of this family, and I hope that you’ll be spending more time with us in the future,” the steel-clad stallion said, turning his head to me. “Knowing how to switch any weapon or attachment with any of our power armor will be a useful skill to have, especially if we ever have the resources to upgrade the armor you and your sister were gifted.

“That makes sense, I guess,” I answered, nodding and trying not to think if there was anything more to him saying he wanted us to spend more time together.

The smaller stallion reattached the cables that’d been undone when I sat down. “Best we start from the beginning,” he said. Pointing to the cluster attaching the gun to the armor, he instructed. “First we need to disconnect the power armor’s integration wiring from the gun. Just grab and pull.”

When he didn’t move forward to do it himself, I leaned in and grabbed onto as many as I could with my teeth and tugged hard. They resisted at first, but with a little extra pull, each one snapped free and dangled loosely. “What are these for?” I asked, dropping them from my teeth.

“Those, and the mounting cradle here, make it so the power armor can assist with aiming the gun, and allow the pony inside to fire it without needing to use their hooves,” he explained. “Now for the gun itself,” he said, smiling. Jumping up onto his hind legs, he wrapped his forehooves around the missile launcher. “I’ll hold it steady. See that retainer pin there? Just pull that out.”

“Training in Stable Sixty revolved around always assessing whatever situation was ahead of us. The first choice for any battle is to always try and resolve it peacefully,” Lamington explained as I looked for the pin Tim Tam had mentioned. “We were taught to never fire the first shot. Always extend a hoof of friendship. It can save ammunition, time, and most importantly... lives.” He paused for a moment, and both Tim Tam and I looked up at him. “Unfortunately, being the bigger pony has a price.” He cleared his throat. “Regardless, being prepared for what life throws at you was the basic tenant of our training growing up. All of my siblings have learned it, and one day I hope I can teach it to my foals.”

Feeling rather pale at the thought of him having foals with somepony, I said nothing and instead stuck my face dangerously close to the hinge between weapon and armor. Praying it wouldn’t snap into action and split my head open, I bit down on the pin Tim Tam had pointed out. Yanking my head back, it pulled free. “‘Ot if,” I said, triumphantly as the gun lifted away in the hooves of the smaller stallion.

“-so fucked,” said the voice of my sister from the hallway. The quiet thump of her hooves against the metal hallway echoed into the room. “I mean...” She sniffled, coming into view from the doorway. Tilting her head slightly, she looked in the door at the three of us, Lamington without his gun, Tim Tam on his hind hooves holding a gun to his chest, and me with my face practically stuck inside the Star Paladin’s armor.

“Sis?” I asked, turning to face her.

She shook her head and looked away, saying nothing. Head hung low, she sulked away.

“I should go take care of that,” I said, standing up and pulling back from the armor. The conversation with Crème Brûlée must have gone about as terribly as I’d expected. Gulping, I walked to the doorway.

“Don’t,” said the staticy voice of the Star Paladin. “I know she’s your sister, but I have four of them and I know that look more than I care to. Whatever my eldest sister said, it was more than likely what she needed to hear.”

I tilted my head, asking “How do you-”

“Gossip travels fast in a large family,” he answered, matter-of-factly. “She’ll be with us as we travel, and there’ll be plenty of time to discuss with her how to deal with the Crème Brûlée’s decision. If you chase her, she’ll only dig deeper into whatever hole she’s made for herself.”

“We need to mount this gun, anyway,” Tim Tam said, pointing to a minigun that leaned against the lockers behind Lamington. “We just have to do the same thing backward, and it’ll be mounted.” The dark orange stallion grabbed the gun and hoisted it into the air, just above the Star Paladin. “Tell me when it’s lined up,” he requested, lowering it down and sliding the cradle back and forth.

Leaning down, I squinted and looked at the two pieces. As he shifted it around, I held up a hoof. “Okay, it’s good,” I announced. I leaned in and pushed the retainer pin through the hinge pieces. “Now the cables... right?”

“Yup, then we just hook up the feeding belt for the ammunition,” answered the freckled stallion.

Together we switched to the far side of Lamington and worked to push each through. Tim Tam told me which went where, and how they were color coded. Each explanation was brief, as we were on the clock. When the final cable slid into place, he turned to Lamington. “Ready for dry fire testing?” he asked.

Lamington wasted no time. The gun snapped out from the back of his power armor and whirred to life. I winced at how much it sounded like Wirepony's teeth, but I managed to hold everything together and keep from losing myself to the memory. After only a moment of testing, the weapon snapped back into place.

“Perfection,” Lamington announced. “Excellent work, both of you.”

“Thank you,” I muttered, looking at the floor.

Tim Tam grabbed onto the now unattached missile launcher and put it into a steel saddlebag with designs that matched Lamington’s armor. “Now just attach that feeding chute so it can fire actually bullets, and we’re done.”

I grabbed the feeding chute he mentioned, and stared at it. It ran from the saddlebags, where the ammo must have been kept to a little pair of clips. Squinting, I found the slot for it and snapped it into place. “All done.”

“Good, then let us depart.” He looked over to the other stallion. “We’ve little time.”

With that, the three of us made our way out of the armory and down the hall.

* * *

Due to the massive weight of Lamington’s armor, the entire back of the motorwagon sagged. I sat next to him, holding Persistence over my hind legs as I leaned against the engine block. Rose, Fine Tune, and Tim Tam were sitting in the front seats, with Lost laying curled up in the side walkway of the motorwagon.

She hadn’t responded when I tried to talk to her, but as Lamington had said, I told her that I’d be there when she wanted to talk and then left her alone. It hurt to do so, but I knew Lost, and even though she could be frustrating sometimes, she’d come back better than ever if I gave her the chance.

I had to trust her. I always trusted her, she was always there for me. Even when... even when I wanted to run away and take time to think. Goddesses, we were going back to Idle, where I’d done the exact same thing she was doing now.

“So, what’s it like having such a big family?” I asked the Star Paladin, hoping to break up the monotony of watching the Wasteland slowly roll by.

“What’s it like with just two of you?” he asked coyly in response. After a moment’s pause, he shook his head. “It can be trying, at times, but I wouldn’t have it another way, given the choice. I remember many of their births, and how things slowly grew to be so lively.”

“It’s weird,” I agreed. “Going from being alone, well, with only my sister... to having so many others with me.” I fidgeted, kicking a hoof over the edge of the motorwagon’s deck. “It used to be just Lost and me, and then there was Xeno and Fine Tune and now Rose and... And you two.”

The Star Paladin didn’t answer. Instead he reached up and began unclasping the fasteners that held his helmet in place. He had to shift slightly, dragging the minigun against the engine block behind him. It couldn’t have been comfortable to sit on his haunches, like I was, in power armor... With a hiss and several clunks from inside the armor, he unlatched his helmet and stiffly pulled it away, before setting it off to the side. “Much better,” he said happily, his voice still sounding amazing.

“Aren’t you supposed to be all... by the book about armor?” I asked, a bit confused. I loved that he was taking it off so much, so I could see him... it just felt out of place for him since he’d been so stiff and stuffy every time Praline was seen out of her power armor.

“Yes,” he answered. “I feel it best to lead by example. With sisters like Praline and Crème Brûlée... If I don’t follow the rules, why would they?” He chuckled. “Neither of them are here now, and we’re safe on the road, are we not?”

“Usually...” I muttered. Lifting up Persistence, I grinned. “If anypony comes to mess with us, I’ll take care of them, though.” Suddenly, I wished we’d taken the sniper rifle with us when we left, but that was Xeno’s gun now and I couldn’t go stealing it from her. Relaxing and lowering the gun, I shrugged. “I doubt we’ll run into trouble. Most raiders are stupid and crazy, but I doubt they’ll go against a motorwagon with several geared ponies and two Steel Rangers.”

“Do tell, Miss Fortune, what other dangers await us on our trip?” he requested.

I winced and seethed. “You... You don’t have to call me that,” I muttered, fighting the urge to tell him about every fight I’d ever had. This wasn’t an order I wanted to ignore, but I wanted to do it on my own terms. “It’s just Hidden Fortune, or Hidden.”

“As you wish,” he agreed. “Hidden. What dangers should I remain vigilant against?”

“Bandits, raiders, gang ponies who might wander out this far,” I answered. “And manticores, Hellhounds, slavers, psychopath alicorns with steel rods through their heads...” Tapping a hoof against my chin, I considered the other things. “Dragons, zebras who think ‘sadaka’ is a good thing, Power Armor full of wires, feral ghouls.”

“My family and I must have had an easy time in your Wasteland, then?” he asked. “Our travels from Stable Sixty and the Leathers manufacturing plant were without peril.”

“Speaking of, other Steel Rangers, too.”

Lamington didn’t answer that. He just looked away. After an awkward silence, he placed a hoof on his helmet. “We’re supposed to protect other ponies,” he said solemnly. “I was raised to believe that the War needed those who were strong to protect those who couldn't fight. Equestria, I was taught, had many who offered their services to protect home and family, but not all were able to. The elderly, sick, foals. They cannot go to war when there are ponies young and strong, with friendship and love as their bulwark.”

“Their wha?” I asked. I was a lot better than most ponies in that I was taught how to actually read, but... That word escaped me.

“Shield,” he clarified. “Just the idea of what that Elder, that Star Paladin... What they were doing was wrong.”

“Ponies don’t have love and friendship like they used to,” I explained. “Most of us are just trying to stay alive. Mom never told me why we left our Stable, but she was always afraid of groups.” I clutched the gun tighter in my hooves. “They look out for themselves, and if a new pony comes in and throws everything out of balance, they’ll turn on that new pony in an instant.”

“We didn’t turn on you, or your sister,” Lamington said. “Quite the opposite in fact. Remember what symbol emblazons your barding.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked. That’d never made sense to me... We’d done nothing special for them. “All we did was pull you into our fight...”

“I requested it,” he explained.

“You requested what?” I practically demanded.

“When you, your sister, and your friends found us, I thought very much that our world would change,” he said calmly. “We spent our entire lives underground, locked within the protection of the Stable. The mine’s irradiated visage had generations before convinced of the inhospitality of the world above. You proved that wrong.”

“The world is inhospitable, though,” I countered.

“That isn’t true, and you know it,” he argued. “Your world is dangerous, which means you must be strong to survive. At first I thought you a coward, for fleeing in battle. Despite my wounds, I spent time overlooking the scene of destruction within the factory, and finding out what happened. Scribe Lemon Tart explained many things about Scifresh’s Steel Rangers and what they had been fighting and surviving against.”

“Wirepony?” I asked, wincing and looking down at my steel hooves. He’d thought I was a coward... We ran because we were outnumbered and outgunned... Even the twins had stayed to fight.

“We all have our own struggles, our own demons to overcome,” Lamington continued, with a knowing nod. “While we fought ponies, you destroyed a true monster. I was wrong in thinking you and your sister to be weak. Even with one eye, I could see your triumph against armor and whatever that unliving beast must have been. Truly, I respect you for doing so much with so little.”

“It was Lost’s idea on how to kill it,” I pointed out.

“Teamwork is a scarcely found and extremely useful skill to have,” he said, placing an armored hoof on my shoulder. “My personal feelings aside, I believe you to be a valuable asset, not only as a fighter, but as a pony. Were you born in my family, you could easily be in my place at the head of the family.”

“I’d just fuck it up,” I muttered, slumping back and sliding along the wooden deck of the motorwagon. “I really appreciate that you’d give me and my sister a chance but... I don’t think I’m the right kind of pony to-”

“We gave you the benefit of the doubt from the moment you set hoof into our lives,” Lamington interrupted. “I told you, extending the offer of friendship is always the first thing a pony should do when given the chance.” He smiled, looking down at me. “We extended that offer, and you and your friends proved yourselves worthy.”

“Mmm... I’m just a treasure hunter, Lamington... I’m not a soldier,” I argued.

“That’s not a requirement to do what’s right,” he corrected me. “Have some faith in yourself. You might just be one pony, but you’re surrounded by friends and those who trust you.”

“They don’t trust me, though...”

“Surely, you jest,” he said, looking down at me with confusion.

“I did something really stupid on the other side of the mountain,” I explained, rolling onto my side and looking away. “I nearly got Rose killed, and I put a huge group of ponies and zebras and buffalo in danger. Lost... doesn’t trust me anymore.” I inhaled deeply and squeezed Persistence close. “I’m sure if she wasn’t... curled up with her own problems, she’d have asked you to keep watch over me already.”

“I’ll offer to do so once she’s in a more agreeable state to talk to,” he said, turning slightly to look at where my sister lay. Wonderful, he was just taking my word for it that the others couldn’t trust me. So much for benefit of the doubt. “It would be a good excuse to spend more time with you, after all.”

I opened my eyes wide and stared up at him. I could feel my cheeks burning. “I...” I coughed out, sputtering. “So have you heard about DJ Pon3 yet?” Scooting back to a sitting position, I pulled the PipBuck up to my face and started tapping around at the screen to turn the radio on. “I’m sure you’ll really enjoy listening to him. We can see if there’s any news happening!” I gulped, flicking the radio on with the tip of the steel around my hoof.

Nothing happened.

“Miss...” he started, before catching himself. “Hidden, are you alright?” He looked concerned, and raised a hoof toward me.

“Fine, just fine. Forgot to put the broadcaster in, that’s all,” I said, speaking almost as fast as Praline would when she got excited. Slapping my hoof around behind me, I looked for my saddlebags. After a few seconds of searching, I managed to grab my things and pulled the broadcaster free.

Snapping it into the port on the side of the PipBuck, the radio burst to life. “-on the warpath. Keep your eyes open, my little ponies, and stay safe out there!” Oh Goddesses, please let whatever trouble’s going on out there be far far away from us... “Now let’s enjoy some of that new music I got in recently. Tap your hooves, and sing a long!” The DJ’s voice cut out, and a song I hadn’t heard before started to play.

Once the voice died down, I adjusted the volume and looked at the Star Paladin. “So, that’s the DJ,” I muttered, forcing myself to sound cheerful. “Did you get a chance to...”

Lamington just stared at me, both his steel eye and his real one looking very intent. It was enough to make me shrink back slightly, wondering if I’d done something to upset him by suddenly changing the subject and... Goddesses, how bad had I just fucked up? The little claws suddenly reappeared, picking at the back of my mind. They sped up with my heartbeat, as I twitched with worry.

“You have leaves in your mane,” he said, furrowing his brows.

My heart practically stopped, and my face burned from blushing. I lifted a hoof and grabbed at my mane with my fetlock. “Goddesses, dammit!”

* * *

I stared down at the little stack of leaves, twigs, and branches that I’d piled up on the deck of the motorwagon. After scouring my mane, jacket, armor, and even pulled some from the back of my hind leg’s shackle, I wasn’t going to take my eyes off them.

Somehow, every time I looked away, they managed to find their way back into my mane and tail and... everything else. It wasn’t happening again.

Not if I had any say in the matter.

Still, it always seemed like there was more of it every time I found some. I’d been throwing away leaves for hours since I fell, and I never seemed to make a dent. It didn’t make any-

The motorwagon lurched forward.

Losing my balance, I flailed my forehooves and slammed myself back against the motorwagon’s engine housing. “Ow!” I yelped, instantly throwing my hooves to the back of my head. The damn metal casing hurt. With ears pinned down, I swiftly looked at the pile I’d made.

All of it was gone.

“Are you okay?” asked Lamington, raising one hoof toward me and tilting over to look at the back of my head.

“Yeah, just a bump on the head,” I answered, grumbling. “What happened?”

The Star Paladin shifting in his armor, as if shrugging.

The two of us looked back the way we’d come, then toward the side. We were going much faster that we’d been before. Something wasn’t right.

“What’s going on up there?” I yelled over the engine, picking Persistence up and holding onto it tightly. “Do I need to shoot anything?”

“No!” yelled Rose.

“What’s going on?” asked the groggy, hoarse voice of my sister.

“I don’t know,” I answered, only slightly panicked. Setting my rifle down, I looked to Lamington. “You pull rear guard and I’ll go check it out?” I asked rather than ordered... I wasn’t really in a position to be barking orders, especially not to a Star Paladin. Rank probably, worked like... I didn’t know. When he nodded, I pulled myself to my hooves and walked around.

I scanned across the horizon, at the little dots of civilization far off in the distance. Something had to have spooked Rose, but why was she moving toward it? It was just a dark day, like somepony had taken the normal grey clouds and burnt them, leaving only black smoke for the sun to try and shine through. But... this was the Wasteland, sometimes it was just like that. In the distance, I could see the familiar sign, welcoming us to town. The little waving arm of the pony inviting us in wasn’t moving, and the air felt dead. The restful feeling I’d had of the place the last time we were here, when I’d walked far too much with far too little sleep, didn’t seem to return with her smile.

Walking on three legs, I smiled at Tim Tam and Fine Tune, then sat down next to Rose. “It’s... Goddess, it’s late.” I said as calmly as I could, looking at the clock on the PipBuck to see if I’d really lost track of that much time while casually chatting with Lamington and cleaning my mane out. “We’ve still got time, don’t we?”

“Something’s not right,” Rose said, pointedly not answering my question. She sounded distant, staring ahead blankly. The mare’s mane was nearly back to how it’d been before she was burnt alive, only missing the little hook at the end of her forelocks.

For a moment I said nothing, unable to see whatever had her so worried. It just looked normal out, to me. But, on our way out of Blackhoof, I hadn’t listened when Xeno said there was something wrong, and I’d ignored plenty of other times when my friends knew something I didn’t. I took a deep breath. Rose had survived a long time in the Wasteland, if she said something was wrong, I had to believe her.

“Okay, what do I need to do?” I asked, lowering my hoof and looking back at the others. “Wake Lost and get the guns out?” As long as whatever she needed didn’t end up with me doing something stupid and hurt my legs again. I looked down at them, distracted...

She reached out with a hoof, but stopped mid-way. Instead, the clone mare just squinted at me, looking back and forth from one of my eyes to the other. Lowering her hoof back to the steering column, she nodded. “Yes, get them just in case,” she said, sounding much calmer already.

Fine Tune crawled off and went to Lost at the far side of the motorwagon’s deck. The changeling let out a few whimpering noises, “Krii...” When Lost didn’t get up, the entire side of the motorwagon lit up with the swirl of green fire as he transformed. “My Queen?” he requested. “We need you. Badly.”

“Hmph,” she snorted. “You’re fine without me, I don’t want to get up...”

“She won’t...” muttered the stallion, turning to look over his shoulder at us.

Goddesses, why couldn’t I have cheater magic like my sister. Then at least I could do some good helping. Without being able to power the engine, I just stood there dumbly, watching the buildings slowly grow bigger as we got closer. With a quiet sigh, I stepped over the empty seat and looked over Fine Tune’s shoulder.

“Sis, please. You can lay there and sulk if you really need to...” I said, chewing on the inside of my cheek as I told her she could sulk. “But we really need to hurry up. Rose says something’s wrong and that she needs help, and I can’t use magic. Please?”

Lost said nothing. She just rolled onto her side and buried her head underneath her tail. Her horn dimly lit up, glowing a pale blue. The engine revved slightly, and we picked up a little speed. The tiny act was enough, and it was a building block for later. If she was willing to put her problems aside to focus on her magic, then we could break her out of the slump as soon as we got there.

Fine Tune smiled, and his own horn began to glow as well. The two of us returned to the seat and sat down. While he helped to power the engine, I started pulling out the equipment we’d need. I’d taken my battle saddle off when we left, but if Rose thought something was going down, I’d be needing it.

“Thank you,” said the clone mare.

I nodded, even though she wasn’t looking. As we rode faster toward Idle, I grabbed my battle saddle and started to worm my way into it. Without Lost’s magic to help, it took longer than I wanted. Once it was finally on, and I’d gotten my jacket comfortable, I looked back at the ruins of the town just in time to see the sign pass us by. “See anything more Rose?”

“Yeah, something’s on fire,” she answered, her voice cracking. “You have a scope or binoculars or something?” Without looking back, she frantically waved a hoof in my direction.

“Only scope we had was on the sniper rifle, and we left that with Xeno.”

“Well, fuck.”

My ears drooped. “Sorry,” I muttered. It was another thing to put on the list of ‘things we should have.’ Which honestly was a list I should start keeping track of, right next to the list of things I never wanted to experience again.

“Whatever, we’ll figure it out when we get there,” she answered, twisting the wheel to keep us on the road as we sped closer to the town.

“I see nothing attempting to flank our position,” Lamington yelled over the roar of the engine. Once again his voice carried static with it, meaning he’d put his helmet back on.

“Whatever it is, it’s in front of us,” I yelled back adjusting the battle saddle slightly. Dropping onto my hooves, I walked down the side of the motorwagon’s deck as best I could. Moving so fast it was unsteady, and with unfeeling steel I had to balance myself with my hips. Once I got to the back, I poked my head around. “I need my gun, can you pass it to me?”

The wagon slowed, making me wobble back and forth on my shaky legs. The first few burnt out buildings at the very edge of town passed by the side of the motorwagon. They looked terrible, with pockmarked holes making a trail along one’s wall and to the broken road. I shook my head. Why couldn’t our world have not ended in a horrible War?

“Oh, shit...” muttered Rose, just barely louder than the now quiet engine.

Rolling forward, we slowly stopped in the middle of the main intersection where one of the local addicts had begged me for caps before. Now, instead of needy ponies swarming to ask us to pay for their addictions, it was empty. Just as Rose had said, one of the buildings nearby smoldered, it’s walls collapsed since the last time we were here. Foul-smelling smoke billowed from underneath the wreckage, raising into the air.

It wasn’t the only one. Several other buildings looked in far far worse condition than I remembered, even for the Wasteland. More bulletholes riddled the ground, with splatters of blood that looked new here and there around us. It looked...

“I don’t think we’ll need to worry about fighting an army, here,” said Lamington, his voice crackling.

“No... I don’t either...”

Gulping, I looked around the far side of the engine block, past the Star Paladin. Black arcing lines twisted across the faded grey of the road’s pavement, branching out and suddenly stopping in a circle. There were more, further down the road. Little kinked branches, looking like dead trees painted on the road, all ending in the same sudden pony-sized circles.

A head poked out from one of the alleyways, several blocks down the road. A pool of fresh blood surrounded it, and from the trail of holes along the walls nearby, it was clear somepony had gotten too curious about what was happening and paid the price.

I scrunched my nose as a harsh metallic scent cut through the smoky air. Snorting, I asked, “What is that smell?”

“Ozone,” Rose answered, taking a few sniffs herself.

“... and what is an ozone?” I asked, really hoping it wasn’t another metal beast that I had to fight. I wanted to keep my current number of hooves.

Lammington's static filled voice answered, “It's a gas, also known as trioxygen, normally made by high voltages sparks...” He turned his helmeted head towards another set of lines radiating from a scorched circle. “Or lighting.”

The hair on the back of my mane began to stand on end.

“I really need my gun...”

From the road behind me, I could hear the clatter of hooves. Without Persistence attached to my battle saddle, there was nothing to do, but I turned ready to fight anyway. Just in case.

Rose ran toward the motorwagon, not our Rose, but one of the other clones. Her eyes wide and her fully grown mane a mess, panted as she made her way toward us. “Hey! Hey!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “I need you to come help! We need to evac-”

Everything went blinding white. The sky erupted with a devastating crack, like a rifle going off inside my head. I squinted my eyes, staring through a tiny crease at what was happening.

The Rose in front of us stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes seeming to pop out of her head. Her mane and tail went straight on edge, and little sparkles of electricity crackled between her teeth. She’d been struck by something mid-yell, and a tiny bit of smoke rose from her coat.

The blinding light disappeared, and through my ears were ringing, I could hear the mare finish her sentence.

“-uate...”

She collapsed, twitching and writhing on the broken road, inside a black-lined circle just like the others that dotted the roads. After several seconds of shuddering, she went still.

Next to me, the Rose we’d traveled with jumped onto the ground and ran forward. “Evacuate?” she yelled. “What do you mean! Don’t you fade away on me! I need answers!” She skidded to a stop at the other cloned mare and grabbed her in her forehooves. “Tell me!”

It was too late. Before she could get any answers, the mare who’d run toward us started to disappear. Her pink coat turned ashy and black, and she just... melted. It wasn’t something I was unfamiliar with, but watching it when not on an adrenaline high I couldn’t help but shiver.

The air around us crackled with energy. It started to shimmer, like the heat over a fire, making everything behind wave about out of focus. My stomach knotted itself up. I remembered that, I remembered it well. Looking back, I stared wide-eyed at Lamington. “I need my gun, now.” I plead.

“You!” the voice of the blue alicorn shrieked, rattling about inside my mind.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Progress: 50%

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire...”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“So, who’s the one who unleashed a mentally disturbed alicorn on the Wasteland?”
“I don’t think ‘unleashed’ is the right word.”
“And I don’t think you think! Two centuries and I get stuck with an idiot!”
“It could be worse...”
“How?”
“We planned to kill you off a few chapters ago.”
“You little cu-”
“Krii.... We should cut this off, this post-chapter banter is getting a little long...”

Chapter 24: Consequences

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Chapter Twenty Four: Consequences
“Is this what everything’s been leading up to?”

“Slavers!”

Forgetting my request for my gun, I collapsed onto the deck of the motorwagon and clamped my steel hooves over my ears. It didn’t do anything, but it was the best I could think of to try and block out the deafening shriek that overpowered every thought within my head. Rebar’s yelling inside my mind worried me, but I couldn’t remember whether it meant she was doing well or was completely gone from being unable to contact her Goddess.

“Why do you ally yourselves with those who have stolen Our- daughters?” she demanded, quieter, but still with such force I thought my head would explode. The cold gaze of the alicorn trailed from Rose to me, then to the rest of the motorwagon and the other ponies on it with me. Her horn crackled, readying the lightning spell she’d used to liquify the clone mare a second time. The slits of her pupils shifted again, looking back at me.

The presence in my mind grew worse, and I swore I could feel my ears bleeding. Clenching my eyes closed and grinding my teeth, I huddled down, trying to hide behind the armored railing of the deck. “Rose...” I rasped out, barely able to force the words. I couldn’t be the only one she was doing this too...

The muffled sound of hooves filled my ears, growing closer, followed by the blackness of my closed eyes becoming a bright red. I yelped and blindly jumped away, not wanting to get hit by the enraged alicorn’s blast. Landing hard on the pavement, I covered my head with my hooves and curled up. The lightning of the alicorn arced past me, sending my coat on edge.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d expected to hear my name being cursed in my friends’ death throes. It brought back terrible memories, through the sound of the lightning striking above me, as if I could hear the same pained anguish as when Rose was burnt alive.

Instead, an explosion rocked past me, and the sounds of several ponies panicking filled my ears as chunks of metal rained down on my back.

Forcing myself up, I turned away from the blue pseudo-goddess of a pony and cracked my eyes open to look at what had happened. The motorwagon was in ruins, the armor plating singed and the engine block... what was left of it... smoking.

Forgetting for only a moment that the alicorn could be readying another attack, I screamed, “Lost!” Little green markers in the corner of my vision flickered amongst one another. Did that mean that... Tears already welling up in the corners of my eyes, I ignored the static anguish that suddenly returned to my legs and ran for the far side of the ruined motorwagon.

Lost had been on the opposite side, nestled between the engine housing and the outer panels that’d been build on as armor. Though Rebar wouldn’t have known she was there, that just meant Lost couldn’t jump away like I did. Please, Luna... Celestia... Let her not have been electrocuted by the shock from the alicorn. Please.

“Lost!” I screamed again.

A heavy thud shook the ground, sending rubble and pieces of pavement up from the broken road around us. The whirr of teeth- no, Lamington’s minigun, sounded as the Star Paladin hit the street ready to fight. At the far side of the motorwagon, Tim Tam followed suit hesitantly. He looked pained, as if feeling the same overpowering screaming within his head. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself forward to follow the larger Steel Ranger. His own less extensive armor had a gun attached too, smaller than the Star Paladin’s, and more similar to Persistence than anything else. It was out, his mouth around the trigger for it, and ready to fire.

I passed by Lamington, running as hard as my aching hooves would let me, to scramble around the far side of the motorwagon to see the others. I had to make sure Lost hadn’t been hit, Rose and Fine Tune, too... Looking at Lamington from the corner of my eye, I just...

“She has a shield!” I snapped, giving him warning of what he should expect. The response I got was a nod. I didn’t have time to wait around, to see if he’d use that warning, I had to get to the far side of the motorwagon. Hooves scrambling for purchase on the broken remains of the road, I ran around the back wheels and skidded to a stop.

Rose stood wide-eyed, staring at a frantically chirping Fine Tune. Between them was my sister, a hoof held to her head and her eyes shut. She heaved, breathing in short gasps.

Letting out a sigh of relief, I slumped down to the ground. All of the E.F.S.’s markers were accounted for.

The distant whirring of Lamington’s minigun disappeared, replaced by the sounds of a barrage of bullets fired toward the alicorn. His static-laced voice shouted something, but through the repeated peppering of minigun firing and the occasional loud popping shots of Tim Tam’s rifle, whatever he said was lost to the chaos.

“The-” Rose screamed, but the sound of gunfire overhead drowned it out. “Wagon!”

“What!” I yelled back, between the peppering gunshots that filled the air.

Rose scrunched her nose up, glaring at me and pointed from the motorwagon to me, rage in her aquamarine eyes. Practically growling, she yelled, “Flip the fu-” A spat of minigun fire cut her off. Mid-sentence she shut her mouth, looked straight up, and screamed as loud as she could. The gunfire stopped, and all I hear was the mare screaming at the top of her lungs, “Fuck!” Then, taking advantage of the brief silence, she hopped up onto her haunches and places her forehooves on the deck of the motorwagon. “Motorwagon! Flip! Now!”

After all the work we’d done to restore it and get it back onto it’s wheels, all the pain... I looked down at my legs. Gritting my teeth, I put my hooves on the deck. If we put it on it’s side, we’d have something to hide behind but... “What if she flies over?” I yelled.

Rose clenched her eyes shut and hit the armored railing with her hooves so hard it left a dent. “Fuck, fine! Go under!” she yelled. Dropping down, her horn lit up and an aquamarine haze wrapped around my sister. With Fine Tune helping her, she dragged Lost underneath and then scrambled down to huddle next to an axle.

I looked over the deck of the motorwagon, standing on the tips of my hooves. Lamington stood, legs spread and minigun spinning. Over the whirring of the gun, I could hear his static-laced voice, but with the presence in my mind, I couldn’t focus enough to listen to it. Was he... trying to talk to her? Seeing bullets weren’t making a dent, he must have decided that the other option was the only one.

Rebar didn’t seem to pay any attention to him. Instead, her eyes trailed back and forth, as if she was looking for something. She stopped looking around, and stared directly at me.

“You! Mare with the X!” howled the alicorn’s voice between my ears. “Our- daughters are hidden by the pink one!”

I faltered, collapsing onto the ground. Digging my hooves against the broken road, I dragged myself underneath the motorwagon and curled up against one of the wheels. Covering my ears, I pressed my face as close to the ground as I could. Through the spokes of the wheel, I watched her, and the red marker the E.F.S. showed for her. All I could do was pray she wouldn’t assault my brain again.

Beyond the Steel Rangers, the alicorn stood with her shield up. Her long flowing tail snapped side to side every so often, and even though I’d hidden myself behind the wheel of the motorwagon, she stared directly at me. Lamington and Tim Tam shared a look, turning their attention away from the giant mare. The freckled stallion looked distressed, breathing heavily and with one of his eyes clenched tightly shut. He said something I couldn’t hear, and Lamington nodded. A moment later, Tim Tam started to back up, slowly moving his hooves and not turning away from the alicorn.

Wings spread and eyes barely slits, she looked bigger than before. Her mane and tail flowed in the gentle wind that blew down the roadway. Her eyes widened, and her voice shouted inside my head, “Tell Us- where!”

“We... We don’t know!” I shouted back. I tried my best to think it as loudly as I said it, hoping she could hear me.

“We don’t know what!” demanded Rose. “Who the fuck is that anyway?” She wasn’t there with us when we dealt with Rebar in Skirt, and in all our talks... I’d never thought to mention the alicorn. Goddesses, it was obvious we’d run into her again...

“Hidden,” Lost muttered weakly, still half-curled underneath a protective-looking Fine Tune. She stared up at me, giving a look halfway between accusation and apology.

“She wants the mares,” I translated. “Can you not hear her?”

“All I hear is screaming,” answered Lost. Her horn glowed and something above us shifted, dragging around the deck of the motorwagon. “Not words... I recognize her voice though.”

Huddling down between the wheels, the four of us looked at one another. Green fire erupted from around Fine Tune, and with a swirling mass of flames, he transformed into the green pegasus mare once more.

Rose’s eyelid twitched. “You know how I kept telling you that we needed to fucking hurry?” demanded the clone mare, her eyes practically popping out of her head. “This was fucking why!”

“Because you just knew an alicorn would be waiting for us here?” asked Lost, snapping at her. At the very least, if she was already well enough to be snippy, then she must not have been hurt too bad by Rebar’s lightning spell.

“No, but I knew if we took our sweet time-” Rose raged. Her eyelid twitched again. “Some bullshit or another would fuck everything up. And now I’ve got thi-”

Fine Tune put a hoof on Rose’s shoulder. In a soft, feminine voice she said, “Calm down, or I’m going to have to knock you out.” She smiled. “None of us knew she’d come here. We’re all in enough trouble without blame.”

Rose quieted, staring at the changeling’s eyes and letting her eyelids lower some. She nodded, then looked back at my sister and I.

“We need the mares...” I repeated. She wanted them, not us. “We, don’t have them.” I said, more to myself. I couldn’t just think words, I had to say them out loud and pray that they’d get across my brain to Rebar.

“Well, none of us know where they are...” Lost said, her horn glowing. “Unless Rose knows?” She closed her eyes and her horn glowed brighter. Under her breath, she muttered, “Just need to get our guns from up top without her realizing it...”

“I was against you in that fight, I don’t know where the other group took the mares,” Rose answered. “I told you, our little group-think only goes toward the original. I don’t get--” She clenched her teeth and groaned. “Okay.” She forced the words out. “I can hear her screaming in my head now.”

“They‘re not going to do us any good. You know we can’t fight Rebar...” I reminded her. Last time we’d tried, even Loyalty hadn’t managed to pierce her shield.

“Where are Our- daughters!” screamed the voice in my head again, sounding far more impatient than before. To punctuate the question, a crackling arc of lightning crossed over the motorwagon’s deck and slammed into a building at the far side of the street.

The windows of the building shattered, and somepony inside shrieked in fear. The quiet echo of hooves running filled the air, coming from the broken wall and now-missing windows. A half-second later a door at the far side of the building slammed open, the sound splitting the suddenly quiet street. Only a second later, a mare ran by, crossing the street while screaming. She disappeared down another alleyway.

“I don’t know!” I screamed back, ignoring the fleeing mare.

“Where did you take the mares?” Lost demanded of our changeling friend. She pointed at him, but didn’t sound angry. Her ears pinned back. “We need to trace them to get this screaming to stop!”

She just shook her head. “Rose’s... They took them,” she answered. Swallowing repeatedly, nervously, she pointed at our clone pony. “Not her, others. None had the grenade rifle. They separated us, brought me to you all, when they realized I wasn’t a part of the group.”

“Told. You,” Rose said, placing a hoof on her head. She clenched her eyes shut and sucked in air through her gritted teeth. “We need to get back to the original, that’s the only way to find out where they are.” She shut one eye tight and took a deep breath, pinning her ears back. “Unless they already evacuated...”

Lost and I shared a look with each other, then the other two with us. Fine Tune was the only one not strained, and even she looked more jittery than usual.

“Fuck,” we all said in unison.

Words filled my mind, jilted and paced... She was choosing them wisely. “You... You told Us-, slavers. Took,” she said, so loud I couldn’t even think. There was a pause, and the little marker in the corner of my vision flickered back and forth from red to green a few times. “Our- Daughters! Ponies. Here, they told Us- Feared Us-!” It settled on red.

Armored steel hooves clanged against the pavement, slowly getting louder as the Star Paladin got closer. I could barely hear it over the forced words filling my brain. I looked at Lost, then curled against her.

She wrapped a hoof around me and pulled my closer. Leaning down over me, she whispered into my ear. “I won’t let her hurt you,” she said, calmly.

“The screaming hurts,” I answered, unable to put anything more into words. I could only imagine this is what our mother went through, dealing with two screaming fillies always wanting something.

“They told Us-. Told Us- that Our- Our- daughters! They were brought here, to be used,” the voice seethed, drawing the word out so I’d know exactly what she meant. I knew what she did, I’d seen it with my own eyes. We’d freed them from that...

Lamington’s massive armor-covered legs appeared around the back of the wheels, slowly walking past the back of the motorwagon. He backed slowly past the deck until he reached the far side from Rebar. Leaning down, his helmet blocked out everything past the wheels. “Miss Fortune? Miss Art?” asked the Star Paladin. “What is that pony? She refuses to listen to reason, but lacks continuing outward hostility.” There was hesitation in his voice, as if his own armor’s indicators were giving mixed signals, too.

“Alicorn,” I muttered through my teeth. “Something about unity, and a Goddess, and ponies she calls her daughters.”

“What do we do about her?” he asked. “And her screaming inside my head.” Either he was putting on a strong front for us, or it just didn’t affect him like it did me and the others.

“Just don’t let her get closer,” Lost ordered.

“She’s made no advances,” announced Laming.

Lost just stared flatly at him before continuing, “We talked through to her once. Hidden can do it again.” She smiled and brushed a hoof over my cheek. “Keep talking to her.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. This was my fault... If, if we’d just shot her in the head and let her die before... “We saved them!” I yelled.

“Then where are they!” demanded the voice in my brain.

“Safe!” I shouted back, clenching my eyes shut and trying to somehow talk back through my brain to her.

The answer I got wasn’t what I expected. No words came back to me, either through my ears or my mind. The only thing to return was fury. The sound of hooves on pavement echoed through the hiding place we’d founded under the remains of our motorwagon. The electric crackle of magic, both lightning and shield singed the air, making the itch of healing flesh all across, but without the soothing feeling that had always accompanied it before.

Instead, the massive mare charged us, her magic acting as her spear.

Lightning arcs struck the motorwagon above us, boring holes in more places that I could count through the wood. Pockets of flame erupted, and we panicked, suddenly trapped underneath a burning wagon. Hooves scrambled to get free as arcs blasted between the newly formed holes. The wheels lifted, creaking and spinning as a dark glow of telekinesis wrapped around the entirety of the burning vehicle.

Even as the four of us shunned away from it, even as Lamington leapt away to stay clear of it and Tim Tam ducked to keep from losing his head, the alicorn lifted it away from us. She flung it with her magic, sending the motorwagon flying through the air and crashing into the collapsing frame of another run down building far down the street.

Her slitted pupils shown only rage, the dark blue of her eyes glowing in a terrifyingly unnatural way. The glow of her shielding spell was no longer invisible, hiding her immunities to all attacks from those who might wish to harm her. Instead, from sheer power alone, it glowed white, bright enough that it hurt my eyes.

When her thundering hooves reached us, she didn’t impale my sister, my friends, or myself. Instead, the painful tingling of her shield struck us and forced our haunches across the broken road. The front of her white glowing shield split in the middle like a crosshair and peel away into four section. Each quarter snaked out towards us, the white glow darkening to match the deep blue of Rebar's eyes, and enveloped us as a haze of telekinesis. She lifted my friends and I in front of her, while the remainder of the shield still protected her, and slammed the four of us against a far building.

Both Steel Rangers opened fire on her as her magic held us in place. She seemed unfazed, paying no attention to either of them. With a casual glance to the side, her horn brightened and the same glow that held me enveloped Lamington and Tim Tam. The alicorn gritted her teeth and flung her head to the side, tossing both Steel Rangers down the street.

Tim Tam toppled end over end, groaning quietly until he came to a stop. He didn’t move to get up.

Lamington suffered a similar fate, crashing and rolling until he slammed into a wall. The sudden force of him hitting it cracked the ancient building and in only a split second...

It collapsed, burying the Star Paladin underneath.

Pinned in place, I couldn’t help but yell, both in fear and pain, my sight suddenly overwhelmed with flashing warnings.. In unison, Fine Tune, Lost, and even Rose, let out similar cries of surprise, agony, and terror. I struggled as best I could, trying in vain to break free of her telekinetic grasp. The fact that she’d so effortlessly dismantled our entire group, including, the extra firepower we’d brought without even blinking...

This mare was terrifying.

Holding us weightless in the air, and without anypony left to oppose her, her shield disappeared. Both Lamington and Tim Tam were either knocked out or dead, leaving her with nothing to fear from behind. The four of us, we weren’t in any position to fight back... She lifted us higher into the air, over her head. Over her long tapered horn...

Without words, the screaming of her mind seemed to molest every one of my thoughts, and I could only imagine the feeling was shared between my friends and sister. The others, I could hear them screaming and cursing at her, begging and arguing to be let go, but their words... I couldn’t make anything out over Rebar’s rage filling my brain. I couldn’t even beg for mercy, the words simply wouldn’t come. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of agony, the reasoning for the alicorn’s attack was shared with us.

“My daughters, are only safe with me!” she screamed, her lips quivering as she yelled verbally, no longer assaulting my mind with her thoughts.

I could only nod, crying from pain and terror at what she might do if I argued with her.

“Please...” Lost whispered. Her glasses fell to the ground with a clatter, dropped from her muzzle as she curled in the air to shy away from the monster of a pony. It was the second time she’d been trapped in her telekinetic grasp.

It was the second time I was afraid, helpless, and completely at a loss at how to protect her.

Fine Tune shuddered, transforming with eruptions of swirling green fire over and over, as if to scorch her and force the alicorn to free him.

Rose, who seemed to feel the mare in her brain the least, only seemed pissed. Teeth bared, she looked like she was planning something more than writhing in pain. Maybe her being connected to other ponies naturally protected her from the attack on her brain.

“Where. Are. My. Daughters!” Rebar demanded. She shook the same as my sister and I, whether from rage or fear. Was she only so worried about them, that her only option was to lash out at ponies she knew hadn’t wronged her?

Though we were the ones who’d passed the poor mares to Rose, it hadn’t been intentional. The entire time we’d been away, we’d been trying to save them. I wanted to tell the mare with the steel rod through her head, but words failed me. I found them trapped in my throat, as I uselessly opened and closed my mouth like a filly told to keep quiet but still wanting to ask for something.

As I kicked at the air and squirmed, trying to find some way to argue back, to make her drop me... Her eyes started to glow green. The tiniest of glows, pale and reminding me of something horrific, seemed to wrap around her head. The alicorn hadn’t noticed, as it snaked from her eyes, down her neck, until it wrapped softly around her chest.

Like before, it looked as if she were carefully choosing her words. In the time it took her to look at the four of us, she’d decided what she wanted. Her lips twisted, frowning worse than even Rose could. “My daughters... Are only safe. With me. Unity will protect them,” she said, her voice strained. “You, will tell me where... Tell me where I can find my daughters. I need them, so I can take them to Unity. To safety.” Practically growling, she squeezed with her magic.

It tightened around my neck, making me kick harder. I dug at my throat with my forehooves, uselessly hitting myself with the blunted steel edges. It was like when Wirepony had... I closed my eyes and prayed to the Goddesses, crying.

“Or I will-” she started, pausing. “I will...”

“Krrii!” Fine Tune chirped, his high pitched squeal cutting through my ears and the screaming inside my head. The knitting, tingling feeling of magic all around me got worse, and Rebar faltered her threat.

Forcing my eyes open, and watching through the tears, I caught what he’d done just in time. The eerie green glow around Rebar was him. His magic. Was he... feeding off her?

The alicorn didn’t seem to mind. Her horn still glowed, pulsing brightly every so often as she held and choked us.

Lost, on the other hoof, picked up on it. Her own horn sparked and glowed, adding to the growing light. It seemed to cut through Rebar’s darker magic aura, like a beacon of hope. Rather than attack the alicorn directly, my sister grabbed onto the steel rod run through her skull. It twisted sharply, and the magic around us faltered.

Rose fell to the ground, hard. She groaned in pain, having falling sharply onto the rubble of the ruined building below. It didn’t take her long to realize what my sister was doing. With her own aquamarine glow, her telekinesis wrapped around the back part of the steel rod. Together, she helped my sister to twist it to the side.

Rebar finally noticed. With her head twisted sharply to the side, she fought against it. Squinting at us, she bared her teeth and did whatever unicorns and alicorns did to make their magic stronger. It tugged at my legs and spread them apart, but it was obvious she was fighting a losing battle. Stronger than the two of them, even she couldn’t withstand the force of two unicorns and a changeling working together.

Slowly being drained of whatever powered her, her head was slowly turned away from us. The glow of all three of my companions increased, one at a time, as they struggled through clenched eyes and gritted teeth. Fine Tune’s wings fluttered so fast I couldn’t even see them, while my sister and the cloned mare’s horns both seemed to gain a second glow around them.

The alicorn struggled, eyes wide and full of hatred as she did her best to force her head back to face us. Flickers of pained screaming ripped through my mind as the four of them worked in a horrible tug of war with the mare’s neck. It was as if she could only fight back against them by screaming louder and louder inside our minds with frustration.

With sudden finality, Rebar’s head snapped to the side completely and the magic holding us in the air broke.

Without cheater magic to help, I fell to the ground unceremoniously, and all the more uselessly. The pain of hitting the broken pavement made me wince, and the PipBuck warnings flashed again, as if trying to add to the screaming overloading my senses.

When Lost slammed down on top of me, she gasped and moaned in pain.

“Why do you fight!” demanded the alicorn, swinging her head back and forth with more strength. Though her horn had stopped glowing, the sharp edge was still enough to do damage, and Fine Tune fluttered away as soon as she got close. His carapace seemed to shine, as if he were reflecting all the emotions he’d taken.

Green fire engulfed him, and he tackled the mare. Just like he had the dragon, he crashed like a meteor into the mare’s neck. The two tumbled to the ground, aided by the combination of two ponies’ magic holding her to the side.

Rebar didn’t go down easily. She kicked and struggled, screaming both inside our heads and out.

It only took a second, but it seemed to stretch on forever. Fine Tune with his hole-filled hooves wrapped around her neck, bit at her mane and ear. The magic around her held the steel rod to the ground, leaving her face dug harshly into the broken road.

“Stop fighting us and we’ll help you find your daughters!” I screamed. I couldn’t help with cheater magic, but with the rest of them focusing everything they had on their magic and keeping her down, I did the only thing I could. “Promise! We’ll help!”

“We submit,” said Rebar, quietly. She stopped struggling, and went still. The red marker in the corner of my vision disappeared, and suddenly only green ones remained. “Just call back your insect attack beast!” Eyes-wide, she stared at the changeling in the closest thing I could imagine to terror. Then again, having a giant bug of a pony latch onto me would have me just as terrified, if I didn’t know already that Fine Tune was mostly harmless.

Together, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

“We just need to find them,” she said, much calmer than before. “We need to protect them.”

“If we knew where the fuck they were we’d have just said it earlier, didn’t you fucking think about that? Instead of screaming into our minds and demanding it,” shouted my sister “We’ve gone across the mountains and back to help them.” Lost groaned, nearly growling. “First you sell ponies to slavers and now you just kill them on sight! If you want to call yourself their mother, try acting like one! Because what you’re doing right now is nothing like how a mother should act!” She stomped her hoof and hastily picked her glasses up with her telekinesis. Resting them back on her nose, she looked at me. “Go make sure Lamington and Tim Tam aren’t dead!” she ordered.

I looked back at the wreckage where Lamington had been thrown.

“Oh Goddesses, please be okay...”

* * *

I stared at the pile of debris, the remains of the building Rebar had so easily thrown Lamington into. A half-dozen little green markers shifted around the E.F.S. in the corner of my sight. One of them had to belong to the Star Paladin, because there was no way he... He was tougher than the building. Sucking air through my teeth in worry, I looked over at the changeling next to me.

He buzzed back and forth, lazily flitting from one side of me to the other on wings moving too fast to see. Whatever he’d sucked out of Rebar to weaken her, it was still very much in his system. Eyes bright and little chirps practically erupting from his fanged mouth every so often, he seemed all too eager to put that excess energy to work.

“You start at the top, and I’ll start at the bottom?” I asked, already leaning down and wrapping my forehooves around the closest chunk of wall.

He just lifted higher in the air and darted over to the top of the pile of building. Wrapping his own hooves around one piece, he hooked it into the holes in his forelegs. With both legs and his magic, he started to swiftly toss chunks away.

Lamington was a big pony, and he had been wearing his power armor. He was... probably okay. Still, time was a thing we didn’t have much of, and I wanted to make sure he was alright as soon as possible. “Lamington?” I yelled, pressing a hoof to the side of my mouth. “Can you hear me!”

Static answered, but no words. That was... I hoped it was a good sign. These were old buildings, and it wasn’t like they were made of concrete and rebar like some- I looked back at the alicorn as I grabbed a large chunk of wallpaper-covered wreckage from the interior of the building.

Lost had Rebar’s ear in her magic and the two of them were both arguing. My sister seemed quite pissed, and while Rebar still had that somewhat majestic air about her that seemed to come with being a giant alicorn, she did look apologetic. Whatever they were talking about, I couldn’t hear it, but the conversation was, hopefully, helping the situation. With Rebar, there wasn’t a way anypony could tell. She might just snap back into that psychotic rage if she didn’t get what she wanted.

I made a note to keep a closer eye on the indicators, just in case. Even the tiniest of warnings could save us from more trouble.

Moving closer, I started pulling out more pieces of the building. Part of me tried to guess what it might have been at one point. Sadly, being smashed in with a massive armor-covered pony did a great job at destroying anything I could identify it with. All that was left was the broken pieces of wallpaper-covered inner wall and the sturdier outside that had very much not survived the test of time.

Maybe after I dug him out I could go inside and dig around for some-

“Focus,” I told myself.

Fine Tune looked at me. “Krii?” he chirped, cocking his head to the side.

“Thinking out loud,” I answered, biting down on the wall piece and dragging it away. I spit it out once it was far enough away, hating that I didn’t have cheater magic to make this easier. Scraping my tongue with my teeth, I looked back at where the junk had been. The barest glimmers of metal shown from underneath. “The faster we go, the better. We’re finally making progress.” I trotted closer. “Lamington! Are you okay in there?”

“No,” he answered sternly. Good, that meant one of those green markers was his, and that he wasn’t dead.

The metal shifted and so did the pile of junk covering him.

“We’ll get you out!” I yelled. “Where are you exactly?” Hopping up onto the pile, I turned a few times on shaky legs, looking underneath me to find out what part of his armor I could see.

“Miss Fortune?” he asked, the edge still in his voice.

“Y-yes?” I asked hesitantly...

“Stop standing on me.”

“Eep!” I yelped, jumping into the air and scrambling to move. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t... Let me dig you out.” I pointed at where I’d been standing. “Right here Fine Tune! Help me!”

When the changeling zipped over, we both grabbed onto a large chunk of pressed wood that once made up the interior wall and lifted it up. A support beam shifted and slid to the side, taking chunks of old wires and some... strange pink wall fluff with it. We pulled it free, exposing much of the steel armor to the dull, cloud-hidden light again. Lamington’s foreleg and head were visible, but most of him remained buried.

“Are you okay?” I asked again.

“I was not trained on being thrown through a building,” he answered, somewhat deadpan. “Where is Tim Tam? Is he safe?”

“Rose is looking him over,” I answered as Fine Tune and I hefted the wall away. The large panel teetered in the air as we pushed it over, before finally hitting a tipping point and flopping down to land with a thud. Hitting the street, it kicked up a cloud of dirt. “He-” I couldn’t help but cough. “He got thrown down the road and took a tumble, but...” I looked over at the clone mare and the dark orange stallion.

She had him sitting on the side of the street, holding perfectly still. Her horn glowed slightly, as she bobbed her head back and forth, examining him the same way she had me just a few hours before.

“He’s up, and it looks like he’s still alive.”

Past them, other ponies had decided to come looking. That explained the sudden surge in green markers... They kept their distance, but stared out from alleyways and huddled with heads poked out from behind buildings. One seemed braver than the others. She was ‘hidden’ behind a lamppost, neck craned forward to stare at Rose in awe. Every so often, she would lick her lips, staring intently at the clone mare and shaking slightly.

Well, Rose was a pretty mare, but that’s a little too- Oh, of course, Rose was their drug supplier... Somepony must be itching for a-

A shadow blocked out the light behind me.

“We wish to assist you,” boomed Rebar’s voice. The dark blue glow of her magic wrapped around the remainder of the building’s pieces. In unison, using a similar trick that I’d seen other unicorns do, she lifted all of it into the air at once. Fucking cheater magic. Held in the hazy glow of her telekinesis, she balled the pieces together and tossed them effortlessly with a flick of her head to the side. They crashed loudly into the main room of the house, kicking up more dust.

I couldn’t help but cough. Stupid Wasteland.

Lamington’s visor lit up and he shifted. “Help me up?” he requested. After a moment, he added, “Please?”

As I reached down to grab onto him, the alicorn encased him in her magic. It only took a second, but she lifted him up into the air, spun him until his hooves were straight down, then dropped him onto the pavement. The force of his heavy armor hitting pavement made me jump into the air, all while the alicorn effortlessly flapped her wings to keep her away from the ground.

Lamington took a few steps forward, his movements jerky and slow due to the damage his armor must have gotten when he was thrown through a wall. He pressed the face of his armor against the alicorn’s nose. “Thank you,” he practically spat, sounding more annoyed than anything else. After a moment, he backed away. “I presume, given your assistance and the lack of visible hostility from my power armor’s E.F.S., that we’re no longer at odds, and therefore there’s no reason for me to pursue our fight.” The minigun on his back began to spin, whirring loudly. “I recommend we keep it that way, lest I find myself forced to discover a way to deal with you.”

“What did Lost say?” I asked, taking a few steps back away from the standoff.

“Many harsh words,” Rebar answered coldly, very much ignoring Lamington’s threat. “We apologize for not seeking to talk first. We were... overcome with worry. Our daughters are very important to Us.”

“Family is the most important thing there is, but that does not give you the right to outright attack others,” lectured the Star Paladin. He looked to me. “Excuse me, I must see to Tim Tam. To make sure he isn’t too wounded to continue.” With what had to be a glare at Rebar, he walked away.

Past him, where Tim Tam was being seen to, Lost had joined Rose in tending to him. As the Star Paladin walked over toward the three of them, I looked to Fine Tune.

I sighed. “If only you had any idea where Rose’s ponies took-” I muttered, stopping and looking at the alicorn. Could, could I just call her Rebar? Was that a name we used behind her back and never to her face or...

Fine Tune just fluttered about, eventually settling on the back of the alicorn. When he landed on her, she flinched and went rigid, but didn’t move to fling him away. He smiled, closing his eyes and resting his head across her neck. For a moment, his lack of draining seemed to confuse Rebar, but after seeing him lay down and close his eyes, she seemed to relax. She... must have been a good meal?

“You do know there’s a steel rod stuck in your head, right?” I asked awkwardly. Forcing a stupid smile, I rubbed a hoof across the back of my mane. It sent a shock of pain from hoof to shoulder, but I ignored it.

“What?” she asked, an eyebrow raising.

“I mean, you have this, umm... piece of rebar...” I muttered, tapping at my forehead. “Right here.... Going through your brain.” Oh Goddesses, I was a fucking idiot. Why’d I have to say anything? “Everypony in Skirt, umm, they were using it as a name for you. Since, I guess, nopony knew your name?”

“We have what?” she demanded, suddenly sounding furious. Crossing her eyes, she looked at her horn, then at the piece of metal jutting out from her head just past it. “How long has that been in Our head?”

Gulping, I answered, “Well, it was there when we met you, and-”

“Obviously it’s not doing any real damage,” interrupted Rose. She walked up and stopped next to me. “Otherwise, you’d be dead. Best to leave it there, unless you have a death wish.”

“How’s Tim Tam?” I asked.

“Yes, how is the one We tossed?” echoed Rebar. Her voice was flat and indifferent, but the small smirk gave away that she must have been proud of her throw.

“I’m fairly certain he has a concussion, but it could be a lot worse,” answered the clone mare. “Let’s go get this bitch’s ‘daughters’ so we can be done with this fiasco.” She glared at Rebar, her horn sparking to light and her magic wrapping around the metal stuck through the alicorn’s head. She pulled it close, eliciting a pained groan that seemed completely out of place coming from the pony that reminded me so much of a Goddess. The clone mare tugged on it until the much much taller mare was eye-level with the pink mare. “And don’t you ever, ever, fuck with me or my kind again. Or I will rip this-” She twisted the steel rod to the side, pulling the alicorn’s head with it. “-out of your skull and beat what’s left of you to death with it.”

“We wish to see you attempt it,” spat Rebar.

The magical haze around the steel rod disappeared, and Rose walked past her. “If I know the old sack of lard, she’s kept them close. Follow me.”

Heavy hooffalls fell behind me, shaking the ground below. Lamington, supporting Tim Tam, walked up behind me. My sister followed the two of them, her own blue magical glow knitting up a cut that Rose had missed on the stallion’s leg. He looked... terrible. His eye was swollen and a bruise was forming on the side of his head. When he saw me looking, he forced a smile.

“I’ve had worse,” he muttered. “I didn’t get to grow up in a Stable like Lamington here.” He sighed. “Never been thrown down a road before though... Get to add that to the list, I guess.”

It was good to know I wasn’t the only pony keeping lists. Actually, it was probably a good idea to add ‘getting thrown through a building’ to the List of Things to Never Do Again.

There was only one question left...

“Where are the daughters you left Skirt with, umm, Rebar?”

I winced, waiting to be struck. Instead, Lost just shot me a glare. The alicorn didn’t respond, at all.

I poked at her. “Rebar?” I asked, hoping to get her attention. “Where are the daughters you left Skirt with?”

“We have asked them to stay safely outside town,” she answered, not correcting me with the new ‘name.’ “We wish to keep them safe, and thought it better to not bring them to Our fight. We shall return to them with Our other daughters in tow, once they are safely with Us.” She didn’t make mention of the name I’d called her.

“Let’s just get them and be done with it,” said Lost, her voice a mix of exasperation and exhaustion. “I’m so sick of today, already...”

* * *

The walk back was... eerie.

Nopony said anything, not even Rose or my sister. Fine Tune was still draped over Rebar’s back, and while she kept her eye on him warily, she hadn’t acted out to throw him off. Her wings, however, were half-raised, as if she was going to take off at any second. We walked down the road toward where Rose stayed, not that I could tell, since we weren’t taking the same path I’d chased her down during the fight. I wasn’t on an adrenaline high anymore... I had a chance to look around and realize that, even if we were going the same way, given the destruction Rebar had caused before we arrived, I wouldn’t know because, well... it all looked the same to me. Nothing stood out as a landmark to know where I was.

I lagged behind the others, quietly watching. A nagging little claw dug at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite place why. It wouldn’t have been because of the alicorn, since the little marker for her was staying green. It might have been that, despite the fact that more townsponies were wandering around and gawking at a distance, there were far less markers overall. It might have been the little jolts of pain that occasionally shot up and down my legs. Or maybe I was just afraid we were too late, and the original fat lard-sack Rose had fled and taken the mares with her.

A large part of me feared what Rebar would do if that was the case...

Still, it might have been worry about Tim Tam. Despite the fact that he had spoken clearly and without any problems earlier, he walked on wobbly legs and kept staring around. Every so often he’d start looking at the other side of the road and slow down, as if blankly caught in focus of something. But, every time, before somepony other than me would notice, he’d start back up and wobble his way to stand next to Lamington.

The Star Paladin himself walked with a slightly off-kilter gait, due in large part to the series of dents and dings covering the intricately carved designs on his power armor. I didn’t know how he could lift it, given how much it must weigh, but if there was something inside the suit that assisted him, it was probably damaged.

But the voice wasn’t screaming inside my head anymore, and that seemed to be true for everypony. It was, thank the Goddesses, a small blessing.

After several blocks, a few twists and turns to get to a different part of the ruined city, Rose stopped. She turned on a hoof and looked at the rest of us. “Let me go in first. I need to find out if she’s still here,” she announced, giving a look at the alicorn.

At least she wasn’t glaring at me, for once.

“We are not privy to your orders,” answered the massive mare. Squinting at the clone pony, she spread her wings wider.

“Rebar,” Lost muttered, using the same name without hesitation. “Don’t make me sic my insect attack beast on you.”

Fine Tune grinned, cooing out a little, “Criiiiiiki...”

“We shall behave,” relented the alicorn, sulking slightly. She pinned her wings to her side and hung her head. “We wish Our daughters back. Their safety is first amongst Our desires.” Turning her head, she looked at each member of our little group one at a time. “We wish you only safety, as well. Unity would do well to gain the teamwork shown betwixt you all.” From the corner of her eye, she looked at the ‘insect attack beast’ resting on her happily. “This one would not be welcome.”

Fine Tune just stuck his tongue out at her, his transformative green fire erupting around him in a massive swirl of flame.

Rebar practically shrieked. Rearing up, she kicked her forelegs in the air several times, throwing the swirling ball of fire away, and took to the air. Wings flapping, she hovered away from him, fear in her deep blue eyes.

The unicorn stallion with the f-marks cutie mark remained, landing delicately on his hooves from where he was thrown into the air. “I have my own hive,” he said angrily. “I don’t need yours.” Raising his snout, he snorted and turned away from her. “I’m happier here as it is, than being stuck in whatever this unity you mentioned is.”

“And we’re glad to have you here, Fine Tune,” Lost said, walking over and resting a hoof on his shoulder.

“My Queen,” he whispered, bowing.

“Are we done?” Rose demanded, deadpan.

“I was a few minutes ago,” Tim Tam answered for us. “Can I sit down and rest?”

“No!” snapped the pink mare. Scrunching her eyes closed, she mouthed counting slowly. “I hate all of you.”

“Perhaps,” Lamington interrupted calmly. “We should await your findings, relating to where...”

“Yes,” Rose interrupted him. “I’ll go check on my progenitor. You all wait here.”

I remembered that word. She meant the original.

As the clone mare disappeared into the building where at one time we’d been ambushed, the rest of us gathered closer together. Lamington rested a hoof against Tim Tam, holding him steady as he gently swayed back and forth. Fine Tune sat down and smiled, closing his eyes like a Manticore that had just fed and wanted to relax. Lost sighed, slouching a bit like she had on the motorwagon. The alicorn, however, stayed airborne.

The silence was... awkward.

I wanted to say something, but I wasn’t sure what I could say.

Luckily, none of us had to wait long to find out about the original Rose. Our Rose, the one we’d been traveling with, slammed open a set of wooden shutters keeping the upstairs windows closed. She looked down at us. “She’s gone,” she announced.

“Our daughters?” demanded the alicorn, flapping her massive wings and flying over to the window. She pushed Rose out of the way and stuck her head clean in through the open window. A second later, she pulled it free. “What stench is this!”

“The stink of a pony who’s not moved in over a hundred years,” I answered sarcastically. Thank the Goddesses Rose hadn’t demanded we all go up with her. She really took one for the team. Still, I looked at the E.F.S. in the corner of my vision, tilting my head slightly to center...

No markers. At all.

What the fuck was wrong with this thing?

“What do you mean a pony who’s not moved in over a hundred years?” asked Lamington. “There are no ponies who can live that long, Celestia and Luna aside.” Static peppered his words, but... it made sense. Nopony must have filled him in on how many stupid seemingly ‘immortal’ things we dealt with.

A Wartime mare peddling drugs. A dragon hatched by zebras during the War. A ageless, mechanical monster inside a suit of power armor...

That was a pattern if I’d ever seen one.

“Lost, do you-”

“Where. Are. Our. Daughters,” demanded Rebar again. She sounded far more urgent.

“Well, one of two places,” answered Rose calmly. “Either she’s decided to take them as pony shields, in hopes that you wouldn’t attack them.... Which assumed she knows you were after them. And I can’t say if she does or not. Or, she’s got them holed up somewhere nearby.”

“Which is more likely?” asked my sister. She scraped a forehoof against the ground. “Should we spread out and look for them?” Before Rose could answer, her horn lit up and the blue glow of her magic wrapped around the PipBuck attached to my foreleg. “Mind if I use this if we have to look? I don’t have that little edge in finding things.”

“Huh?” I muttered blankly. I looked down at the PipBuck, then at the corner of my vision... Green markers filled the E.F.S. “Yeah, sure.” The magical overlay in my vision disappeared as the internal mechanisms Lost had built into the device were released, and it lifted off my foreleg.

“I believe we should,” Lamington answered, in place of the clone mare. “If we are to assume she took these mares with her, then we’re opening the possibility of leaving them here unguarded and potentially without sustenance. A cursory check of likely areas is the best course of action. Once we’ve ruled out any local holding areas, we can then pursue the mare.”

“He’s right,” agreed Rose, shouting past the alicorn’s head. “She doesn’t move fast. We’ll catch up to her, even if we spend time searching here.” She disappeared from the window entirely, and after only a few seconds, reappeared from the front door. “If only we still had a motorwagon, it’d be even faster.”

“The faster We find Our daughters, the better,” Rebar said, the barest of voices raising in the back of my mind. “We graciously accept your assistance in finding them. Now.” Yeah, the tone she used made it very obvious it wasn’t a request... and given how it’d taken the teamwork of three of us to subdue her in the first place...

We all shared a look and nodded in unison. Except Tim Tam, he was busy staring off at a group of ponies gawking from the far intersection. He waved at them absently.

Lost and I were supposed to be the team, not Lost and Rose, or Lost and Fine Tune, or...

“Let’s start looking. The faster the better,” I said, hanging my head. At least I was good at finding what we needed when we needed it. Hopefully that worked for ponies, too.

Rebar landed and did a pass over the rest of us. “We shall seek Our daughters on Our own terms,” she announced before turning away from our group. “We shall return...” Casually, she glanced at Rose’s home and squinted, Walking over slowly, she lowered her head and dragged her horn across the rotting front of it. Carving a deep gouge into the wood, she lifted her head and dragged a second across it, making a massive X across the house. “... here, if We do not find Our daughters.” With a little snort of disgust, she spread her wings and took to the air. Without regard for us, she disappeared past the roof.

“Well, that’s ominous,” I muttered. We really should have just shot her the second we had the chance. A single bullet in the head without any radiation around and this whole problem would have been solved. We could have saved the poor mares, and...

What could we have done with them, then? Send them to Stables Twelve and Twenty One? Would there be enough food for them all there? I looked over at Lamington, trying my best to keep it from being obvious. Would they have allowed more and more ponies to show up? It... was an imperfect solution.

And if word got out that there was a ‘safe haven’ they might have been overrun by ponies demanding things, or have liars sneak in to try and steal from them, or be overwhelmed by attacks by ponies who wanted to take what they had, or-

I shook my head. My mind was racing down horrible possibilities that would likely never happen with the speed of an overly excited Praline. Taking a deep breath, I sat down.

“So, how shall we split up to cover more ground?” I asked, scooting myself closer to Lost.

“I’ll go with the Steel Rangers,” Rose answered. “This one.” She pointed at Tim Tam. “He needs somepony to watch over him, and as much as the big stallion seems to have his head on straight, I doubt he’s trained as a medic.”

“Actually, as part of training for all soldiers, we are given, at the barest levels, a rudimentary training in field first aid,” he answered, static cutting through his voice. He sounded very proud of himself. “I consider myself proficient for basics.”

Smugly impressed, Rose only smiled. “Good to see Fluttershy’s initiatives gained some traction, at least,” she said.

“Familiar with the Ministry Mare of the Ministry of Peace?” asked the Star Paladin.

“I worked under her, a lifetime ago,” the clone mare answered.

“Hundred year old pony, indeed.”

“We’re wasting time, aren’t we?” asked Lost. “Rose, go with them. Hidden and I will go together.” She turned to the Changeling. “Fine Tune, can you stay here, relay back and forth with us if Rebar shows back up?”

Fine Tune drew his hooves together, stood straight, and saluted. “Of course, my Queen,” he answered.

“But I’m supposed to be the guard pony,” corrected Tim Tam. Blinking slowly, he looked at the ground, then back up at the blue unicorn stallion. “Right?”

“Come with me, soldier,” answered Lamington. “New orders.” With a nod of his head, he beckoned Rose to follow him and walked down the street. “Where shall we check first?”

“Check the buildings nearby. The fat Rose took over most of these houses and shops for her own gains in the few years after the world ended and nopony was around. Basements, attics. Make sure to check everywhere in them. The whole block,” Rose instructed. “We’ll start at separate corners and meet in the middle. Go clockwise around the edge of this block.” She pointed, motioning with her hoof. “When you get to the second corner, start working inward.”

“Sounds good,” I answered. “Meet you back here.”

Rose half-heartedly waved, then turned and followed after Lamington and Tim Tam.

At least this would give me some time to talk to my sister... We headed the opposite direction, for the corner of the city block.

* * *

We’d searched three of the homes so far with no luck. Finding mares was a lot different than finding... our usual treasure. Mares moved around and talked and they weren’t tiny and stuffed into cabinets or drawers out of sight if somepony wasn’t digging for them. Still. We hadn’t found them.

From the kitchen, I looked through the doorway into the living room where Lost was poking around. She hadn’t said much since we started, nothing more than whatever was absolutely necessary. Usually, when we were searching for things together, there would be small talk to pass the time, but this time...

I tossed down the fork I had in my fetlock. The stabby bits were bent anyway, and it wasn’t what I was here for. Trotting out into the main room, I stopped behind my sister. She wasn’t moping anymore, and I felt like it’d been long enough for me to give her the space Lamington suggested. We could talk, privately, here... Hopefully keep her from falling back into that same funk again the instant we weren’t either fighting for our lives or trying to find a group of ponies before the nigh-unkillable alicorn monster got impatient with us...

“Did you check upstairs yet?” I asked, forcing myself to stay casual.

“Yeah, I didn’t see anything,” she answered, without turning around.

“Lost...”

“What?” she asked.

“When are you going to start talking to me?” I asked, shifting my weight and moving closer to the door.

“We’re talking right now, Hidden,” she countered, finally turning around to face me. “Let’s move on to the next house.” Sidestepping me, she walked past and pulled the door open with the blue haze of her magic. Disappearing outside, the sound of her hooffalls casually echoed through the door as she got further away.

I sighed and followed her. Another rotting house down, so many more to go. Before passing the doorway, I took one last look inside, and twisted my ear around to listen. Just in case.

Nothing. Not even a creak of the building settling.

I raced after my sister as fast as my legs would carry me until I caught up with her, just as she entered the next building. Rather than head in after her to look around, I stepped right inside the doorway and hooked a rear hoof around the door to slam it closed. The shackle around my leg caught on the wood and shifted, dragging the spikes inside against my bones and sending a jolt up my leg. After all the other aches shooting through them, I barely registered it. I slammed the door shut so we could have some privacy.

Maybe I hadn’t given her enough time? Regardless, we needed to push past the problem, and the best way to do it was to talk it out. That’s how family worked, we banded together to find a solution, be it in a fight or dealing with... relationship problems. If only I knew anything about them. “Lost! This is serious. We need to talk, and you know what I mean,” I practically shouted.

“What happened between Crème Brûlée and I is my business, not yours,” she argued, walking off into the kitchen of this new house.

I stormed after her. “It is. Because I need you to not be too busy sulking when things like, oh I don’t know, an alicorn decides to attack,” I snapped. That was the main reason, but more to the point I just wanted my sister back. It wasn’t the same when she was curled up, uselessly refusing to help. “So yes, what happened between you and Crème Brûlée is exactly my business.” I stopped in the doorway and spread my legs as wide as I could to block her in. We needed to have this talk. “If you hadn’t snapped out of it back there, what could have happened?”

She looked over the rims of her glasses at me, shaking her head. “I snapped out of it because I needed to,” she clarified. “Something more important came up, and I’m not going to talk about it.” Twisting on her hoof, she walked out another doorway from the kitchen and into the back part of the house.

With a frown, I pulled myself back and looked around to find a way to head her off. The place was in shambles, but it looked like somepony had been through recently. Then again, we were in a town and not some remote part of the Wasteland that nopony went. The druggies nearby had probably cleared the place out of anything worthwhile long ago. No trash just meant nothing to dig for. I trotted past a staircase that led to the second floor, but heard nothing up there. No voices, no hooves. Underneath it, around the back of the stairs, was a door. As I trotted by, I hooked the latch awkwardly with my steel forehoof and pulled it open.

It was pitch black inside, and silently still. No mares...

“Sis look, I’m not trying to force you to talk about it, but...” I muttered, pausing... “We’ve shared damn near everything. I’ve known you my entire life. Can’t you trust me?”

She just snorted from the other room. “There’s a big difference between trusting you and telling you about my fucking sex life!” After a pregnant pause, she sighed and walked over around the doorway. Standing face to face with me, she furrowed her brows. She looked... pathetic. “It’s complicated Hidden.”

“I know, but I just want to help you through it,” I said in my most reassuring voice. Taking a few steps closer, I wrapped my steel hooves around her and squeezed. “Lovers will come and go, but I’ll always be here. Right?”

“I know, but it’s... I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, hugging me back. After a weak squeeze, she released and walked past me. “Finding those mares is more important right now.”

“We can do both. C’mon. Talk.”

Stomping a hoof, she pursed her lips and stared at me over her shoulder. After what felt like an eternity of her staring and occasionally scrunching up her face as she thought, she just turned away.

I twisted an ear and looked up, both in frustration and because she was right about finding the mares. “Seriously. Seriously? It’s just the two of us so the others don’t have to be involved in our personal business and we’re inside so...” I compromised, trailing off as I noticed she’d already left. “Goddesses dammit...”

Moving to the next house, I pushed open the door and stepped in. No sign of my sister. “Lost!” I snapped. This place was the same as the last. Picked clean with just the barest of strewn around trash littering the floor. Old food cans, empty ones, were piled around an absolutely filthy mattress in the corner. Either we were getting closer, or it was a coincidence.

Probably a coincidence.

“Fine!” she groaned, as she stormed up the house’s stairs. “Sex is weird. Good weird. I’ve never...” She raised to her hind legs on the stairs and raised her hooves up in frustration. “I don’t have something to equate all of this to.” She went silent, and disappeared down the hallway. “Now do you see why I don’t want to talk about it?”

“Look, I know if the situations were flipped I wouldn’t want to have to spill everything about my potential sex life with you,” I admitted. “It’s... personal, and probably embarrassing.”

“Y’think?” she asked, reappearing at the top of the stairs. “And there’s no fucking mares up here right now!”

“But it’s affecting how we worked together, and you sulking to the point where you could have been killed in that fight?” I continued, stopping to take a deep breath.

“Look, I- I’m scared. Okay?” she stammered.

“Of what?” I goaded.

“Commitment!” she yelled, exasperated. Trotting down the stairs, she stopped in front of me. One of her forehooves raised and she pointed at the mess in the corner where somepony had been living. “That pony is probably dead, because this is the fucking Wasteland. I can’t... commit to a relationship.” She looked nearly ready to cry. “What happens if that’s Crème Brûlée tomorrow? What if she gets shot the next day? I just want to take what little time I can to feel good when I can. Is it wrong to do that? To get a little pleasure wherever I can?”

My ears drooped and I shrunk back.

“It could happen, we both know it, at any time,” Lost continued, sounding dour. “We came really really close to dying, okay? Back under Amble. And I’m not going to let what little happiness I can get just... disappear when I can grab it and hold onto it,” she continued. “We’re survivors, Hidden, but I want to experience life, not just survive it. And I can’t accept that you don’t understand that.”

I nodded. I understood all too well. So many times I’d thought it was good to go running ahead without thinking. Goddesses above, it was all I did. I locked myself into a fantasy world...

“So now I’ve got this new way to feel good for the first time without commitment, and...” She stopped, stamping a hoof in frustration. “I can’t do that because of somepony who might not be alive next time I see her!”

“But...” I started, now feeling a bit confused. “You broke up with Crème. Why can't you pursue other mares without commitment?” I may not have felt the same way about sex as Lost, I wasn’t even sure how I felt about it, but she seemed set that this was how she wanted to live.

“Because... I didn't break up with her, okay? It wasn’t that easy,” she said in a frustrated tone, walking around me and out the door. “Check the basement, I’m moving to the next house.”

Before I could react to what she said, she disappeared.

Half-assed, I pulled open the door and trotted down a few steps. “Hello?” I yelled. “Anypony there?”

Nopony answered.

Not wanting to get caught down there by some crazy drugged pony, in case there was somepony still living there, I backed up the stairs and trotted from the house. When I got to the next one, Lost was nowhere to be seen. Dammit. Running inside, I looked around the main floor, in a big circle from foyer to kitchen to the other two rooms and back to foyer. Then I checked up stairs. Going up them hurt, and that little static-scream inside my legs returned... but disappeared again once I reached the top. Inside was nopony, not Lost, nor another mare.

Except the skeletons...

Somepony had died in bed, and was never disturbed. Everything around them was torn up, but the bed itself looked completely untouched, as if they’d just laid down for a nap and then when the world ended, nopony came to get them.

I backed out of the room and down the hallway. By the time I made it to the stairs, I saw my sister halfway out the door.

“Nopony downstairs!” she yelled as the purple wisp of her tail disappeared out of sight.

“Fuck!” I snapped. Running awkwardly on aching legs down the stairs, and ignoring the jolts and static pains, I bolted out the door. The house looked just like the rest. Trash, ruined walls, rotting furniture; no point checking around anymore.

Once outside, I rounded the corner. We’d hit the edge of the block and on the far side of the corner was a store, instead of a home. Past the broken window and missing sign, Lost stood inside looking around. Somepony had gone to a lot of work to topple over both the racks that once held goods, turning the aisles into one poorly floored mess. The register in the back lay upside down, with the box-part where bits were kept ripped out and bent. Of course, it was empty.

If this had been any other day, I’d have been scrounging around for the one shiny thing I could find...

“What do you mean you didn't break up with Crème Brûlée” I asked incredulously, jumping through the broken glass door and inside. “After all you just said about wanting to experience life and not wanting to be tied down to somepony that may be dead the next day?”

“I feel bad that I fucked around on Crème Brûlée,” she admitted. “There, I said it. Okay? I feel shit that I put me first and hurt somepony I care about.” It looked like she was suddenly on the verge of crying again. “Despite all the reasons I had to end it, I just couldn't bring myself to hurt her more, and... I realized it would hurt if I lost her. In the end I told her about the zebra, and we wound up arguing about the same things as last time.”

Instead of continuing, she gave the building one last glance. “We need to find the mares,” she said, completely off topic. When she walked off, I followed, and we made our way to the next building.

It was non-descript, with wooden walls and a sign so faded I couldn’t read it. It didn’t matter. Inside was a bit better, since the elements hadn’t gotten through the broken front like the last shop. A jacket, much like my own, hung in a little alcove. It was in rough shape, with holes all through it, but there was enough leather to patch up the holes mine was full of! Forgetting for a moment the heart to heart I was having with my sister, I bolted inside and grabbed it.

“Hey Lost, look,” I said, holding up my prize. “Now we can fix my jacket.” It was nice to break up the heavy conversation, if only for a moment.

“Now we can fix your jacket,” she agreed, as I stuffed it into my saddlebags.

“You were saying?” I encouraged once the clothing piece was away.

“I’m not sure what I should do next. I'm stuck in an impossible situation. Living the life of meeting up with ponies I meet at each town, burn bridges when I disappear, all at the cost of hurting those I care about. Or force myself to give up chasing my own happiness all for the possibly brief time I may have with Crème?”

I raised my hoof to say something, but stopped. My ear flicked. Forgetting my sister for a second, I looked around. The walls had little alcove-boxes scattered around, with the remains of what had to have been mirrors at one point. Aside from a little door to the back behind the counter, the room was filled with little stands that might have once been pony mannequins? But I thought I heard something...

“Do you hear that?”

She stood up straight and swiveled her ears back and forth.

“Back room?” We both asked in unison.

Together the two of us walked past the counter and she pushed the door open. Past it was a small storage area, full of boxes overflowing with ancient clothes. Were it not for the fact we had a reason to be here, I’d have found quite the treasure trove. Against the far wall was a small staircase, with a sign above it that read ‘extra storage downstairs.’

The voices were louder, echoing up the stairs quietly.

“... this isn’t as bad as before, we can all agree on that right?” said the voice of Battu.

Finally.

* * *

The blue haze of Lost’s magic wrapped around the knob for the door. Slowly, it twitched as she twisted it.

“Lost, wait...” I whispered, resting a hoof onto her shoulder. Waiting until the aura of her telekinesis disappeared, I slowly walked over to the door, letting my hooves fall as quietly as I could to keep the metal from clanking against the hard stone floor of the storage basement. Once I’d reached it, I pressed my head against the door and twisted my ear to listen.

My sister took my lead and walked over to stand opposite me. She leaned in close and pressed her ear to the door as well, making her glasses shift and nearly fall off her nose. She held a hoof to her lips and shushed me.

As if I needed to be told how to eavesdrop.

“I don’t think so,” answered a voice I wasn’t familiar with. It must have been one of the unicorn mares that weren’t in the same pen as I was when we were dragged off with Amble. Maybe it was the mare Lost had called Arabesque when she was healing them before? “At least we knew where we stood there. Here? I don’t know shit.”

“Mother will come for us though, if we just wait,” said Fouetté, the lime green mare who’d been so eager to keep the group held together back when we were in that pen. “I have faith in that.” It seemed she hadn’t given up.

“But what if she was lying to us, too?” asked Battu’s voice. The sound of hooves on the floor echoes, as the mares moved around while they talked. “What if the Unity she talked about wasn’t really a thing, and she just wanted to collect us? If that fucking slaver had her wrapped around her hoof, maybe this was always the plan. A bait and switch?”

“Then we’d just better hope those mares Rose keeps using as a carrot on a stick will actually come through for us,” snarled Fouetté. A hoof stomped on the ground. “Then we can all go our separate ways, can’t we! Nopony will force you to join Unity with me.”

It went silent, for long enough that I looked at my sister.

“Should we go in now?” I asked in a whisper.

She shook her head. “Not yet...” she answered hesitantly.

“...don’t think we should jump to conclusions!” said Arabesque. “We’re better off together. We know we can trust one another at least, right?”

“Only because we’re all in the same predicament,” snapped Battu. “But, yes. I’d rather make sure we’re all safe than just run off.” There was another pause. “Unity and mother or not, I’m not going to just abandon you. You’re my friends.”

“I’ll... agree on that one, at least,” answered Fouetté, the slightest of warm inflections in her voice. “Shared experiences. I just want mother to come get us. I want to be free of this stupid basement.”

“Do you really think she’s coming?” asked Battu, her voice level and calm.

“Yes,” Fouetté answered.

“No,” answered Arabesque. “Not... after what happened. I don’t think even Unity can remove that memory from my mind.”

She must have been the mare that was with the stallion when I... sorta killed a bunch of Rose clones. It was a hazy memory, all that happened. All I knew was there was a lot of adrenaline, and a lot of anger at being run ragged around the entirety of Idle by her. I felt bad about it, after learning what Rose was really like and... Goddesses, I wondered if they’d all had that same fear in them of dying, of becoming nothing when their world ended.

I really was a monster.

“A murderer,” whispered that voice.

I shook my head and took a deep breath. I just had to ignore it. Instead, I focused on the conversation behind the door, adjusting my ear to hear better.

“...can’t help but think it was all a part of her plan though,” said Battu.

“You’ve said that twenty seven times since we’ve been put down here,” answered Arabesque. “The only way we’re going to find out is if she comes back. When she comes back. She’ll tell us, and set everything right.”

“I’m glad to see at least one of you is still with me,” said Fouetté smugly. “Today should be the day, if what Rose said was true.”

“Assuming you believe anything she says, either,” snapped Battu. “She could be in on the whole thing. You saw yourself how she basically runs this place.” She said the last bit with an obnoxious voice, as if trying to rub it in.

“Well, considering how she complains, I think there’s a bigger picture going on here,” answered Fouetté. “These things can’t just be isolated, can they? What kind of a pony tries to keep an entire town drugged? A few...” She cleared her throat. “A few pleasure ponies, sure. That made sense, but imagine how many drugs she needs to keep every pony here under her hoof. It’s... there’s just not enough drugs around.”

“And how do you know that?” asked Arabesque.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” answered the mare, sheepishly.

“Oh...” said both Arabesque and Battu at the same time.

“Can we stop talking about all this?” asked a fourth voice quietly. “We’re at least safe here, let’s just sleep it off until Rose lets us out.”

“Life isn’t just eating and sleeping,” said Fouetté. “We need to be free, to live.”

“I think that’s our cue,” I said to my sister.

“I think so, too,” she answered, smiling softly. It was a nice little parallel to the conversation we’d had earlier. About the difference between survival and living, and trying to find happiness and all the complications that came with it.

Shame we hadn’t finished that talk. There’d be time later.

I moved away from the door just as lost grabbed onto the knob with her magic. When she pulled on it, nothing happened. The door just jostled on its hinges.

Of course it was locked. Otherwise the mares could have just wandered out. Knowing Rose, she’d kept them locked in there and was only opening the door to give them food and water so they could stay alive as collateral. But if Rose and her clones had already made their escape, what had happened to the key?

Did they go with? Did they leave them? Who would even know where the keys were? Our Rose couldn’t, since she was with us and she told us repeatedly that the group didn’t have some sort of hivemind and she couldn’t have learned without being here personally. Rebar would have killed any that knew and hadn’t evacuated with her so...

I reared up on my hind legs and smashed my forehooves into the door as hard as I could. It hurt. Goddesses did it hurt. My legs, what parts of them were left, screamed in protest. So did the mares inside, given their surprised yelps. But the door needed to come down, and I was going to make it come down. I reared my hooves back again and put as much force as I could muster into smashing at it. I aimed just above the latch, trying to smash through that or at least weaken it to where we could push it open.

Through gritted teeth, I held back a cry of pain each time I hit it. I wished there was a better way, but I couldn’t go shooting a high powered rifle through a door and not hit the ponies inside. We needed them alive, after all. After several painful bashes against the wooden door with my steel forehooves, I finally made enough of a crack in it that my sister and I could manage to push it open.

Behind the door was a small store room, with boxes filling up the corners and lining the walls. A few of them were toppled onto the floor and had obviously been used as seats for the mares. A single light hanging from the ceiling illuminated the room, and the four mares inside. Battu, Arabesque, Fouetté, and... It took me a minute to place it, but the mare was Allegro, who’d been broken down and crying when I’d first seen her in U Cig.

Each of them had a look of terror on their faces, no doubt from the fact that I literally destroyed my way inside. I couldn’t blame them. Arabesque’s horn glowed, the dark green haze of her magic sparking softly. Whatever she was doing with her horn, I didn’t want to find out.

She stared at me for a moment, then look at my sister. The moment she locked eyes with Lost, the aura around her horn disappeared and she sighed in relief. “Thank goodness,” she whispered. “Did you really have to bash the door in?”

“Well, we could have gotten our changeling to pick the lock, but we’re on a time limit,” Lost answered “I see you’re all much healthier than the last time I was here. We’re back, and we’ve brought somepony you might be interested in seeing.”

“Mother?” asked Fouetté and Allegro at the same time.

“She found us, but yes,” I answered.

The two of them wasted no time in getting up, and running for the door. Pushing past my sister and me, they bolted up the stairs.

“Hey, wait!” I yelled, but they were already gone.

“Is she really here?” asked Battu, her voice very hesitant.

“She is, flying around somewhere,” Lost answered.

The pinkish-grey mare smiled, looking at Arabesque. They could have been sisters, so close in color. One a pale pink, and the other purple. In another world, they could have mirrored my sister and I, given only one of them had fucking cheater magic. “I knew she’d come back for us,” she said.

Arabesque just rolled her eyes. “Of course you did,” she muttered. “Let’s go to her.”

Oh, they were definitely sisters.

“We’ll show you where she’s going to meet us,” Lost said as the four of us turned to walk back up the stairs.

I hung back and followed, not really paying attention to the quiet mutterings between the two unity mares and whatever they were saying to my sister. Instead, I could only really focus on the ambient background agony going on in my legs. It felt like somepony had given my body to a hellhound and they’d used my legs as a chew toy.

This had all been easy, and in a town like this there wasn’t any reason to keep myself on guard. Not anymore. Instead, I focused on my breathing and tried my hardest to block out the pain. It wasn’t too difficult. I’d survived getting a hoof bitten completely off. I could deal with pulled muscles, even if it was all of them.

The walk back to the meeting spot wasn’t difficult or even time consuming. By the time we got back Rose and the others were already there. Now that we had all the unity mares in tow, the only pony that we were missing was Rebar.

“So, where were they?” asked Rose as we walked up.

“Basement storage room of a clothing store,” answered Lost, matter-of-factly.

“Hmm, that seems like the kind of place she’d keep them,” Rose answered. “Out of the way, but close. Somewhere other ponies wouldn’t be snooping around.” She looked at me and squinted. “You hurt yourself again, didn’t you?”

Was it that obvious?

“No, I’m fine,” I lied, straightening up and standing as tall as my hooves would let me. Still, I was a bit shorter than Rose. Dammit...

“Has Rebar come back yet?” asked Lost.

Fine Tune shook his head. “Haven’t seen her,” he answered. “Want me to go find her, my Queen?”

“Please, the sooner we get this over with, the better.”

Before Lost could finish her sentence, the changeling was already transforming. The swirl of green fire that wrapped around him didn’t faze Lost, Rose, or the Steel Rangers, but the mares certainly freaked out. Each of them had a different, but altogether bad, reaction.

Allegro collapsed down and curled up, covering herself with her hooves. Battu jumped over her to protect her, her ears pinning back. The other two just bolted behind a nearby building and peeked their heads out to watch.

When the fires faded, a green pegasus mare remained. She jumped into the air and lazily buzzed off past the nearby houses.

I cleared my throat after the changeling disappeared, and waved for the two mares to return. “Don’t worry, Fine Tune wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I reassured them. With a quiet laugh, I couldn’t help but add, “They might be his family, after all.”

“To my knowledge, changelings aren’t related to insects,” announced Lamington, finally breaking from pretending to be a statue. Static crackled as his mic was kept on, but he said nothing. After an awkward silence, his armor shifted. “Oh, you were making a joke. Apologies for ruining your jest.” He sounded embarrassed.

“That’s okay,” I said, chewing on my bottom lip slightly. Silly stallion. I was no doubt blushing, but that was probably the cutest thing I’d seen him do yet.

Before we could say anything else, the massive frame of the alicorn appeared in the air and landed directly between us. She kicked up dust as she slammed into the cracked pavement, her wings quickly furling up and pinning to her side. She didn’t look quite as imposing anymore, and didn’t even look as big as she had when we first saw her materialize from thin air when we got back to Idle. Did alicorns shrink?

Ignoring our group, she dropped down onto her haunches and raised her forehooves to her ‘daughters.’ In the happiest voice I’d ever heard her use, she called to them, “Daughters! Your Mother has returned! Come to Us!”

They didn’t need any more coaxing. The four of them, even the two hiding behind the building, ran to her. They collected between her forelegs, forming a large group hug in the protective embrace of their ‘mother.’

“We have missed you all,” she said, both verbally and inside my head. It wasn’t the same shrieking rage as before, instead it felt... nice. Like when our mother had been alive and gently whispering into our ears that she was going to keep Lost and I safe no matter what.

It felt like I was being stabbed through.

I missed her...

Rubbing one of the hard steel forehooves across my muzzle to make sure I wasn’t crying; not that I could feel it, I took a step back. This was their moment, and not one we should interfere with.

Rose, on the other hoof, thought the exact opposite. “There,” she snapped. “Now that you’ve got your daughters, or whatever, are you going to go and not fuck with my town anymore?”

“We have collected what is Ours,” Rebar answered, her happiness gone and her voice cold. She stared at Rose with her slitted pupils and snorted, turning her nose up. “Tell Us, how did Our daughters come to this place? These are not all of Our daughters, where are the others.”

“Slavers probably still have them,” Lost answered. “Just like we told you before. Go to U Cig, that’s where Amble has been. She’ll probably have the rest.” She looked down, raising the PipBuck up and flicking over the controls with her magic. After a moment’s pause, she turned to the alicorn. “Head that way.” She pointed a hoof. “U Cig is there, and so are the rest of your daughters.”

“And that’s where the mare who’s been selling them off is,” I added. “She keeps good records, too. I bet she can tell you where each and every one of them are.” I smirked. If Rebar was as furious as I hoped she was, we could just kill two balefire phoenixes with one stone on this. Rebar would wreck the shit out of Amble, and if the slaver managed to survive, she’d be effectively weakened enough that either my sister and I, or somepony else with a chip on their shoulder against slavers, could just wander in and either take over or kill them all.

And if they did take over, they’d have to pick up where Amble left off, and in that moment of hopeful weakness, we’d get word of it and be able to go in there to finish the job.

My mistake of letting a monstrous, brain-damaged alicorn loose on the Wasteland might work out. She could be used just like a gun. All we had to do was point her in the right direction.

“Come,” Rebar said to the mares. “We shall go see our former partner. We shall save Our daughters.” She smiled, her lips curling back and baring her teeth wickedly. “All of them. And this time, We shall be prepared.”

“Prepared how, mother?” asked Battu, her previous disbelief and lack of faith in the alicorn gone from her voice.

The alicorn said nothing, as if trying to figure the answer to that out herself. She’d seemed so confident, but had nothing to back it up.

Fine Tune returned, huffing and puffing, still in the form of the green pegasus mare. “I...” she gasped. “Couldn’t...” She saw Rebar and facehoofed, her hoof off to the side to accommodate for the invisible horn. “Nevermind.” Dropping down onto her hooves, she transformed with a flash of green fire. When it disappeared, the insect-like changeling remained. He just smirked at Rebar, as she herself recoiled some.

Coldly, the alicorn looked around at us. “Our- methods are not to be discussed here. Come, We- shall leave from these cretins to collect Our- remaining daughters.” Wrapping a wing around the mares, she encouraged them all to stand, then rose on her own hooves to her full height.

“You’re welcome?” said Lost, sarcastically. She pointed again. “Go that way, wreak havoc.”

“Do not tell Us- what to do,” snapped the alicorn. Extending a wing behind her ‘daughters,’ she walked past my sister and ushered them by me. “We- thank you for your assistance, but you are no longer of any use to Us-. Be grateful that We- do not do worse. For those unworthy of Unity have no right to be alive.”

She looked over her shoulder at our group just before she disappeared around the corner at the end of the block.

“Thank you for helping Me find My daughters.”

* * *

For some reason, it all felt hollow. We’d literally crossed mountains to get everything set up for Rose and this little town. Sure, it was against our will, but we’d poured our blood, sweat, and tears into it. Lost had talked down a dragon, for Goddesses’ sakes. So much went into the adventure, so many things had been put off to the side, and so many little changes to my group of friends had happened.

In the end it was... all for nothing.

The original Rose was gone, and with her, the entire network of clones we needed to ship drugs back and forth. In fact, the whole need for those drugs was now gone. The ponies here would have to do without, unless they managed to scrounge up their own source. And what would happen to them then? Rose’s ponies practically ran the town, from what it seemed, under the nose of the mayor pony.

Given that she was constantly drunk, that was probably a good thing. Who knew if she was even in on it, letting the clones have the run of Idle just to keep her from having to do much.

I was making assumptions. Looking up at the house where Rose had once lived, I couldn’t help but wonder...

“What now?” I thought out loud.

“We go home?” offered Lost, somewhat dejectedly. She took a seat next to me, but she looked fidgety.

It was an idea, sure. Something she’d always sort of half-fought for. This wasn’t really our place in the world, we were just treasure hunters. We were supposed to be neck deep in wreckage, trying to pull out a scrap of food or two to get us through another day. We weren’t supposed to be accidentally liberating towns from drug-pushing overlords.

I laughed a little, under my breath. Would Rebar have decided to show up even if we hadn’t? We could have stayed at home and rested, and the same thing would have happened in the end. What a waste of a few days, well except for helping to reunite Xeno’s tribe... I sighed. It was all for a little revenge on the bitch of a mare who dug her way into my brain.

Luckily, nopony was whispering in my ear about how I was just a murderer.

It felt nice, calm... It was quiet. In fact, the whole Wasteland was. The normal background noise of gunfire and screaming far in the distance was gone, and everything seemed like it could have been the old world, before the world ended.

Pushing the worries we had from my mind, I closed my eyes and just enjoyed it. Maybe I could be in a little town, on a vacation from whatever job I worked, window shopping to see what the locals had to bring back to my family. I’d even get to wear a cute dre-

“I’m going inside to get whatever supplies I can for wherever we head next,” Rose said, interrupting my thoughts and making me cringe. It had been such a happy little fantasy for that half-second I had to dream it.

“You’re coming with us?” asked my sister, giving the clone mare a quizzical look. “All that complaining about foalsitting us and now you’re just going to follow us through the Wasteland?”

“Yes,” Rose answered, dryly. “I’ve spent a century doing pretty much whatever I want, just because the original’s in a new location doesn’t mean I have to stop.” She looked our little group over. “Going by the past few days... I’m sure if I stick around you long enough, we’ll find her anyway. So figure it out, and I’ll tell you whether we’re going there or not when I get back.”

It seemed like we didn’t have a choice in the matter.

I leaned against my sister, slowly opening my eyes. “We can go back to looking for information on...” I said, trailing off and tapping the PipBuck around her foreleg. The steel of my hoof clanked against the steel of the casing.

“We have no idea where to look though,” Lost answered. “Let’s just go home.” She pushed back against me, leaning her head against my shoulder and jabbing the edges of her glasses into my neck. The bags under her eyes were back, and she looked just as tired as she sounded.

“If I may offer a suggestion to the cause,” interjected Lamington, his voice still peppered with static. “I recommend we travel toward the Ministry hubs in the center of the city. Assuming the Ministry of Wartime Technology building is still intact, my family could reappropriate the location into a forward base. It would offer us a more central location to assist as many ponies as necessary. Otherwise, as the current situation with the ‘army’ I was asked to assist in defending against is null, I would need to return to the Stables to continue my leadership duties there.”

The Cinch... It was a good idea. Several times it’d been brought up, in conversations with Rose and others. The Ministry presence in Blackhoof... There’d be information there about the ponies from before the end of the world, and every time we passed by it seemed like it was incredibly fortified, which meant we could call it a new home; a safe home, if nopony else was still there.

With Steel Rangers and Rose, who knew the place already, at our side... there were lots of possibilities open to us. We could get in, take over, and I’d have access to learning about the world I wished I’d been born in instead of this one. Plus, there would be a Ministry of Peace building and they might have stuff I could use to get my legs fixed.

Rose would probably show up any second and demand we go there anyway.

“I agree with Lamington,” I announced.

“Of course you do,” teased Lost, the barest of smirks appearing on her muzzle.

“No, I mean it. It’s the perfect place for treasure hunting,” I muttered, rubbing my hooves together greedily. “We can find out a bunch of information about the Ministries, because I know it’s been brought up enough that I want to know more. And they’ll probably have plenty of good, most likely safely secured treasure. We can see if Rough Night ever made it back.” I nudged Lost with my elbow. “Remember him? He mentioned his queen, or whatever, being there?”

Fine Tune perked up, his eyes going wide. In an instant, the sickly green fires enveloped him and he transformed into the blue coated stallion form he normally used. “Queen?” he asked enthusiastically. “What kind of Queen? Like the bad one at U Cig? A changeling Queen?” He dove forward, sliding on his belly, and grabbed onto Lost’s forelegs. “Can we go? Please? Please!” he begged. “If it’s another changeling hive, maybe we can save my hive from the slavers and join both together?” He looked so hopeful, staring up at Lost with his eyes so big and blue.

“I’m fairly certain he wasn’t a changeling,” answered Lost, looking down at him and wrenching her hooves away. She patted the stallion on the head a few times, smiling weakly. “Maybe. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He was just a very... Rough pony.” She cleared her throat.

“Still, Rose said she wanted to take me there anyway,” I continued. Sitting back on my haunches, I lifted my forelegs. They weren’t aching, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t start again the minute we needed them to work right. “She wants to examine my legs there.”

“What happened to your legs?” asked the Star Paladin.

“Nothing, they’re fine,” I snapped, a little ruder than I should have been. Dropping my forelegs down, I leaned over them, as if I could hide them with just my body.

For a long moment, Lamington stared at me. Whatever he was thinking, it was well hidden behind his expressionless armor. Finally, the armor tilted slightly. “Understood,” he said curtly. “A proper examination of Tim Tam would be appreciated as well.” He hooked an armored forehoof around the freckled stallion and pulled him close.

The stallion looked better, but still seemed a little dazed and confused by everything. Rather than join in the conversation, he just sat next to Lamington and breathed deeply. Ever so often he’d look around, still seemingly out of focus, as if he were watching something on the empty horizon behind us.

“Alright, fine,” Lost relented finally. “It’ll take care of a lot of what we need done.” She frowned and leaned away from me. Standing, she muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like ‘away from the Stables’ as she dusted herself off with a forehoof and her tail. “We’ll spend the time to clear our heads of the mess that this whole situation became, and afterward... we go back home and pretend none of this happened. Deal?”

I didn’t want to agree, because we didn’t know what would happen. I just looked back and forth between her and Fine Tune, and Lamington and Tim Tam. If we went back home, would we be isolating ourselves from everypony again?

I didn’t want to leave my friends, even the annoying ones. And then how would we tell Praline so she could tell Xeno when she came back? That bridge would be there, we could cross it in the future. Given how often things didn’t go the way we intended so far, the chances of us not being able to go home whenever we finished our business with The Cinch were high.

“Deal.”

“Deal what?” asked Rose, as she emerged from the doorway with a brand new set of saddlebags that bulged with supplies she’d collected inside the house. “You know I’m going to veto something if it’s a stupid idea.”

“You don’t really have to go anywhere with us anymore, you know,” answered Lost. “Don’t you need to find your progenitor?”

“What? No. Fuck her,” Rose answered, scoffing. “As long as the fat bitch is alive, and she is because I’m still here, then who the fuck cares. I already told you; I’ll end up finding her with you all eventually anyway.” She scrunched up her face, as if offended, but then looked at me. “You’re the only friends I have right now. Everypony else is either dead, a friend from a previous life that knew the original Rose and not me, or... let’s just say having a working life where you expect to just poof out of existence at any time? It doesn’t lend to making friends.”

“For shame,” chided Lamington. “Friendship is one of the truest values we have as ponies. It is the cornerstone of what our society was in it’s golden period. You should always make time for friends, even if you see none available.”

“You’re so smart,” muttered Tim Tam absently.

“When you live to be over a hundred, you stop getting close to ponies because you’re just going to outlive them,” said Rose, with only the barest hints of remorse in her voice. “It doesn’t help that most ponies have trouble telling me from my alternate versions.” She looked down at Fine Tune, who was still lying on his belly with his hooves out and giving the saddest eyes I’d ever seen at my sister. “What’s his problem?”

“He wants to go to The Cinch,” I answered. “And so do I, and so does Lamington. And if memory serves, so do you?”

“Yes. I want to go get my field armor from my locker in the M.O.P. building,” Rose answered. “Plus, we need to examine you. That’s not something you’re going to get out of.”

I took a step back, offended. “Hey! I was the one who wanted to go there in the first place,” I explained. Placing a steel hoof over my heart, I mock-pouted. “I’m hurt that you would think I’d try and duck out of proper medical care.”

Lost rolled her eyes.

“You- you’re not going to cut me open though, are you?” I asked, shrinking back and dropping my hoof to the shattered asphalt.

“Not unless I absolutely have to,” she answered, deadpan. “Fuck it, let’s go see if we can salvage the motorwagon or not. You any good with repairs?” She stared up at Lamington.

“Negative,” he answered. “My training lies in advanced tactics and deployment, with a specialty in heavy weapons.” He leaned down, to our level. “I’m the only one strong enough to carry them all, even in power armor.” Raising his head back to full height, he shifted his hooves together, clanging the steel of all four. “Additional training in conflict resolution and troop management was given. If you’re looking for repair, modification, or adornment of anything electronic or mechanical, I recommend you look to my second eldest sister, Knight Praline.”

“Did you really have to say all that when a simple ‘no, but Praline would know’ would have worked instead?” I asked, my infatuation with him dampened slightly by the chest-puffing nature of his explanation. Sighing, I turned on a hoof and started back the way we came. Or at least, the way I thought we came. Partially it was done to hide my smile, I just wanted to tease the big stallion.

“Right...” Rose muttered. “Anypony have any business to attend to before we leave?”

“I should see Nip Chaser before we go,” answered Lost.

Fine Tune hopped up onto his hooves, as if lifted by invisible wings. He landed and smiled, answering, “I’d like to-”

“I’d like a nap,” interrupted Tim Tam drowsily.

“No!” shouted Rose, staring at the orange-maned earth pony. “You need to stay awake, just in case. Getting thrown down a road is a sure way to hurt yourself, and you’ve been showing clear signs of a concussion since we started. No. Sleeping.”

“Medical books disproved the link between concussions and comas before the War destroyed the world,” said Lamington, his voice flat and level, but with just enough of an edge to it that hopefully Rose would pick up that he meant for her to calm down.

“Oh, bullshit. I worked with Fluttershy in the M.O.P. for the entirety of the War,” Rose snapped. “If anypony knew-”

Lamington raised a hoof, silencing her without having to say a word. “Though she was a fine mare indeed, and her Ministry’s work is worthy of much praise,” he said calmly, “Her focus was on reintegration of military veterans and the magic of healing life-threatening wounds earned on the battlefield.”

“Look, I was there, I know what-”

“Regardless,” Lamington interrupted, shaking his head. “He is wounded, and you shouldn’t be snapping at him.”

“He’s right,” Lost agreed. “You can say the same thing without getting mad.”

That seemed to cow Rose somewhat. She hung her head and closed her eyes. “Of course,” she muttered. “Kindness is the most important thing. I’m sorry, I’ve just got a lot on my mind and all the frustration.... I forgot that.”

Trotting over to Rose, I wrapped my forehooves around her and squeezed. “We’re all a little on edge,” I said as I hugged her. “Kindness was the first thing you told me about, we all know you’re a kind pony when you’re not so flustered.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“What are friends for?”

She pushed me away and walked past, that little air of importance back. “Go see the bartender mare, and meet us at the motorwagon. We’ll salvage what we can,” she said to my sister as she walked off.

I shared a look at the others. Rose was a... strange mare.

Still, we all followed after her, our strange little group all together. If only we had one strange zebra to finish off our ranks.

* * *

“Unfortunately,” muttered Lamington hesitantly, “My skills in diagnosing and repairing mechanical malfunctions is nowhere near as practiced as my sister’s.” He pushed against the wheel of the motorwagon, still lodged into the wall of the house Rebar had thrown it into, and sent it spinning. “Still, I believe even my observational skills are astute enough to say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this motorwagon will not be taking us to the Ministry buildings.”

He was right. It didn’t take a mechanical genius to see that the motorwagon was beyond repair. Even after what we- they’d done to fix it to get us back across the mountain, this was just too much. One of the wheels was cracked completely in half, with the spokes shattered and the actual ‘wheel’ part missing about a third of its... wheel. The deck was snapped in several places, and probably wouldn’t support our entire party’s weight anymore, let alone just Lamington’s.

Worst though, was the engine. Some sort of dark gooey liquid leaked at a steady pace from the bottom of the housing. The outside casing was riddled with cracks, to the point where I could see inside. Somehow, it felt like looking inside the steel hoof when Praline was working on it the last time... All dented parts and mangled metal. Like...

I shuddered.

Like that dream I’d had, right after Zorana had claimed I’d be a monster of steel and flesh. Those twisted metal parts... But these? These looked beyond repair, as if somepony had taken a hammer and smashed gears together to merge them into one. They’d probably never work again, unless somepony like Praline came and took it apart piece by piece.

We didn’t have that kind of time, and Praline was more than a day’s travel away on hoof. So we were stuck. I looked over my shoulder, in the direction I knew The Cinch to be. How long a trip would it take us to get there?

Would my legs hold out until we reached the Ministry of Peace building?

“So what do we do?” I asked, thinking out loud.

“We hoof it,” answered Rose.

“Do you think I can make it?” I asked, somewhat sarcastically. “Since you are the resident medical pony, after all.”

“Not much of a choice, for any of us,” said Rose, shrugging. “Let’s get what we can, be ready to go once your sister gets back, and then leave. Lamington?” She looked at the massive Steel Ranger. “It was Lamington right?”

He nodded.

“Good. You can help her right?” Rose asked. “She’s fucked her legs up something fierce and she’ll probably need to be carried.”

“I can do that,” he said, sounding quite pleased with himself.

My cheeks burned. I took a few steps back, ignoring the distant ache that shot up my legs with every movement. “I can do it myself!” I practically yelled. Pinning my ears back, I shrunk down. “I’m a big mare, I don’t need to be carried.”

“Technically, you’re not,” Rose countered. She was right, while I might have been taller than my sister, Rose and... most everypony else, was still a bit taller than I was. Maybe if I got onto the tips of my hooves I could be eye to eye with her, but dammit, I was an adult.

I said nothing, I just stared at her with pursed lips in a frustrated pout. I didn’t like it when ponies pointed out that I wasn’t fully capable. Sure, everything hurt most of the time lately, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t push through it.

I was an earth pony, dammit! Our whole thing was that we were tough, wasn’t it? I didn’t get fucking cheater magic, and I couldn’t fly or transform, so I got to be tough.

“Let’s just get our things and get ready to go?” I begged, not wanting to deal with the situation anymore.

“Yeah, let’s,” Rose agreed. “Hey, changeling?”

“Fine Tune,” the blue unicorn stallion corrected her.

“Fine Tune,” she repeated. “Can you fly up there and grab our stuff from between the seats?”

“I can do it,” I offered. I wanted to be useful, after all the talk about how I needed oh so much help. Looking back and forth at the others, I started forward.

Lamington placed a hoof, massive and armored, on my shoulder and held me back. “Allow me, Miss Fortune,” he said sternly.

Any resistance melted away and I sat down calmly on my haunches. “Yes, sir,” I muttered quietly. While the stallion walked forward with Fine Tune, who seemed to have a sympathetic look on his face, I sat and struggled. It might have been the aching in my legs or it might have been the little voice that said nothing, but still somehow made itself known in the back of my mind with a smug little ‘grin,’ but I couldn’t do anything. I wanted to get up and argue, to tell him I could do it and be useful and not have to be treated like a foal. Instead, I just quietly sat.

Rose scrunched up her face, furrowing her brows, as she stared at me. While the others went and started to pull the wreckage down to get at the remainder of our things, the clone mare walked over to me. She took a seat next to me and whispered, “Why did you listen to him and not me?”

There wasn’t much of a point in hiding it. Lost knew, and Xeno knew... I was sure Fine Tune had an idea of it given the look he gave me. At some point Lamington would find out, so what matter if Rose knew just what had happ-

“I thought you were into mares?” Rose teased. “Suddenly listening to the handsome stallion whose face we never get to see?” She chuckled quietly, wrapping a hoof around my shoulder. “What brought this sudden change of heart?”

“I never said I liked mares,” I seethed between my teeth. Pulling away from the clone mare, I pushed her with one of my steel hooves. I wanted to hit her, but just the shove was enough to make my body scream in protest at me. It was getting worse... “He just, said the thing.”

“The thing?”

A massive crash cut me off before I could say anything. Snapping around, I looked at the now-grounded motorwagon. Well, mostly grounded. One wheel still hung over the hole it’d made in the wall when thrown, but two of the wheels were touching the pavement and all our things were now toppled out from the box we’d stashed them in while traveling onto the road. Amongst our things were twigs and leaves, and one far thicker branch. It seemed I just couldn’t get away from that pile of rubbish.

Part of me wanted to get up and go help clean, but a bigger part of me just sat there, obedient. “Do you want the long version or the short version? I can’t remember how much I’ve already explained,” I continued, doing my best to resist the clashing urges inside me.

“Might as well go short version?” she suggested.

“Something something slavers, something something she called me ‘Miss Fortune’ when trying to break me,” I answered, twisting a steel hoof around the pavement and pushing a small broken off rock around. “So that phrase gets in my head.” I looked up at her pleading. “Please don’t mention it to Lamington? I’ll... tell him when I’m ready.”

“I’ve overheard him call you Miss Fortune at least twice this trip,” Rose chided. “You should probably tell him sooner than later.”

“I know, I know... I will.”

“I won’t tell him either,” said Tim Tam.

I practically jumped out of my skin. I didn’t know he was still sitting there next to us. It should have been obvious, since he hadn’t gone to help. He was just so damned quiet... As my heart stopped beating, I looked at the freckled stallion.

He looked a lot better. His eyes were focused again and he didn’t seem so drowsy. Awkwardly, he smiled. “I’ve been around the Wasteland a time or two,” he explained, his words somewhat forced. “Nothing that serious, but I’ve seen other ponies with... similar problems. It’s not our place to tell him. It’s up to you.”

“Thank you, Tim Tam,” I said, smiling.

“Alright, just, try not to let it get you killed?” Rose suggested.

“I’ve been trying since it happened,” I explained, shifting my weight uneasily. Taking a deep breath, I looked around. Fine Tune and Lamington were doing... something... with the motorwagon, after having re-boxed all our things. And with Rose and Tim Tam here, we just needed my sister to get back.

After a few minutes, Tim Tam got up and walked over to the Star Paladin. Together, the three stallions kept working on the motorwagon. They weren’t repairing it, at all. It actually seemed like they were taking it apart. Lamington himself was giving quiet instructions, telling them what to do. Though whatever he was saying wasn’t loud enough for me to hear, it seemed fairly obvious. The two stallions would, with a combination of magic and hooves, break off a piece of the engine and stuff it into the stallion’s armor. The same panel opened that we’d seen Star Paladin Jazz use to offer us medicine ages ago, but on the opposite side. Small pieces of armor plating and broken machinery would go inside, and when the panel was opened a second time, it would be empty.

Was that how he repaired his armor? It seemed like ages ago, but I remembered distantly that he’d said something about the armor repairing itself, after his helmet was broken open and he’d lost his eye. So they just took pieces of whatever metal they had lying around and the armor put itself back together that way?

“Wow,” I muttered to myself, earning a raised eyebrow from the pink-coated mare next to me. Ignoring her, I just kept watching. It was fascinating, watching the dents and dings in his armor slowly disappear. I looked down at my steel hooves. Knowing that it worked for his armor in such a mundane way made me feel a little at ease, since the only time I’d seen such a thing before was with that fucking metal monster. Going back to watching, I couldn’t help but wonder why the etchings and designs Praline had carved into the armor weren’t repairing and disappearing as well, since they couldn’t have been a part of the armor originally, as his was the only set I’d seen so intricately designed.

Before he could get his armor back to perfect condition, Lost appeared around the nearby corner. Poking her head into view, she looked around once, then her eyes floated down toward the corner of her vision. She must have been checking the E.F.S. on the PipBuck... After a second’s glance, she trotted over to us with her head hung low.

“How’d it go?” I asked when she finally reached Rose and I.

“It... didn’t,” she said with a sigh. “I just, stood outside the bar trying to work myself up to go talk, but... I realized.” She cleared her throat. “I realized she’d probably just offer me a drink, or a Mint-al, and then we’d spiral into sex and I just-”

“Don’t have time for that?” I finished for her. Whatever details about it she might have been wanting to talk about, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to hear.

“Let’s go with that, yeah,” she agreed. “Are they done?” When Rose and I shrugged, she instead turned to the others. “Are you done?”

“Yes my Queen!” answered Fine Tune, smiling as wide as he could without the top of his head popping off.

“And the motorwagon is too far gone, I guess?” she muttered, accurately.

“Eeyup,” I answered.

“Wonderful,” she sighed. Her horn glowed and the blue haze of her telekinesis wrapped around the top of the box with all our things. Once it opened, the cloak we’d worn during the trip from the zebra tribe’s mall to the dragon’s cave floated out of it. Lost wrapped it around her, over her back and pulled the hood up to cover the top of her head and mane. “Let’s go then, time’s wasting.”

We weren’t on a schedule, but she wasn’t wrong. Together, we all grabbed our things; Rose her grenade rifle, Fine Tune his leather armor and silenced pistol, and me my saddlebags to throw over my back. Lamington graciously offered to carry the rest of our things that we couldn’t carry ourselves. Tim Tam took what little he couldn’t fit in his armor-equipped saddlebags.

As I adjusted my jacket, our little group turned away from the town. Something felt wrong, like I was forgetting something. I couldn’t help but turn around and scan over the buildings behind us. At the far end of the road hung a little sign... a broken Sparkle~Cola cap.

Deal Breaker.

“We need supplies first,” I muttered, feeling like somepony else was doing the talking for me. “Just in case.”

The others stopped. Lost looked at Rose, then the others. For a moment nopony said a word, but then they all turned around and started toward the same store I was looking at, led by the pink mare with the grenade rifle.

“I know just the place,” she said as she passed by me. “Then we leave.”

* * *

Ponies had tried to make a home out in the Wasteland, far from any real civilization. Dull red paint, what I hoped was paint, covered a wall of rippled steel, which had been inexpertly nailed to a few pieces of wood to make a little lean-to home. The paint spelled out the words “GO AWAY” big enough that anypony could see from a good distance.

Unfortunately, the owner’s warning wasn’t heeded, and instead, I sat staring at the corpse of a stallion. He’d been shot in the head and chest, and whatever he owned was stripped clean away. Going from the smatterings of dirt on his coat, around his haunches and fetlocks, he’d worn armor at some point...

Goddesses, today was going poorly. First the hollow victory with the mares in Idle, then having to wait outside because I was too terrified to go inside and see Deal Breaker after she’d roundly abused me while trading the first time I was in town, and now... none of the places I’d scampered off to check out had had anything.

I wasn’t the only pony out hunting.

The trip to The Cinch wasn’t going to be a quick one, not that we were in a rush anymore anyway. While Lamington and Tim Tam followed Rose down the main road toward the fortified Ministry buildings, Lost and I had split off to clear our heads. Even while I dug through, I couldn’t seem to get my brain to calm down. Without the constant need to go faster and faster, to save ponies like heroes we never were, it felt good to get back to a sense of normalcy. This was where I belonged, digging for whatever treasure I could find. Even with all the chaos in my head, it felt good to be back in my ‘place’ in the world. Lost had told me to stay within E.F.S. range, but at the same time she’d left in the other direction with Fine Tune following her like a pet.

Hopefully our return to scavenging would work for both our heads.

With a quick glance under the makeshift shelter, beyond the stallion, I moved on. There wasn’t anything worthwhile left. Past his ‘house’ there were several more that looked markedly similar. Bulletholes pockmarked the other ramshackle huts, and piles of rubble, barrels, pipes, and tires littered the spaces between them. In the distance, a few gunshots echoed through the air, tinny and metallic from the steel sheets everywhere.

I really should’ve stayed with the group.

Dismissing my worries, I moved to the next makeshift home and started to look around. A small ammo-box sat in the corner. Perfect. It was at least something I could bring back and that would make the whole trip worthwhile. Wriggling my way into the low-ceilinged, not-building... I grabbed onto the front latch with my teeth and pulled it out into the open. Sitting down, I pulled on the lid.

Locked.

Of course it was. I’d have to bring it back to have Fine Tune open it for us. Pushing it into an opening between all the shacks, I headed toward the next one.

Another round of gunshots echoed through the sheetmetal alleyways between the homes, much louder than the first time. It was enough to make me pause and swivel my ears around. The constant echoing made it hard to figure out where it was coming from, but they were still a good distance. At least that’s how it felt... Nopony knew I was here, so it’s not like they’d be looking for me. If I stayed alert and hid in one of the homes when I needed to, I’d be okay.

There were only a few left anyway.

Trotting around one of the rubble piles, I groaned. The aching was back in my legs, and that just made treasure hunting all the more frustrating. Around the pile was a barrel, on fire.

I stopped and squinted. Fires tended to rage for days if left unattended, and we’d moved past our fair share in the years past where it looked like somepony was still living there but hadn’t been in ages. Still, I looked around, but stopped when I noticed an old refrigerator with the door missing.

Sitting inside was food. Eyes widening, I ignored the pain and ran over. It was still good! At least, it looked it. Tossing a chunk of meat with a stick through it to the side, I grabbed onto several old boxes and cans of food and started to stuff them into my saddlebags and jacket pockets. This was more than enough to justify everything. Of course, if somepony else was actually living there, and it was their fire?

That little voice in the back of my head, who always whispered that I was just a murderer, seemed to smile. Just like the shack we slept in, we killed for, near Pommel Falls so many days ago. Here I was, taking food that might belong to somepony else.

I pushed the thought away as I pushed the flaps of my saddlebags down to cover the last can. If somepony was living here, then they were being awfully quiet with all the gunfire.

A sound caught in my ears, pulling me away from my moral dilemma. Hooves, running across the dry broken dirt of the Wasteland.

I put my mouth around the bit of my battle saddle and eased my way around the pile of rubble to see just what was going on. Swiveling an ear around, I tried my best to pinpoint where the noise was coming from and moved in the direction I hoped was the right one. Mom instilled a lot of caution into Lost and me as fillies, which I was soundly ignoring by walking around alone. However, if that was one of my friends, I needed to know so I could help them.

A unicorn mare with a light grey coat and a dark grey mane ran by, a gun clutched in the greenish haze of her magic. It looked unusable, with the barrel bent so badly, but she didn’t seem to care. Peeking further around, I watched as every so often she would look over her shoulder, running and weaving around the metal walls and piles of trash everywhere.

I raised a hoof to call out to her, but stopped. Instead, I pulled my hoof back and scooted away, something plucking and digging at the back of my mind. The claws had returned, in full force, and seemed to tease off some fear that I couldn’t quite place. I ignored them. They seemed to always be around, tormenting me and keeping me on edge when nothing was going wrong. But if it was just me being anxious... what was she running from?

Gunfire filled the air, the report of a what had to be half a dozen pistols all firing at once. I dove down and covered my head with my hooves, since I had no idea where it was coming from. The sound of bullets flying by and screaming echoed around me. Whoever had just gotten shot...

“Criii!” yelled a changeling.

“Fine Tune!” I yelled, pushing myself up and ignoring the jolts of pain that shot through my entire body. I bolted past the half-wall I’d been hiding behind just in time to see the changeling’s disguise slowly disappear. A small line of green fire receded away to expose the illusion of a unicorn mare as nothing more than a fake. His wings were mangled, full of far more holes than they should be and twitching uselessly. The gun he’d had in her magic lay on the ground, still looking altogether useless with the bent barrel.

“Got ya!” yelled the disturbingly familiar pale blue unicorn mare who stood over the body of the changeling. She looked bored, staring back past another sheet of metal that was now full of bullet holes. “Now ta find tha-” The mare’s magenta eyes focused on me, and she stopped mid sentence, a small smile forming on her lips. She looked different, with far fewer guns, and a nice outfit on. A little skull rested under her chin, nestled above two dangling strings and holding the folded collar of her white button-down shirt together. Above that was a black vest, covered in various holsters. More were strapped to her legs and over her haunches, once again covering the cutie mark from prying eyes.

I could feel the blood draining from my face. I could feel my heart stop.

What the fuck was Slipstock doing here?

Not waiting for an answer, I turned and ran as fast as my hooves would let me. It wasn’t fast, given the pain I was in, but it was the best I could do. I didn’t bother to look back, the changeling could survive on their own. Amble wouldn’t just pointlessly kill her slaves unless they were more trouble than they were worth, and since-

I didn’t have time to justify myself! I just ran.

“Oh, what a day,” yelled Slipstock, just loud enough for her disinterested voice to carry over the sound of my running. “Ta find ya here. I was wonderin’ when I’d run inta ya again.” Her hooves thundered against the cracked dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust around us as she chased after me.

I couldn’t bear to look back. I jumped past the ammo box I’d laid out earlier, and made my way back toward where I’d last seen Lost, Fine Tune, and the others. I had to warn them, that Slipstock was here and that could only mean one thing.

I was fucked.

“Lost! Rose!” I yelled. If I could get their attention, maybe I wouldn’t be as fucked. “Hel-”

The cold steel of a pistol caught my hind leg, just above the shackle and pulled. The spikes inside ground against my bone. Everything inside me locked, and I went down hard. Collapsing into a little ball and rolling awkwardly across the ground, I slammed into one of the makeshift sheet metal walls. It felt like somepony had ripped off my skin and dragged their hooves along my bones.

Scrambling against the wall, I pushed myself up and looked around again. I’d landed inside one of the makeshift homes, with a sheet of steel to one side and a pile of junk too big to climb up on the other. Slipstock was in front of me, closer than ever, with only one of her pistols out. The mare looked bored, slowly pacing toward me without a care in the world. The look of confidence on her face terrified me, and now I was cornered. Maybe I could go around her, but with the state my legs were in, it wasn’t the smartest thing I could do. Staring at the pale blue mare, I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth. There was only one thing I could do. Aches and pains or not, if I was going down, I’d do my best to take her down with me. Make it so she couldn’t take me back to Amble.

That little voice in the back of my head started to whisper to me again, just low enough that I couldn’t make out what it was saying. Just loud enough to keep me from thinking or planning how to get away or fight.

If my mind wouldn’t give me a chance to plan, I’d go with what always worked for me before. Shifting my weight roughly, I leveled Persistence at the mare.

She stopped and tilted her head. “There’s the mare I know,” she muttered. “Lookin’ fer a shootoff?” The haze of her telekinesis flickered, and in an instant she’d returned all her guns to their holsters on her legs, haunches, and around her outfit. With a shift of her hooves, she lowered herself down. “Ready when you are?” Her horn flickered to life again, but the haze didn’t appear around the grips of her guns.

Gulping, I aimed up at her again. Part of me wished I still had the PipBuck, just to get the extra few seconds to aim. Without it, I just had to call her bluff. She’d been fast before, always able to block my shots but... She’d always had her guns out.

“Fire!” she shouted.

Before I could pull the trigger, my world turned to flame.

Wrapped in her magenta haze, the flaming barrel I’d seen earlier flew by my head. Yelping, I shied away, clenching my eyes shut and praying the fire wouldn’t hit me. An echoing clang rattled me, from my ears to my hooves. The barrel exploded above me, smashing into the hard edge of the steel wall I’d huddled against.

Sparks and embers flew everywhere, fire and smoke filled the air. With another ear-splitting clang against the metal, the mare threw the now empty barrel away. “S’amatter? Not gon’ shoot back?” she teased.

I just stood there, one eyelid twitching in a mix of fear and disbelief. It felt like I was on fire, but... she hadn’t hit me. It’d gone right past my head, and the embers burnt out the second they hit the dirt.

“What...” I whimpered...

Slipstock moseyed her way over while I stood there slack-jawed. She pressed the gun to my lips and smiled. “Open wide,” she ordered me. When I didn’t do as she ordered, she pulled the gun back and swung it at me.

I raised a foreleg to block it, stubbornly refusing to let the lingering pain take away my last defense. The crack of the pistol’s grip effortlessly forced my foreleg away. She followed through, striking me hard against the side of my head. Whimpering, I fell to the side, sticking a hoof out to stop myself from falling over completely. I stared up at her, shaking from nose to tail.

“Think you’re so fucking special? Miss Fortune,” she teased... “I. Said. Open.”

“Help!” I yelled, only silenced when the barrel of her gun found its way inside my mouth. Leaning back as far as I could, I looked up at her.

She just smiled, that bored little smile of hers. “I’m surprised I found ya, to be ‘onest,” she said calmly. One hoof raising to adjust her pale blonde mane, which was kinked and bent instead of straight as it had been the last time I saw her, she tilted her head to the side. “Whatcha doin’ over on this side a’ the Wasteland, anyway?”

I didn’t answer, instead I just stared at the gun in my mouth.

“S’a matter? Nothin’ta say to yer old friend Slipstock?” she asked, twisting the barrel and pointing it up at the roof of my mouth. “We ‘ad such good times t’gether, didn’t we? Before ya went and ran away. I thought we were bondin’.”

Twisting away, I pulled myself free of the barrel and clenched my teeth. “Fuck you,” I spat through my teeth.

“Now, now... There’ll be plenty’a time later fer pleasantries,” she answered, slowly pulling her gun back and sliding it into its holster. Once it was away, she offered me a hoof. “Come on now, Amble’s been lookin’ fer ya.” After a moment of me not taking her offered hoof, she grabbed onto my neck. Pulling me close, she pressed her muzzle to mine. “And I ‘ave ya to thank fer makin’ me go out ‘n collect runaways personally.”

I threw my hoof at her, as hard as I could. We were close enough together, I could get one good hit in and break free. My steel hoof against her face? I’d be gone before she got back up.

She took the hit, square in the cheek. Rolling her jaw once, she just shook her head and chuckled. “And to think, she chose you,” she muttered, dragging me up onto my hooves. She took one step back and lit her horn up. The guns in her holsters raised in unison, and she pointed each at me. All I could do was stand and stare. I needed a way out of this, because there was absolutely no way I could go hoof to hoof against her again. She’d nearly killed me several times already, and the one time we fought evenly, I’d only come out on top because I was abusing Buck to get an edge.

Now? Would I get the chance to grab some? Would I be able to fight with my legs in such terrible condition?

She’d already shown. I wasn’t anywhere near well enough to beat her.

Slipstock didn’t give me another chance to even try. She cracked me upside the head with two of the pistols, one right after the other. When I didn’t fall onto my side, she did it again with two more. Clenching her teeth in obvious frustration, she took the chance while we were alone to beat me senseless. It wasn’t as bad as the time before, when I’d been chained up, but I wasn’t done trying.

“Lo-”

She rammed the muzzle of her gun into my mouth again, silencing me. Glaring, her lip twitching in frustration, she pulled it back and aimed at my head again.

“Lamin-”

Again she smacked me in the mouth with the gun, cracking the wooden grip against my teeth. “Why won’t you shut up?” she shrieked, her voice cracking. Ripping the gun harshly out of my mouth, she whipped it around into the side of my head, right over my ear. Again and again, she struck me, switching sides and hitting me in the teeth or tongue every time I opened my mouth to scream.

I wasn’t going to give her the time of day, despite the agony she was inflicting. Already, I could feel bruises starting and blood rolling down my coat. Instead, I slowly worked up the courage to try and fight her physically. I lifted my hoof to block. I wasn’t fast enough. Rather than take another blow to the face, she twisted the pistol away. Sweeping it back, she pulled my other foreleg out from under me.

I went down hard.

“What’sa matter! Ain’t got any fight left in ya?” she goaded, sliding the guns away. “Don’tcha wanna get revenge or some manner ‘a bullshit fer what I did ta ya legs?” She kicked my left forehoof hard.

I finally broke, and screamed in pain.

“There ya go!” she snapped at me. “Tried ta take onna yer shackles off, didja? Stupid fuckin’ move wasn’t it?” Wrapping the steel covered hoof in her magic, she pulled. It didn’t budge, but I could feel inside the bones moving around again as she twisted and jerked on the metal.

“Stop it,” I begged, not worrying about my pride anymore. The bruises on the outside I could deal with, I would make myself deal with, but when she went after my insides... I just, I couldn’t bear it. I was so close to getting attention from a real doctor pony in a Ministry of Peace building, the very best place I could get attention in... and this happened.

“Don’t ya fuckin’ understand!” asked the pale blue mare. She released her grip on my forehoof and grabbed me by the shoulders. Pulling me up with a combination of hooves and magic, she slammed my back against the rippled steel wall behind me. With one hoof, she hit me in the gut hard. “Don’t.” She hit me again. “Ya.” She pistol whipped me across the face, her voice cracking as she shrieked at me. “Fuckin’.” Once more she hit me in the stomach, her glare softening as tears started to well in the corners of her eyes. “Understand?!”

“No!” I shouted, crying from the pain and trying not to throw up. I knew she was pissed we’d gotten away, but why not just slap a collar on me and drag me back. Did she have to break me, too? I hung my head, sobbing and aching. She’d already gotten her revenge for me beating her in a fight. She’d branded me in a way I’d never fully recover from and-

“Ya got away!” she shouted, slamming her head against the wall beside me. Her horn punched through the steel, letting in a shaft of light against the side of her head. She was crying too, but I had no idea why.

I just shook, balancing awkwardly on my hind legs as she held me with one hoof against the wall. I pushed against her with my steel hoof, the fake one, but she didn’t budge.

She just cried quietly, hiccuping every so often like my sister did. Sniffling and inhaling sharply, she pulled her head back and stared at me. “Ya don’t even know...” she muttered to herself, before hitting me again and letting me drop to the ground.

I landed on my hooves and coughed, my legs going out from under me and dropping me back onto the cracked dirt below us. Retching, I spat up blood from all the blows to my gut. It was sticky, tasted terrible, and I could feel it in my teeth. I looked up at the mare and panted, trying to roll back to aim Persistence up at her. She was busy bawling her eyes out; maybe I could...

She twisted on her hooves and bucked me in the side. It caught my armor, but it still sent ringing pains into my ears and jolts through my legs. It wasn’t enough for her. Dropping onto her haunches above me, she pounded her hooves against me. It wasn’t as bad as the pistols being cracked into my head, and she focused mainly on my side where the armor was, but it still hurt.

“W-why are you doing this?” I asked, whimpering through the weaker assault. Every time her hooves hit, a hollow ringing filled the air. Every time her hooves hit, another part of me felt like it was being destroyed. Legs screaming in static misery, my stomach knotting up, and the bruises already tender against the ground. What had happened to the pissy mare who seemed bored with everything. Each time she hit me, the ringing was quieter and quieter, weaker... What did she mean ‘I got away.’ We hadn’t escaped from her, we’d gotten free of Sunbright. So why did...

Had I gotten away when-

She slammed her hoof into my head and pinned it to the ground, muttering something about fairness. The magenta haze of her telekinesis enveloped my mane, turning the normally green hair into a sickly mix with her magenta magic.The unicorn mare lifted me into the air and stared at me. It hurt, more than I’d imagined it would, having my entire body be held up by nothing but my mane. She opened her mouth once as if to say something, but after a deep breath, the calm, bored exterior reappeared on the mare. Eyes half- lidded, she threw me across the opening, over the ammo box I’d run past, and into another rubble pile.

I screamed as I flew through the air, waving my hooves useless. I hit hard, screaming as I slammed into the barrel she’d thrown at me earlier. Stuck in a massive dent, I wriggled uselessly until I fell to the ground. Luckily, I landed on one of the ancient tires. It cushioned my fall, but it’d still been hot, and I still burned. Cushion or not, everything was terrible. Hopefully I hadn’t broken anything. Anything else.

Moving my steel covered forehoof to-

Moving my forehoof...

My flesh forehoof didn’t move. I tried to move the steel one, but it wouldn’t budge either. Instead, my brain was suddenly attacked by the incredible agony of my entire body screaming in protest. Rolling my eyes around, I looked at the mare as she slowly walked closer.

She took deep steady breaths, her eyes closed and her hooves moving with focus.

This was it. This was where I died. The Wasteland would take me the same way it welcomed me to it. Through the care of a mare much stronger, smarter and better equipped to deal with it than I was. I thought about Lost, who would wonder where I’d gone to, about Rose who’d be more pissed off that I’d ditched getting medical attention than anything else, and Xeno who’d lose another part of her ‘family.’

But mostly, I thought about mom. I’d finally get to see her, and dad, again.

I closed my eyes. Acceptance was the first step, right?

The warm grasp of magic wrapped around me again, this time encasing my chest and neck, and lifted me into the air. The feeling of ground under my hooves disappeared, and it was almost like being weightless. Any moment now, a gun would press against my head, and it’d all be over.

I took a deep breath, whispering to myself, “Goodb-”

Slipstock pressed her lips to mine, cutting me off, and kissed me.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Progress 75%

“Is this what happens when we split up?”
“No, usually I’m the one instigating.”
“How am I supposed to react to this!?”
“I’m sure we’ll find out in the next chapter.”
“How come everything interesting happens off screen? I should have followed with popcorn.”
“Not funny Rose!”

Chapter 25: Where Ministry Mares Walked

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Chapter Twenty Five: Where Ministry Mares Walked
“History will remember, win or lose. Do you want your legacy to be one of aggression, or one of protection. Here is where you choose your path.”

Kiss.

She kissed me.

As I hung limply in the air, hooves dangling uselessly below me, I felt my heart nearly stop. Why... why would she do that? Part of me wanted to open my eyes and stare at her, in some sort of... confused and angry mix, but I didn’t. I just hung there in the grasp of her magic, my stomach twisting up with her lips pressed against mine.

I pulled my head back to break the kiss, jerking to the side sharply and shivering. Why did it feel good? Cracking my eyes open, I stared at her. That warm knotted feeling still working its way through my stomach, making my heart pound in my chest. Was it terror? Was it, some weird form of arousal at everything that happened?

The blue-coated slaver mare didn’t move. Her eyes still closed, her lips still pursed mid-kiss, she seemed almost serene. Were it not for the history of psychotic attacks against me, or the tears rolling down her cheeks from her closed eyes, I might have-

No. I wasn’t going to admit she was cute, not when she’d nearly killed me all those times and had just beaten me near senseless. I raised a hoof to-

I raised a hoof-

“Dammit!” I shrieked. I might not be able to move, but I wasn’t going to just let her win. Somehow I’d find a way, legs or no legs. I just, didn’t know how. If Lost were with me, she’d have already planned something and snuck up on the mare to attack her while I was keeping her attention.

Maybe she’d heard me screaming...

Slipstock opened her eyes slowly, and stared at me. Her bottom lip quivered, before she pulled it back to bare her teeth. Furrowing her brows, she stared me up and down, looking from my eyes to my muzzle, and back again. Her front teeth clicked together, and she shivered, making her kinked mane twitch back and forth.

“Not fuckin’ good enough?” she snapped as her horn started to glow brighter. The grip of her magic around my chest and throat tightened. “Think ya can beat me once!” She pulled me closer, before slamming my back against the rippled metal sheet behind me. “An’ just fuckin’ leave!” She did it again, lifting me up above her head and squeezing the magic tight enough to strangle me.

Choking, I tried in vain to lift my hooves up and claw at the magic holding me. Nothing worked, they just hung there, twitching every so often but being utterly useless overall. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could remember the list of things to never do again, and I knew I was doing one of those things.

Just as the edges of my vision started to darken, the grip loosened. Throat burning, I inhaled sharply, painfully, through the tiniest of gaps she’d given me. As deep as I could, I sucked air in and held, praying to Celestia and Luna she wouldn’t repeat herself.

Instead, I dropped to the ground. Hard. Yelping in pain as I hit the ground on my side, I curled as best I could. My armor had done something to protect me, but the edges bent in sharply when I hit, digging further into my sides. Without that warm confused feeling knotting my stomach, the only thing I had to focus on was the pain in my everything. My legs were completely numb, feeling like some sort of alien attachment stuck on me that didn’t belong, but everything else seemed like it was on fire. Tears flowed freely from my eyes, and my breathing came through a clogged nose and a mouth that was too busy quivering to properly draw breath.

“Why...” I whimpered, grinding my face against the broken dirt as if it would give way and let me crawl underground to hide.

“Why indeed,” snapped the slaver mare. She placed a hoof on my steel forehoof and pressed down, twisting it against the joint. It should have hurt, but even through the tearing I could hear as she twisted the two parts away from one another, it didn’t. Without bothering to use her guns to beat me again, she stomped on me with renewed strength.

It was a small blessing from the Goddesses, that since my legs were finally too far gone to be of any use they were too numb to feel pain.

That didn’t stop me from crying.

“Fight back!” she yelled between stomps. “S’matter!” Rearing herself up onto her hind legs, she kicked her forehooves. “Can’t take bein’ told yer not special ‘r somethin’?” Crashing down on my armor, she smashed me harder into the ground and sent a cloud of dust up around us. Standing on me, she stared down as if waiting for an answer; as if there was one I could give that wouldn’t send her into a fit of rage.

“I ca-”

The magenta haze of her magic wrapped around my muzzle, pinching my mouth shut. “Bullshit,” she snapped, finally stepping off me. “Yer the strong one ‘ere, ain’tcha?” Her voice cracked. She dragged me up, forcing me into a sitting position across from her. “Yer the one that got ‘way!” Gritting her teeth, she stared me in the eye. “‘Yer the one that beat me in a fight!”

“Slipstock, plea-”

“Yer the one she wanted!” she interrupted, her voice cracking again. Raising a hoof, she wiped it against her own muzzle and smeared her tear-coated face with dirt. Her breathing came in ragged gasps. “Why were ya so special?”

“I don’t... know,” I whispered, clenching my eyes shut and turning my head away from her. Gritting my teeth, I tried again to raise a hoof against her. If I could just hit her once, I’d consider it a win. Anything that kept me from going back to Amble, even the tiniest bit of resistance. If I could just... Nothing happened. I wanted to scream, instead I just stared at her and admitted to her as much as to myself, “I can’t fight you.”

“Why tha fuck not!” she demanded with a smack of her hoof to my face. “Where’s the Miss Fortune I know! Block my attacks! Defend yourself! Fight back! C’mon!” Eyes wide, full of rage and welling up with tears, she pulled her hoof back to hit me again. It shook in the air, Several times she tensed up, but never once attacked. Seemingly finished, the magic she’d been using to prop me up disappeared.

I simply fell to the side, unable to support myself on my own.

Throwing her hoof forward and slamming it into the steel ‘wall’ hard enough to bend the metal, Slipstock went down next to me. Crashing with a poof of dirt into the ground, she sobbed. She rolled onto her side and curled into a little ball, tight enough to drape her kinked tail over her face, hiding it completely. She hit the ground with a forehoof repeatedly, muttering something to herself as she did. By the time she finally uncovered her face, she’d dug a small hole with the edge of her hoof. Tears still covered the side of her face, having made a streak through the dirt she’d smeared there earlier.

It felt like I was looking into a mirror. From one broken mare to another. With one of my eyes closed, I panted, still whispering silent prayers to the Goddesses. I wasn’t special, just like she said. I was just a fucked up little pony in a big Wasteland. And suddenly, I really wished we’d just decided to go home when we had the chance.

Slipstock seemed to have other ideas. Raising her hoof once more, she brought it down hard.

Into her own cheek.

Grunting at the self-inflicted wound, she panted the same as I was, lying on the ground across from me.

“Yer... not special.., Hidden,” she finally said between frustrated pants.

“I know,” I answered, shying away as best I could. It took a lot of wriggling of my hips and shoulders, twisting with muscles in my belly that I almost never used, but I managed to put a whole smidgen of distance between us.

“How’d a mare like ya ever beat me...”

“Drugs,” I admitted.

“And gettin’ ‘way from U Cig?” she asked.

“Sister,” I answered.

Slipstock squinted at me, her lips quivering as she worked through what I’d told her. After only a moment, her eyes went wide, as if she’d just been struck by the Goddesses’ vengeance and seen the light. “Yer not special,” she repeated, this time without the edge to her voice. She sounded more disappointed than angry, like I’d somehow let her down.

I shook my head.

“Fuck,” she muttered. Her eyes trailed away from me, looking first at the ground, and then blankly off into the distance. Seemingly unfocused, she just repeated herself. “Fuck...” Every muscle in her body seemed to go limp at once, and the little tenseness that kept her propped up disappeared. She flattened against the ground, rolling onto her side and letting her head fall to the dirt. Lying there, she just breathed.

Finally, everything was calm. I just needed to find a way to get up, force my legs to work, and get away while she was having... whatever existential crisis was going through her mind. I stared down at my foreleg, the flesh and blood one, and gritted my teeth. “Move,” I ordered it, hissing a whisper out through my teeth. “Move. I need to go...”

Nothing happened. My hoof, encased in steel, didn’t even flinch. My leg lay there uselessly. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. Even if I only had a few seconds, I needed to plan. Sniffling and snorting, I forced myself to take a few deep breaths. There were a million terrible things Slipstock could do to me if I didn’t get away from her. Whatever she did to that changeling who-

Lifting my head, I twisted my neck and looked over my shoulder at the poor bugpony she’d shot before. Please, Celestia, Luna... Don’t let that be Fine Tune. It didn’t look like him, the frill-thing was wrong, and the mangled wings look like they’d been messed up for a long time. Still, if that was him somehow, then had she already gotten my sister? Or was I just in the worst place at the wrong time?

Eyes widening, I looked back at the mare. Was she here to find me? Had she managed to track us down... My heart started to pound again, and that knot returned to my stomach. This time it wasn’t warm or any sort of confusingly pleasant, it was cold and hollow. Feeling myself shiver, I tried to worm my way free. Slipstock would get up at any minute, grab me in her magic, and drag me back to... to Amble.

Was she going to use me for bait for my sister? Or would she just cut her losses and separate us? I’d have to beg her, to get my sister- No. I couldn’t do that... Even if I disappeared without a trace, it was better that Lost worry than get dragged back to U Cig with me. Being alone was better than being a slave, for her. And if it took that sacrifice to make sure she was safe?

I looked at the slaver mare, still twisting my stomach around to put whatever distance I could between us.

I would make that sacrifice if I had to.

Slipstock didn’t seem interested in me, not yet. She wasn’t even looking in my direction. Instead, she faced away and snorted every so often while taking short breaths. Was she still crying? Was she going to attack me again?

Already I could feel bruises forming, blood pooling against me in my armor, and the sting of dirt in the cuts and scrapes she’d given me. I couldn’t take another of her beatings.

“Sl-Slipstock?” I asked finally, cautiously.

“What,” she demanded.

For a moment I said nothing, mulling over what to say in my head. The wrong words might get me killed, and I wasn’t really ready for that. As much as it would be nice to be with my family, if there was some sort of afterlife for ponies, I didn’t want it to happen just yet. I took a deep breath. “What’re you going to do to me?” I asked.

“Who cares,” she snorted.

Fine, if she was going to just give up... I might not be able to attack her, but I could get help. Lifting my head, I yelled, “Lost! Help!”

“Oh, shut up already,” she snapped, still not looking at me. One of her hooves raised, but she just lowered it to the ground and started to dig it around in front of her, where I couldn’t see.

“No,” I argued. “I’m not going back with you, if I can help it.” Swallowing, I tried my best to sound like I was confident in myself. “I’ll do whatever I can to keep you from taking me back to Amble, whether I can fight you or just scream until somepony finds us.” I wasn’t going to give her the chance to argue. “Lost!” I yelled again.

While I screamed, I wriggled my hips side to side, trying to move myself. I still had Persistence, and if I could aim the gun, even on my side, I might just be able to shoot her. I had enough ammo to take her down, especially if she wasn’t looking. It took a lot of work, lots of huffing and puffing to psyche myself up, but I managed to twist my shoulders forward far enough to aim my rifle in her general direction.

It didn’t have to be a kill shot. I just needed to do enough to stop her from fighting, to stop her from dragging me back to Amble. If only I had fucking cheater magic like my sister, I could grab the gun behind me and use it. The barrel might look bent all to fuck, but if that changeling, whoever it was, thought it was usable...

Sadly, I wasn’t a unicorn.

And I didn’t have the PipBuck either. Craning my neck to reach the bit of my battle saddle, I grabbed it with my teeth.

“Give it a rest,” said Slipstock distantly, one of her ears back and listening to every move I was making. “Ya should know by now, I ain’t gonna letcha hit me. Even if I lose my fav’rite gun, I’m not lettin’ ya take tha shot.”

I pulled back from the bit. “Am I just supposed to give up?” I demanded.

“Ya said yerself, yer not special,” she repeated. “Don’t attack, Miss Fortune.” She sneered, dragging out the title.

My eyes went wide, and I could practically feel the little voice that whispered in the back of my head smiling. It wasn’t even a thing, it was just a voice. How did it have a mouth to smile? My body moved on its own, pulling away from the battle saddle’s bit. I tried to fight it, but nothing I did worked. It was just like trying to move my legs, nothing I did helped.

Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes again. Letting my head fall into the dirt, I screamed in frustration.

Behind me, the changeling groaned. It was more a chirp, but it sounded forced and painful. Understanding all too well, I sympathized.

The three of us lay there, none moving, all in pain from various sources. Slipstock seemed broken, the ideal image of me she’d created shattered just like her will. I could feel the aches and pains slowly getting worse, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. The changeling? I still prayed it wasn’t Fine Tune.

In the distance, far far away, I could hear the quiet din of gunfire. Whoever it was, they were throwing some kind of heavy ordinances around. Still, it was a long way off and didn’t matter with the trouble I was in. Somehow closer, the sound of a sprite-bot playing obnoxious music echoed through the ruins. As with Slipstock’s gunfire before, it was hard to tell where it came from. Just tinny music echoing back and forth through the makeshift lean-tos ponies had once lived in.

I shouldn’t have gone treasure hunting. It just felt so nice to get back to normal. A few alleyways made up of shacks built with salvaged materials and no ponies around? It was just too perfect. The buildings were too bombed out, shells of their former selves, just the type of place to find the good stuff. Instead, amongst the piles of rubble and would-be homes of Wasteland ponies?

Instead I found her.

“Lost!” I yelled again. “Help! Somepony! Anypony!”

I wasn’t strong enough to fight her myself. I couldn’t go back. I just...

I needed help.

* * *

Slipstock sat across from me, her tail snapping back and forth and kicking up dirt. She’d collected herself, and now stared at me with a mix of boredom and agitation on her face. How she managed to perfectly capture both with the way she looked at me, I’d never know, but dammit she did it. Her muzzle was scrunched up, eyes closed halfway as if she were examining every detail about me, but it all seemed so half-assed.

“Why can’t ya fight back?” she finally asked, with a hoof on her forehead rubbing softly back and forth and making her mane sway around.

“Sit me up and I’ll tell you?” I requested. She’d sat up, but left me lying on the ground on my side. Maybe it was a power thing, to be higher than me so I’d know she was in charge? I did that with Lost on occasion, when we butted heads on something. I’d try and stand on the tips of my hooves to be just that little bit taller than her. Even if she was smaller than me, she always won out because she was older. So, maybe leaving me helpless on the ground was a part of that?

Or she was just toying with me.

Nopony had come when I screamed for help, all probably too far away. Without the PipBuck, I didn’t know how long I’d been searching before Slipstock found me, and time seemed to go far slower once she stopped beating me to death. They could be halfway to The Cinch by now, or taking a break and expecting me to catch up.

Why hadn’t they come looking yet?

Frowning, I glared at the slaver mare. “Please?” I demanded. “I can’t do it myself.”

With a snort, she did as I asked. Her horn lit up and the magenta haze of her magic wrapped around my foreleg. In a cruel move, she jerked my leg up hard with her telekinesis. It should have hurt, but instead I just felt a slight tingle in my shoulder where I was pulled.

“Ahh!” I yelped as I was swiftly pulled into a sitting position. A mostly sitting position. Teetering on my hind leg, which was caught underneath me, I stared at her in shock. “Why!” I snapped.

“Huh, oh...” she muttered absently. “Ya weren’t lyin’, were ya?” Looking me over, the glow of her magic brightened and she lifted me. Manually moving my legs, she set me down on my haunches so my hind legs were just to my sides. It was mostly comfortable, but I could sit without feeling myself about to topple over, so it worked. She let go of my foreleg once I was sitting, and it fell uselessly to the ground in front of me, landing at a weird angle. Groaning, Slipstock grabbed onto the offending forehoof and straightened it out for me.

“Thanks,” I muttered, staring down at my legs. “Why won’t you work?”

My legs didn’t answer, but Slipstock did let out an uncharacteristic chuckle.

“So, what’d ya do ta yerself?” she asked again. “What ‘appened ta tha mare who beat me near ta death?” She scowled at me, baring her teeth from one side of her face.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve been getting aches and pains for days now. Since before we fought, I think. Before you stomped on my legs while I was chained down. And before you put these in me!” I nodded down toward my back leg, at the shackle. After a pause, where she said nothing, I looked back at her. “Then the zebras gave me something that made it all better for... an entire evening. No pain, no aches.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” she said, staring at her own hoof and not looking at me. She already seemed bored of the conversation.

“After a while the pain came back, worse. I was getting jolts up and down them, all four... Then a horrible...” I started, stopping to shiver. I didn’t know how to describe it... “I don’t know, imagine if a hundred ponies are all screaming inside your head, how loud it would be? It’s like that, except in my legs. Every part of me begging for-”

“Beggin’?”

“You have any Med-X?” I asked hopefully.

Slipstock laughed. It wasn’t a warm pleasant laugh, but a mocking one. She laughed for a good while, before trailing off into a tiny, cute, giggle. “First off,” she said, raising a hoof and pointing it at me. “Yer not in a position ta be makin’ requests.” She laughed again. “Second off, whatcha see is whatcha get.” She lifted the various guns from their holsters and floated them in the air around her head in a little circle. Each gun would aim at me for just a moment, like some twisted game of chance where she might decide that I was too boring to keep alive. It was decidedly uncomfortable. “Why ya think Amble keeps me as her right-hoof pony? It’s easier ta throw guns at a problem than it is ta fix up a pony. Broken guns can be scrapped, reused. Potion’s and drugs ain’t too common ‘round here.” She slid the guns back into their respective holsters.

“Right...” I whispered, hanging my head. I wanted to start crying again. If she talked to me normally, I could pretend she wasn’t a psychopathic slaver. But when she started spinning guns around for emphasis, it reminded me that she wasn’t the kind of pony I wanted to deal with given the choice. All that just made the whole kiss weirder. Why was she just talking with me? Couldn’t she just take me to Amble and get it over with already? That would at least keep the others from getting caught when they finally came looking for me.

“Continue,” the mare ordered.

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked. I needed an answer so I could be appropriately worried in the future.

“Continue, Miss Fortune,” she repeated.

“I don’t know. The pain came back a lot worse, and then it started hurting to even walk,” I continued. And now I couldn’t even walk at all. It always came back before... Why wasn’t it this time? Had I finally pushed myself to the point where I’d done enough damage that it couldn’t ever be fixed? If I was stuck this way, my treasure hunting days were over. Honestly, that was the least of my worries. What would Amble do if she found out her pet project wasn’t able to walk anymore? I needed help, fast. No part of me wanted to find out what would happen if Amble got ahold of me so badly broken. Flicking an ear, I listened for hooves or talking, ponies coming to find me. All I could hear was the quiet music in the distance, and the bombing- or whatever it was, past that.

Slipstock’s horn lit up again, but instead of grabbing for her guns or wrapping her telekinesis around me, she-

I crossed my eyes, catching the magenta glow of her magic above me. My mane shifted, and she pulled several leaves from inside it. A small, sharp-ended chunk of wood followed. Several small, sharp-edged chunks of wood followed.

“What the fuck?” I asked nopony in particular.

The mare shrugged and flicked each away with her magic. The glow of her telekinesis disappeared, and she lifted a hoof. Rolling it, she encouraged me to continue.

“They just locked up. It was happening before, where every so often they wouldn’t bend where I told them to,” I added. “Ro- A medical pony said I needed a proper exam.” I didn’t need to be giving away who I was traveling with.

She was right though. I definitely needed a doctor. I should have listened to her. Why didn’t I listen to her? Why did I have to be such a stubborn mare? I wanted to hit myself, because I deserved a knock upside the head, but I couldn’t even do that. Taking a deep breath, I look around the little shanty town we were in. All dead ponies and hastily thrown together hovels. What the fuck was I doing out here? Why... why wasn’t I safe with my friends?

Slipstock squinted, but said nothing about it. Instead, she nodded. “Amble won’t be ‘appy ‘bout that,” she muttered passively. “She’s plenty pissed ya left- Not that she’s got tha time ta focus on it.” She chuckled, sneering. “Know why she didn’t send a pony after ya right ‘way?”

I raised my ho- I tried to raise my hoof to point out that she was wrong. Clearing my throat, I corrected her, “She did sen-”

“Shut up,” she interrupted. “Ya think a business mare like ‘er ‘asta send out... dipshit fuck-ass slaves?” She snorted a laugh. “Hah, nah. Escapees ain’t uncommon. Few ‘get out’ now ‘n then, usually small fuckery ones we let slip through tha cracks. Like that one ya killed. S’is name? Little green shit?”

“I. Didn’t. Kill. Him,” I screamed at her, glaring and gritting my teeth. If only I could aim Persistence. I’d shoot her right through the skull. I was not going to let the blood of ponies she, Sunbright, and Amble killed be put on my hooves.

Slipstock rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said. “Point is, trainin’ exercises ‘re normal. Guards get sloppy if’n they ain’t kept on edge. Ya sister burned down half tha compound. Ya got a puppy thrown after ya. One that could sniff ya out, y’know, like lil’ ‘ell’ounds do.” She mock sniffed. “Just so ya know we ain’t gonna letcha free. Ya ain’t an example like the ones we let slip through our ‘ooves. Those ‘uns? We string ‘em up near mess to let others see what ‘appens ya run ‘ways.”

“You’re twisted,” I snapped.

“And yer not special,” Slipstock repeated. “I understandcha. Once, she ‘ad me in yer place. Only diff’rence? I ‘ad no sister ta bail me out.” She spat at the ground next to me. “Ta think, I thoughtcha ‘ad something special...”

“Slipstock... What happened to you?”

“Same thin’ ‘appened ta ya,” she answered. “Caught in a bad way, but put up a good fight. She saw, said she wanted me.” Sitting up on her haunches, she grabbed her head with her forehooves. “Dug ‘er way inside. I can ‘ear ‘er now. Tellin’ me all I’m good fer is collectin’ troublemakers who ain’t worth Sunbright’s fires.”

“How many ponies has she done this to?” I asked. Looking around, I scanned behind the mare. All I could do was pray, to both Goddesses, that somepony was coming for me. They’d sneak up behind her while she was distracted and get me free. Then we could hide out again, and- and something.

“Plenty,” the slaver mare answered. “More bodyguards tha better. Mosta the guards useta be slaves. But she gets it in their heads. S’better with her. She keeps ‘em safe. She keeps ‘em fed. Lookit Vice Brand. Think he likes bein’ the ‘Breaker?’ Nah. ‘E just wants ‘is daughter ‘appy. Disciplinin’ ponies? Keeps ‘im in good favor. Amble let’s ‘im do what ‘e wants.” She grinned, nodding. “Gotta play tha system.”

“But you’re here, outside the walls, you could be free,” I said in the most encouraging voice I could. “You could come with Lost and me, we could use somepony who fights as well as you do.” I forced a smile. “Since I’m useless right now...”

She sat there a long time, saying nothing. Staring past me, she looked in the direction of the wounded changeling. Her eyes seemed to look back and forth, going from staring at one thing to another, never quite stopping. Though she seemed to be staring blankly, it was obvious something was going on inside her head.

“Why’d you kiss me?”

“I thought... ya were somepony else,” she admitted.

“You knew it was me...”

“Not... not what I meant, ya dumbfuck,” she said, practically growling. “She ‘ad ya for what... a week? Try years. An’ somepony waltzes in, takes everythin’ she throws an’ keeps on fightin’?” Tears started to well up in the corners of her eyes again, but she didn’t burst into tears. “Ya know ‘ow ‘ard I tried? Ta resist ‘er? And ya? Ya little thin’... Ain’t even a whole pony no more.” She pointed at my steel forehoof. “And ya... stood upta ‘er like that?”

“I-”

“Shut. Up,” she snapped, her voice cracking. “I... wanted ta be like ya, once ya got out. I ‘ad time ta think, and I... I was jealous. Ya were everythin’ I wanted ta be, everythin’ I wanted. Nopony’s made me feel that way ‘fore. I’d think ‘bout yer escape an’ just...” She bit at her lower lip. “It felt warm, ‘appy. I ain’t ‘ad that inna long time.” She looked me up and down once, before stopping to stare me in the eyes. “But yer not that pony.”

“Sorry to break your heart?” I offered, shruggi- trying to shrug.

“Ya fuckin’ cheeky cunt,” she seethed, one of her pistols slipping free of its holster and thwacking me across the top of my head. “Ya think this is fuckin’ funny?” She breathed faster, through her teeth.

“I-I didn’t mean...” I stuttered. “I’m sorry.”

Somehow I knew this would happen. When I lost my hoof, I thought everything was over. Being crippled in the Wasteland was a death sentence... A pony that couldn’t fight or escape? They were as good as dead. And here I was, watching a mare who’d already tried to kill me when I was able to fully move fight against herself.

I hated being helpless.

More though... I hated the fear of it.

While Slipstock seemed to fight off the tears, I realized my heart was pounding. She kept switching from calm to psychotic. It felt like everything I said was the wrong thing, that just as she’d calm down, I’d mention something to work her back up. If she finally decided to show me just how crazy she could be, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I’d be stuck there, like a foal against a Hellhound. I was as good as dead.

Please Celestia, Luna... Let my sister and my friends find me.

Please.

Something growled.

It wasn’t my sister, or my friends.

Eyes widening, I stared at the mare across from me. A shiver went up my spine and instinct took over. It was a quiet growl, but growls meant one of two things. Manticore or Hellhounds. I wasn’t in any shape to deal with either of those things, and I didn’t want to be around when whatever had growled decided to show up. If we were lucky, it was far enough away that all of us could flee before we were found. If worst came to worst... I was the one who couldn’t move. I was the one the Wasteland would eat.

Slipstock’s reaction was similar. She stared back at me, magenta eyes wide and her ears twisting side to side. Slowly, she looked around me. First left, then right, and finally she turned around behind her. Raising to her hooves, her horn lit up. The haze of her magic wrapped around the grips of her guns, but none left their holsters. Tail snapping, she spun in a little circle to try and find what it was.

The growling started again, quiet, but getting louder. The ground didn’t shake, didn’t bulge. There weren’t any tunnels showing up around us. Either that meant manticore, or a Hellhound with a big gun that it didn’t want to drag through tunnels. Hellhounds didn’t often come out to Blackhoof anyway, and aside from the ones I’d seen as a foal, they’d only ever been the stuff of rumors.

So I looked to the sky. Through the husks of old buildings, far above the ramshackle homes ponies had made in the alleyways... all I could see were clouds. Blanketing the sky, blocking out the sun, just clouds.

“Don’t toy with me like this!” I yelled to nopony, to the Wasteland itself. I wasn’t in any position to take this sort of shit. Gulping my heart back into my chest, I slumped as best as my broken legs would let me.

The tiniest of howls broke the silence.

In front of me, Slipstock’s ears spun back. She slowly turned around and looked at me. Together we looked down.

Just to the side, not quite between us, stood the little wooden form of a splinterwolf. ‘Fangs’ bared and little wooden claws digging into the dirt below, it stared at Slipstock with it’s glowing green eyes. Dark liquid dripped from between its sharp-edged teeth. It snarled, bottom jaw quivering in what had to be rage. A row of suspiciously familiar leaves ran down it’s back, starting with two atop its head where ears would be on a ‘real’ animal, and ending with a flat bristly tail at the far end. A thick mass of wood, seemingly mashed together, made up the main body, with twigs like the one Slipstock had pulled from my mane earlier propping it up as legs.

Growling again, it charged the pale blue slaver mare.

Were I able to, I would have facehoofed. That’s what was in my mane the whole time? That was the thing keeping me so frustrated that every other time I turned around I’d find a pile of leaves, as if it were following me?

Because it was a pile of leaves and wood following me?

Ever since I’d fallen in the mountains... Goddesses, even before that. It was so... tiny. The little itty-bitty thing ran at Slipstock as if it were the great hunter its parents were. I held back a little giggle, watching the pup as it danced around her hooves, nipping at her.

Slipstock was far less amused. She kept stepping away from it, always just far enough to keep from getting bit whenever it snapped its little sharp-edged wood teeth at her. The pup barely came up to her hocks, but that was apparently enough for her to not want it biting her.

Having been attacked by splinterwolves before, I didn’t blame her. Crossing my eyes, I looked at the scar down my muzzle. Their bites, their scratches... they never healed completely.

“Slipstock,” I offered.

“What!” she snapped, agitated by dodging the wolf. Finally having enough, she slung one of the pistols from her side and took the little pup’s head clean off.

It howled, growling as the head flew through the air and landed with a clang against one of the makeshift steel walls somepony had set up as their home in the Wasteland. Even headless, it kept jumping around her hooves trying to attack.

Rearing up, the mare dropped her whole weight down onto her forehooves right on top of the wood. Smashing the body free of the legs, the wooden body cracked but didn’t break.

The body lit up, glowing a green similar to Fine Tune’s transformation fires. The yapping, snarling head of the splinterwolf pup lifted into the air and floated over. It reattached at the one end, reforming the line of leaves down its back. Its tail wagged back and forth, kicking up more dust in the alleyway, as the legs floated over and joined onto it. Once whole, it started its nipping, biting, clawing attacks on the slaver mare again.

“Good pup,” I said with a smile.

“Why won’t you stop!” Slipstock demanded. Kicking it again, it just reformed. She tried several times, smacking it with her guns and kicking pieces away. Each time, it just floated the pieces back together until it was whole. Baring her teeth and screaming, she holstered all her guns and grabbed the splinterwolf pup in the magenta haze of her telekinesis. Lifting it off the ground, she held it away from her face.

It kept trying to bite her.

“Tha fuck is this thin’!” she demanded. “Where tha fuck ya been hidin’ it!”

Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but smile. “It’s a splinterwolf pup, I think,” I answered in the most matter-of-fact tone I could. “I didn’t even know it was there, I just thought they were leaves that wouldn’t leave me alone.” I had to stifle a laugh, puffing out my cheeks to not piss her off as the little pup kept snapping and clawing at her while she held it in the air. Splinterwolves were kind of cute, when they weren’t huge monster dog-things...

“I fuckin’ swear,” she snapped, glaring at the little thing. Aiming one of her guns at it, she pressed the barrel to the front of its muzzle. “Settle, or yer gonna lose yer head fer good. Y’understand?”

The splinterwolf pup just growled at her.

“That won’t do anything,” I informed her. “You need fire to kill it, or it’ll just keep coming back.”

Slipstock snarled. “What I wouldn’t give fer that bitch Sunbright...” she muttered. A smile erupted across her lips. “Fine, ain’t gotta kill it.” Twisting on one of her rear hooves, she lowered her head and slid her guns back into their holsters. With a flick of her neck, she released her telekinetic grip on the pup and flung it into the distance.

A little forlorn howl echoed through the steel-filled alleyway, followed by a crash a moment later.

“See, problem solved,” she said with a grin. Slowly walking over to me, she pressed her muzzle to mine. “Now, I’mma go get my prey over there, an’ then you an’ me ‘re gonna have a nice long trip back ta U Cig. Got it?”

My skin crawled and my ears pinned back, all while my tail twitched. I could only nod as she pulled away. Somehow, some way, I had to figure out how to keep her from taking me back there. Without moving my head, I watched as she walked past me. It felt like death itself walking by me. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

What would Lost do?

Without guaranteeing that my sister or friends would find me in time, I had few options. I could find a way to fight her, which wasn’t really an option at all... I could talk her out of it. Or I could let her take. Or kill me. With my legs completely wrecked, I couldn’t fight. Slipstock was completely psychotic, so I didn’t think I could talk her out of it.

There was no way I’d let her take me back.

Well, if I couldn’t convince her to let me go somehow, I’d just have to piss her off enough to make her kill me. It was the best of my limited solutions. I’d try talking, or...

Opening my eyes, I twisted around to look at the pale blue slaver. Insane or not, there was still a pony in there. She’d kissed me, because she thought I was a stronger mare than she was. We’d gone through almost exactly the same thing, in what Amble did to us, but I’d gotten free with help.

Maybe I could help her, or convince her that I could...

My heart nearly leapt into my throat.

I smirked. That was a plan...

As the slaver pulled the changeling up onto her back, she looked back at me. After a few adjustments to keep the poor unconscious bugpony from slipping, she started back toward me. “So,” she said. “Ready ta go back ‘ome?”

“You don’t have to take me, or whoever that is. You don’t have to go back,” I said calmly.

“Ya’d think that, wouldn’tcha?” she replied, frowning. “Lookie ‘ere. I been at this fer a long damn time, and I ain’t lookin’ta letcha get ‘way now that I found ya.” The warm tingly haze of her magic enveloped me, the magenta glow wrapping around my chest and legs. She lifted me into the air and draped me across her back in front of the changeling.

Face pressed into the back of her mane, the smell of gunpowder was overwhelming. Beneath it I could still smell a pony, but it was covered in so much... fighting. It was like she’d spent every day in the Wasteland slinging the guns around and firing without rest.

Wriggling my face free of her mane, I pulled myself with my chin to rest atop her head. “Do you want to go back?” I asked her.

She didn’t answer, instead she just walked toward the main road that I’d gone on to find the little treasure trove earlier. Before I could look down the roadway to see if my sister and friends were still nearby, she turned and started the other direction. “Dun matter,” she answered. “S’orders.”

“What does she call you?” I asked. Miss Fortune was the little moniker she’d given me, but so far I hadn’t heard what she called Slipstock other than her name. Perhaps, if I could get into her head the way she got into mine, I could turn the tables.

Slipstock laughed. “Nope, not gonna happen,” she said. “I ain’t that stupid.” Still, she stopped. “I dun wanna go back. As much as I like tha power an’ tha protection she gives... I don’t like bein’ under somepony else’s control.” Clearing her throat, she twisted an ear back toward me. “I ain’t strong enough ta break ‘er control.”

“I did,” I said quietly. “You’re stronger than I am, you’re special... moreso than I am. You can do it.”

She sniffled, muttering, “Ya dun understand...”

“I do.”

“No, ya... ya dun,” she corrected. “Ya dealt with it fer a few days, I... It’s been years.”

“You’re a tough pony Slipstock. The only way I beat you in a fight was by abusing drugs. I only got out because I got help,” I informed her. “I can help you now. I... I got her out of my head. I stopped calling her ‘Mistress’ after a few days. If, if you just try?”

I prayed to the Goddesses I wouldn’t have to go with plan B... My heart started to pound in my chest. So far this wasn’t working.

She snorted. “As if I ain’t done that ‘fore,” she snapped. Twisting her ear back around, she started walking again. “Thin’ is... She’s got a way’a stayin’ ‘round whether ya want ‘er to or not. No matter ‘ow ya push ‘er ‘way, ya still gonna hear that whisperin’ when everythin’s quiet. When she gets ‘er eye on a pet project, she ain’t tha type ta let go. She wants ya back, Miss Fortune.”

I twitched.

“If you take me back, I’ll never be that mare you thought I was,” I said, gulping. “If you give me a chance now... I have friends who will fix me, and I can... I can become that mare. The one strong enough to beat her. They could do the same for-”

Slipstock laughed.

“She’ll probably kill me when she finds me broken this bad,” I suggested. “Do you want me dead that bad?”

“If ya were tha pony I thoughtcha were... maybe not,” she said, her voice wavering. “I thought...”

“Did you think I could save you?” I purred, leaning to the side and getting close to one of her ears. “That I’d be strong enough to beat you again, but let you live? Let you come with me?”

The mare underneath me shivered. She said nothing, but she’d stopped walking again. The tiniest of nods gave her away. It hurt to see her admit it. At the same time, that meant there was a glimmer of hope for her. Nopony could want to be that psychotic slaver bodyguard, and if Slipstock wanted to be her own pony again, maybe, just maybe...

I nibbled on the inner edge of her ear. “Let me go,” I begged, barely whispering. “I’ll find a way... I promise.” My heart pounded in my chest. I’d never thought of doing such a thing to a mare, but if it worked... And despite the smell of gunpowder, she smelled nice... She was a pretty mare. It wouldn’t be so bad.

If I led her on just a little...

The mare’s whole body went tense. Her ear twitched, flicking forward and back as I held the base of it softly in my teeth. After only a moment, she went limp on her hooves, as if she melted. “I can’t,” she said, her voice lacking the sharp hatred it had always had behind the boredom.

“You can,” I reassured her, whispering. I tried to wrap my legs around her to squeeze, but they wouldn’t react, wouldn’t move the way I told them to. Atop my head, I could feel a cold sweat starting just underneath my mane. I prayed to the Goddesses it would work.

“Amble will-”

“Never have to know,” I interrupted, finishing for her. “She doesn’t know you found me, and you don’t have to tell her. You got the changeling you were after, that’s all.” Honestly, I felt terrible to sell the poor changeling out for my own safety, but if everything worked out the way I hoped it would, it would be worth it in the end. Nopony deserved to be dragged back there but- I just... I just needed to focus. I bit at the tip of Slipstock’s ear, catching it in my teeth and tugging slightly. “Lost and I, and our friends... We’re going to take her down. We already burned U Cig down. Together, all of us? We just have to finish the job, and we can save you when she goes down.”

Slipstock sniffled, seemingly crying again. Sidestepping over to the side of the road, she leaned against one of the bombed out buildings. It must have been something important, because the entire front was still intact. The name across the front was too faded to read. All around us was wreckage, but she’d stopped in the one place she could lean over and not drop the changeling or me.

“Ya promise...”

“I promise,” I reassured her. “Lost is smarter than I am, and I’ll be well enough to fight again soon. Even without getting into a direct fight with Amble or... you, we got rid of the alicorn in Skirt and made a mess of her operation in Idle. That’s on top of burning most of U Cig to the ground...” I gulped, my heart still in my throat. “I can be that mare you thought I was.”

“And if you don’t?”

“We will,” I said forcefully. “Set me down here, and go. It’ll take time, but we’ll put an end to Amble.”

Slipstock did as I suggested, leaning herself to the side and stepping away from the wall. She let me slide off her, until I was propped up on my haunches with my back against the broken remains of the building. Taking a few steps back, with the changeling still draped over her, she looked at me. “Ya... ya think yer special, do ya?” she said, sounding like she was forcing herself to talk tough, while her face showed worry.

“I do,” I answered, nodding.

Once again a small stream of tears rolled down her cheeks. She seemed to be in disbelief. Slipstock was crazy, but there had to still be a real pony inside her. She just needed help.

“Slipstock?”

“What?” she asked, raising a hoof to wipe her eyes.

“Watch out for alicorns, okay?” I warned her. “Trust me...”

The mare nodded. “I ain’t the type ta trust...” she snarled, stomping a hoof. “Just... dun fuck me on this, okay?” She leaned in close, squinting her eyes and glaring at me until our muzzles were pressed together.

She kissed me again.

My entire body tensed. I inhaled sharply. That warm knot in my stomach reappeared, twisting and tightening in the strangest type of pleasure I’d ever felt. Lips moving on their own... I kissed her back.

A crack across my skull shattered the pleasant moment. Recoiling, I clenched my eyes shut. No second hit came, and when I finally managed to open my eyes, I saw the mare staring at me with the grip of one of her pistols right above my nose. “Wha- what was that for?” I demanded, stuck between pleasure and shock at how fast everything happened.

“A reminder of what I’ll do ta ya if ya fuck me on this,” she said calmly. When I nodded, she turned and started off. Giving one look back, she squinted at me, then snapped her kinked mane around and trotted down the broken road away from me. “Don’t disappoint me...”

I watched her leave, alone in the Wasteland again. My heart pounded, so far up my throat I could feel it in my ears. Hopefully, Lost and the others would find me...

~ ~ ~

Mom paced across the rocks on the ground. Each pass, she’d lower her head to make it under the remains of the bridge we were beneath. When she turned around, she’d lift it back up, staring at me out of the corner of her eye. In the dim light of the evening, it was hard to make every detail out, but I could tell she was still staring at me. The pale green glow of the PipBuck strapped to her foreleg lit up the collapsed roadway above us, and painted both my sister’s and my face a sickly color each time she passed us.

She was mad at me for something stupid I’d done, again. We’d bolted from the house we were searching, and didn’t stop until we ran out of road. Of course, there was more on the far side of the thin shallow riverbed, but the shattered roadway made for a perfect hidey hole. One side’s supports had shattered, leaving the little stone road tilted at a sharp angle. The other side’s stood strong through the years, giving us a lean-to that blocked out any way for ponies to sneak up on us. It was a perfect spot, since we’d only be staying for the night.

The river might have run dry a long time ago, but it left a smooth rock bed below that wasn’t too uncomfortable. All of our things were hastily stuffed into the back corner, where I found myself huddling as far back as I could. When mom was angry, I couldn’t help but make myself as small as possible. Were it not for the fact that she’d yell at me for hiding from her, I’d have buried my face in the saddlebags already.

Mom took a deep breath and stopped. She looked away from my sister and I, down the riverbed and at the remains of the homes in the distance. Most were just frames, with walls that had rotted away long ago. Nopony stood on the outskirts watching us, and that seemed to be good enough for her. Turning back to me, and shining the PipBuck’s light directly at me, she exhaled.

Her face softened.

“I cannot believe you, Hidden,” she said breathlessly. Frowning, she turned to my sister. “And you, Lost, you should know better. You’re supposed to watch out for her, and keep this sort of thing from happening.” Crouching down and shuffling her way next to my sister, she curled up under the short ceiling the broken roadway made for us.

“I’m sorry...” Lost muttered, sulking and resting her chin on her hooves.

“I’m not mad at you, either of you,” she reassured us. Beckoning with one hoof, she urged us close to her.

Reluctantly, I scooted closer and curled up between her fore and rear legs. Pressing my face against her side, I could feel Lost moving in close as well. Once we were both huddled against her, and somewhat comfortable, she draped her thick red tail across both of us so only our heads were exposed.

“I just worry about you,” she said calmly. “You know the rules. You always need to be aware of them. It’s what keeps us safe.”

I nodded. “Sorry momma,” I muttered, not moving my face away from her side.

The faintest of green glows broke through the darkness around her coat, her horn lighting up. She pulled my head back gently and tilted it so I was looking at her. “Radios draw attention, okay?” she asked, a sympathetic look on her face. “You never know who might be lurking around the corner, and if somepony finds us... What’ll happen?”

I didn’t answer. I just looked away. Pulling my head against the warm tingly feeling of her telekinesis, I tried to push my face back against her side. It wasn’t fair. I’d never had a chance to hear the radio outside, and it wasn’t my fault there was music playing when I turned it on... I couldn’t have known. Gulping, I tried not to cry.

I shouldn’t be blamed for somepony else playing music...

“Mom, we didn’t know,” Lost said in my defense. She put a foreleg over me and squeezed. “We’ve never found a radio that still worked.”

“Yeah, I didn’t even know it would turn on!” I announced, a little louder than I should have.

Mom shot us a glare, raising her eyebrows and then tilting her head toward the opening that exposed us to the Wasteland. “It’s getting late, you two need to be quiet,” she said, her voice low. Her magic disappeared from my cheeks, the warm tingle disappearing. With a quick tap of it to her PipBuck, the light turned off, leaving us in near darkness.

In the far distance, the few remaining streaks of hazy, cloud-scattered sunlight shone through the skeletons of old houses. The line of shadow from the mountains past us slowly crawled closer as the sun sank behind the peaks. It looked almost like teeth, slowly closing down on us. The bridge would protect us in the night, while mom kept watch over the small section not covered. Just in case anypony found us...

“Prevention is the best medicine,” she said in a distinctly motherly tone, more so than her usual. “If you don’t know if something works, something that’ll make loud noise, it’s best to leave it off.” She squeezed with her tail, hugging us against her. “I want you two to be safe.”

“We should have stayed in the Stable,” Lost said, sounding somewhat annoyed.

“We couldn’t,” Mom said, her words sharp.

“I know but... but it was safe there,” she repeated. “No raiders or bandits or slavers or...” She bit at her lower lip. “We had baths, too.”

“Momma, why’d you come to the surface if it was so nice in the Stable?” I asked. I couldn’t remember the Stable. My only memory of it was the occasional flash of steel walls and bright lights. And crying...

Mom raised a hoof and stroked my mane softly with it. “Oh, my little treasures,” she cooed, smiling. “You’re too young to remember what it was really like...” She turned to Lost and ran her hoof over her mane as well, making my sister flick one of her ears a few times. Wistfully, she leaned back and looked up at the dimming sky. “The Stable wasn’t a great place.”

“But it was!” Lost argued. “We were safe and there was food and water and I had friends and... and dad...” She trailed off, the barest traces of tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

“Now now, shhh,” Mom said, her horn lighting up and a little haze appearing at the edges of Lost’s muzzle. She wiped the tears away with a flick of the glowing haze, lighting my sister’s face up for only a moment. “It wasn’t safe, not for ponies like us.” She looked at me from the corner of my eye, but smiled when she did so. “The ponies in charge there weren’t to be trusted. What do I always tell you?”

“Groups look out for their own,” we both said in unison.

“Exactly,” Mom agreed. “And we weren’t a part of ‘their own’ anymore.” She shrugged, lowering her head and resting it on her forehoof. “When I was younger, just barely with a cutie mark of my own, I always wanted away from those walls.” She smiled somewhat, looking out at the shadows that were slowly approaching. “This was before I got to know your father, of course. But everything there felt so... claustrophobic. So small. Like I was always encased. I wanted to feel grass under my hooves. I wanted to see a sky that wasn’t painted on. I wanted to see the world we thought we’d lost...”

“But momma, this world isn’t like that at all,” I said, having finally pulled my face free of her side. Leaning against her, I looked up past my sister at her.

“I know baby, I know,” she said solemnly. “We didn’t know that, at the time... Ponies had built the Stables for the worst case, but we didn’t... we didn’t know what was going to happen. Everything was made ‘just in case’ and they prayed we’d never have to use it.” Lighting her horn up again, dimly illuminating her green coat with its green glow, she turned and smiled at us. “Of course, they taught us when I was growing up, that nopony knew exactly what was happening when it all ended. Everything we had was from, at minimum, a few months before whatever ended everything.”

“So how do we know what happened?” Lost asked. “We left before they got that far in class.” Her own horn lit up, weakly glowing blue. She pulled her glasses from her face and adjusted them. They wobbled in the air, her magic not as stable as our Mom’s, until she rested them back across her nose.

“Ponies up here,” Mom answered, matter-of-factly. Raising a hoof, she pressed down on the top corner of my sister’s glasses, straightening them out on her muzzle. “My mother, and her mother, and her mother... They never knew exactly what happened. Ponies assumed it was the zebras, but our Stable is so far away from where everything important was happening? Our ancestors just ran for it when they saw bombs falling.”

“But when you found out everything was dead, why’d you ever go back?” Lost asked. She tilted her head to the side, before leaning it down and resting it next to our mother’s on her foreleg.

I scooted closer, resting myself against my sister. A big part of me was glad she wasn’t angry anymore, after what I’d done. It hadn’t been my fault, but I didn’t like it when she was angry anyway. Bedtime story mom was a lot better than lecture mom, any day.

“Hope, I guess,” she answered. “I kept thinking, maybe it was just a bad patch. If I went past the hill, or across the mountain, I’d find something green. Something alive.” She chuckled quietly. “Something alive that didn’t feel evil.” Whatever she meant, it went over both Lost and my head. “I just don’t believe everything can be a desert, or ruins. There has to be something left.”

“What if there’s not?” I asked.

“Well, we’ll just pretend it’s still hidden away from us,” she said with a smile. “One day we’ll find it, and make it a home. We’ll be happy, taken care of, and nopony out there will take it away from us.” She smiled, wrapping her rust-colored tail tighter around Lost and me and curling around to rest her head next to mine protectively over my sister.

“I volunteered to go to the surface, because I always hoped things hadn’t been as bad as ponies thought,” she continued. “We just didn’t know. Communications to the outside world were basically gone, and while we had enough to survive, it wasn’t living. Surviving isn’t living. So I offered to find out.”

“But you went back after?” I asked, somewhat confused. Sure the world was ruined now, but if she wanted to be out so bad, why would she ever return? I shifted on the smooth riverbed of rocks until I was on my side. Splaying my hooves forward, I poked at my sister’s side.

Lost glared at me, but said nothing. She just shifted on her own side and curled against our mother’s forelegs.

“Steel wasn’t going to be raising my daughter alone,” she answered, smirking. “This was before I had you, Hidden. But Lost was still too young for me to leave her alone with your father. So I only left for a few nights at a time. I always made sure to come back for my baby.” She nuzzled Lost, messing her glasses up again. The two pressed their noses together, the tip of Lost’s horn barely touching the base of our mother’s. “Each time I went out, I’d check a different direction, collect what I could, and come back. I brought back textbooks, weapons, and little souvenirs.”

“Like my glasses?” asked my sister, as she fixed them again.

“Yes,” she answered. At my confused look, she continued, “We didn’t have any small enough to fit her at the time.”

“Oh...”

Sighing happily, she smiled. “I nearly died a few times, you know?” she asked. “Before I learned how to gauge just how bad the radiation was by PipBuck ticks alone. When the doors closed, we didn’t know if there was any real danger. It was all automated, you see, and once it shut everything went into motion the way it’d been designed.”

I went to ask about what she meant, looking up at the dim glow of her horn lighting her face up, but she continued before I could get a word out.

“There’d been drills, of course,” she explained. “The Overmare was already chosen. And once the doors were shut, they weren’t going to open for a long time. Whether the world ended or not, it was on an automatic timer.” She laughed quietly. “Imagine our luck, that the doors were finally able to be unlocked when I was old enough to go out.” She looked at her haunch, at the cutie mark there. It was a set of flowers, three stems emerging from one spot and all three in various stages of bloom. The first was just a bud, the second a half-opened flower, while the third’s brilliant blue petals were spread wide as if looking to catch the sun. “Maybe it was fate,” she muttered quietly. “That I would be allowed to bloom outside.”

“What do you mean?” Lost asked, furrowing her brows.

“I never really knew what I was supposed to do in the Stable,” mom explained. “The jobs they had? Either I was no good at them, or they were full up. There’s only so many jobs in a Stable, and so many ponies there, too. Of course, nopony likes a freeloader.” She brushed a hoof across the bridge of her nose, scratching an itch a few times. “It wasn’t until I got outside that I found myself, discovered what I was truly capable of. Before I was able to become ‘me.’”

“You are you though, momma,” I said, hugging at her tail.

“Exactly, Hidden, exactly,” she agreed. Though she sounded happy, her smile slowly disappeared. “Not everypony liked that, though...” Pawing once at the ground with her hoof, she turned her head away and scanned over the darkness past us. The sunlight had disappeared behind the mountains entirely, and shadow had overtaken us while she’d been telling her story.

Nopony was in the distance, and the usual distant gunfire had quieted down for the night. Even bandits and raiders needed sleep, after all.

Turning back to my sister and me, mom put the smile back on her face. It seemed forced, though. “Once I told them what I found, they wanted to close back up,” she explained. “I lost hope, I felt like it’d all been taken away from me. So I didn’t stop. I knew how to get out, I knew the codes for the door and what time it would be safe to leave. I needed to find it, something lush, something green.” Slumping slightly, she rested her head across my sister and me again. “That’s where your names came from...”

“Which?” Lost asked.

Mom chuckled quietly. She booped my sister gently on the nose and shook her head. “You know which,” she answered. “When I had you, Lost... I thought I’d lost my chance. And when I had you, Hidden, I thought the world was just hiding the healing from me.” Her smile disappeared again. “I didn’t realize then, that no matter how far I went, I’d only ever see clouds and Wasteland.”

“I’m sorry, momma,” I said.

“Shh, shhh...” she cooed. “I found my place in the world, Wasteland or not.” She ran her hoof over my sister’s mane. “And I found my happiness in both of you. Sadness was inspiration, and you both filled the void in my heart more than any green grass ever could. And who knows, maybe the world will heal itself in my lifetime.” She tapped her horn. “Magic is powerful. Somepony out there might know a spell that’ll grow something out here.” Her smile reappeared. “Goddesses know your father knew one. He could grow anything in that steel trap of a Stable.”

I shrunk back. Why didn’t I have magic like they did?

I yawned, but mom kept talking. The bedtime story was interesting, and I wanted to listen, but suddenly everything felt heavy. Closing my eyes, I nuzzled closer between my sister and my mother. Opening one eye and looking up at them, I smiled. At least she wasn’t... mad... I yawned... anymore...

~ ~ ~

“Hidden!”

Without opening my eyes, I turned my head away. Pinning my ears back, I groaned. “Mmm, sleep,” I muttered finally. I’d been having a dream... a good one. What was it about?

“Hidden! You need to get up!” yelled my sister. Her hooves on my shoulders, she shook me. As she did, I could feel my legs flopping around in front of me, but it wasn’t enough. Her attempts to wake me weren’t going to work.

I wanted to finish the dream... I wanted to remember the last of it.

“I swear to the Goddesses if you don’t wake up this instant Hidden!” Lost snapped, her voice frantic. She nudged me again, gentler than before, but I didn’t move. A smile on my face, I could hear her turning and yelling. “Rose! What do I do? What if she doesn’t wake up. Could she be in a coma or something? I’ve never seen her this bad before! Can we pick her up and just carry her the rest of the way?”

“Be gentle until we get her to the Ministry of Peace hospital,” Rose answered. “I can assess everything there. She’s breathing and she’s not hemorrhaging, I can tell that from here. To check her brain I’d need the right equipment.”

“I volunteer to carry her, whether she wakes or not,” offered Lamington, his voice peppered with static the same as always. “A pony of her size would be no burden to my travels.” Even through the static, his voice sounded happy.

I yawned, slowly opening my eyes. Smiling up at my sister, I craned my neck forward and kissed her on the nose. “I had a dream,” I whispered. I could remember it, enough of it. “A dream about mom...” Collapsing back against the broken down building Slipstock had left me propped against, I blinked a few times to adjust to the light. “A good one about her.”

Lost stared at me, her nose scrunched up and her eyes wide. “You what?” she finally asked, shocked. With a twitch of her eyelid, all emotion came back with force. “You what! You’re sitting here, covered in blood and bruises, your jacket’s in worse condition than it’s ever been and I can see dents in your armor. Yet, yet you tell me what you had a nice dream about our mother?” She blinked several times, taking a step back.

“I tripped?” I offered. “Decided to take a nap while I was down.”

Telling her about what happened with Slipstock wasn’t going to happen. If I told her about the kiss, especially in front of Rose, I’d never hear the end of it. I didn’t want to admit it in front of Lamington, either, since he already seemed to have a muddied opinion of me. Fine Tune would probably figure it out on his own if he was as smart about emotions as I thought he was. And Tim Tam? He probably still had a concussion.

I just didn’t need more teasing about me liking mares. Sure, Slipstock’s kiss was nice... despite her constant attacks. And sure, I wanted to help her because she seemed like she honestly needed it. She’d gone through the same as I did, and it wouldn’t be right to sell her out over that. I mean, she had left me someplace ‘safe’ instead of taking me back with her to U Cig where I’d be under Amble’s hoof again.

It was better that I just pretend nothing happened.

“Don’t lie to me, Hidden,” Lost said, squinting at me. “We found you passed out and covered in blood and bruises. This does not look like a fall. I... I need to know what happened because I care about you, so I can help if something’s wrong. I’m not so stupid to think you just tripped, but I can’t help unless you let me.” Her horn lit up a pale blue, while her telekinesis ruffled and reset my mane in its normal position.

“Okay, fine,” I relented. “Know the twigs that I kept finding in my mane all the time?”

She looked at me with a confused look on her face, and tilted her head to the side.

“I notice you no longer adorn your mane with them,” Lamington chimed in. “While dusty and bloody, your mane seems clean of any foreign matter.” The Star Paladin’s steel armor tilted slightly, and he looked down. “Where did you find green, living leaves, here?”

“Funny story,” I started, raising a- not raising a hoof. I sat there and leaned my head back against the building. Looking up at it, I tried to make out the sign near the top of the wall, but I couldn’t read it from the angle I was at. Honestly, where’d the splinterwolf pup gone, anyway? After Slipstock tossed it away... “Remember the splinterwolves we ran into when we were going across the mountains? It’s one of those.”

“The ones I nearly ruined my magic trying to kill?” Lost asked.

“The ones that gave you scars even I won’t be able to heal?” asked Rose.

“What is a splinterwolf?” asked Lamington.

Fine Tune raised a hoof and chirped out a loud, “Krii!” Smiling wide, the sickening green fires of his transformation magic erupted around him. After a few moments, where glimpses of various coat colors and mane colors slipped through the gaps, he let the fires die down. In the changeling’s stead was a brown earth pony, with streaks across his coat that looked very similar to the bark of the splinterwolves. With a fluffy green mane and tail, and glowing green eyes, he struck a pose. “Like this! But made of actual wood.”

“Nice job piecing that together,” complimented my sister. Reaching back, she gave the changeling a pat on the head. “That’s fairly accurate, to be honest. They’re native to the woods up there, according to Xeno. Pack hunters; we ran into some while going across to her home and the Imani Tribe.”

Rose hooked a hoof up and pointed it at my sister. “This one did some fancy fire nova and scorched them all,” she explained. “It’s the only thing that stopped them from putting themselves back together.”

“I see,” Lamington muttered through the static of his armor. “Incredible and quite dangerous sounding. I presume you all survived relatively unscathed? Was your zebra friend wounded in any way? Was that the reason she elected to remain with the zebras?”

“And where’s the splinterwolf... pieces? Where are they now?” Lost asked. She looked around, her horn already glowing dimly in preparation to attack.

“No no!” I said, raising my hooves to- Sitting there quietly, I stared at her. “It’s not pieces, a whole splinterwolf. Just, it’s a little one, a pup. It seemed to like me.” I cleared my throat. “It umm, it was defending me.”

Slowly, my sister turned and squinted at me. “You said you tripped,” she said.

Shit.

“Can we argue about this later?” Rose requested. “We’re losing daylight.” Holding her grenade rifle up in the air with her own telekinesis, she pointed the barrel toward the setting sun. “I want to get to the Ministry Hospital before dark. It’s not a long trip if we trot instead of slowly meander.”

“Hidden, I’m worried about you,” Lost said, sitting across from me. “You didn’t come back when we called, and I couldn’t find you on the E.F.S. Do you have any idea how terrified I was when I found you sitting here, all alone, and covered in blood?” She blanched. “Rose is right, we need to hurry and get you to the Ministry of Peace hospital.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, hanging my head. Ear drooping, I looked up at her apologetically. “I got into a bit of a fight and talked my way out of it. We’re safe now.”

“Except for the splinterwolf pup?” Rose asked.

“I’m telling you, he was a friend. I’m sure he’ll find me again,” I said with a smirk. “He went nipping at the hocks of the pony who was attacking me.”

“Who was it that attacked you?” Lost asked, staring at me over the rims of her glasses.

“Can you just put me on Lamington’s back and demand answers as we walk?” I asked. Looking down at my legs, I nodded at them. “I can’t move.”

“Oh for-” Rose snapped, raising onto her hind legs and throwing her hooves up into the air. “I told you to go easy and not exert yourself! Do you have any idea...” Dropping back to all four hooves, she turned and walked off, still ranting to herself.

“This is why I worry about you Hidden,” Lost said. She turned to Fine Tune. “Can you turn back into a unicorn and help me?”

Fine Tune nodded and in an instant, the fires surrounded him. A second later, the blue stallion with the f-holes cutie mark remained. His horn began to glow green, and joined in with my sister’s magic, the two of them lifted me into the air.

Lamington lowered slightly, giving clearance as they draped me over his gun. It was mildly uncomfortable, and surprisingly cold. Even on numb legs, the metal was stiff and left me bent at a weird angle, with my belly on the Star Paladin’s back and my head propped awkwardly on the barrel of his minigun. Turning his head slightly, he looked back at me. At least, that’s what it seemed like. “I’ll take great care to relinquish you before firing if a firefight begins. Tim Tam will supervise you in such an event.”

Tim Tam, who’d been quiet the entire conversation, saluted. He seemed far more in focus since the last time I saw him, which was a good thing.

“What about the Splinterwolf pup?” I asked. Lying on the Star Paladin wasn’t entirely uncomfortable... I could get used to it, if I had to. Wriggling around as best I could without using my legs, I managed to fit myself into the space between his gun and saddlebags. It would do, and I was off my useless hooves. While normally I preferred to walk for myself, I was too far gone to bother fighting. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need to fire the minigun while I was using it as a pillow.

“I’m surprised you want it around, given how often you were picking the pieces out of your mane,” Lost said, a half-smile forming. “It’s tenacious, if it really wants to, it’ll probably find its way back. Trouble seems to be attracted to you...”

I looked away. “Mmm. Is that why Slipstock found me...” I muttered under my breath.

Lost’s ear flicked. In an instant she turned toward me, her eyes wide. “Did... you just say-” she started, but never finished. Before she could complete the thought, she had Loyalty in the air. She swept it across the ruins, looking around for the mare who was long gone. Fine Tune followed suit, not half a second after my sister had the modified gun out, his own silenced pistol was in the air and he was looking around the opposite direction.

“Where is she?” Lost demanded, still panning her gun around as the others looked on in various states of confusion. They weren’t around when we dealt with Slipstock the first time...

Fuck. Ears drooping, I buried my face against the metal of the gun I was resting on. I didn’t want her to hear that. Why’d I say it out loud? A thinky pony wouldn’t have said anything... Why couldn’t I be a thinky pony? “She left... We got into a fight and...” I muttered, trailing off and praying I could sink past Lamington and disappear into the ground. “Umm, some stuff happened, and...” I chewed on my bottom lip. “She went through the same thing I did, there... So I talked her into letting me go. That’s it!” I could feel a blush starting on my cheeks. “Nothing else happened, nope. Just a fight and a talk and then she left. I promise. I. Promise.”

Repeating it seemed to do the trick. Lost and Fine Tune shared a glance, then slowly put their weapons away. Tilting her head my sister beckoned us to move.

Rose stared at us for a moment, blinking a few times. “Who the fuck is Slipstock?” she asked. Before any of us could say anything, she raised a hoof. “No, don’t even try to explain. We need to get to The Cinch now. We can deal with this... whatever drama it is, later.” She trotted forward, leading the rest of us back down the road toward the Ministry Hub.

“I could have told you she was a slave turned bodyguard,” Fine Tune said to me. Before I could question why he never did so before, he smiled. “You never asked. You should ask more about that sort of thing, once we’re not running.”

I nodded, since it was one of the few things I could still do. One ear swiveled back, listening. Off in the distance, I was sure I could hear the echoing howl of a splinterwolf pup. It made me smile. Any creature that protected me from Slipstock couldn’t be all bad.

I hoped he’d find us.

* * *

The closer we got to The Cinch, the worse the ruins around us got. While ahead the massive buildings the Ministry Mares once called home still loomed, seemingly untouched by the ages, and the blast that took out the city... Little else withstood it. They’d once obviously been bigger buildings, with multiple stories that had all collapsed to make what was effectively just a pile of rubble. Dozens of them lined the street we walked down, with the occasional frame shooting into the air and swaying in the wind. All together, it was eerie. We were walking past what had to once be a busy street, the workplaces of potentially hundreds of ponies. All that was left was shattered glass and the rotting shards of furniture, blown from the buildings when they fell. What wasn’t destroyed by the balefire didn’t survive the centuries of exposure.

Lying on Lamington’s back, I took time to examine each building. There wasn’t much else I could do. One we walked by looked like it once was a bank, the faded outline of the fallen letters still present on the only wall that remained. A poster stuck stubbornly to the corner of the building, one corner flapping gently. The pink and grey haired mare stared at us as we went past, her eyes seeming to follow me as I locked into a staring contest with her.

It sent a chill up my spine.

Lamington stopped.

Tearing myself away from the poster, I looked forward. Maybe the poster mare was staring at the dead bodies.

A half-dozen ponies, with no weapons or armor, lay dead before us. Blood pooled in the cracks of the street. It wasn’t fresh, but it wasn’t old either. Whoever was shooting earlier, I might have figured out who they were shooting at.

But who would kill weaponless ponies?

Especially ones... full of piercings, with bloodshot eyes... Manes hacked into terrible styles, dirt and grime caked into their coats, and chunks missing from ears and faces? These weren’t weaponless ponies... These were raiders.

The smell hit me, hard.

Gagging, I buried my nose against the metal gun I’d been using as a pillow.

“What the fuck happened here?” I croaked, praying to not get the taste of blood in my mouth from how bad the stink was.

Nopony said anything. The rest just stood there, looking the scene over. Some of the ponies were simply shot up, full of holes. Others weren’t so lucky. At least one was missing his hind legs. I didn’t want to guess where they were. The holes in the ponies weren’t small, either... They’d been shot by something big, and it’d blown out more than a few of their sides. I could see innards, too.

That explained the smell. They were already rotting.

“A massacre,” Lamington answered, static lacing his voice. He started walking again, pacing across the remains of the battle. It gave me a good view of the dead ponies, and just how fucked up whoever killed them was.

I had an eye for finding things, it was the one thing I was good at. Across the bodies, the ones still intact? The grime and dirt showed where they’d once worn armor and battle saddles. It wasn’t the best kind of armor, given all the gaps, either. Bloody hoofsteps, larger than any I’d seen outside of Lamington or Wirepony, were tracked everywhere, especially around the bodies. They’d been looted and tossed back down...

Shell casings were scattered everywhere, large caliber like I thought. Some smaller ones were lodged in the cracks of the road. They probably belonged to the dead ponies here. They must have been outmatched... Even for raiders, I felt bad for them.

Sure, they got what they deserved for being scum barely qualifying as ponies anymore but... I shivered. It made me worry just who we were ‘following.’

I twisted my ears forward and listened. Whoever’d been fighting earlier had slacked off, but every so often another loud burst of gunfire would fill the air. Somepony was still fighting and we were walking right toward it. Darker clouds hung in the air around the towering black Ministry building we were getting closer to, caught in the wind and blowing away from the battle.

I prayed to the Goddesses they’d be finished before we got there. Or, better yet, that they weren’t fighting at The Cinch, and we’d never have to deal with them.

But these dead raiders...

“What do you think got them?” I asked nopony in particular.

“Who cares,” Rose said, spitting on one of the dead mares, one missing a hind leg.

I looked over the others bodies. Past a headless pony, and past the splatter of brain and blood covering the road, I saw something odd. A few piles of green goo and pink ash were slowly simmering in the road, with pink dust scattered by the wind blowing through the street. I looked away, at the rubble of the buildings and the holes there. I’d rather see walls with bullet holes than ponies.

There were only two groups of ponies I knew who used magical energy weapons. Either we’d stumbled upon a fight with the Ashen, or... I cracked one eye open and looked at Lamington’s armor. We should have brought the rest of the family...

“Nopony truly deserved this,” Lamington said.

“They were raiders, they got what was coming to them,” Lost disagreed. “Still, if whoever’s been fighting up ahead took all their weapons... We might be in for a big fight.” She sighed. “I sure hope not...”

“That is peculiar, yes. Unfortunately, there’s little in the way of clues as to who might have relieved them of their weaponry,” Lamington said, the static seemingly absent from his voice for once. He walked past the dead ponies, further down the road. “I cannot tell, for certain, if armored ponies assaulted this collective or not. Their weapons and armor were seized, however, which leads me to believe it was the same ponies calling themselves Steel Rangers at the factory. They said similar disparaging things to the effect of confiscating our weaponry during the battle previously. My bits are on Star Paladin Jazz and hers being our perpetrators.”

“And who does it sound like up ahead?” Rose asked.

“Heavy ordinance being fired?” Lamington asked, seemingly amused. “As I said, my bits are on Star Paladin Jazz and hers.”

“Hopefully everypony’ll kill one another before we get there,” I muttered.

“Indeed,” Lamington agreed.

“Want me to go search ahead?” Fine Tune asked. “I can fly and all...” He smiled, looking hopeful.

“Negative,” Lamington stated. He pointed a hoof toward the clouds of smoke in the distance. “We’ll have our answer regardless of searching.”

“Then let’s move forward,” Rose said. “Slowly. Worst case, I know the emergency codes and we can sneak in one of the buildings from whatever side they’re not fighting on. I was a courier there, after all. It had its perks.” She smiled, but it was obviously forced.

It was a plan, as good a one as we’d have time to come up with. I looked back, wondering about the splinterwolf pup, and Slipstock, and the dead ponies that were suddenly behind us. Today was such a busy day...

* * *

Lying across the back of the Star Paladin, I stared at the wall. After what seemed like an eternity, restless and unable to move while I was carried, we’d made it. Somehow, ponies had taken the best preserved and most fortified part of the Wasteland and made it their home. I imagined it was an old settlement, given how much time it would take even an army of ponies to build up the wall around their home. It towered over us, going up along the building we were standing behind, reaching high enough that only pegasi could hope to get over. It was made of chunks of old building, likely scavenged from nearby, and layered with reinforced steel. Parts were covered in pieces of skywagon and metal, armoring it against attackers. At the top, helmets lined the walls at random intervals. None had moved when we approached, and when I got close enough to tell, I could see they were just there to trick ponies into thinking there was a guard. The massive wall wound around in a gentle circle, connecting the buildings.

I could tell where the Cinch got its name. The massive wall weaving between the Ministry buildings looked just like the saddle belt it was named after.

We just needed to find a way inside. Unfortunately, there were still the sounds of a gunfight. Whoever it was, they were close, most likely fighting just out of sight with whoever had built the walls. They’d gotten their second wind, and the gunfire, though muffled, was far louder. They were firing something high caliber, and I could hear the tell tale “PLZ-OW” of magical energy weapons going off during the attack.

“Glad they’re on the other side...” muttered Rose. “It feels weird being back after so long.” She trailed off, staring at the back of the building. After a moment, she turned back to look at us. “Feels good though. Welcome to the Ministry of Arcane Sciences building.” She pointed up at the building directly in front of us.

I stared up at the impossibly tall building. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. I was used to ruins, falling apart or already broken. The few places that weren’t in pieces were made by Wasteland ponies to live in, and were always pieced together. This place, however... it was perfectly spotless, with no damage from the end of the world.

The Ministry of Arcane Sciences building reminded me of pictures of a tiered, somewhat unappetizing, cake. The base of the building looked like a giant, purple, silvery steel brick. It covered an entire city block and rose up several stories, completely smooth and featureless. Above that, the building shot into the sky in the shape of a giant triangular wedge, getting thinner and thinner as it went up, seemingly disappearing into the cloud cover overhead. The wedge part at least had windows, if fact there was nothing but windows covering it, reflecting the setting sun with streaking diagonal orange lines across the back. With no visible entrances, we’d have to go through somewhere else to get inside The Cinch.

“What about the others?” I asked, twisting my ears forward, and looking to my left.

“Well, the one over there,” she started, pointing in the direction I was looking. “That’s the Ministry of Wartime Technology building, run by Applejack’s advisors.”

Drab grey, short, squat and looking far more functional for a pony to use than the previous building, this one reminded me of Leathers. While it had little in the way of fancy designs, outside the main walls were several smaller sections, all different heights and looking as if they’d been added on after the main section had been long complete to give additional space for whatever ponies inside needed. A long ramp went up to one of the smaller sections, leading to a set of doors barricaded from the inside. The tiny windows that might have given us a view inside were dark, boarded up and protected from prying eyes.

A massive door, reinforced with a mishmash of metal much like the sheets I’d surrounded myself in when fighting Slipstock, covered every part of the walls outside the building. It looked like somepony had taken a good deal of time to make it completely unbreachable. Old motorwagons, broken into pieces and smashed along the bottom of the rear wall were nailed in with gigantic steel rods like Rebar’s. Their ends were bent, to keep from being removed. It was probably the best a pony could get with the limited resources in the Wasteland. I wouldn’t try opening it, not with all the junk now connected to it.

“On the other side is the Ministry of Image building,” Rose explained. “Rarity designed it personally, with nothing more than appearance in mind.” She smirked and chuckled quietly. “As if she would do anything else.”

To my right, another building rose into the sky similar to the first. It had no corners. Instead, the walls smoothly curved around in a bulging cone that tapered off in a point at the very top. Frameless windows lined the entirety of the building, spiraling diagonally around the curved walls. The windows repeated in a pattern of three, with two lines light in color, with a third set much darker. The pattern made it look like a unicorn’s horn, with that same dark spiral leading up to the point. Capping the building at the very tip was another window, bright and polished, like a gemstone somepony fawned over daily. Surprisingly, it was clean, without so much as a spec of dust or dirt on it.

“The other three buildings are on the far side, though from here we can’t really get a good look at them,” Rose continued explaining.

Of the remaining three buildings, two were tall enough to see. One, a massive, black, and windowless skyscraper, towered above the rest of the buildings. Even the Ministry of Arcane Science building was dwarfed by its imposing height. The last made no sense. Far tinier than the rest, it was like somepony had blown a little bubble on the roof. Next to it, completely disconnected, was a stack of pink ovals, like old foal’s toys I’d seen long ago, forming a tiered spire.

“Fluttershy’s research and hospital buildings are directly across the plaza from where we are. The two buildings make up the area’s Ministry of Peace headquarters. Across from the others are the Ministry of Awesome ‘offices’ and Pinkie Pie’s Ministry of Morale ‘Funland’... thing.” She shuddered.

I’d heard the names she used before, but it was nice to put something to the name. It might not be a face, but at least I could tell what type of ponies they might have been. A little, at least.

Lamington cleared his throat. “How are we to breach the walls?” the Star Paladin asked, pacing slightly and looking at Applejack’s factory. “I presume, given the fortifications, this isn’t an uninhabited area?”

“There are squatters, yes,” Rose answered. “They’ve been busy. This place looks a lot more secure since the last time I was here.”

“Security is a good thing,” I said, nodding.

“Want me to fly over the walls and find a gate?” asked Fine Tune, still in his blue unicorn form.

“I wouldn’t,” said both Rose and my sister at the same time. They looked at one another, and Rose continued. “If there’s a fight going on, we don’t need a trigger happy pony watching their back and thinking you’re another target. We need you alive more than we need to get over the wall.”

“Are there doors we can get in?” my sister asked Rose.

“Probably,” answered the pink mare, frowning “The question is whether any are still viable.”

“Because of the barricades?” I asked, nodding my head over toward the Ministry of Wartime Technology’s collection of motorwagon parts and nailed shut doorway.

“Those are just the obvious doors,” Rose answered. “I was a courier here, I know all the back doors and secret entrances. I can try them one by one to get in, then we sneak through to get into the Ministry of Peace hospital.”

“Which one is that again?” asked Tim Tam. He tilted his head and stood up on the tips of his hooves, as if he could see over the wall by doing so.

“There’s a yellow and light pink building on the far side, Fluttershy’s colors, directly across from the M.A.S. building,” Rose explained. “The light pink section is a hospital, and unless somepony ransacked it, it should still have enough supplies to do some basic healing for both of you.” She cocked her head to the side. “And get my field gear, too.” Squinting, she looked over her shoulder at the wall. “If one of the squatters managed to break into my locker and steal it... I might forget kindness for a few moments.”

Lamington chuckled. “We can cross that bridge when we arrive at it,” he said calmly. “For now, we should try and get inside swiftly. I don’t like how close that battle sounds.”

Collectively, we all nodded. He was right, the sooner we were inside the walls the better. If the ponies were still fighting after all the time it’d taken us to get to The Cinch, it was probably all the ponies inside fighting for their home. Hopefully, at least. The last thing we needed was for a gun happy pony to see us sneaking in a back door and thinking their enemy was trying to slip in. If Rose could get us in, then we could lock ourselves in the hospital from the inside, so we could have some peace.

We could deal with the squatters afterward. Maybe, just maybe, Rough Night and the other ponies from Leathers were here, and would recognize us. That’d make things a lot easier, and we’d get shot at a lot less.

“However,” Lamington added, interrupting my train of thought. “I believe, being wounded, Miss Fortune should wait somewhere safe, nearby. Tim Tam can stay with her as a guard.”

My heart practically stopped. How dare he phrase it that way... “What?” I whimpered, practically begging. “I want to come with you...” Wriggling, I fought against the urge to hang my head and do exactly as he suggested. “You’ve got no reason to leave us back here.”

“Why’s that, Sir?” asked Tim Tam.

“We don’t have any intelligence on the combatants, only assumptions,” the massive pony answered. “If we’re outnumbered and spotted, it will be easier for us to fight or flee without needing to worry about Miss Fortune.”

Rose nodded. “I agree,” she said. “As soon as we know which path through the ruins to take, and which doors I can still access, we can come back and get you both.”

“The most important thing right now is to keep you safe, Hidden,” Lost added. She smiled, walking over to me and stroking a hoof through my mane. “You’re in no condition to fight. If worse comes to worse, I can get away and come back to get you. Then we can all get away, somehow...”

“But... but...” I whispered, not happy with the arrangement one bit. “What if something happens to you? What if you can’t get back?”

Lost looked up at the Star Paladin, then to Rose and Fine Tune. “We’ll be careful, all of us,” she answered in a reassuring voice.

“I’ll keep you company and watch over you,” added Tim Tam. Clicking his rear hooves together, he saluted Lamington. “Find us a location and I’ll stand guard.” Smirking a wary sideways smirk, he shifted. “You can’t see it under my armor, but my special talent is that sorta thing.”

I stared at him. I’d rather be with my sister, but I knew I had no choice. What was I to do? Get up and follow her? Hanging my head over Lamington’s minigun, I finally relented. “Alright, just be quick okay?”

“Of course, Hidden,” Lost answered. “Let’s find you a safe place.”

With that, she and Rose split up. Fine Tune transformed, his unicorn form flaring up with a swirl of green fire, and leaving him the pegasus mare I recognized. Lifting into the air, she lazily buzzed off into the ruins, staying low enough to not be seen over the wall.

As we waited, Lamington turned his helmeted head toward me. “I promise we’ll come back as soon as we can,” he said in a staticy but reassuring voice.

It only took a few minutes, but Rose returned with a bright smile. “Found something,” she announced. “Two blocks that way, there’s half a building still standing. A staircase will take you to the second floor.” She pointed down one of the ruined roads. “Drop her off up there, out of sight. I’ll stay here to tell the others where we’re going.”

“I shall return momentarily,” the Star Paladin answered her. Trotting harshly, he carried me and led Tim Tam in the direction Rose had shown him. Once we were out of earshot of the mare, he turned his armored head back and looked at the two of us. “I trust you’ll remain in place, Miss Fortune.” It sounded like a joke, but I didn’t appreciate it. When I didn’t laugh, he changed subjects. In a harder voice, he added, “I only care to keep you and our other companions protected. This temporary arrangement is all for that, and will indeed be just that; temporary.”

“Lamington’s a good soldier,” Tim Tam vouched.

We reached the building Rose had pointed out. Just as promised, three walls still stood. It was all cracked concrete and rebar jutting out from the remains. A staircase led up, against the one of the remaining walls, to what was left of the second floor. It had collapsed, badly, and going by the bones, crushed some poor pony caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ignoring the potential for his heavy armor to crash through the stairs, Lamington trotted up with all manner of clanking from the metal hooves on steel stairs. A quieter Tim Tam followed.

At the top, Lamington shifted his weight and slid me off his side, where I landed on the floor with a little oof. Tim Tam helped to keep me from toppling over, by propping me against the wall. I looked out the window, away from them. Part of me understood, but most of me was fuming. I didn’t want to be left behind, even for a moment.

“You’re in charge,” Lamington said, placing a hoof on Tim Tam’s withers. “We’ll return as soon as possible.”

“Understood,” answered the freckled pony. He took a seat next to me, on the opposite side of the window.

With one last nod, Lamington retreated down the stairs with the same loud clanking, and disappeared.

“This’ll be fun,” I muttered through a sigh...

* * *

“... and then, after leaving Stirrup, I decided to head north,” rambled Tim Tam. “This was a while back, and I’d heard there were Steel Rangers up north.” He paused and rolled his forehoof a few times. “This was before I knew Scifresh’s ponies were such jerks.” He chuckled a bit, smiling at me, before looking back out the empty window. “I’ve heard a lot about them recently.”

Without the PipBuck, I had no idea how long we’d been sitting in the ruins together. It wasn’t long, I knew, but I couldn’t really focus on what Tim Tam was saying. I heard it, but I wasn’t listening to it. The stallion was nice enough, but I had other things on my mind. I wanted to know what was taking the others. The sounds of gunfire in the distance had me worried.

All sorts of little possibilities ran through my head, of what could happen. I clenched my eyes shut. None of the thoughts were good, and though I knew I was overreacting, I just wanted to turn my brain off.

It had gone silent. Tim Tam was staring at me. He didn’t seem happy at all, what with the frown across his mouth.

“You’re not listening, are you?” he asked, sounding only mildly annoyed.

“Sorry, I’m just a bit preoccupied,” I admitted. “I didn’t mean to...”

Adjusting his orange mane, he waved a hoof dismissively. “I understand,” he reassured me. “I’m not happy to be left behind either, but you’re hurt and my head still aches. It’s not as fuzzy as it was before, but I don’t think I’m up to snuff if they need me to fight.” He started to laugh, but stopped, exhaling. One of his ears twisted to the side. “Shame we don’t have any Med-X or something to take the edge off.”

I smirked. “I know how you feel,” I agreed.

Something caught in my ear. I twisted the left one around and listening, not turning my head to look. Instead, I stared at the stallion.

He’d heard it too. Both of his ears were twisted to the side, and he was looking out the empty window. Glancing at me, he nodded toward the outside, then leaned over to look past the windowsill at the road below.

“What is it?” I asked, unable to make out exactly what it was.

Whatever it was, the sound was too jumbled to make out with any distinction. It was a mass of clattering, thumping, metal on road. It wasn’t even a sound, it was just noise. My heart rose, it might be Lamington, running back with all his might to tell us they’d found a way in. His armor would be heavy, and give off the clanky sound of steel on cracked pavement.

I smiled.

The sound got louder, heavier. Chunk of broken wall and roof that had collapsed onto the half-floor we were sitting on started to rattle around, bouncing up and down. It couldn’t be Lamington; even in his armor he wasn’t heavy enough to make that sort of a commotion. The sound of hooves grew, getting closer.

I shifted my weight, leaning hard against the wall. I couldn’t see over the windowsill, so instead I stared at Tim Tam. Grimacing, I asked, “Who is-”

“Flank!” yelled a familiar voice, interrupting me. “Go go!” Her voice cut clear and loud, raising above the noise the running ponies were making. Star Paladin Jazz didn’t sound happy. “I swear, if you lot don’t break the wall I’ll find that fucking metal monster again and feed you to him! March!”

Tim Tam flailed a hoof, motioning down. When I didn’t move, he reached over and grabbed onto me. Pulling hard, he threw us both onto the floor and out of sight of the road, even from the collapsed side of the building.

I stifled an ‘oof,’ landing just in time to watch at least a dozen ponies storm by. They kicked up a racket, their hooffalls clanking loudly each time the metal hit ground. With so many, it was overpowering, and all I could do was pin my ears back to try and keep the sound out. Snout buried in a broken piece of wall, I watched wide-eyed and tried to count them while praying they wouldn’t notice us.

Wait, Steel Ranger armor has E.F.S.!

I prayed they’d just think we were radroaches, just something to ignore as they went by on the orders the Star Paladin had given them. Shrinking down as best I could against the floor, I gulped. Please, Celestia... Luna... Don’t let them glance up here. We were helpless against so many, we’d be dead in an instant. Curling my tail around my side, I kept praying.

Not one broke rank as they ran, daring to look away from their charge. Too many ran by too quick to count, but there were a lot more than I expected. Even with their running, there was still fighting going on off on the far side of The Cinch. She’d broken them off to get behind them.

“Oh no,” I whispered...

They ran out of sight, past the crumbling wall and down the far road. The sounds of their hooves on the ground gradually got quieter, but I could still hear somepony coming.

The Star Paladin herself ran into view. Like the others, she didn’t stop. Though her armor looked identical to the rest of the Steel Rangers, she didn’t wear her helmet. Instead, it was strapped next to the massive magical laser gatling gun that rested on her back. She didn’t look at all happy, and her red and yellow mane was matted to her forehead from sweat. Thankfully, she didn’t take the time to scan the ruins.

She raised her head as she passed, and though she was out of sight in only a moment, we could hear her yelling. “Trifle!” she shouted. “Break left! Find us a spot on the wall!” A spot on the wall? What kind of spot.

Goddesses, what were they doing back here?

I gulped and twisted to look at Tim Tam. Eyes wide, I couldn’t help but fear all those little worries from before were about to come true. I didn’t know which way Lost, Lamington, and the others had run. If they didn’t know Jazz and the others were running around to attack The Cinch from behind, they might be right in their path.

My heart practically stopped. Shivering, I waited until the sound of hooves had quieted down enough that I felt safe. Actually, I didn’t feel safe at all. Knowing it was the Steel Rangers attacking, I wasn’t going to feel safe. Still, I looked at the stallion next to me.

Only daring a whisper, I forced out a little squeak at him. Clearing my throat, I whispered, “We need to tell the others.”

“I know,” he said quietly. Pushing himself up onto his hooves, he turned back to the window we’d been looking out. “I just... I don’t know which way they went.”

“Me either...” I muttered. Lost and the others would be outnumbered. There were four of them, and if they were found, they’d be up against over a dozen of the armored ponies. Outgunned and outflanked... I fought back tears. I couldn’t let my imagination run wild.

They were resourceful, if my sister heard ponies coming running, especially that many, she’d duck away. I knew she would. She’d tell the others to get out of sight, too. I just had to trust her, that she’d be okay. Of course, the best case? The best case, they’d gone the other way and weren’t anywhere near the Steel Rangers as they marched around The Cinch.

The window we’d been looking through faced the massive wall, and they’d gone around our building. If they’d taken such a wide path around, which made sense if they wanted to sneak behind... I took a deep breath. I could figure it out, I just had to pretend to be a thinky pony.

They were too loud to hug the wall, and there were too many of them. If they were spotted, the whole ‘flank them’ plan would fall apart. Lost and I had learned that the hard way when we were younger. If we didn’t want to be seen, we had to make sure we went the long way around and gave ourselves plenty of space. So if they went around in a wide circle away from the wall, they’d have completely missed Lost and the others.

Because they were right up against the wall, looking for a way in without having to worry about being seen. After all, the only ‘guards’ on our side of The Cinch were just helmets pretending to watch. Did Jazz know that though?

Probably not...

I took another deep breath.

That was good. It made sense. I just hoped I was right. It wasn’t like I could go chec- I looked at Tim Tam.

“We have to go find the others,” I said. “I can’t go alone, I need you to carry me.”

“No,” he said, his voice wavering. “We... we were given orders.” He gulped. “To wait here.”

“Tim Tam!” I practically shouted. Wincing, I remembered to keep my voice down. The sound of hooves was quiet, distant now, but I shouldn’t be taking any chances. “We need to find my sister! I need to know she’s okay.” I squirmed at him, trying to be as intimidating as possible. I probably just looked stupid.

Slowly, the stallion licked his lips. He looked deep in thought, his hooves up on the windowsill as he stared out the windowless opening. Ear flicking around to listen, he kept looking back and forth. “They won’t be able to find us, if we move,” he argued.

The sounds of gunfire erupted, louder than ever. They were close. I could hear Jazz’s laser gatling spraying magical energy at something. Hopefully it was just the wall...

“Please,” I begged. “I need to know that my sister’s alright...” My heart pounded, thumping in my throat each time. There’d been so much gunfire the entire time we’d been waiting that I’d let it fade into the background noise. Now it was all I could think about. My breathing came ragged, and it took me a minute to realize I was gasping for breath. “Please...”

He looked at me, then back at the window. Dropping away from it, he started to pace around the little section of floor we had. He walked to the stairs down, stopped and placed his hooves on the first step. Muttering to himself, arguing with his own decision, he pulled back. Then he put his hooves on the step again.

I stared, focusing on my breathing and trying not to panic.

He pulled his hooves back, making me want to scream in frustration.

“We have to find them and warn them, just in case!” I shouted, not caring whether I was heard.

“Okay, but... Okay,” the stallion finally relented. He sat down on the floor, his front legs still extended and resting on the first step down. “We’ll go...” He looked over at me, then at his own back, then at me again. “Somehow.” Taking a deep breath, he forced a smile. “We will, in a few minutes. Just, just not yet. Compromise. Enough time to see if Lamington and the others return. If they don’t... we’ll go find out what happened.”

I took a deep breath, ready to argue. Instead I just... exhaled and hung my head. I had no bargaining power. What was I going to do? Get up and hit him? Instead, I just stared forward at the spot where they’d run off to.

Tim Tam looked at me, then at the window. Pulling himself up off the stairs, he walked slowly over and stuck his head out to look around. A few glances, and he pulled himself back. His ears twisted back and forth, flicking a few times. “I thought I heard something,” he muttered, barely loud enough for me to hear.

“You shouldn’t stick your head out,” I chided him. “If they decide to turn around and see a pony sticking their nose in their business...” I motioned getting shot with my ho- I laid there, doing nothing. “Y’know, don’t want to get shot.” I flicked an ear as well.

The sounds of metal hooves on asphalt was much quieter. They’d gotten far enough away. That was good. One set of clanks was louder than the others, one pony different. Maybe it was Jazz, storming around and keeping tabs on her soldiers. Maybe it was somepony coming back to check. It could be anything.

Tim Tam looked at me for a moment, then nodded. Gulping, he walked back over and stood next to me. “I’ll go find the others, but you need to stay here,” he announced. “I’m not strong enough to carry you myself and move fast enough to find them at the same time.”

I blanched. Was he really going to leave me here, alone? Where the Steel Rangers were going through and could find me? I’d be helpless!

Bending down, he grabbed onto the collar of my jacket and pulled me back from the edge of the floor. Scooting me into the corner, he placed a hoof on my shoulder. “I’ll be back as fast as I can with them,” he said, forcing a smile. “I promise.”

Groaning, I nodded, not being in a position to bargain. Instead, I just twisted my ears around, nearly pinning them back. I needed to keep listening to that sound of clanking hooves, if I focused, maybe I could tell where they were coming from.

They were getting louder...

“Back soon,” he said. Without another word, he turned and trotted down the stairs. The sound of his hooves slamming into the ground gave away that he’d jumped down the last few. Then everything went silent. He wasn’t moving.

I craned my neck, trying to see something. “Stay safe,” I whispered, just loud enough for him to hear. I didn’t want whoever was running by to hear me, too. If it was one of the Steel Rangers returning to the ‘front’ of the battlefield, things could be bad.

The clank of hooves on road stopped.

Tim Tam yelped in surprise. “Shit!” he snapped.

Oh no.

I shut my eyes tight, grinding my teeth and pinning my ears. I didn’t want to hear him get shot. I didn’t want to... be the reason.

I could hear him take a few steps back. I could hear the other pony moving closer. They weren’t shooting. It wasn’t fair, that I couldn’t see what was going on. Opening my eyes, I craned my neck again. The sound of hooves moved closer, slowly. Was he moving back? He said something, but I didn’t catch it with my ears twisted the wrong way.

The heavy hooffalls, the metal clanking, got closer. After a moment, metal hit metal. Static erupted, loud enough to cut through me entirely. I swiveled my ears forward.

“It isn’t proper for a guard to vacate his post,” teased Star Paladin Lamington, static peppering his voice. “We’ve found an entrance.”

Oh thank the Goddesses.

I slumped, lying my head on the floor. It shook and rumbled as the massive stallion made his way up. He came into sight, the delicately designed armor a sight for sore eyes. I smiled. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“A Steel Ranger keeps his promises,” he said to me. Walking over, he wrapped a massive leg around me and practically threw me onto his back. My armor slammed against his, but it was already more comfortable than the floor. “I’ll lead the two of you there. Come with me.”

He walked down the stairs, looked at Tim Tam, and nodded. Together, the three of us went off, to wherever they’d found a door, and more importantly... Away from Star Paladin Jazz.

* * *

I watched, eyes half-closed, over the massive minigun I was lying on. Lamington led us away from the wall, putting a half-dozen blocks of Wasteland ruins between us and the massive structure. Even though we were getting further away, I couldn’t help but worry.

“The Steel Rangers from Leathers are fighting near the Ministry of Awesome building, at the wall just north of it,” Lamington explained as he ran. “An appropriate berth will keep them from noticing us, and keep us from being spotted by the locals as well.” He looked down one of the alleyways as he ran past, then slowed. Gingerly placing his massive hooves on the ground, quieter than I could have expected, he made his way further away. “The others are already at the Ministry of Peace hospital.”

I looked toward the wall. I wasn’t happy being so close to them and not being able to at least defend myself if we were spotted. Even this far away, it didn’t feel like enough. If only I were back at full capacity and could move, I wouldn’t be putting them all in danger by making this stupid risky trip.

Too bad wishful thinking didn’t fix my fucking legs!

Grumbling to myself, I squirmed my way onto my side and looked toward the part of the city we were moving past. Gunshots and explosions rocked the ruins near the wall, several blocks away. It was incredibly loud as we moved past. Beyond the rubble that shot by us, I could see countless ponies atop the wall, too far away to examine individually. Amid lances of pink and green magical energy, they fired back at the Steel Rangers. Occasionally one would toss a grenade, which would explode below and blow rubble and chunks of building free from the shockwave. I couldn’t see the Steel Rangers past the buildings, but I could hear them. The clatter of their hooves, and the muffled shouting of orders that didn’t make sense by a pony whose voice I didn’t recognize.

Scifresh most likely wasn’t there with them. She was an older mare, and I couldn’t see her being on the frontlines of the battlefield when she didn’t absolutely have to be. I was right there with her, and if I could stay off away from that fight, I’d be happy.

My view of the battle disappeared, hidden behind a tilted wall as we moved past. Instead, I looked up at the Ministry of Awesome tower. The massive black building from before loomed over us, blotting out so much of the sky it sent a shiver down my spine. The shiver hurt, a lot. Like a million ponies all yelling at me to stop doing anything all at once. Eyes going wide, I froze in place. Even bouncing gently on the Star Paladin’s back as he ran, I locked up completely.

My back was doing the same thing my legs had done. Was it getting worse? Was I going to be completely immobile?

“How much further?” I asked, choking back a whimper. Tearing myself away from the massive black tower, I looked at the Ministry of Peace building we were supposed to be heading to. It looked like the building form of a first aid kit, dressed up in the same light pink and yellow livery. Easily recognizable as something to help ponies, just like the healing potions we occasionally found scattered around the Wasteland.

“Nearly there,” answered the Star Paladin. He rounded another block, turning at the corner without a glance. With the turn, he’d aimed us straight back toward The Cinch, with Tim Tam still in tow behind us. Up ahead, the wall met with the road, butting up against it and giving just enough room for us to pass through between it and the crumbling chunks of an old office building. Far ahead, I could see the sides of the Ministry of Peace hospital, with the massive barrier stopping right up against it. Much like the other buildings, it’d been built directly against and reinforced so outside ponies couldn’t squeeze in.

The hospital had two wings, with the boxy yellow one rising a few stories above the other. Just like the other Ministry buildings, it looked practically spotless, with big wide windows perfectly preserved. I could only imagine the view from inside, being able to see the entire city while recovering from another surgery... Hopefully we’d get that far.

The smaller of the two wings jutted out from the first, covered in reflective and welcoming windows. With smooth walls and no sharp corners, it looked like a half-buried ball that somepony had cut the top off of. Approaching swiftly, we ran past the building's entranceway, a massive set of doors, both completely closed. Parked alongside the building to the side of the entrance were several ancient motorwagons in the same light pink and yellow colors.

Just beyond them in a small alcove, in front of a smaller door, stood Lost and my friends.

Rose was busy tapping away at a small terminal inset in the wall against the doorframe. She looked frustrated, and the doors weren’t open like I’d expected. Maybe she was having trouble?

From the look on her face, she was definitely having trouble.

The Star Paladin threw both hooves forward mid-step, digging them into the ground. At full speed, he started to skid to a stop, throwing chunks of road up in front of us as his armor dug into the road. Surprisingly, we slowed almost instantly to a stop right in front of the alcove the others were standing in.

“... me to try?” asked my sister, her voice just loud enough for me to catch over the noise Lamington’s hooves made against the asphalt.

“Any luck?” asked Lamington.

“No,” snapped Rose. She turned to my sister and scowled, blowing her mane up and brushing it away from her face. The little curl at the end bobbed a few times, before settling back exactly where it had been just a moment before. “And no, I’ve got one passcode left. If it doesn’t work, nothing will.” Her horn lit up with an aquamarine glow just as Lamington stepped up next to them with Tam Tam doing the same beside us. She squinted her eyes and did something with her magic. “This is the old ‘world ended’ emergency code for medical supplies, “she explained through gritted teeth.” There’s only a hoofful of ponies still alive who might know it, and the ones that are... other than me... are ghouls and don’t need it.” She looked at us, then at my sister and Fine Tune. “We need to be prepared if anypony in there doesn’t want us to get in.”

Lamington said nothing, and neither did Tim Tam. They both just shifted their weight; Lamington away from the door to shield the others while Tim Tam twisted toward it, pointing his battle saddle at the doorway. Lost slid the modified plasma pistol from its holster on her leg with her telekinesis. Fine Tune’s silenced pistol similarly floated in the air next to his head.

“Now or never...” muttered the clone mare. Rolling her neck, she closed her eyes and her horn glowed brighter. A few clicks sounded from the door at whatever she was doing with her cheater magic. The glow disappeared.

The door beeped three times, slowly.

“Well?” I asked, impatient and worried.

The door clicked, loudly.

“We’re in,” announced Rose. She grabbed onto the latch for the door with her telekinesis and pulled.

It worked, and the door opened. It let out a loud creak when she swung it open. A small cloud of dust poofed into the air, but we were inside. Looking back, she nodded for somepony other than her to go first.

Lamington took the offer and stepped in.

“You’re not going to go shooting this gun with my face right next to it, are you?” I asked, furrowing my brows.

“Negative,” he answered as he walked forward. “Live fire will be a last resort. My armor will be sufficient to withstand small caliber weaponry, protecting both of us. If I’m required to shoot, we’ll be up against something that could kill us both anyway.”

Well, that was reassuring.

The door that Rose had opened led into a small corridor, with bland white walls and a little horizontal stripe about withers-level running down it, and another door at the far end. When we reached the far door, Lamington quietly opened it and stepped into the hospital proper.

Inside was... different. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but it wasn’t what I was looking at.

We found ourselves at the intersection of two hallways. In front of us was a wide hall, with curtain after curtain lining the right wall. Craning my neck around to look behind us, I saw that the hall ended at the large doors I spotted from the outside. Looking to the right I could see that the other hallway was lined on both sides with even more curtains. They seemed to been used as doors, leading into other smaller rooms, but from my position on the steel ranger's back I could only catch glimpses inside.

Lamington shifted, turning counter clockwise, and stopping to face the hall to our left. Again, there was another set of curtains, lining just the left wall this time. On the right side though, just past a closed door with a sign reading ‘X-Ray’ above it, was an alcove with an island of counters surrounding several chairs. Terminals sat at even intervals along the parts of the counters I could see, and a sign above it read ‘Nurses’ Station.’

Behind the 'Nurses’ station' were more small rooms closed off by even more curtains. Between them I could see small plaques, but couldn’t make out what they said to explain what was hidden behind those curtains.

Aside from being particularly well preserved given the end of the world, two things stood out more than anything else. First, all the lights were on and working. Not a single one had burnt out or broken. Second...

The thick layer of dust left over from two centuries of disuse had hoofprints in it.

Lamington raised a hoof and motioned for the others to enter as well. By the time he set his hoof down, Lost and Rose had trotted inside the entry hallway and were standing next to us. Fine Tune and Tim Tam stood behind them, stretching to peek past the ponies to see what we saw.

“We’re not the only ponies here,” I said quietly, nodding my head toward the trail of hoofprints down the hallway.

“I believe we should allow whoever has taken residence here the benefit of the doubt,” Lamington said, moving to the side to make room for the others to enter the hallway completely. “I recommend Miss Rose lead us while I protect our flank, as locals may mistake me for a member of the siege. Still, we should all be on gua-”

“Oh, no...” said somepony, sounding frantic. It was a mare’s voice. She wheezed, sounding short of breath. “Oh no...” The voice sounded like it was coming from the counter with the terminals. “Whoever you are.” She wheezed again, her nasally voice whistling as she forcibly sucked in air. Even from down the hallway and out of sight, I could tell she had problems. “Go away!”

A very very pale yellow earth pony mare in a blue jumpsuit peeked out from behind the counter. Looking terrified, she sucked in air through her nose, giving off an ear-splittingly high pitched whine. She glanced at us for only a second before turning and running the opposite direction full tilt.

“Wait!” yelled Lamington.

In an instant, the mare froze. One leg still in the air, her curly teal and violet mane mid-bounce, she didn’t move. She’d made it halfway around the counter before Lamington said anything. She stared at us, her blue eyes wide and full of fear. Shaking slightly, her coat seemed to shimmer in the bright light shining down from the ceiling.

Lost cleared her throat and took a few steps toward the mare. “We’re only here for medical attention, my name is Lost Art,” she said very calmly, introducing herself. “My sister is wounded, and we need to examine her to figure out just what’s wrong. We are not with the attacking forces and we mean you know harm.” Looking at Loyalty hanging in the air next to her, she swiftly holstered the weapon. “We know a pony from here named Rough Night, he will vouch for us.”

The mare didn’t say anything. She just stood there, not even blinking.

“I believe while we discuss accommodations Tim Tam should watch the entrance,” Lamington added.

The freckled stallion saluted.

“Good idea, but not from there,” said Rose. “With the door shut, nopony’s going to be coming in after us, since they won’t know the proper access codes. There’s an intake office right around the corner.” She nodded toward the hallway behind us. “It has somewhere to sit, and a window to watch through. If the Steel Rangers double back, there’s a big red button on the wall near the door. Hit it and we’ll come running.”

Tim Tam saluted again and walked past us, disappearing around the corner where Rose had told him to go.

The pale yellow mare wheezed, gasping for breath. “So...” she started, gasping. “You’re not with the siege?”

“No,” repeated my sister. “We’re just here for medical supplies and to examine my sister.”

“You may relax,” announced Lamington.

Wheezing once more, the mare dropped her hoof and sat down. Pushing herself back a bit with her forehooves, she scooted behind the nurse’s station counter until only her head was visible. Looking the group of us over, still wheezing, she asked, “You’re not gonna shoot me... are you?”

“Are you going to go tell the ponies who live here to come kill us?” asked Rose.

The mare just shook her head, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.

“Then no,” Rose answered for herself. “Who are you and why was the hospital on total lockdown?” She lifted her grenade rifle with her telekinesis and draped it over her back.

“I... I...” she stuttered, gasping for breath. Pointing down another hallway, toward the inside of The Cinch, she stared up at us pleading. “Locals scare me.” She took a deep breath. “Bad experiences.”

As she shuddered, something caught my eye about the yellow-striped, blue jumpsuit she wore. Stitched into the collar was the number ‘101.’ It took me a moment to realize that it was a Stable jumpsuit! She was a stable pony like Lamington, my sister, and I. Although I had no idea there were so many Stables.

Lost looked at Rose, then over at me. “Guess we don’t have to worry about the locals then,” she said.

“That’s assuming there’s not other ponies other than the squatters to worry about,” Rose said, an edge to her voice. She looked back at the earth pony mare. “Is there anypony else in here, other than you?” When she shook her head, Rose turned back to us. “Alright, we can go start the examination. Just sit her up on one of the tables and I’ll start looking her over.”

“My...” wheezed the mare, before taking a deep breath. “My name is Saccharin and I was one of the surgeons at my Stable.” With the pause, she took another deep breath. “I’m here because there’s not a lot of safe places in the Wasteland.” She gasped, taking another breath. “I locked the building down, to keep the locals out.” Pausing again, she breathed in and out a few times. Each time she did, a high pitched whine escaped her nose. “I can help though.”

Her eyes darted back and forth swiftly, from Rose to my sister, then to Fine Tune. Finally she looked over at me, but never quite at Lamington. When I smiled at her, she looked from my face down my patched jacket, to the steel hoof hanging off Lamington’s back behind the minigun.

In an instant, her eyes went wide. She took a deep breath, making her nose squeak loudly. She opened her mouth to say something, raising a hoof. Then she stopped and looked away. Again she raised her hoof and opened her mouth, but said nothing. Looking away once more, then back at me, her lips curled up into a little smile.

“Is that a cyberhoof?” she asked, sounding happy despite the hoarseness in her voice. When I nodded her eyes lit up. “Yes, yes.” She wheezed, gasping for breath. “My Stable developed them.”

Groaning quietly, I winced at the mere mention of my hoof...

Lost looked at me out of the corner of her eye, frowning at the noise I made. “Hopefully whatever’s going on with Hidden isn’t so serious it would need cybernetics,” she said calmly.

“After last time, I don’t want any more metal parts in me anyway,” I added while frowning. I had enough cybernetics and after the surgery Praline performed, I wasn’t eager to experience it again. Having my leg flayed open wasn’t something worth repeating. Ever. It was very very high up on my list of things to never do again.

We all stood there in silence. Well, I laid on Lamington’s back in silence and Saccharin laid on the floor in silence, but it was quiet enough to hear a bullet casing hit the ground regardless.

“Still, I’m a doctor,” Saccharin said with a wheeze. “It’s my duty to help with an examination. So long as you don’t throw me-”

“We’re not going to throw you out, nor coerce you to help us against you will,” explained Rose.

Groaning in frustration, Lost wrapped her telekinesis around my chest and forelegs and lifted me off Lamington’s back. “C’mon. Let’s go find out what’s wrong with you so we can fix it,” she said, before turning to Saccharin. “Which room?” When the mare pointed to the nearest curtain-covered room, Lost nodded. With me floating in the warm tingly grasp of her magic, she ducked past the curtain and into the room behind it.

In the center of the room was a flat table, made up of pads with a white sheet of paper down the center. Cautiously, Lost lowered me onto it, and the paper crinkled up. All around me were strange machines glowing with green numbers and letters that made no sense to me. Big tubes lined one wall, and strange... things... hung in a basket from another. Several horrifying looking tools that I’d seen before but never gotten a chance to examine or learn the names of were clipped near the basket on the wall. Wires and cords lined the floor, or were tied up with other machines. A box with clasps at the top jutted out from the final wall of the room. Together, it was all very ominous.

“Now what?” I asked, looking up at my sister.

“Now we figure out how to fix you,” she said, an awkward frown on her face. “I wish I knew how so we didn’t have to do all this...”

“I know, sis,” I said in my most reassuring voice.

Fine Tune stuck his head in past the curtain. “Can I help at all?” he asked, looking hopeful.

“Not unless you...” Lost started. She stopped and looked at all the tools around her. “I don’t even think I’ll be much help in here, but I’m not leaving my sister. You and Lamington wait outside, okay?”

“She’s right,” Rose said as she pulled the curtain away and walked past the changeling. “Leave this one to the professionals.” The clone mare eyed me, almost glaring. “There’s not enough room to have everypony in here anyway.”

“Okay...” he muttered as he pulled back out of the room.

Saccharin walked in after he left and stood on the far side of the bed from my sister. She looked me up and down once. It was awkward, having all three of them looking at me, and it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. “Can you explain what’s wrong?” she requested, before taking a deep breath. “Get her out of the jacket and we can start.”

As my sister and Rose started to undress me with their magic, I looked at the earth pony mare. Having my legs flopped around outside of my control was frustrating but I didn’t have a choice in the matter. “My hoof was bitten off by a monster, and I had it replaced with a metal one by a friend,” I explained, nodding toward my steel hoof. “The other one’s just a... umm. I forget what she called it, because I broke the bone. It’s to hold everything together.”

“Compression garment,” Lost clarified as she finished removing my jacket. Folding it up with her telekinesis, she set it onto the floor in the corner.

“Right, that,” I agreed. “So my legs were already a little broken, and then my zebra friend gave me some potion that fixed my sister’s horn. I’d been in pain before, but not much. It got a lot worse after that.”

“On any medications?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. Instead I just looked at the floor.

“Med-X only when necessary,” Lost answered for me. “And she has a problem with Buck.” To emphasize her point, she pulled the chestpiece of my armor off and then set me back onto the table. Without the armor to protect me, all the bruises, cuts, and scrapes from my fight with Slipstock were suddenly screaming at me from my own weight pressing on them.

“Ow...” I whimpered. “And I don’t have a problem...”

“Right,” muttered the mare. Reaching back with a hoof, she grabbed onto one of the tools from the wall clip. “Let’s start.”

I clenched my eyes shut and let them start their examination...

* * *

Lying on the table, with half a dozen wires strapped to my face, I sighed. Another dozen or so were attached at various points on my chest, legs, back, and belly. Each was connected to a machine that beeped at regular intervals and read off more green letters and numbers that I didn’t understand. Their examination had been thorough. Very thorough. They’d used so many new tools to perform tests, everything from simple ‘reflex trials’ that involved hitting me in the legs to taking samples from my mouth and... other places, to whatever a ‘biopsy’ was. I shuddered. The worst though...

I stared down at my foreleg. During the examination they’d stretched it out and sliced open a small section of my skin. While I’d spent the entire time protesting, after what Praline did... I couldn’t feel it. The little chunk they cut off, they’d used some of the tools to clamp it away and the tube on the wall to suck out anything that seeped free. I could still see it, that big clear, half full cylinder. The majority of it was filled with my blood, but there were other things too. A sickly yellow goop floated on top, with little black spots mixed in.

Of course, once they’d looked....

Sighing, I turned to my sister. “What’re they saying?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet,” she answered. Uneasily, she shifted her weight on her hooves. One forehoof rested on my back, gently rubbing up and down my spine. “We’ll find out soon.”

Together we watched as Rose spoke privately in the corner of the room with Saccharin. They kept their voices low, discussing what they’d found when they cut me open.

I remembered well what my inside of my leg looked like the last time it was split open, and though I didn’t know what it was this time, I could tell that it was different. Instead of being bright red, everything was dark. It wasn’t black, but it was damn close to it. There were also pieces missing, little dips and gaps scattered in several places I could see through the section they’d cut open. That might explain why it had hurt so much... When they’d poked at it and prodded with tools I didn’t recognize, there wasn’t any reaction. That seemed to surprise both mares.

“Honestly though,” I said in the happiest voice I could muster. Looking up at my sister, I smiled. “At least it’s not Praline. She’d have already tried sawing my legs off to replace with more metal.”

Lost chuckled, pursing her lips. “Excitable or not, Praline did know what she was doing,” Lost answered. “I kind of wish she was here now, it’d make this waiting less painful.” She chuckled again. “Though, knowing that mare, she might have tried to climb into the vents already.”

“Yeah...” I whispered, lying my head on the table and looking at the mares.

Rose looked over at me, then back at Saccharin. The two nodded to one another. While the earth pony mare turned to the wall and started to clean up, Rose walked over to my sister and me.

“What’s the diagnosis?” asked Lost uneasily.

“Bad,” Rose answered curtly, looking down at the small section of exposed muscle. “I haven’t operated on ponies in any serious capacity in a long time, usually I just do spot healing with magic. I want to say this is beyond my scope, but it’s really not. I’m just out of practice with hooves-on fixing.” She cleared her throat. Her horn lit up, and the flap of skin they’d cut away lifted into the air. After a moment in her telekinesis, she flattened it against my leg. Were it not for the little red lines and the small bit of blood seeping from the cuts, I’d have forgotten it was there.

I couldn’t feel it, after all.

“There’s a proper term for it,” Saccharin added. She put the final tool away, a weird looking cone-shaped scope she’d used to look into my ear, then walked over. With a deep, wheezing breath, she stared down at me. “But to use laypony terms, your muscles are jerky.”

“Basically,” Rose agreed. Glancing at the Stable mare, she rolled her eyes. “I’ll save her the trouble of forcing her breath. Whatever you’ve done, some combination of drugs and zebra alchemy, and the cybernetics integrated into your body? All apart they would be fine. Buck is terrible for you if abused outside of properly prescribed dosages, but there’s no way you could have taken enough to do this type of damage this fast. Cybernetics were fledgling science in the War, but I don’t think Praline would have augmented you if it would have this reaction. As for zebra alchemy?” She sucked air through her teeth. “I don’t know enough to give proper weight to it. But-”

“Just tell us how we can fix it,” Lost interrupted. “I know the basics and you can teach me the rest. We have extra help, and we can call Praline if necessary. Siege or not, she’ll find a way to get here.”

I’d forgotten about the attack by the Steel Rangers. The sounds of fighting in the distance were still there, but they were so quiet they almost didn’t exist. With so many more important things to worry about right now, that just wasn’t worth the extra worry.

“How do we fix it?” Lost demanded.

“I don’t know,” Rose answered.

“Two options,” Saccharin said. She took a deep breath. “We monitor and go through rehabilitation. For years.” She took a deep breath, her nose hissing a shrill whine. “Or we replace it all. Stop any potential spreading.”

My eyes went wide and my ears pinned back. I didn’t like the sound of that. My choices were to be laid up for years, or to... to replace it? I looked down at my steel forehoof. “You mean more metal bits in me?” I squeaked out.

The mares both nodded.

“There’s no other options?” Lost asked.

“Only time will tell,” Rose answered. “The question is whether we want to take that chance. She’s already paralyzed from the haunches and withers down.”

“It’s getting worse,” I admitted. “The pain was slowly getting worse, it has been for a while. On the way here, after Lamington picked us up... I felt it in my back, too.”

The other ponies in the room shared various glances, then looked back at me.

“Just once,” I clarified. “So, either I’m stuck like this until we figure out exactly what caused it and can maybe fix it...” I gulped. “Or we cut my legs off and give me new ones?” I nodded toward my hoof. “Like what Praline did?”

“I don’t think we have the resources for that,” Lost said, her own ears pinned back. “She’d designed and programmed the forehoof you have now using old Steel Ranger armor, and all of that got used up. Remember?”

I nodded. “So, I’m stuck being paralyzed,” I muttered in defeat.

“Not entirely,” Saccharin said with a smile. “I have supplies.”

“What... kind...” I dared ask.

The mare took a deep breath and pointed a hoof to the little ‘101’ on her collar. “My stable developed cybernetics over two centuries,” she said, taking a deep breath. “When I... left... I took as much as I could carry. One moment.” Wheezing again, she pushed the curtain away and walked from the room.

Both Lamington and Fine Tune were standing right outside the curtain, both looking in. When Saccharin walked past, Fine Tune jumped into the air and backpedaled several steps. Lamington just stood tall and saluted while the mare walked past.

She disappeared behind the curtain when it fell, but returned a moment later holding a clipboard. “Here’s my inventory,” she said, setting the clipboard on the table in front of my nose. It had too much to read all at once, and honestly none of it mattered. If it was what was needed to fix me, and I had to make that choice, then I could trust her.

She’d been nice enough so far...

“And you’re offering to help us out of the goodness of your heart?” asked Lost skeptically as she read over the list. Grabbing onto it with her telekinesis, she floated the clipboard closer and held it just in front of her nose. Several times she stopped, glanced toward me, then read it over repeatedly. Once with her glasses on, and several times looking over the rims.

“I’m offering because it’s my job,” answered Saccharin through another gasp. “But, if you want to make it ‘fair,’ we can trade,” She pressed a hoof to her chest. “As you might have noticed...” She wheezed, sucking in air through her nose. “I’m having trouble breathing. I fix her, you help fix me.”

“You can’t do it yourself?” Rose asked, staring at the mare skeptically.

She just shook her head. “Synthetic respiratory system doesn’t mean I don’t need to breathe,” she answered before taking another deep breath. “Need somepony else to turn it back on.”

Lost looked at me. “It’s your decision,” she said as she swiveled her ears toward me.

Wide-eyed, I shrunk back. This... I didn’t want this. The surgery last time had been terrible, gut wrenchingly painful. It wasn’t an experience I ever wanted to go through again. Sure, my steel hoof gave me a hit that could knock most ponies cold, but when did I really get to use it? Was it worth it to get more?

My other option wasn’t any better. I didn’t want to spend years, possibly my entire life, confined to a bed and needing somepony else to take care of me. My place was in the Wasteland, exploring and finding amazing things that had been hidden for generations.

Why’d I have to make such a stupid decision? It wasn’t fair! Slamming my head down onto the table, I grumbled.

“Hidden!” Lost yelled, alarmed. “What was that for? Are you okay?” She lifted my head up with her telekinesis and stared into my eyes.

“I don’t want to make this decision,” I admitted.

“I understand,” Lost said, resting her hoof on my shoulder. “It’s not an easy one, but I’ll back up your choice no matter what. For as long as you need.”

That didn’t help. At all. It made it worse. “I need a few minutes,” I finally said. “Just, to think this over.”

“Alright, just call us when you need it.”

With that, the three of them disappeared behind the curtain. Alone in the room, I hung my head.

Years of my life stuck requiring my sister to abandon everything and care for me, more than she already did.

Or a horrible surgery that might leave me with worse scars than I started with. We knew nothing about this mare and what her skills were, and while Lost had helped with Praline enough that she could stop Saccharin from potentially doing something terrible to me...

Was it worth it?

Resting my chin on the crinkly paper between me and the table, I sighed. There wasn’t an answer to that question. I didn’t... I didn’t want to have to go through some stupid surgery. Too many times I’d had absolutely horrible experiences with metal bits. The shackles in my legs, and the whole mess in Stable Sixty. Taking a few deep breaths through my nose, I clenched my eyes shut.

I could just stay here. Right here. Lost said she’d support me with whatever I decided. Fine, I’d just decide to do nothing and tell her to go back home. Lamington and Tim Tam could take her and Fine Tune to the Stables, or back to our home. She could fix things with Crème Brûlée and have a nice happy life without needing to worry about me. I’d just tell her that it was what I decided and she already promised to support that decision. It would... hurt... a lot. But it was the right thing. I’d done this to myself and it was my job to suffer the consequences, nopony else.

Groaning, I lifted my head up, then pressed my face against the table. It wouldn’t work. Lost needed me just as much as I needed her. She’d never just walk off because I said she should. She was almost as stubborn as I was, and if I couldn’t actually force her to, she’d stick right next to me until I either made a real choice or died. I groaned again.

It wasn’t fair. “Stupid drugs. Stupid cyber parts. Stupid goopy zebra brews,” I grumbled to myself. “Stupid Wasteland...” Why couldn’t I have just been born before the War and before the world ended? Then I could have a nice sundress and a nice job and not have to be stuck like this.

That wasn’t a luxury I had, so I needed to make a decision for real. Sighing, I looked up at the ceiling, as if I could see past it. As if I could get a look up to where the Goddesses were. “What should I do?” I asked them quietly.

There wasn’t a response. I hadn’t expected there to be one.

In reality, the choice was clear. Mobility was worth more. The Wasteland ate crippled ponies for breakfast, and there was no part of me that would allow Lost to sacrifice her life to become my caretaker because I was paralyzed. Knowing her, she’d give up any semblance of love or happiness just to coddle me. It wasn’t something I could accept.

In the same way that I would rather let myself be captured alone by slavers to save her from that future, I would have to be okay with letting a strange mare operate on me to fix me so that she wouldn’t have to be a slave to me in the future.

I took a deep breath.

“I’ve decided,” I announced.

Lost walked back in, followed by Rose, and finally Saccharin.

Clearing my throat, I looked up at them. “I can’t be bedridden for the rest of my life,” I said. “That’s not fair to everypony around me. What do we need to do?”

“Anesthetic,” answered Saccharin.

“I’ll go get some,” Rose announced. Without another word, she disappeared out of the room again.

“Are you sure, Hidden?” Lost asked.

“No, but I think this is the right choice,” I answered. My heart pounded in my chest and I could feel myself starting to sweat. I forced a smile.

“We’ll work on the details once you’re sedated,” Saccharin said, walking over to my sister. She took a deep breath. “Any experience in surgery?”

“A little, and Rose is a medical pony too,” Lost answered.

Saccharin nodded, just as the curtain moved again and Rose returned. The mare walked over to me with a bag of some clear liquid in her telekinetic grasp. Dangling from it was a long tube that ended in a needle.

“This’ll put you to sleep. When you wake up, it’ll all be taken care of,” Rose told me. She looked at Saccharin. “I worked for the Ministry of Peace during the War.” She held up a hoof toward the earth pony mare. “Questions later. But I know my way around an operating table.”

“Good,” said the mare.

Rose jabbed me in the shoulder with the needle and held the little clear bag up high in the air. It felt cold, with the liquid running into my leg. At my withers it stung, but just enough to make me wince and not much more. I couldn’t feel it in my legs.

“Do I need to do anything else?” I asked, already feeling my eyelids starting to close.

“Just relax, we’ll do everything we can,” said Rose reassuringly. It sounded more like something a doctor would say, than her usual way of talking...

My sister kissed me on the forehead then cooed, “I’ll be here the wh-”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Up!

Hidden Fortune:
New Perk: Brick Wall – You're a lot harder to knock down when fighting, but this has a nice little side effect of making it hard to keep you down in general. Beaten and bruised, you keep pushing. Was your great grandfather a mule or something?
Quest Perk: Cyberpony (Design Level 2) – Additional cybernetic enhancements have been made to your body, permanently. Remember, you chose this. You gain +3 additional Damage Threshold, immunity to Poison and your Unarmed skill now maxes out at 110. Congratulations on your new <DESCRIPTION ERROR>.

Lost Art:
New Perk: Cybernetic Surgeon – You may now upgrade ponies with cybernetics, and reboot them in the field. You may use normal medicine and healing (including doctor's bags and hydra) on cyberponies with Cyberpony Rank 3.

“So how is this going to affect her?”
“Well, either with a newfound respect for not damaging her body, or a lot of angst.”
“I don’t like angst, it tastes terrible.”
“Nopony likes angst.”
“At least she’ll look cool, right?”
“Function over form, we’re giving her her mobility back, not making her a walking tank.”
“Awww....”

Chapter 26: The Best Treatment

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Chapter Twenty Six: The Best Treatment
“It's not just about healing your body, it's about healing everything. We want to bring you back to normal life after the battle. Both physically and mentally.”

Sccrrraaaappppeeee.

I felt something, distant and cold, across my haunch. Everything was black, and my throat burned. I tried to look around, but nothing happened. I tried to open my eyes, but they wouldn’t. Or they already were, I couldn’t tell. Somewhere I could hear ponies talking.

They were calm, discussing in muted voices things I couldn’t understand. They were words, I knew that much, but either my hearing had finally gone or they were far away.

I jerked to the side, trying to get some bearings. Anything to tell me where I was, to tell me why my throat was burning so much. My jaw was... sore; stiff and stuck. Somehow it was worse than all those times I’d been choked, by Wirepony and Slipstock.

Was this just another nightmare?

It wasn’t like any I’d ever had before. They were always so vivid and bright, not pitch black. Unless... had whatever I’d done to myself spread even faster? Did I lose my eyes while they were working on me?

Panicking, I struggled and tried to move. My stomach and back tightened but didn’t budge. Panting through the burning in my throat, I whimpered. I needed the ponies to hear me. The ones who were talking, they could help. Whoever they were.

Sucking in air through my nose sharply, painfully, I felt something bite me. It wasn’t like the last time I’d been bitten, without sensation... Where my hoof was suddenly just gone. This burned, like a flamer across my backside.

I tried to scream, but no sound came out.

Feeling tears in the corners of my eyes, I bit down, forcing my sore jaw onto whatever was keeping my mouth open. Celestia, Luna... take me...

* * *

Mouth watering, that burning feeling came and went. In the back of my throat, always there but somehow not. Even before I knew what it was, I knew I wanted it to just go and be done with. I swallowed, my jaw moved.

I threw up.

Retching several times, my mouth filled with a slurry of nastiness. Heaving forward, it kept coming. I let it go, wanting it to just end. Several chest-aching clenches later, and it passed. I felt sorry for the pony who’d have to clean it up.

“Oh, Goddesses...” muttered a voice. A voice I knew. My sister.

Slowly, I opened one eye a crack. Everything was hazy and grey, out of focus. In front of me I could see Lost, eyes wide in shock, her white coat marred by a brown and grey mix of... Oh no. I shrunk back, closing my eye again.

“Sor-”

Before I could even apologize, I threw up again.

Lost shrieked, her hooves clattering on the floor. “Saccharin! Rose!” she shouted. “She’s vomiting! I need help!” Her hooves slammed against the floor again as she ran around the room, with the quiet little splatters of my vomit hitting the floor.

I spit out the little that was left in my mouth. It tasted foul, and I was glad to be rid of it. With a frown, I rested my head on the... whatever I was lying on. I didn’t care about the mess, I was used to it. The Wasteland wasn’t the cleanest place to begin with, and if this was a real hospital they’d have something to clean us both up.

With a hiccup, I looked at my sister. She stood at the doorway, looking out it, most likely at the other two who I could hear coming running. The burning in my throat was terrible, and I swallowed what hadn’t come up all the way just to get it out of my throat. Breathing heavily, I whispered, “Sorry... Lost...”

Rose ran into the room, pushing past Lost with a little oddly shaped bowl in her magic. She skidded to a stop the moment she passed my sister, looking around the room. Groaning, she looked at the little bowl-thing, then at me. “What did you eat?” she demanded.

“I don’t remember the last time I ate,” I muttered, feeling something solid in the corner of my mouth. Working it free, I spit it into the rest of the mess on the floor. “Can I have something to drink... This tastes terrible...”

Deep, deep down in my stomach, I could feel there was more. I’d just have to hope it stayed down. I couldn’t take any more vomiting.

“I’ll get something,” Lost said. She looked down at herself and grimaced. “On second thought, you probably should. I don’t want to track this everywhere.”

Rose levitated the bowl-thing down to my face. “Lift your head,” she ordered. When I did as she commanded, she slid it underneath my chin. “If you have to throw up again, do it in there. I’ll go... find a hose.” Daintily lifting her hooves, she backed out of the room and stopped at the doorway. “Stay with her, I’ll be back with something to drink in a few minutes. The bathroom has a little shower in it. Go wash yourself up, and if she throws up again, make her do it in the dish.”

Clearing my throat, I let my head sink into the dish she’d provided. “Sorry, sis...” I repeated. “I think I’m okay now.” That wasn’t true, at all, but she needed to clean her legs before it started to dry. “I’ll call if I need you...”

My sister nodded and walked past me, carefully placing her hooves on the floor to keep from splattering more of the contents of my stomach everywhere. She looked extremely grossed out, but she wasn’t saying anything about it. While it was incredibly awkward, I was glad she wasn’t. I didn’t watch as she disappeared behind me, but I could hear the door creak as she closed it. It didn’t catch, meaning she’d left it open at least part way.

“I’ll be quick,” she said, her voice echoing quietly through the room behind me. After a moment, the sound of running water filled the air, followed by a contented sigh.

Slowing my breathing, everything suddenly felt very lonely. The room was bright and open, with me lying on my belly on a bed. Across from me was a terminal screen, but it was dark. There were two chairs against the wall under the window. I looked out it, to try and get an idea of where I was-

“Ow!” I yelped, suddenly aware that my everything hurt. Eyes widening, I remembered the intense burning sensation I’d felt on my haunches before. Lifting my head to look, I stopped. Everything had gone dark and hazy again, and my head ached something fierce. “Okay... look later,” I muttered to myself as I slowly lowered my head back into the basin Rose had given me.

Trying to focus on anything but the pain, I smiled. I could feel again... The pain was in my legs. They felt tight, like something was trying to push through my skin. I didn’t care, pain was fine, pain meant I could feel again. Smiling wide, I looked out the window.

It was wide and flat, meaning I had to have been moved into the taller yellow building. Outside I could see the clouds, bright and glowing from the sunlight above them. Wait, that meant... Had I been out all night? How much time had passed while they were... I shook my head. I’d get answers eventually.

My throat wasn’t burning anymore, and the feeling like I needed to throw up was gone. So far, everything was going well. I just had to wait for the inevitable downswing and everything would be back to normal.

Well, as normal as the Wasteland got.

Instead of something terrible happening, Saccharin walked in with Lamington right behind her. She stopped just inside the doorway, her eyes wide and looking at the mess I’d made on the floor in front of me. Scowling, she turned to Lamington.

“Probably best to wait a bit more,” she said before wheezing again. When the Star Paladin nodded and backed off, she pushed the door closed. When it clicked shut, she walked over to me and stopped at the side of the bed. “How do you feel?” While she asked, she pulled up a machine I hadn’t noticed from behind me. Several wires and tubes hung from it, all snaking across the bed and ended up attached to me in various places. She started to read off whatever the machine was saying about me.

“My everything hurts,” I answered honestly. A mild burning sensation shot through my haunch, in time with a strange whirring from the machine the mare was looking at.

“Good,” she answered. Pushing the machine away, she walked over to one of the chairs and grabbed onto it. Stifling a few wheezing breaths, she pulled it over and took a seat across from me. She smiled. “We did everything we could...”

Oh no. That wasn’t a good sign. Those words couldn’t mean anything good. I pinned my ears back, waiting for the ‘but’ to come right after.

“... and I’m certain you’ll be...” she continued, stopping to take another slow breath through her nose. Breathing problem or not, I was about to jump out of the bed and strangle her if she didn’t tell me what happened. Giggling quietly, she leaned forward. “Sorry. I mean happy.” Raising a hoof, she waved frantically. “Happy with the results.”

“What’d you do to me, doc?” I asked, trying to keep myself calm. The burning in my throat was back, and I was vaguely aware that my heart was pounding in my chest. I could feel it in my ears, like all those times I’d use Buck to get an edge. It wasn’t the same, not the powerful throbbing, but something different. Panic. Slowly, my heartbeat was returning to normal though, fading away back where it belonged.

“Take a look,” she said, pointing a hoof at my leg.

Lifting my head from the basin, I craned my neck and glanced down at my forelegs; which were splayed out in front of me. They looked...

Exactly the same as always.

I could see my left forehoof, the same as it’d always been, though now there was a dull stinging throughout it. The steel boot Praline had encased it with was nowhere to be seen. Turning to the other side, I looked at my right leg. Just like the left, I couldn’t see what was different. The steel forehoof from Stable Sixty was still there, meaning they must not have been able to rebuild an entire hoof. In the corners of the etched designs Praline had made, I could see the little flecks of red left over from when we were across the mountain. The red stains on my coat were gone however, every trace of the markings washed away or somehow cleaned. The only difference from how I looked before they put me under was the missing ring on the inside of the hoof from when Vice Brand and Slipstock had shackled me...

I turned my head around and looked at my back legs. I’d been rested on my hip, with both rear legs to my right side. The wires and tubes were attached all over me, with one of them attached to a needle stabbed into my back. On my haunch I could see my cutie mark, contrasting perfectly against my coat. Sighing in relief, that they hadn’t somehow burned it off with whatever that black painfulness had been, I looked down.

The shackles were gone. Completely. There weren’t even holes left in my coat from where their spikes had pushed through. I could feel myself smiling as I looked at them, clean and bare. Lip quivering, tears forming again, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to reach out and touch my coat, just to be sure. Aches and pains aside, that was the best thing they could have done for me. A huge weight lifted off me that instant, and I knew that somehow, some way... We’d take down Amble and make Blackhoof, maybe even the Wasteland, a safer place.

Still, why was nothing different? I’d expected to wake up and have my legs replaced completely. I’d expected to see more work like Praline’s, heavy mechanical armor legs with intricate designs. This was different, confusing.

“What’d you do?” I asked again.

“Do you like it?” Saccharin asked, without answering my question. She breathed quietly, wheezing only slightly.

“I-”

A massive BOOM cut me off, deafening me and sending Saccharin out of the chair. She fell to the ground with a muffled thud, barely heard past the ringing that filled my head.

Through the ringing in my ears, I heard a wet and heavy thud from the direction of the shower.

“Fuck!” yelped my sister from inside.

“What’s happening!” I yelled, panic returning in that instant. The burning came back, stronger than ever. Eyes wide, I threw my head forward and pressed my muzzle into the basin between my legs.

Together with another explosion, I threw up. The siege wasn’t over, and we weren’t safe just yet.

* * *

Every time the building shook, my body would ache. The pain was terrible. It felt like somepony else was inside my skin, pushing up and trying to break it to get out. I had to force myself not to think about it, distracting myself with anything I could. Even staring at the furniture in the room was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world, if only because it meant that each time an explosion or gunfire would rock the outside world and make the walls and floor shake, that I’d feel it a little less.

They’d been at it for hours, trading shots back and forth. Time had started to blend together and without the PipBuck I only knew that it’d been way too long since there’d been some peace and quiet.

Had they performed surgery during all this? What if they’d fucked something up and I was left wit-

No, I couldn’t think about it.

Lost was a capable pony and she knew what she was doing thanks to her practice with Praline. Her special talent was working with intricate metal parts, which I probably had a lot more of now. Rose I knew was a medical pony and she had cheater magic to make everything go perfectly. She had training from the Ministry of Peace itself, there was nothing better out there for a pony. The only wildcard was Saccharin, but...

I looked down at my legs.

I couldn’t even see where they’d cut me open. The front of my foreleg had a little shimmer to it, enough to catch the light and almost sparkle whenever I shifted my weight just right. Rolling my shoulder, painfully, I watched as a little shining streak ran from hoof to elbow and back. It looked just like Saccharin’s. I didn’t know what it meant, but most likely it was something boring, like what a clean coat looked like. I didn’t mind it at all, it was just... different. Were it not for that barely noticable difference, I’d still have been worried they’d just knocked me out for the night and used magic without giving me any sort of operation.

I tried moving a hoof.

“Ow! Ow, ow... ow...” I whimpered, shying away and grinding my teeth. It still hurt, but at least it did move, even if it was only a twitch. Smiling through the pain, I tried the other one; my steel forehoof. That one moved as well, without the extra pain added along with it. Just like before, it flexed back and forth along the hinge Praline had made at my fetlock. That was good enough. I could test my rear hooves later.

My stomach rumbled, in time with another rattle of gunfire outside the windows. Groaning, I looked at the door.

“Hey! Anypony hear me?” I yelled. “Is there anything to eat?” My stomach grumbled again. “I’m starving,” I added under my breath.

Lost poked her head in before I could finish complaining to myself. She looked at me, a small smile across her lips. “I can get you something,” she answered. “How’re you feeling?”

“I can move,” I answered, not mentioning the pain. I could whine about that later.

“Good,” she said, sighing softly. “I’ll grab you something, and I’ll get Saccharin while I’m there.”

“Why? She’s not food,” I muttered. My stomach growled again, as if to emphasize my point. “I just want something to eat.” Actually, I wanted the pain to go away and something to eat, but the two combined were putting me on edge.

The building shook again from another explosion outside.

Shaking in the bed and biting my tongue to keep from crying, I hung my head.

“Sorry, Hidden,” Lost muttered. “I’ll see if we can get a painkiller, too. Back soon.” With that, she disappeared.

Ears drooping, all I could do was lay there and wait. Goddesses, waiting was boring. I stared back at the furniture, examining the pattern on the chair near the wall. It’d do until she got back.

Luckily, my wait wasn’t that long. Lost returned a few minutes later with her horn glowing and a few ancient cans of food held in her telekinesis. Along with the cans, she had a package of Fancy Buck Snack Cakes and two bottles of Sparkle~Cola.

Both probably for her...

Saccharin walked in behind her my sister on three legs. Hooked in her foreleg was a clipboard. “No painkillers yet,” she announced. “It’s too soon since the last dose we gave you just before you woke up.” She took a deep breath. “Improper dosages are part of what put you here, so we have to be safe about it.”

“Here’s something to eat,” Lost said, setting the various foodstuffs in front of me. She nestled one of the Sparkle~Cola bottles between my side and the railing on the side of the bed. When I stared down at the packaging blankly, she blushed. “Sorry, here, let me open it for you.” Her horn lit up again and she popped open one of the cans, a short one with a half-torn ‘Braised Carrots &’ label around it.

Ancient carrots and hay awaited me inside. Normally it wouldn’t be the tastiest meal, but it looked delicious after all that’d happened.

“Thanks sis,” I said. “If you say so, doc.” Forgetting any manners I might have had, I stuffed my muzzle into the can and started to eat.

“You’re welcome. And the reason I offered to bring Saccharin is to explain what she did,” Lost said. “I’m sure you’re wondering exactly what we did to get you walking again.” She sounded very pleased with herself.

“Mmhmm, I am,” I said through the corner of my mouth. I swallowed before saying any more, remembering that mom had taught us not to talk with our mouths full. For once, it wasn’t just to keep from giving away our hiding spots, it was just the being polite... The carrots were fantastic, rivaling Marshmallow Sundae’s cooking, but it was probably a good idea that I paid attention. Still, it was hard to ignore my hunger. “Sorry, I’ve just been starving.”

“That’s fine, but just in case the siege gets worse, we’ll discuss as much as we can about the surgery now,” said the pale yellow mare. She grabbed one of the chairs near the wall and pulled it closer to the bed. Holding it in her teeth, she positioned it across from me and took a seat. Once there, she looked down at the clipboard and took a deep breath.

“Good point,” I said, sneaking another mouthful of carrot and hay. Lifting my head up, I looked at her chewing. “Explain away.”

“I just want to go over post-surgery care,” she explained, her voice more nasally than it was before. She wheezed once and looked down at the clipboard. Reading over a few lines of it, she turned back to me. “Outside you might look the same, but inside we augmented quite a bit.” She took another breath. “Your forehoof is well made, but based on archaic designs.” Another deep, wheezing breath. “Still, they were a good base to work from.”

“Praline did a good job, for what she had,” Lost added.

“You did, too,” continued Saccharin. “Crude or not, it’s masterfully m-”

The building shook violently, rocked by another explosion outside.

“Fuck!” I shouted, wracked in pain by the shaking of the bed underneath me. Groaning and throwing my head down against the surprisingly clean sheets, I clenched my teeth and bore it. It was worth it to feel again. Sucking air through my teeth, I twisted around to look at Saccharin. “Keep going, please.”

She cleared her throat, a noisy gurgling affair. “Removing the... um, shackles was the hardest part,” she explained. “Once they were out, we started repairing.” Mentioning the shackles made me shudder, and my sister seemed to have the same reaction. Saccharin, however, ignored it while breathing slowly in and out. Once we’d recovered, she continued, “We reset the bones and reinforced them with two number five osteo-cases, similar to what your cybernetic forehoof is installed around.”

“Number wha? That same weird segmented bendy rod?” I asked. Forcing myself, I raised my right forehoof up. It hurt, a lot, but it felt good at the same time. Even feeling pain was an improvement, after all. I could move it, I was actually doing it. That was worth every bit of pain. Once I’d gotten it up, holding it shakily in place was easy. Still, I could feel my skin buckling and bulging, straining to contain whatever they’d put in me.

“Correct,” Saccharin confirmed. “Your leg bones are still there, but they’re strengthened by and encased in steel now.” She took a deep breath, set the clipboard down on the chair, and walked over to me. Taking my extended foreleg in her hooves, she slowly forced it down. Tapping my elbow, she continued her lecture. “Everything from here down is mostly tendon.” She took a breath. “Above that we removed all the septic muscle, stopping above tricep and rectus.”

“Tri-wha? Re-wha?” I muttered, tilting my head. I’d never heard of any of those and wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“She means we took everything out from your shoulder and your haunches down and put synthetic muscles in instead,” Lost clarified. “The damage stopped about halfway under your cutie mark and was already working up toward your withers. So we took those entire muscles out, just to be safe. We didn’t want it spreading.”

“My Stable designed unobtrusive synthetics for as much as we could,” explained Saccharin, before she took another deep nasally breath. “Some complex organs require bulky, unsightly additions, but...” She ran a hoof down my foreleg, pushing against the skin and making that shimmery streak of light reflect up and down my coat. “Wherever possible, especially on large scale projects like this, we went with what would make ponies look normal.” Backing away, she lowered her hoof from my leg. “Synthetic muscles are made of extremely thin metal wires woven into ribbons.” She wheezed again, looking incredibly uncomfortable. “They overlap to form a complete system, from hoof to haunch-”

“So, I have a... metal butt?” I interrupted, suddenly very worried.

Lost stared at me over the rims of her glasses. “No, Hidden,” she answered in a tone that practically screamed ‘what a stupid question.’ “You don’t have a metal butt.”

“Good,” I muttered grumpily.

“What’s with that tone?” Lost demanded. “We spent all night making sure you could walk again and you give us an attitude?”

“What’re you talking about?” I retorted, glaring at her. “I didn’t choose for this to happen, and... well, okay I did. But it wasn’t an easy choice! I’d rather we got it over with in one night than make you wait on me head and hoof for the rest of my life if my legs never start-”

“Stop!” shouted Saccharin. “Fighting is bad for your blood pressure.” She turned to my sister and waggled a hoof at her. “You should know better.”

A pang shot through my heart. That tone of voice- just like... No. No, it wasn’t. I shook my head, dismissing the thought. Instead I lowered my head and looked away from Lost. “Thank you for fixing me,” I whispered.

“Sorry for getting snippy,” Lost apologized. “It’s just been stressful, working with that siege in the background.” As if to make her point, the rapport of a magical laser gatling filled the air. It probably belonged to Jazz, but we didn’t have time to worry about it. We were safe inside, for now...

“Anyway,” the pale yellow mare interrupted, starting her explanation again. “Bones reinforced with permanent internal bracing.” She took a deep breath. “Tendons and muscles refit up to here.” She poked me in the shoulder, midway up to my withers. “And here.” She poked me again, just above my cutie mark. “It’s very simple stuff, compared to the complex systems I had at the Stable.”

“So... how does it work?” I asked. I’d already moved my leg once, but I didn’t really know how it did it. Just like when my forehoof had been replaced, I’d piggybacked it on another movement. Moving two hooves together was easier than just one, and... maybe I’d already trained my brain?

Testing it, I tried to kick my back leg a few times.

Nothing happened.

Well, it hurt a lot, but it didn’t move more than a twitch. Twitches were good, but I wanted to be able to move. Forcing myself through the pain with a huff, I tried again.

“Ow!” I snapped, a lance of pain shooting up my backside. “What was that? Why’d it hurt in my haunch?”

“Because that’s where everything connects,” Lost explained. “You’re going to feel your skin hurt from where we cut it open, and the anchor points will hurt where the new musculature is attached. The actual replacement parts don’t really... umm, ‘feel.’ The overlapped ribbons she mentioned hook up with your natural muscles and the reinforced bone in the same places as if everything was flesh and blood. But since they’re not, it’s going to hurt wherever they pull against what still is.”

“Well, that makes sense,” I agreed. “I can’t feel anything with my steel forehoof, because it’s not flesh and blood.” I didn’t like being talked to like a foal, I could have figured it out if she’d just told me that was the ‘anchor point’ in the first place. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. I didn’t need to be upset, I was just agitated because I was in pain. Getting angry at my sister wasn’t going to do anything for me, especially since she’d done so much to help make me better. Once calm, I opened my eyes and smiled at the doctor. “Sorry, continue...”

“The only other replacement is the synthetic hide,” she continued, before taking few deep, forceful breaths. “We had to replace your skin due to fears of the tissue dying.” She exhaled, then wheezed another deep breath. “The surgery was particularly intrusive and we cut away much to give us room to operate safely.” She paused, breathing slowly, making me somewhat agitated that the explanation was coming so slowly. “There wasn’t sufficient oxygen supplied during that time, so we erred on the side of caution. The outside of each of your legs, from hoof to cutie mark in the back and hoof to chest in the front.” she answered, stopping to take a few deep breaths. “We left in as much as we could. Fat, nerve connections, and your circulatory system to keep your remaining real skin and bone alive.”

“It’s lucky your coat is white,” Lost added. “We didn’t have to find any dyes to make it match.”

Saccharin nodded in agreement. “Correct. As for the muscles...” she started, exhaling forcefully. “They’re actually very simple. Everything is wired to your nerves, same as the steel forehoof. It’s all electrical signals designed to work exactly like natural systems.”

Lost rolled her eyes. “Each leg has a muscle set of two parts with two positions. Up or down,” she added, explaining for the mare. “We tried to match it with Praline’s little terminal piece inside. That way there’s less to ‘learn’ when using them. They work almost identical to real muscles. one pulls while the other relaxes, then when you want to move the other way, the two flip. Forward back, forward back, taking steps.”

“So, will I be able to dance around in a firefight?” I asked. Movement while shooting was important, it kept ponies like me from getting too shot up. Given how reckless I was, and I knew I was reckless, I needed to be able to jump around and stay out of ponies shooting path.

“Eventually, probably,” she answered with a shrug. “What do you think, Saccharin?”

Saccharin shrugged. “With practice,” she answered. “Fine movements will take time to relearn and master. You’re not going to be a power pony.” Turning away from me, she grabbed the clipboard and looked at it while taking another deep breath. “These aren’t industrial strength parts, they’re medical grade augments. You’ll be about as strong as you were before.”

“I’m okay with that,” I said in my most agreeable voice. “I don’t really need to be throwing motorwagons around or kicking through buildings.”

“Says the mare who tried to lift a motorwagon,” Lost teased.

I chose to ignore it.

“None of that, again,” Saccharin ordered. “These are strong, but no more than a strong pony.” She wheezed again. “If you want super pony strength, put on Steel Ranger power armor.”

“I promise not to do anything stupid with my legs,” I announced. Biting at my lip, I added under my breath, “To the best of my abilities.”

“Good,” Saccharin answered. “Synthetic muscles aren’t common, especially after what happened at Stable One-oh-one.”

“What happened at the Stable?” my sister and I both asked.

“A mad stallion took over and tried to kill everypony,” she answered somberly before walking out.

“Think it was rude to ask about that?” I asked my sister.

“Maybe, but we couldn’t have known,” she answered, frowning. Moving to the seat Saccharin had left in the middle of the room, Lost sat down. “She’s right though. You look mostly the same on the outside, but it’s only skin deep. Underneath you’ve got yellow and blue steel ribbons in place of your muscles and tendons. It’s going to take time to heal and walk again. I want you to take it easy for a while, especially until the siege is over.” She turned toward the window. “There’s no telling what might happen.”

“I just want to walk again,” I muttered.

“I know, and you will,” she said with a smile. “Let’s see if I can’t magic you healed a little faster.” Standing up and pushing the chair back where it belonged, she walked over to me. Her horn lit up a light blue, and its magical glow wrapped around my left foreleg. The familiar feeling of knitted flesh started again, even through the part of my coat that seemed to shimmer in the light.

It felt good, enough that I leaned toward the side of the bed against her while she healed me. “Split the Sparkle~Colas with you?” I offered, making sure she didn’t get both of them.

“Deal, once I get all four legs,” she said.

* * *

“I wish I had the PipBuck,” I muttered to myself, staring out the window.

The clouds had darkened, their gentle sun-blocking glow fading away as evening turned to dusk. I’d spent several... hours? Years? It felt like years. I’d spent ages staring down at my hooves and working them around. The pain wasn’t that bad if I moved in small twitches.

There was a phrase, probably, for what I was doing. Pushing just a little bit further each time to see exactly what my limits were. My hoof would bend perfectly fine, it was just how much pain I could take before I grit my teeth and had to stop. After each test, I’d let my hoof snap back to a ‘neutral’ position where it wasn’t flexed or bent in any direction.

That’d kept me busy for the majority of the afternoon. It was only when I started to notice it getting darker outside that it bothered me how stuck I was in the stupid room.

They could have at least put my bed against the window so I could look outside. Scanning the scenery of the destroyed city would have been nice, relaxing even.

Instead, I was stuck staring down at my own hooves and boring myself to death. So that’s what I did, I stared down at my own hooves and kept working, slowly pushing myself in little twitches and spasms over and over.

After another indescribably long time working, I heard something. A quiet tapping over and over, like somepony finally coming to talk to me. I flicked an ear and looked over at the open doorway.

“Hello?” wheezed the voice of Saccharin. The pale yellow Stable pony poked her head into the room. She forced an awkward smile. “It’s time for your nightly checkup.”

“Alright,” I muttered, shifting my shoulders painfully. “I don’t have to get up, do I?” I meant it as a joke, but I wasn’t sure if it’d come across right.

“No, no, just lay there,” she answered, disappearing once again. Only a moment later she reappeared, walking on her hind hooves and pushing a small metal cart into the room. Atop it lay a smaller metal tray with a piece of cloth covering whatever was on it. On the bottom shelf of the cart was a basin with a towel in it, and several tools sitting on a clipboard.

“What kind of checkup will this be?” I asked, eyeing the tools. I recognized a few from the examination the day before, but several were brand new.

“Just making sure there’s no complications,” she answered, stopping the cart next to my bed and dropping to all four of her hooves. She took a deep breath, walked over to the chair she’d used earlier, and pulled it close. “They’re slacking off outside, this is a good time to check on you before bed.”

She was right. The gunfire outside had slowed to nearly a stop as night fell. I could still hear it, coming from both sides of the wall. They’d trade a few shots then stop, only to start back up a short while later. Now, though, the sounds of battle were further away. Either they’d moved to another part of The Cinch or they were off killing more raiders and bandits in the outskirts of the city proper.

It didn’t matter, they weren’t a threat to us for the moment and I was happy for that. The break was good for everypony, especially my limbs.

“Lost and I were born in a Stable too, y’know,” I said, trying to strike up a casual conversation. “We left a long time ago, when I was little.”

“Really?” asked the mare, sounding genuinely interested. Reaching down with a hoof, she grabbed one of the tools from before. It was a the same pointy scope thing she’d used to look in my ears before. “What Stable was it, do you remember?”

“I don’t, but Lost probably does,” I answered as she pushed the cone part into my ear. “Our mother took us into the Wasteland when we were foals.” It felt weird, having the scope pushed into my head, and I could feel every little motion nearly in my brain as she squirmed it around and looked inside. It didn’t help that, because she was so close, I could feel her breathing shallowly against my neck.

“Your pinna looks like it’s been through a lot, but there’s no internal damage. Looks good,” she announced, seemingly to herself as she pulled the scope back. Trotting to the other side of me, she pushed the scope back into my head from the other ear. As the weird sensation returned, she continued, “My Stable... One-oh-one? I’ve been out a long time now.” She took a deep breath, right against my skin. “But I’ll never forget the number, or why I had to leave...” The tone of her voice changed. “But you said you’d been gone since you were a foal.”

“Correct,” I answered, pulling away from the scope. It felt too weird having her talk into my head with it.

“How old are you now?” she asked, trotting back to the other side and pulling out the clipboard from the bottom shelf. Holding the clipboard with one foreleg, she sat down and raised her other one. As I tried to count how many years it’d been by how many winters and summers I could remember, she twisted her head around and unsnapped a button on the back of the Stable jumpsuit she was wearing.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “We didn’t really have a clock or a calendar. Other things were more important than keeping track.”

“That’s too bad,” she answered. “Knowing that would help for your medical history.“ She bit down on the fabric of the jumpsuit and lifted up a flap I hadn’t noticed before. Beneath it, I could see the telltale streaking shimmer of a synthetic coat just like mine as she moved about underneath the light from the ceiling.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I need to take notes,” she answered. Without further explanation, her back opened up. Watching wide eyed, a massive piece of her skin just lifted away. It exposed a compartment, full of more metal and artificial parts. The inside of her coat was smooth and white, just like mine, completely different than the pale yellow on the outside. Shining metal gleamed from the opening, covered in twisting wires and housing a massive arrangement of orange and silver cylinders. They spun out from the inside and extended outward. At the very tip of the three-jointed limb was a little pincher, with two dull claws at the end. As I watched in horror, it angled its way over her shoulder and grabbed onto a pen that had been stuffed under the clip of the clipboard. It pulled back and tapped the pen against the paper a few times, and she wasn’t even paying attention to it!

“Wh-what in the Goddesses name is that?” I shrieked, scrambling painfully with my forehooves and pushing as hard as they would let me against the bed. I ignored the pain, not caring as I tried to put as much distance as I could between me and whatever that was. It didn’t do much good, as all I could do was pat uselessly at the covers I laid on. For all the struggle and agony of synthetic ribbony muscles pushing, I didn’t move almost at all.

“What’s what?” she asked, staring up at me in wide-eyed confusion. Whatever it was caught her eye, and she snapped her head to the side to look at it, making her mane bounce. “Oh, thi- Oh. OH!” she practically shouted. The little pinchy claw-things dropped the pen and it retracted, bending around and collapsing in on itself until it disappeared back into the opening in her back. A second later, her back snapped shut.

Breathing heavily, I just stared at her. Is that what she put inside me?

Frantically, I looked at myself, my legs, my back. I had to get it out. I’d rather be immobile. The shackles were better than whatever that was! At least with the shackles I knew what it was. Breathing heavily, I shook back and forth. My legs weren’t responding to anything I was telling them to do. My forehooves twitched back and forth, but that wasn’t doing me any good. My heart pounded in my throat, threatening to jump out of my mouth.

“Calm down,” she said softly, one hoof raised toward me as if that would be enough. “Calm... Down.”

“What was that!” I demanded, cowering.

“It’s an arm, I use it for writing,” she explained in a calm matter-of-fact tone.

“Why do you have an arm?” I asked, blinking several times.

“My Stable designed and perfected cybernetics,” she explained, suddenly sounding very sad. That freaked me out even more, how calm she’d been. “Almost everypony had something similar.” She inhaled deeply, taking a long time to suck in air through her nose. “I thought you... being another cyberpony.” She paused, then looked away. “I forgot you hadn’t seen it.”

“You didn’t put one of those fucking things in me did you?!”

“No...” she answered, shaking her head.

All the tension melted in an instant. Still shaking, both from fear and the exertion, I slumped back down and let my head fall onto the bed below. I panted, taking quick shallow breaths and trying to stop my heart from pounding in my throat. Thank Celestia, thank Luna. I couldn’t have dealt with that...

“I’m sorry,” the mare said. “I... I’ll finish the exam later.” Setting the clipboard down, she stood and snapped the Stable jumpsuit completely closed again.

“Tell me about your Stable,” I interrupted her. I had to learn to deal with this sort of thing sooner than later. If I was going to have bundled ribbons of metal inside me, then... then that’d just have to be normal.

“Are you sure?” she asked defensively.

I just nodded.

She tapped a hoof a few times, looking very nervous. “Okay, after I check one thing,” she announced. When I nodded again, she finished shrugging her jumpsuit back on and walked over to the bed. Hopping up onto her hind legs. she started to push around at my skin at my shoulder.

It hurt, a lot. I could feel something different and alien inside me, shifting about against my skin. When she pushed one way, it would twist and bend around her hoof, squishing and bulging. It wasn’t too bad, until she started to pull with both hooves.

I bit down on my tongue to keep from screaming. Whatever they’d done to anchor the new muscles in place, she was doing her best to rip it back apart. It felt like my shoulder was being pulled out of the socket.

She let go.

Everything snapped back into place, and with it came the intense realization of exactly what they’d done. I looked down at my legs, both in awe and in horror. I blinked a few times, vaguely aware of her walking to the other side and doing the same thing. It didn’t hurt as much the second time, or the third... or the fourth. My haunches weren’t in anywhere near as much pain as my shoulder had been. Either it was because I was ready for it, or because I was too busy being shocked.

She was right. I wasn’t going to be some ‘power pony’ and be capable of doing incredible things. With just that she’d pointed out exactly how painful it could be if I tried too hard. The muscles would snap back, I might not. Thank the Goddesses she’d reinforced my leg bones. I could only imagine that without it, running and fighting might be enough to snap my legs in half.

“What was that for?” I asked dimly.

“Making sure the anchors held,” she answered plainly. “Nothing snapped apart when I pulled.” She took a deep breath, grabbed the clipboard, and set it on the top shelf of the cart. Grabbing the discarded pen in her mouth, she started writing notes.

“But they might if I push harder than that?” I asked, still staring down at my leg.

“Only if you push too hard,” she answered, surprisingly clearly around the pen in her mouth. “They’re designed for living, not lying in bed.”

“Then can I get up?” I demanded. “I’m sick of being stuck in bed already, I feel like I’m going to go crazy.”

“I’ll have a wheelchair brought up for you,” she answered with a smile, as if that was good enough. Setting the clipboard and pen down, she pulled the cloth off the smaller metal tray. “Last thing, then we talk.” Picking up a syringe, she walked over and held it up for me to see. “The painkillers you wanted earlier.”

Thank the Goddesses.

She jabbed me in the shoulder, just above where the shimmery gleaming streaks in my coat stopped. Pressing hard, she injected me with the deliciously amazing Med-X. It started its work almost instantly, cooling the burning aching pain around my new muscle anchors and joints.

I’d forgotten how much I loved Med-X. Closing my eyes, I just smiled. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome,” she answered happily. “But a more thorough exam will come tomorrow, and every day after until I say you’re better.”

“If you bring me more Med-X, that’s fine...” I answered, feeling in a haze. It’d been far too long, and even though it did little to make my legs feel more normal, it did a lot to make them feel good. My fears about whatever was going on inside her skin were already going away as well. It’d be okay, if I just let it.

“My Stable was completely populated with earth ponies,” she said. It sounded like a dream. “We were given much in the way of technology, and advanced it in spades.” She took a deep breath. “It’s located...” She trailed off, not finishing her sentence.

“Where?” I asked.

“Far, far away from here,” she explained. “In one of the least safe places in all of Equestria.” She took a deep breath. “It’s been... a decade, maybe?” She shrugged, breathing again. “I'll give you the short version, because of my respiratory system. I’ve traveled that whole time.”

“Where did you go?” I asked. Twisting around, I watched myself thwack at the pillow at the other end of the bed with my tail. It did little to get it any closer, but Saccharin figured out what I wanted and kindly moved it for me. Once she’d set it down, I rested my head across it and looked up at her.

“All over,” she answered. “Tried Canterlot...” She shook her head. “Death trap. Tried Manehatten, but it didn’t work out.” She shrugged, taking another wheezing, nasally breath. “Friendship City was nice for a while, then I started this way.” She chuckled once, quietly and forced. “It takes a long time to walk the Wasteland...”

“Why come out here though?”

“Ministry buildings,” she answered. “Few places had entire hubs.” That must have meant all six buildings together? “Canterlot had Ministry Walk, but the pink cloud there makes it...” She shook her head again. “I don’t want to discuss it.” With another deep breath, she sat back in the chair.

“Wait, wait,” I said, raising a hoof just barely and stopping her. “If you’ve been out so long, why not settle somewhere and make friends? Or be a town doctor? You obviously know how. And if you had so many resources to replace all my leg muscles, why not just make other ponies into cyberponies like us, or like Lamington?”

“He’s...” she started, trailing off.

“Replacement eye,” I explained.

“Really?” the mare interrupted, furrowing her brows. “Is it integrated into the armor or?”

“No,” I answered, mildly confused by her reaction. However, I wanted to hear more about her Stable and where she’d been, we’d already discussed cybernetics too much for one day. “Seriously. Did you just spend a decade wandering?”

She forced a smile. “Like I said, it takes a long time to walk that much,” she answered, before taking another breath. “Everfree to Canterlot, back, Manehatten near the coast... Friendship City...” She wheezed again, leaning back in the chair. “Then all the way to Blackhoof. I wasn’t in a rush.”

“But what about using up all the supplies?” I countered. “Have you really been wheezing for that long?” It seemed impossible.

The mare licked her lips, saying nothing. She looked deep in thought, so I didn’t interrupt. After a few moments, she shrugged. “Wheezing, yes,” she answered, a sad tone to her voice. “I hoped I’d find a Ministry Hospital where I could repair myself. No luck.” Pausing, she looked around the room. “Until now.” She took another breath. “Being a doctor? Sometimes I was, but not everypony is compatible with cybernetics from Stable One-oh-one.” She began to fiddle with the stitching on the chair she was sitting in. “When he gassed the Stable, I panicked. I grabbed as much as I could.” She took another deep breath, wheezing through her nose. We had to get that fixed. It was becoming unbearable. “Mostly small things, tools, collapsible hydraulics, muscle ribbons, rolls of hide.”

“Small things you could stuff into saddlebags and run with?” I asked, and when she nodded I continued. “But you still have all of it?”

“Most.”

“And you’ve just kept it?” I asked, trying a different wording to get the answer I wanted. “You could have helped so many ponies.”

“It’s not that easy. You need special tools, places to operate and rehabilitate,” she said somberly. “The Wasteland doesn’t have those. It’s a terrible place.” She said nothing for a moment, just breathing. “Either ponies don’t need it, they aren’t that bad... Or they’re too far gone to be saved by it.”

“Oh...”

That actually made a lot of sense.

I must have been lucky then. There were plenty of ways and times I could’ve died in the Wasteland, but the things that I needed replaced were... replaceable. Sulking, I pressed my head into the pillow I was resting on. Thank the Goddesses I had a choice when I was crippled. I’d have to thank Praline next time I saw her, for being there when I needed her.

“Yeah...” she finally muttered.

“So, your Stable?” I asked, steering the conversation back.

“Under Everfree Forest, maybe the worst place in the Wasteland,” she explained. “Last I heard it was getting even worse, if that were possible...” Grumbling, she coughed. After a minute or so of coughing, she smiled. “I’m okay, wrong tube...” She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “We were to try the Earth Pony Way, and see what happened, to make better choices than the ponies in the War.” She fiddled with the chair stitching again, tugging at it with her forehooves. “But one pony took over. Not an Overmare, but his charisma made others follow him, or turn a blind eye.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, shifting my weight on the bed. It hurt a little, but lying in one position for so long was starting to numb my haunches.

“We thought the nearby dragon was the problem, but...” Saccharin continued, not answering my question, breathing shallowly but quickly. “It was him, the whole time. The things he did were unsettling, even by our standards. We were used to working on ponies, doing surgery and expanding our capabilities.” Between each short burst of words, she’d take another breath, now forcing them raggedly. She slammed her hoof against the chair. “But not like him. He took dead and dying ponies, pretended to be the smart, intellectual type, but he was experimenting on them.” She looked away. “I couldn’t say anything, he had too much pull. Then he turned on us all...”

“I’m sorry I brought it up...”

Tears were starting to form in the corners of her eyes. They shimmered on her coat, reflecting the light through the synthetic hide. “It’s okay, I need to let this out,” she answered, dismissing my apology. “At first it felt like... he was doing the right thing.” She pulled her hooves from the stitching of the chair and took a deep breath. “Going above, bringing things we needed back. It helped, but...” She sucked air through her teeth. “I want to say he snapped, went bad.” She stared down at her hooves. “That’s not true, he was always that way. He was just good at... twisting it. He knew how to make an atrocity seem like a good idea, in the end.”

“What the fuck kind of pony would do that sort of thing?” I asked.

“The kind who kills their friends, family,” she answered. “All in the name of ‘progress.’ But he’s not a kind of pony...” She inhaled deeply. “If we’re lucky, he’s the only one.”

“Please tell me he’s gone,” I muttered.

“No,” she answered, shaking her head again. “Red Eye is still out there, making the Wasteland worse than the zebras ever could...”

* * *

Leaning my head down, I flipped the page of the Supernaturals book I’d been reading. Before I woke up earlier in the morning, somepony had stopped by and left me a little care package. It included a nice breakfast, the book sitting next to it, and a wheelchair that I hadn’t bothered trying to get into. My complaining about not having anything to do while everypony else was up, mobile, and living their lives must have finally gotten on their nerves enough to give me something to do. At least the book was interesting. It was a Wartime book, stamped under the cover with all sorts of warnings and clauses, but the actual contents about different natural cures for a variety of illnesses kept my attention for the most part. The methods in it were dated, and required a lot of things that probably didn’t exist anymore, but I didn’t care. It kept me busy and I was learning a thing or two about medicine regardless. Even if I’d never get to use it.

I skimmed the diagram of what order to cook several different flowers and roots together, then grabbed the corner of the page with my lip. Flipping it to the side, I started reading down the page.

Stopping, I looked out at the window. It was very quiet outside... Sure, it was early, but the Steel Rangers had started far earlier the day before. Were they finally done attacking the walls of The Cinch, or had they just moved far enough to the other side that I could-

A burst of gunfire cut through my thoughts.

“Nevermind,” I muttered to myself... Looking back at the book, I found what little interest I had in it had evaporated. Instead, I just nosed it closed and pushed it off to the side of the bed. Breakfast was good, and the book was fine, but what I really wanted was the wheelchair.

Twisting my forehooves slightly, I pulled myself forward. I only moved a bit, and while I could get my forehooves to move around, I was still having trouble with my elbows. My back legs were ... well, with the shackles or not, I still wasn’t going to be doing much with them just yet.

If I could get my rump into the chair though, I could use my forehooves to get around. That’d be good enough, and I could find out where everypony else was spending their time.

Several minutes I spent grunting and groaning, making only the smallest of progress. I’d made it far enough to hook my steel forehoof over the edge of the mattress. Small victories. My concentration, however, was cut off by heavy clanking hoofsteps in the hallway.

Only one pony I knew could be that loud.

“Lamington?” I asked, looking expectantly at the door. Just as I’d expected, the heavily armored form of the Steel Ranger appeared in the doorway only a moment later. I smiled. “Can you come lend me a hoof?”

“Certainly,” he said, turning and squeezing his way through the open door.

“You can take the armor off, y’know,” I said, eyes closing halfway as I watched him struggle.

“Unfortunately, Miss Fortune, I must disagree,” he... disagreed, finally making his way through the door.

I twitched, closing an eye and grimacing. Okay, it was now or never. I needed to tell him not to keep calling me that. At least he hadn’t given me an order this time, and was just telling me his opinion. I, of course, agreed with it, against my wishes, but I wasn’t trying to stand up and move around just because he’d said I needed to with Amble’s little code-phrase.

“Umm, Lamington? Can I ask a favor...”

“I believe you’ve asked me for one already,” he said, his static-laced voice jovial. It wasn’t really the best time to tease, though...

“I know but, I mean...” I stammered. “Can you, can you not call me ‘Miss Fortune’ anymore?”

He stopped mid-way through the room. I couldn’t see his face, but given how his helmet was moving, I could tell he was trying to figure out what to say. After a few seconds, he nodded. “As you wish,” he agreed. “Is there a particular reason? I’d assumed you would prefer a more formal and polite manner of being addressed.”

“I- I do, actually, but,” I muttered, flicking my steel forehoof back and forth and tapping it against the mattress. “I think the way you talk is really nice, because most ponies in the Wasteland just spit out whatever they want to say.” I cleared my throat, seeing I was getting off topic. “However, I have some bad history with ponies calling me that.”

“Oh, I,” he muttered, his voice cutting out halfway. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry.” The formality in his voice was gone. It was nice to hear Lamington, rather than Star Paladin Lamington.

“I know, I didn’t tell you, because I keep wanting to pretend it never happened,” I explained. When he said nothing, I just kept talking. “The whole thing with the slavers in U Cig. Amble just got in my head, and that’s what she called me. So every time you were saying it, it just brought back all the things she did...”

He shifted uneasily. Even behind the armor it was obvious how uncomfortable he was. Taking one step back, his haunches slammed down to the ground with a heavy metallic clank.

“She used that name to give me orders,” I clarified.

The Star Paladin looked at me, the armor blank and expressionless. It felt almost like he was staring me down, but Lamington wasn’t the type of pony to do that sort of thing. He hung his head. “I had no idea,” he said, finally. “I won’t do it again.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner.”

“However,” he continued, a small burst of static sounding off as he spoke. “If I meet this ‘Amble’ pony, I will be the end of her.” There was an edge to his voice I hadn’t expected. He might have been a fairly stern stallion when necessary, but I’d never heard him angry before. The sharpness of his words, the confidence? It was a little scary... More intimidating, coming from a massive stallion that I knew was capable of backing up what he said.

He’d have to get in line, Amble was mine. If Rebar didn’t kill her before I got the chance, I wanted to personally strangle her to death. For everything she did, not just to me, not just to my sister, but to all the ponies she’d hurt in the Wasteland, for all the ones she’d sent to-

“Red Eye...” I muttered to myself, realization washing over me. Why hadn’t that clicked sooner? “Goddesses...”

Lamington cocked his head to the side. “Excuse me?” he asked, sounding extremely confused.

I pushed the thoughts to the side. Just another pony to get revenge on later. He was the one making it so profitable for Amble, which meant that even if I ended her life, there’d still be a worse pony to worry about. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Will you please take the armor off?” I asked again. “I just want to be pushed around in the wheelchair, and you can barely fit through the doors.”

“I can remove my helmet,” he agreed. “I would prefer to retain the remainder.”

I just whined incoherently. “Okay, good enough,” I relented. “But why?” Curiosity was getting the best of me.

“I only have the undersuit beneath,” he answered, matter-of-factly.

“The wha?”

“A skin tight suit overlay, similar to Stable barding,” he explained. “Over it is an interface mesh layer for the power armor. Neither are meant to be worn as common clothing.”

Eyes widening, I just blushed. I could feel my cheeks burning. Oh Goddesses, Lamington in a skin tight suit. It was too much. Still... “I’m sure there’s something around here you could wear to cover up,” I said, hoping he’d at least try. “Tim Tam’s the only other Steel Ranger here, you don’t have to be the ‘example’ for your brothers and sisters anymore.”

He said nothing, instead just reached up and grabbed onto his helmet. Twisting and fiddling with the latches that kept it closed, he finally removed the helmet. It hissed as the seal was broken and a puff of air escaped. With some work, he pulled it free of his head. The gorgeous stallion’s mane was a mess, pulled from the swept back style I’d seen on him the first time. His coat was perfect, clean. The only thing marring his face was the scar around his eye. I’d gotten used to it though, and smiled as I looked over the reflective chrome of the replacement.

I understood a bit better now, what he’d gone through... How it was so alien to have something inside your body that didn’t belong.

He just slid an armored hoof over his head, brushing his mane back to perfection. One of his ears flicked. “For you, I will,” he said with a smile, staring at me with those intense yellow eyes. I could have melted... While I looked on, he started to strip out of the power armor. The armor itself popped open, as if the spine had split in half. The two parts opened up behind him and folded away, offering a view of his back. The power armor continued, the rigid pieces shifting on hinges and spreading further apart as the sides slowly unlatched from one another as well. Once they were far enough apart, he rolled his shoulders, as if moving them for the first time to work out stiffness. Seconds later the forelegs popped, seams forming on the outside as they opened up to give him room to remove his hooves. The hind legs of the power armor did similar, splitting down the side and parting on more hinges to allow him to back out.

The way the armor broke apart reminded me of the wire monstrosity from before, but I was too excited at the prospect of seeing Lamington for the first time completely armorless to care. That fear was so far away, behind indestructible Ministry walls, that it wasn’t worth fretting over.

The massive stallion pushed himself up onto his hind legs, rearing up so his forelegs were free. Carefully, he took a few steps back, until his hind legs were free of the armor. Once he’d cleared it, he dropped back down to the ground without a sound. How did such a massive pony land so quietly...

True to his word, he was wearing two sets of clothing. The outer one loosely hung to his body, draped off his back and made of the mesh he’d mentioned. I could see almost straight through it, though it matched the same dark grey as the power armor he’d been wearing. Underneath was what looked exactly like Stable barding, clinging to him and outlining every-

Oh Goddesses.

I buried my face against the pillow, barely peeking up at him. It really was that tight.

Not looking at my practically-melted form, Lamington instead turned to the armor and started to push it closed. He worked quickly and quietly, pushing the folded out pieces back together and closing everything. Once the body of the armor was back together, he picked up the helmet and set it atop. Were it not for the fact that I was looking at him, I’d have sworn he was still inside.

However, he was very much outside the armor. And I was very much staring at him.

As he moved, his hips swayed and his tail swished back and forth, probably free for the first time in ages. For how big he was, only the quietest of hooffalls echoed inside the room. He moved smoothly, surprisingly different from the heavy, jerking clankiness of the pony I was used to.

Was power armor really that different? I looked down at my legs. Would I be that clunky when I walked around now that I had similar inside me? I sure hoped not.

By the time I looked back up, the stallion was facing me. He’d stripped off the outer mesh layer of his clothing and draped it over the power armor next to him. Easily, he could have been a Stable pony and not a Steel Ranger without either of it on. Even the barding he had on had the little stitched ‘60’ on the collar, just like Saccharin’s Stable barding. The only bad part was that I couldn’t see his cutie mark.

“Is something the matter, Mis-” he started, before catching himself. With a small smile, he offered me a hoof. “Is something the matter, Hidden?” Lamington wasn’t as huge a pony as I had expected, but that just meant the power armor was a lot heavier and thicker than I’d given it credit. He was still massive compared to me, and to most ponies for that matter, but he didn’t seem it. Without the steel encasing him, he didn’t even seem intimidating. It might have been the warm smile, or that he was the cleanest, prettiest thing I’d ever seen in the Wasteland, or just... everything.

“You’re really hot,” I blurted out. The second the words left my mouth, my eyes shot wide open. “I MEAN! Uhh...” Clearing my throat, I looked over to the wheelchair and hooked my steel forehoof toward it. “Can you help me into the chair? So we can go look around?”

The Star Paladin smirked, but said nothing about the stupid thing I’d accidentally let slip. Instead, he just grinned. “Is that what you had requested my services for?” he asked, looking over to it.

“Yes,” I answered. “I’m restless, stuck here in this bed. I wanted to go and just... do... stuff. Anything but stare at these walls.” I wiggled my forehooves, ignoring the dull distant pain in them. “I can’t move myself is all, I need somepony to move me around.”

“Of course,” Lamington agreed. Walking over to me, he moved the railing on the side of the bed away and then hooked his hooves underneath me. It made me squirm, but he said nothing. He just lifted me into the air and slid me onto his back. A few steps later we were at the wheelchair, and he gently slid me off into it.

Landing was a... strange feeling. The parts of me that still had my natural hide could feel the chair just fine. But past my cutie mark, and the outsides of my legs... I couldn’t feel a thing. I was aware, of course, that I was sitting, because even through the new synthetic parts my weight was rested on something. Just... Part of me felt missing. Like there was a gap in the spots where my body was. Laying my forelegs on the rests to my side was similar. I could partially feel it, in the spots where my original coat was. I could feel my weight resting on something, but... there was just cold nothingness in the spots with the synthetic hide. I’d have to ask Saccharin if there was a way to get feeling back, because not being able to feel my skin was an experience I was definitely not okay with.

Once sitting, I tried to wiggle my hind hooves.

Nothing happened.

I frowned, but didn’t say anything to the Star Paladin. This was going to be a good experience whether I had to make it one or not. Instead, I looked up at him all while trying in vain to wiggle my rear hooves. “Thank you,” I said, sincerely. “Mind wheeling me around? We can chat?” It would be good to spend some time together.

“I’d enjoy that very much, Hidden,” he replied. As he raised his hooves to grab onto the grips at the back of the chair, he stopped and dropped back down.

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked, twisting to see what was happening. When he didn’t respond, I raised my voice. “Star Paladin! What’s going on?”

“Apologies, I just noticed the gunfire had stopped,” he answered. Grabbing onto the grip with one forehoof, he twisted the chair around until I was facing the window and was close enough to see outside it.

The view was amazing; breathtaking even.

While Blackhoof was in ruins, there was still so much to see. We were facing away from The Cinch, out at the rest of the city. A wide road ran directly away from us, the lifeline that connected the ring of Ministry buildings with the rest of the city past us. Perfectly straight, it only stopped upon reaching another wall far in the distance. Made of red bricks and raising nowhere near as high as the one surrounding The Cinch, ancient letters hanging off the wall explained just what the building was.

R. E. A. Academy.

I’d heard that mentioned before, but now I knew exactly what it was. Below the letters was a huge gate, open and inviting. Of course, nothing survived the Wasteland intact. Several chunks of the wall were gone, seemingly melted. Perched atop the wall, halfway between the gate and the edge, I could see a massive cannon, poking out from behind the wall, aimed toward the sky. It must have been the gun Lost and I heard about while stuck with the trader, so long ago...

Between us and the wall, off to the right, were the remains of long thin buildings. They took up a majority of the space, zig zagged along ground, their rubble occupying much of the area between the Academy, the mountains, and the outcropping of regular homes. I could only make out what the remainder looked like based on the few that survived. The majority were just frames, which had somehow kept from falling into more piles of rubble in the centuries after the world ended. Lining the main road itself were several buildings that looked distinctly like stores, but from our angle I could only see the tops, rather than the front to know for sure. Were it not for the vantage point, I’d have written the entire half of the city a loss. That’s how little survived the end of the world.

On the opposite side of the wide road were massive empty spots, dotted with little piles of rubble and a sparse few intact buildings.

To my left, I could see dozens of sprawling, massive buildings. Much like Leathers or the M.W.T. building, they had to have been factories of some sort. Gigantic chimneys stabbed at the air from their roofs, the ones that were still intact at least. A few still shot smoke into the air after two centuries.

Well, at least somepony was past the ‘just survive’ part of living in the Wasteland...

After scanning the horizon and all the buildings nearby, I finally caught what Lamington was looking at. Dozens of power armor wearing ponies were marching down the main street that led directly to the Academy. They were going the opposite direction, and there were too many marching to just be a small group heading off to kill some local raiders or bandits like the ones we’d found.

“What in the Goddesses’ names are they doing?” I asked nopony in particular.

“Perhaps they’ve given up on the siege,” suggested Lamington. “Assaults on fortified locations run supplies low, and training states to cut losses when necessary.” He scraped a hoof across the floor. “Let’s hope they’re finished here...”

I smiled and looked up at him. “We’ll find out eventually,” I said. “For now? Wheel me around?”

“I can do that, Hidden,” he answered. “That sounds far more pleasant than thinking about Star Paladin Jazz and her ilk.” Grabbing onto the grips of my chair, he hoisted himself up onto his hind hooves and started pushing me toward the door.

* * *

What should have been a nice walk through the halls of the Ministry of Peace hospital instead became a race to find the others. Lamington’s gentle hooffalls on the tile clacked alongside the rustling of the wheels underneath me. I held on with my forehooves for dear life as the Star Paladin forcefully pushed me through the hallways.

Were it not for the fact that I was so happy to be out and about, I might have been terrified for going so fast.

It was amazing though, to see what I’d been missing. The hallways were clean and bright, painted a warm pale yellow, and lit by lights that should have been burnt out long ago. The tile of the floor flew by, checkered in an alternating pattern of light and dark pink with little designs at each intersection. For brief seconds I could see into the rooms we passed, and all were similar to the one I’d been stuck in, before they whisked by.

As we traveled, wordlessly, I caught a glance at the signs hanging from the ceilings whenever we passed another hallway. We’d been in the recovery wing, while arrows pointed to different ones like the main offices and rehab centers. Apparently, my room was on the third floor. The fourth floor was listed, but whatever they kept up there had been removed from the signage, leaving only the vague outlines of letters in the dust. Were I to guess, I’d say that was the best location for where Rose and her copies practiced and researched the megaspells.

Unless there was some secret underground lair.

That didn’t seem like the kind of thing they’d have in a hospital, though.

I smiled at the thought, but before I could come up with anything more, Lamington slowed to a stop. We’d ended up at one of the hallway intersections, facing two huge steel doors without hinges.

“Where are we?” I asked him, breathing heavily from the excitement. It was all I could do to try and wiggle my hind hooves in the chair, wanting to know more about the place I’d been stuck for so long.

“Elevators,” he announced. “The others need to know about the siege’s ending. They’ll most likely be on the first floor.”

“Ohh,” I answered, cocking my head to the side. With a flick of an ear, I looked up at him. Even from my position under his head, where I could only see his muzzle and chin, I smiled. It was still a good view.

Reaching up with a hoof, he pushed the button for the first floor. The suit he wore under his armor clung to his foreleg, but didn’t cover his hooves. They were well taken care of, no cracks or scuffs, with messy fetlocks where his coat had become somewhat overgrown. Still, looked nice.

After only a moment’s delay, the doors closed and the room dinged again. It lurched hard under me, enough to make every point where the muscles attached to me yell in protest. I groaned in pain, tensing up against my will. It only made it hurt more, but the fact that my brain was already figuring out how to react to things made it worth it.

Once we’d lowered ourselves to the first floor, and the door opened with another ding, Lamington pushed me free of the little elevator room and down another hallway. We traveled through several long corridors, all looking almost identical to the ones from the upper floor. At one point we passed a large counter with a few terminals on it, and a massive door that I could see led to the outside. Lamington didn’t stop though, he pushed me past a threshold of light pink and soft yellow where the colors of the walls and floors suddenly swapped places.

I had an idea where we were, more than likely switching to the smaller building. Signs explained it as intake, examination, and surgery. That made sense, splitting the active parts of the hospital where ponies were healed with the passive parts, where ponies recovered. It also must have kept whatever Rose was working on at the time separate from ponies who were in need of on the spot healing.

The halls we traveled down looked familiar, and I was sure we were close to the exam rooms and nurses’ station where we’d entered. After a quick turn around another corner hallway, we found ourselves right where I’d expected. A short distance away, Rose and Saccharin sat leaning against the counters of the nurses’ station, talking to one another.

“I have news,” announced Lamington as he wheeled me closer.

“...sure that-” Rose was saying, before being interrupted by the stallion. Both mares turned to us, and then blanched. “Hey hey, she’s not supposed to be up and moving yet,” announced Rose. Dropping from the counter, the clone mare made her way around the station and over toward me. Standing in front of us, she looked down at me. “You need your bed rest, otherwise we’re just going to have to operate again when you do something stupid and tear yourself apart.”

“Now now,” chided Saccharin, before taking a deep breath. “She’s holding together well, let’s hear the news before we jump to conclusions.” She looked over at Lamington, eyeing him up and down. Stopping on his face, she raised her eyebrows and made a little ‘hmm’ noise. “So he does have one...” she said quietly to herself.

“So long as the news isn’t ‘Hidden Fortune’s been up and walking,’” Rose snapped. Her expression softened and she placed a hoof against my left forehoof. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself, we can’t put you back together again if you do.”

“Negative,” said the Star Paladin. “Hidden has behaved, allowing me to move her instead of forcing herself.” He smiled. “Our news is good news. The Blackhoof Contingent of Steel Rangers seems to be making their retreat.”

Saccharin and Rose exchanged worried expressions.

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked,

“They’ve been attacking for...” Saccharin started, before pausing to take a breath. She raised her left forehoof and tapped it with her nose. Just like her back, a small section popped open, exposing the white back of her hide. It glowed a sickly green, similar to- Did... did she have a PipBuck inside her leg? It was unsettling, after what I’d seen, but that did explain why she was a Stable pony but wasn’t wearing one. “Two weeks, maybe. Off and on, leaving several times throughout.” She took a deep breath, sitting down and looking toward the wall that hid Blackhoof behind it. “They always come back.”

“How long?” asked Lamington calmly, leaning forward to get her to repeat her answer.

It was strange that none of them seemed all that taken aback that he was out of his power armor. Was I the only one who cared that it was the first time he’d ever- My eyes widened. Had he been hiding himself away from me while letting others see him without the armor already? I.... I really hoped not. I thought it was something special that he’d take it off for me.

Maybe they were just more interested in the news he had for them.

“A week and a half, at the very least?” she answered. “I didn’t look at the date when they started. I didn’t know it’d be a continuing siege.”

Little gears started working in my head. I tried to count the days we’d been wandering around, and how long it’d been since they’d left Leathers after what happened. Without the PipBuck I really had no idea, since I wasn’t checking the date regularly. It’d just never been that important. However, if they’d been under attack for over a week... That was a long time to survive with ponies shooting. It led to other questions, like why the locals hadn’t tried to get in yet, and how long Saccharin had had the entire place on lockdown.

Or how she got the locals out, for that matter. Surely she didn’t fight them out, there weren’t any signs of fighting inside the building. It’d have to be something I spoke to her about later, if at all. It really wasn’t important so long as we were safe.

The ponies who lived here however...

Shaking my head, I turned back to the conversation to find out what I missed while deep in thought.

“...cut losses as is part of Steel Ranger training,” Lamington said. He must have been explaining the same thing he’d told me upstairs.

“Where’s everypony else?” I asked, ignoring the subject at hoof.

“Tim Tam continues to watch the entrance, though he more than likely lacks the vantage point we were privy to,” Lamington explained. He’d dropped his hooves off the grips on my chair and walked around in front to talk to the others. When he did, both mares looked him up and down, and both smiled.

I glared at them, but neither noticed.

“Your sister was doing inventory,” Rose answered. “I’m not sure where the bugpony is, however.”

“Probably with Lost, or looking for something to eat,” I mused. That would be like him. “We need to find them to tell them what’s happening.” Squirming in my seat, I tried to move my hind legs again. They twitched every so slightly, and painfully, but didn’t move otherwise.

Rose’s horn lit up and she swung her head toward me. With the horn close to my head, she looked me over and started to pass it across my body. I watched warily as she scanned me with her cheater magic, the slight tingling sensation spreading across the parts of my legs that were still natural. I could feel it, against the void-like gaps where the new muscle was, lightly healing the parts together. It was a strange feeling, but one that seemed to satisfy her. “You should go tell your sister,” she suggested. “We’ll figure out what to-” She stopped and glanced to Saccharin, then back at Lamington and me with a surprised look on her face. “Actually, there’s nothing that needs to be done with them leaving. We can relax.” She smiled. “You were right, that is good news.”

Lamington nodded curtly. “Inform Tim Tam for me, please,” he requested, before rearing up and grabbing onto the grips of my wheelchair again. Once I’d given the tiniest of waves, he twisted me around and started me off in the other direction.

“She’s in the supply room,” Saccharin said from behind us. She said something to Rose, but I couldn’t make it out over the quiet clacking of Lamington’s hooves against the hard tile floor.

So much for our bonding experience. Oh well, at least I was up and about. We were moving much slower now, and I could take the time to look at the rooms we were passing. All were covered in the same curtains as before, and most were closed. The little butterfly pattern on the curtains reminded me of the first aid boxes we’d occasionally find around the Wasteland, but that made perfect sense. The few that were open all looked the same as the one I’d been checked in when we arrived.

Another two hallways passed and Lamington stopped in front of a doorway. A sign next to it read ‘Pharmacy & Supplies.’ Dropping down, the stallion walked around me and pushed the door open. Needless to say, while he was turned away, I did some looking at him in the skin-tight undersuit of his power armor.

It was anything but a bad view.

“Hello?” Lost said, almost expectantly. She poked her head around from one of the shelves, her horn glowing and holding a pen and clipboard in front of her. When she saw the two of us, her eyes lit up. The clipboard and pen clattered to the floor when he telekinesis disappeared, and she trotted over. “Hi. Hidden, how’re you doing? How does it feel to be up?”

“It’s good, I’m alright,” I answered, wiggling one of my hooves at her.

“She requested to do some sightseeing around the building,” Lamington informed her. “I was more than happy to accommodate.” The Star Paladin took a few steps back, moving my nice view just far enough that I couldn’t see it anymore without making a painfully obvious movement. “We’ve also come with good news.”

“I was going to come up and see you after I finished inventory, but I’m glad you came down instead,” Lost said, scooting closer and giving me a hug in the chair.

It was... lacking, somehow. I could feel her hooves around my shoulders and neck, but the feeling of her coat pressed against mine was missing along the outside of my legs. I couldn’t... feel her. It stung more than the feeling of my legs being pulled almost apart by Saccharin the night before, but I just, I just pushed it away. Instead I leaned against her and nuzzled her neck. After a moment, she broke the embrace and dropped down onto all four hooves.

“So what news?” she asked, cautiously.

“Scifresh and Jazz have begun a retreat, taking what seemed to be the entirety of their forces with them,” he answered with a smile.

“Wait a minute,” Lost said, looking him up and down. “You’re not wearing your power armor.” She squinted. “Why aren’t you wearing your- What have you and Hidden been up to?” She stepped up to him and pressed a hoof against his chest. “You are aware she’s in recovery, right?”

“Lost!” I yelled, feeling my entire body, even the artificial parts, burning with embarrassment. Realizing I’d yelled, I sulked and looked away. “Nothing happened,” I muttered.

My sister looked back and forth at the two of us. After a pause, she snorted. “Alright,” she finally said, before turning to the stallion. “However, you don’t get a pass just for being hot. Don’t do anything with Hidden until she’s healed completely, understand?”

Lamington blinked. The painted yellow iris of his eye shifted slightly, looking my sister up and down as well. He shifted his weight, spreading his forehooves and standing at full height with his head held high. “Understood, ma’am,” he said, before saluting.

Lost just looked up at him and blew air through her nose. “So they left?” she asked, the tone in her voice completely different. After we both nodded, she furrowed her brows. “Okay, good. But that means we have to worry about the ponies who live here trying to get in for medical supplies.” Her horn lit up, and she turned back to the shelves she’d been working on. They seemed sparse, but still had supplies tucked into them. “We’ve got enough for ourselves for a long time if used sparingly. However, if the locals start to rush in, there might be trouble.”

“Well, they can’t get in, can they?” I asked. It was a tough situation, because on the one hoof we needed as much as we could get ourselves. Saccharin had expressed a similar situation to Lost and mine, where we’d been taught and learned well not to trust other groups of ponies. But on the other hoof, was it right to turn ponies away that needed help if it could be provided? Lost was getting very skilled in her medical spells, given how much she’d helped me heal already.

Was she learning from Rose?

Rose... We had her, as well. She was incredibly talented with medical spells, even if she hid it behind snark and a harsh attitude usually. Simple stuff we could fix without the need to use up healing potions, bandages, or other drugs. Harder stuff could be healed with surgery, since there were three ponies who knew how to perform it.

I looked up at Lamington. “Would now be a good time to find out if Praline has heard from Xeno? So she can join us?” I asked. Lemon Tart would be a great help too. They’d fixed me up, and despite Praline’s insane bed manner, she knew her way around an operating room.

“Potentially,” he answered. “I hesitate to act quickly, lest the locals assume another siege is starting.” That was a good point, too. If Lamington’s entire family showed up in their power armor, another fire fight could start, and that would be very very bad. We were stuck until they did something outside.

Hopefully Rough Night and the others from Leathers had made it safely back, then at least we’d have common ground.

Lost cleared her throat. “So, what were you two doing out and about?” she asked.

“I wanted to talk and see the building,” I answered. “I was going stir crazy.” Shifting uncomfortably in the wheelchair, I looked to the Star Paladin. “So, now that we’ve shared the news, can we just... go wander?”

Catching my look, he turned toward me. “Anything you desire,” he said softly.

“Have fun, I’ll find Fine Tune and let him know, too,” Lost said. “Wherever he is...”

“Alright, I’ll see you later...”

Lamington grabbed onto the grips of the wheelchair and turned it away from my sister.

“Lamington, remember what I said,” she warned. “Have fun.”

With her little warning, the stallion pushed me away. Leaning down so his head was next to me, he rested it against my ear. “My apologies for becoming overly excited about the news,” he whispered. “We’ll move a bit slower going forward...”

Oh Goddesses...

* * *

I sighed softly, happily. It’d been a very long day and I was exhausted. The morning’s exciting news had fallen away to a relaxing day of walking around and seeing the various rooms in the hospital and recovery area. With nopony else to worry about, we’d spent the majority of the time wandering. The hospital itself was far bigger than it looked from the outside, and with Lamington pushing me around and us talking about all sorts of things, time had gone by quickly.

We’d seen Tim Tam walking around the main floor, checking lobbies and windows, being a good guard pony. We found Fine Tune with a hoof through a set of ponetian blinds, staring intently out the window toward the inside of The Cinch. When we’d approached him, he didn’t seem to notice us. Whatever he’d been looking at, he was so intensely focused on it that he didn’t even seem to pick up on the happiness I knew I was feeling while out and about.

Changelings... I didn’t think I’d ever understand them.

Still, after exploring the hallways from the emergency waiting room past the others on the far side of the pink wing of the building, and then making our way through almost every hallway back? I was so tired. The sun hadn’t even started to set, and already I was back in bed with my head resting on my pillow fighting to keep my eyes open.

I looked over at the massive stallion. “Sorry I didn’t have anything interesting to say the whole time,” I muttered, rolling onto my side and wriggling my right foreleg as best I could. It twitched and shifted, moving ever so slightly. Progress was progress.

“Perish the thought,” Lamington answered. He’d taken a seat across from me in the chair against the wall. It was far too small for him, but he didn’t seem to mind that. Instead, he just calmly looked out the window with a smile, occasionally glancing at me whenever I shifted too much. “It feels... nice, to be relieved of my armor, even for a short time.” Together, we both looked at the standing armor on the other end of the room.

It was strange, seeing it there. With the visor off and the light dim, it seemed almost like a ghost. It was a guard, watching over the room and us, silently waiting for emergencies. I knew it was empty, but it almost seemed like we weren’t quite alone. After spending so much time in the empty hallways and lobbies, all the empty rooms still made up as if ponies were to be coming in the next day... it was nice. We weren’t so alone.

“Tell me more about your family?” I asked, still playing my right foreleg around the bed in front of me. Each little motion it worked further and further, with only the slightest of aches nagging at me at the anchor point.

“I feel I’d only be repeating what you know,” he retorted, a playful tone in his voice. “After all, you have met them.”

He was right, much of what we’d talked about regarding his family over the course of the day was just rehashing what I’d already known. Praline was crazy but well-meaning, the twins were young but had such a hopeful future, Drop Scone didn’t treat her position as a ruling force but as the matriarch. However...

“What was your father like?” I asked calmly. I hadn’t known my father very well, given he didn’t... didn’t make it out of the Stable with us. Pressing my face hard against the pillow, enough to smoosh it around my muzzle, I looked up at him past the comfortable fluffy.

“Nothing like me,” the Star Paladin answered, looking back from the window at me. He smiled warmly, stood up, and pulled the chair closer by hooking a hind leg around it and dragging it. Once close enough, he sat back down. His steel eye reflected the light from the ceiling, but it was warm and pleasant, unlike how things had been before.

“What do you mean?”

“As you may have noticed, I tend to do things strictly by the instructions of our order,” he mused. It was definitely something anypony who saw him could gather pretty much instantly. Rather than continue, he brought a hoof up to his chin and stroked along it down his neck a few times. “He had little patience for most rules, unless they pertained to saving lives. He even tried to grow a beard.” Cracking a wide grin, Lamington sat back and shifted a few times in the chair.

I couldn’t help but stare at him in that skin tight suit squirming about.

“Beards are against grooming standards...” he said to my flat stare. Clearing his throat, he continued. “My father’s name was Black Forest.” Dropping his forehoof, he rested it between his hind legs. Dammit. “Elder Dr- Mother always told us, in his younger days, he was quite the rebel. She said his mane was unkempt and wild, bright red like cherries, with a streak through it of near white. Of course, that was before even I was born. When I knew him, it had already started to fade completely. When he settled down, he curled it down his neck like a respectable stallion. His eyes were the same, unlike the majority of the family... his were as red as his mane. His coat was darker than all of ours, a deep brown, almost black.” The stallion chuckled a little. “He was special...”

“Aren’t all fathers?” I asked, tilting my head.

“Yes, Hidden,” Lamington answered, raising a massive hoof and using it to ruffle my mane into a mess. “However, I was referring to his coat. Unlike mine, or yours, he had a blanket.”

“I don’t have a blanket?” I said, twisting my steel forehoof slightly and pointing to the blanket that had gotten bunched up against the railing of the bed.

Lamington chuckled. “His coat, mottling, a pattern that was called a ‘blanket’ by ponies before the War,” he explained. “It appeared rarely in ponies, but he was rare.”

“Was he the Star Paladin before you were?” I asked, already thinking about how the ranks worked. There were a lot of questions I could ask, about how the rank passed or if there could only be one Star Paladin. I’d wait though, it was more fun to watch him laugh and talk casually for once.

“Negative. My father was a Scribe.”

“I thought mares were Scribes and stallions were Knights or Paladins?”

“Prior to my generation, there were enough to do both,” Lamington answered. “He was Head Scribe and chief cook.” Leaning back, he placed a hoof over his belly and patted it a few times. “Marshmallow Sundae learned her craft via my father, before he passed. Her cooking is amazing, his was divine.”

“I hate to press, but... what happened?” I reluctantly asked.

“We aren’t quite sure,” Lamington answered somberly. “He seemed in good spirits one day, lively and cheerful. The next he complained of a headache. Then...” The stallion trailed off and looked away. He stood up and pushed the chair back to where it belonged at the far end of the room. “Then he was gone. There was nothing anypony could do.”

“I’m sorry...”

I shouldn’t have asked.

Lamington waved a hoof dismissively, reaching over and curling under my chin like my sister had many times before. Tilting my head up so I was looking at him, he just smiled at me. “I see us having plenty of time to learn about one another. There will be happy times and sad, whatever it was that killed him, it was quick.” His smile disappeared, slowly... “It was a more gracious death than he would have been given outside the Stable. For that I am happy.”

I could only nod against his hoof. I understood that. There were a lot of ponies I’d seen die, or killed myself. I’d been shot many times and hurt in ways I didn’t even want to remember. Given the choice, a headache and then being dead swiftly and hopefully painlessly, well, I’d take that over being strangled or having my limbs ripped off any day.

“Maybe I should try to grow a beard like him,” Lamington said, more to himself than me.

I sighed again. It was nice getting to know him better. Slumping a little, I let the full weight of my head rest against his hoof and I looked out the window. Past the pale yellow walls, and the little bumper along the wall that jutted out at haunch level, I could see the sky through the wide windows. We still had plenty of time to talk about happier things, after all. The clouds were darkening, but still looked fluff and imposing so high up in the air. But if it rained, we were safe inside.

As if on cue, a droplet hit the window.

“It’s raining,” I whispered.

Lamington said nothing, instead he lowered his hoof until I was resting on the pillow again. Reaching back with a hoof, he grabbed the chair and pulled it closer. As more and more droplets of rain splattered against the window, leaving behind a beautiful pattern of water splashed, he took a seat beside me. “Let’s watch for a while,” he suggested.

Rain had always been something to hide from, just in case it was the kind that had somehow absorbed some of the magical radiation that tainted the land. But we were safe inside, with a sturdy roof over our heads. The Steel Rangers had gone and the locals weren’t interested in the building yet. It was the perfect time to relax.

I lost track of how long we watched the soft rainstorm through the windows. It wasn’t heavy, and there wasn’t much in the way of thunder or lightning to bother us. Just quiet background noise as I worked my hoof around lying next to a stallion that I felt safe beside.

As the rain started to slack off, I heard something. Twisting my ear back, I listened.

A loud clacking, fast and frantic. Hooffalls on tile.

Lifting my head, I turned to face the door. It took a bit of work, but with some forced help from my right elbow, I managed to prop myself up. Another small victory. I looked at the door.

The sound of hooves got closer. Clacking in a canter, it echoed down the hallways. “Hello?” I yelled.

“Hidden, Lamington!” yelled my sister. The sound of her hooves stopped, just outside the door. I could hear her skidding along the checked pink tiles out in the hallway. Her hoof appeared in the doorway, followed by the rest of her body. It connected with the doorframe, stopping her in an instant. Her mane was matted down and her bandana drenched. Had she been outside?

“What’s wro-”

“We have a problem,” she interrupted. “The locals-”

A massive, ear-splitting BOOM cut her off. The explosion shook the building, jostling me painfully around and sending her off her hooves. The three of us exchanged glances.

Flailing my steel forehoof uselessly, I looked over to the wheelchair where it had been forgotten in the corner of the room. I needed to get to it, and we needed to get our stuff. Where was my jacket? Where was my battle saddle? “What’s going on?” I asked, already feeling out of breath.

A klaxon went off, blaring noisily. Lights in the hallway flashed in time with the droning alarm. It cut out a second later, replaced by a soft, but very loud, bing noise. “All personnel, please report to the second floor research lab. This is an emergency,” said Rose’s voice from the ceiling. How’d she do that?

“We need to group up and plan,” Lost said, telling neither of us what was actually going on.

“Allow me to don my power armor, and we’ll meet you there,” Lamington said, already standing up and moving toward the suit.

“Second floor, follow the signs,” Lost ordered. “It’s near the front of the building-”

The blaring klaxon erupted again, louder than before. Lights flashing behind my sister, she just sighed. She tapped the PipBuck on her forehoof.

Lamington didn’t need to be told twice. Before my sister could disappear down the hallway to go meet up with the others, he was already putting on his power armor.

“So much for a nice day,” I muttered to myself...

* * *

“Be smart,” Lost muttered to herself, staring out the window toward the center of The Cinch.

We were all inside the room, waiting to figure out how we’d deal with the locals. Well, all except our mysteriously absent changeling. While I was still stuck in the wheelchair, everypony else was huddled around a large table full to the edges with various clipboards, surgical tools, and a contraption for making drugs that made Xeno’s kit at our home look like a foal’s toy. On the opposite side of the room were several joined desks, jutting out from the wall with three workstations on each side. Papers and old unfinished works piled on the shelves at each station, left to rot when the world ended. Old terminals, shining sickly green glows into the room capped off the ends, with row after row of strange, upward pointing spikes behind them.

Wartime ponies sure decorated strange. Half the spike-things had jars and... what had Lost called them? Beakers? Whatever they were, dozens of them were hanging from the wall upside down. Was this where they made the healing potions?

I shook my head and looked back at the others.

Saccharin was pacing in the corner, going in little circles and talking to herself. Every so often she would stop and stare at the window toward the inside of The Cinch, then start walking again.

Lamington had put his armor back on and was silently watching the rest of us. Tim Tam had a similar reaction, standing like a statue next to the Star Paladin. He’d smiled and waved at me when we entered though, greeting me kindly. The way he talked, it was obvious his concussion had finally started to get better.

I wanted to wave back, but all I could do when Lamington wheeled me in was wiggle my steel forehoof.

Rose stood next to my sister at the window. She’d been busy since we’d seen her in the morning. Much like she promised to do before we arrived, she’d found her armor. She looked like she was wearing a Stable jumpsuit, but instead of the standard blue like Saccharin’s, hers was the same pale yellow as the building we were in. At her elbows, knees, and hocks were thick pads, held to the jumpsuit with thick stitching. Her forehooves were exposed, which made sense because even a unicorn medic pony would need to have their hooves accessible for emergencies. On her hind hooves were dark boots. What made it stand out was the vest she had over it all. It was light pink, almost as light as her coat, and covered in little dark grey, zippered pouches. It must have been bulletproof or something, since she had mentioned she was a field medic. Over her shoulders and haunches were thick, padded plates, which definitely stood out as armor. Finishing off the outfit was a pink and yellow patch on the collar of the vest, in the shape of a butterfly.

At least everything was the same color and style. That must have made her easy to identify as a medic.

“So, what’s going on?” I asked cautiously. I was just glad the klaxon alarm had stopped. It was making my ears ring.

“Locals,” Lost answered, without looking at me. She squinted, tilting her head and looking down to the ground a floor below us. Snapping her head to the side, she waved a hoof. “Brace yourselves, everypony. They’re going to-”

Another explosive BOOM rocked the building. Everything shook, shaking all of us in the room around. My wheelchair twisted around, jerking me side to side. Around us, papers and beakers shook and fell, smashing on the floor and sending glass everywhere.

I shied away, trying in vain to cover my eyes. My left foreleg did nothing, but my right one lifted just enough to be completely useless as a shield. Luckily, I couldn’t feel the small pieces of glass peppering my side. It could have been a lot worse. Twisting to look at my sister, I stared at her.

“Let me repeat. What in the Goddesses’ names is going on?” I shouted.

“They’re trying to blow the doors open,” Rose answered through gritted teeth.

“Oh,” I whispered. Was that all? “Why aren’t we doing anything to stop them?”

“I am,” Lost answered. She shifted her weight on her hooves. After only a moment, she walked down the line of windows, past the far side of the massive table, until she was at the far edge. She stared out the window. “They’re setting up another one.”

“Why isn’t anypony else worried?” I asked. “Saccharin and I seem to be the only ones freaking out.” When I mentioned her name, the Stable mare looked up at me, then hung her head back down and kept pacing. It would be nice to do the same, but all I could do was sit in my chair and itch. Why was I itching all the sudden? Looking down at my foreleg, I tried to scrape it against the chair. It didn’t do much good.

“Worrying won’t help our current situation,” Lamington said plainly, his voice once again peppered by static. “In the event they breach the doorway, we’ll respond appropriately.”

“They won’t get through,” added Rose. “The doors are locked down. A balefire blast couldn’t destroy them, whatever grenades or bombs they’re using won’t even scuff the paint.”

I wanted to put my head between my hooves and squeeze. I needed somepony to rub my temples. This was all incredibly frustration, since I couldn’t move. At least if my legs were working right, I could pace around and try and figure something out. As it was, I was stuck sitting while other ponies acted far too calmly about explosives being set off right under our hooves.

“Okay, I have a lot of questions about that,” I said. I needed to talk, I needed to keep my mind off coming up with stupid scenarios that would never happen. I didn’t want to think about the local ponies getting in and finding us having locked them out. If they were trying to get in here, even I was a thinky enough pony to realize they were wanting medical supplies. So what would they do if they thought we were keeping it from them.

Mom always told us groups weren’t to be trusted. This could be a perfect example of that...

“Well, ask between explosions,” Rose said, flicking an ear. “If you’re going to ask why not, it’s simple. This place, and all the other buildings here, were built to withstand megaspell usage.”

“They’re setting up another,” Lost interrupted, as she leaned forward and raised up onto the tips of her hooves. What was she looking for, anyway?

“Understood,” Lamington said. Walking beside me, he sat down and placed his forehooves on either side of the large wheel of my chair. “I wouldn’t forgive myself, if they made your recovery take any longer.”

“Appreciated,” I said with a smile. Such a good stallion. Turning back to Rose, I rolled a hoo- I wiggled my right forehoof. “Okay, explain? Please.”

Before she could open her mouth, the sky went pure white. The evening’s dull glow of waning sunlight through the cloud cover fell away, replaced by something so bright I had to clamp my eyes shut and pray. Even through my clenched shut eyes, I felt I was being blinded by an intense red glare. My eardrums damn near exploded as the catastrophic noise drowned out even my thoughts. To call it a ‘boom’ wouldn’t do it justice. The ground under me went wild, throwing me from the chair.

I landed hard on my side. Crying out in pain, I couldn’t hear it. All I could hear was ringing. When the ground stop shaking, I rested my head on the cold tile floor and prayed I wasn’t dead. “Ow,” I whimpered...

“Fuck! What was that?” yelled my sister, her voice muffled and quiet behind the ringing. When I cracked an eye open, I saw her sitting on her haunches with both forehooves rubbing at her eyes. Her glasses sat on the floor next to her. “I swear, I’m going to stop trying to do this the nice way and just start shooting!”

“Kindness, Lost,” Rose chided, her voice barely audible even though she was yelling. “They’re not going to get in. Not unless we let them.” She took a deep breath. “Are your eyes okay?” When Lost nodded, she continued. “You should stop staring out the windows, just in case they try that again.”

“I can’t,” my sister answered. “I need to see if I can find Rough Night... or even-” She stopped and looked up at the ceiling. “Whoever the pony translating for the griffon was. Her name was some stupid digging reference. Shovel or Trowel...”

“Spade?” I asked loudly. My hearing was starting to come back... That was it, right? I wasn’t... I couldn’t remember.

“I think so.”

“Listen!” snapped Rose. “All of you, I’m trying to explain why they won’t get in.” She stomped a hoof, turning and glaring around the room at all of us. “It’s simple. Ministry buildings were all given the best of the best in protections just in case. But this building was special, because we tested megaspells here. A megaspell going off on the outside would demolish the building. Crunch, everything collapses inward. But if a megaspell went off inside? Well, pop. Everything would get blown outward.” She paused and took a deep breath. “So, we made sure to reinforce everything magically from whatever type of destruction we could think of, both inside and out. We’re flame retardant, with a high melting point, and reinforced against unicorn magic of all varieties. Whatever crude explosives they have? They’re not going to make a dent.”

“So, we’re safe?” I asked, looking at the others for help. “And can somepony help me up?”

“Unless they can hack the codes,” Rose answered. She turned to Saccharin. “Speaking of which, we’re going to have words about how you got in, after this blows over.”

The cyberpony rolled her eyes and kept pacing. “We don’t have enough for all of them regardless,” she said, ignoring Rose’s threat.

“We’ll figure something out,” Rose answered. Her horn lit up again and she grabbed my shoulders with her magic. Lifting me up, and getting some help from Lamington and Tim Tam, the three of them returned me to the chair.

“We should help them,” I said quietly. “If they promise not to shoot us.” While I meant it, because in the end I didn’t want to be the kind of pony Amble thought I was, or the type of pony Scifresh and Jazz were, I’d said it for selfish reasons. I wanted to have free access to all of The Cinch. I’d heard so much about the place and so much about the ponies who lived and worked here. I wanted to be able to explore and learn and maybe even loot some of the amazing things that must be locked in the buildings all around me. A little sign of good will might just get me that freedom to go wherever I wanted within the safety of the walls.

They’d already proved effective against a full siege by Steel Rangers. This might just be the safest place in the Wasteland.

If that didn’t make for a good place to find treasure, no place was a good place to find treasure.

Even if the local ponies had taken all the good stuff, there’d still be terminals I could get onto and read about the mares who’d run the place in Equestria when it was whole.

Lost put her glasses back on and adjusted them with a hoof. Wiping her face a few times, she frowned. “It’s not shooting I’m worried about, being overrun without guns is just as bad,” Lost said. “Mom always said that groups of ponies were dangerous,” she added under her breath as she walked over to the rest of our group. Glancing over her shoulder at the window, she shook her head. “When we stayed off to the side and hid before, we did it because we could. Nopony was counting on us, and we weren’t hurting anypony in the process...”

That wasn’t always true... We were just foals, but there had always been times when a well placed shot to a bad pony could have saved others. But, we did as we’d been told, we’d hidden or run away. Because other ponies wouldn’t help us, they’d just look out for their own. So, slavers or raiders? If they weren’t after us, we just left. We weren’t the only survivors, not by a long shot. The fact that communities like this popped up were proof of that. But, this was... different. We had something they needed, and by hiding and keeping it from them, we could be directly responsible for other ponies dying.

Of course, we’d killed ponies before. But that was always in self defen- I looked at Rose and slumped in the chair. I wasn’t a good pony, I was just as bad as Amble had said. It wasn’t right of me to try and justify myself as not being terrible because I wanted to help.

“Lamington?” Lost asked quietly.

“Yes, Miss Lost?” he asked, his voice peppered by static. At least the ringing had died down.

“Do you feel like you’re the rule, or the exception?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, I don’t feel qualified to properly answer that,” he said somberly. “I’ve experienced far less of the Wasteland than you and your sister have. I do feel qualified to safely say that my family is unlike Elder Scifresh and her ilk. However, I’ve learned how big this world really is, and we...” He pointed to each of us, then himself. “We are a small group in a large world.”

He was right, but that didn’t make anything better about our situation. Saccharin was watching us from the far end of the room, saying nothing. She didn’t look angry, but she certainly wasn’t jumping to offer help to them. I could understand, though. She’d experienced a lot of the same as Lost and I had. At least, that’s what she implied. Her fear at the locals seemed genuine.

“Yeah...” Lost muttered. There wasn’t much to say about it. Lamington had been right, and she knew it. We were just a few ponies out of... who knew how many. “We have supplies they need, after surviving a siege by Scifresh and Jazz’s ponies. We’ve been there before, with them. There’s common ground.”

“So, are you going to open the doors?” asked Rose.

“You can’t...” interrupted Saccharin. “If they’re desperate, they could charge us and ransack the place. I can’t have them stealing my supplies.” She frowned, furrowing her brows. “Even if they deserve medicine and treatment, my supplies from the Stable are mine. Without them...”

“Just because we let ponies in, doesn’t mean they can have the run of the place,” Rose answered, raising a hoof toward her. “You go do an inventory of your things and start moving whatever you want to keep under lock and key into the recovery ward. Go up to the fourth floor. In the atrium there should be a terminal.” She looked at us, then smiled. “The password is Philomena.”

Without needing to be told again, Saccharin disappeared out the door as fast as her hooves would carry her.

“Can we trust them, Lost?” I asked, twisting my one working forehoof. My legs still itched, but I was trying to ignore it. There were more important things to worry about.

“No, we can’t,” she answered sadly. “But I don’t think even mom would want us to hurt ponies like this.” She flicked an ear. “They’re either out of explosives or they’ve given up. If...” She looked over the rims of her glasses at Rose. “Is there a speaker outside, like the one you used earlier?”

Rose nodded. “In the main office, yes,” she answered.

“Then we do what Fluttershy would’ve wanted. We answer with kindness,” Lost said. “It’s the smart choice anyway. This means we’ll have an in with them, moreso than knowing ponies from Leathers, and moreso than asking Rough Night to put in a good word for us. I just... need to spin this so I look like a savior rather than the one keeping them out.”

Rose smiled at Lost’s answer. “You’re learning,” she said softly.

“Lost, are you sure?” I asked. What if something went wrong? I didn’t want to be the kind of pony that kept others from medical attention, or hurt them on purpose, but... This was a huge risk. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it.

Pursing her lips, she swallowed and nodded. “I think so, yeah,” she finally said. “Lamington and his group of Steel Rangers here have proven that not every group of ponies in the Wasteland is out to get us. Mom... Mom was right to make sure we were safe, but we’re not foals anymore. We can’t just spend our lives hiding. If we just ran away from everything... We all might have died at some point along the way.”

There were far too many times I’d come close to that. If she hadn’t run toward the Steel Rangers at Leathers, I’d have been strangled to death. If we hadn’t made friends with Praline, I’d be crippled. If we hadn’t... “You’re right,” I relented.

“Tim Tam, can you take Hidden back to her room?” Lost asked the freckled stallion. “I’m going to have Rose show me the office, and I want to take Lamington just in case.” She scrunched up her muzzle. “And please find Fine Tune when you finish, he’s been acting strange and I want to keep an eye on him.”

“I can do that,” the Steel Ranger agreed. Hopping up onto his hind legs, he rested his forehooves on the grips of my wheelchair. It only took a second before I was twisted back to face the doorway. When I looked over my shoulder past Tim Tam, the others were already talking about what to do next.

“Just... be safe Lost?” I begged.

* * *

Even though night had fallen on the Wasteland, things were incredibly busy. Ponies moved past the door to my room, my new room, without so much as a care. It made me mad something fierce. Not only had they forced me into a different room from the one I’d gotten comfortable in, but they could all walk and move around without being stuck in a fucking bed motionless!

I took a deep breath.

I was frustrated, but mostly I was scared. Well, it was about half and half. My frustration was at my sister, because whatever she’d done to talk to them and keep the ponies from swarming us to take everything we had was completely lost on me. Not being able to move meant I’d missed the entire thing. Once Lost said something on the speaker system, telling them we were going to let them in if it would be orderly, and they could talk it out first, it went quiet. My best guess was that things were discussed in the flesh rather than through an impersonal speaker. However, I wasn’t there, and I didn’t know. And that just rubbed me the wrong way. It might have just been nosiness, but I wanted to be a part of what was going on.

The other half was fear, because there were a lot of ponies living in The Cinch. Of course, I only got quick glances at them as they walked by, but it’d been a long, long time since everything happened, and they hadn’t stopped milling about. Even after the hours, or however long it’d actually been, my worries hadn’t stopped. Not a single pony poked their head in to see who I was or what I was in the recovery room for, but it didn’t keep me from being terrified that one of them would, and that they might take advantage of my inability to move.

Frustrated, I stared down at the Supernaturals book I’d been trying to make myself read. There was something in the chapter about a cure for poison joke. Not that that fucking mattered since it didn’t seem to exist anymore. All we had was the murderous killing joke that-

Grabbing the book in my teeth, I twisted and hurled it across the room.

“Ow!” I yelped, cursing under my breath and pressing my head into the mattress under me. The Med-X I’d been given ages ago had long since worn off, and anything more than a twitch made my entire body hurt. I could feel the new ribbony muscles moving, all a part of a much larger system. I couldn’t just move my head, because when I did I shifted my hips and that pulled at my hind legs which made me tense up and then my everything started to hurt.

I bit at my sheets in frustration.

Now I didn’t even have a book to keep me distracted.

And everything still itched. Why were parts of my body I otherwise couldn’t even feel itching? They were voids before, where sitting in a chair felt like I was floating part way because synthetic hide didn’t have... nerves or... whatever I needed to do that whole ‘feel’ thing, yet now they could itch? It made no sense. I just groaned and forced myself onto my side with the help of what little movement I could muscle from my right foreleg.

At least that one was listening to me, even if barely.

Actually, the left was starting to move too. So long as I tried to do the same thing for both of them, I could shift both slightly. It hurt like a buck to the head from a Goddess, but it was something.

“Okay,” I whispered to myself, taking a deep breath. “Okay... It was a good day, and nopony is here to hurt me. Lost, or Rose, or Saccharin, or somepony just needs to come give me some kind of update and everything will be okay.” That’s all I wanted, to be a part of the group still. I felt so disconnected from everypony. Being left out was what made everything worse.

“Wait a minute, I’m an earth pony,” I told myself. “Why am I letting something like this stop me...” Looking down at my steel forehoof, I furrowed my brows. After a deep breath, I twisted it. Pain lanced up around the joint where it was connected, and I could feel a tugging in my shoulder and chest. I sucked air through my teeth and did the same with the opposite hoof. “Fuck!” It hurt a lot worse, but I kept it up. Stubbornly, I pushed my right foreleg forward and grabbed onto the edge of the bed.

Just like before, I pulled.

Unlike the last time, I made myself slide forward.

I could feel myself smiling. It was a start, and that’s all I needed. I did the same with my left foreleg. It was slower, and noticeably weaker, but it worked. Groaning in agony, with a fire burning at my shoulder and chest, I pulled. Once I’d gotten both sides to roughly the same position, I leaned my head back and pulled as hard as I could. Ignoring the burning feeling in my body, the tightening of skin and synthetic hide against me from the alien bulging of muscles that weren’t natural, I made it to the edge of the bed.

My hind legs sprawled out behind me limply, with my hooves twitching slightly. I’d made it to the edge of the bed though, where I needed to be.

The wheelchair they’d used to push me around earlier in the day, and to relocate me, was just next to the bed. Stretching my right foreleg out awkwardly, I maneuvered my steel forehoof toward it. Movement was... difficult, to say the least. Even when it wasn’t incredibly painful from tearing against parts of my body that were still healing back together, well, there wasn’t much control. My hoof wobbled side to side and up and down, seemingly aimless as it snaked forward until I could grab metal. Holding something in my fetlock helped. Using it as an anchor, and pulling with both forehooves, I managed to work myself to the side where I could slip down into it.

Using my back and hips more than my legs, I scooted and shimmied myself into the-

“Eep!” I squealed, hitting the tipping point and falling off the mattress and into the chair. Landing with a thud, I tensed up. “Owowow.... ow...” Everything hurt, and already tears were welling up in the corners of my eyes.

“Fuck.... you...” I whispered. “Earth pony stubbornness... beats...” Looking around a few times, trying to focus on anything but the pain, I glanced at the door.

A deep blue coated unicorn stared at me.

“Earth pony...” I finished. This was embarrassing...

The stallion looked me up and down once then closed his eyes slowly, and just shook his head. Running a forehoof through his much lighter blue mane, he walked into the room and stood in front of me. Without a word, his horn lit up, glowing the same bright red as his eyes. A hazy telekinetic grasp wrapped around my hind legs and they were gently pulled into a proper sitting position in the chair. Opening his eyes back up, he smiled at me.

“Long time no see,” he whispered quietly. The angry stallion I’d known... what felt like forever ago, wasn’t here. This time, he seemed resigned and distant. The rage he’d had when his... lover, friend? Special somepony? When he’d died. It was gone, and instead, I felt like I was looking at an empty pony.

“Hi Rough Night,” I whispered back. Blushing slightly at being caught being stupidly stubborn and probably hurting myself, I thanked the Goddesses it was him who spotted me and not Lost or Rose. They’d have given me a talking to, or at least teased me. Stupid unicorn cheater magic...

Rough Night cleared his throat and shuffled a hoof against the tiled floor. “I managed to warn the griffon guards...” he muttered, turning away from me. “Told them what I’d overheard. Only two others had died from the radiation, so the rest got out safely.”

I only nodded, looking at his face in the dark reflection of the window he was facing. “It’s... good to see you,” I said, awkwardly. Lifting a hoof to- I started to lift a hoof, but the stubbornness and strength I had seemed to disappear. Instead, I sat there in the wheelchair just watching him.

“You look like you’ve walked through Tartarus and back,” he said, looking at me through the reflection.

“It’s been a rough few weeks, yeah,” I agreed. “Did some stupid shit, got hurt a lot... Killed a massive metal monster though.” I smiled a bit at that memory. It may have cost me a hoof, but it was something clearly good and made the wasteland just a little safer. Clear victories like that were few and far between.

“A metal monster?” the stallion asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It was a horrible thing, made of wires and saw blades...” I shuddered picturing it, then winced in pain. Ugh, even shuddering hurt. “Apparently, Scifresh's Steel Rangers had been fighting it to a stand still for ages, but it wasn't a match to my sister and me.” At least feeling proud didn't hurt, as long as it didn't involve moving.

“And then the Steel Rangers attacked here...” Rough sighed, looking through the dark window.

My spirits sank again. It was true, even after killing a monster, there are always other terrible things in the wasteland... Swallowing, I tried changing the subject. “What, umm, what happened with the others, from the mine?”

He turned around and took a seat in the chair, an identical one like in the previous room, and looked at me. Raising his hooves, he pointed over his shoulder, roughly in the direction of Leathers.

“We’d been that way looking for some supplies, before the Rangers got us,” he explained. “We have a lot here, but every so often we go out to find things that aren’t common in these parts.” His voice was quiet and soft as he talked, it was... strange. Something about him just seemed so distant. Why did he seem so detached. He’d been back with his kind, with his ‘Queen’ and all his friends, so... Why’d it feel like he’d been locked in the same room Amble had put me in all alone?

I realized I hadn’t been listening, and twisted my ears forward to pay attention.

“...but not everypony there was originally a part of my group,” he continued. “After what happened though, I couldn’t leave them there.” He looked down at the tiled floor, his eyes trailing back and forth diagonally like he was following one of the two colors but not the other. “Kyrie, the leader of the griffon guards? I told her what Jazz had said, but I think she knew already. She didn’t care about me at that point, or keeping up ‘guarding’ us.” He shrugged. “We went and told our respective groups what was going on. Her Talons popped a few Steel Rangers in the head, and said we were free to go. They didn’t care.”

“But how’d you get back out?” I asked. “There was fighting through the way to the lift, and the tunnels weren’t exactly safe to take ponies through.” Something behind him moved, outside, but it was too dark to see what it was.

He rolled a forehoof a few times. “Luck,” he finally answered. “The griffons weren’t happy at hearing what I had to say, and with their attention turned on the Steel Rangers, Spade and I were able to herd everypony who was still strong enough to move away. We sort of... hid. When it sounded safe enough, we made a break for it.”

I nodded. I’d been inside the whole time, which meant we-

“The sound of most of the building collapsing gave us the chance to make our move,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “Whoever was throwing around explosives, it hid the noise of the lift and nopony even saw us. With the two groups of Steel Rangers too busy fighting one another, we fled. Only one griffon was brave enough to stick around and keep an eye out.”

That explained a lot... I’d tried to escape and get help near the lift, but nopony was there when I made my way outside. Only the one... I smirked. Well, at least I knew he wasn’t lying.

“Spade led the group back, with me watching the rear,” he said with a shrug. “I figured... if anypony would get picked off at the back... it was best if it was me...”

“Because of-”

“Yes,” he interrupted. “Because of... him.” The stallion cleared his throat, looking back up at me. “We... I.” He took a deep breath. “I couldn’t go back for him. They wouldn’t let me.”

Eyes widening, I stared at him. That meant Sweet Dreams was still in the tunnel, all alone. Abandoned like...

Like mom.

Tears burned at my eyes, and I swallowed painfully. The aching pain in my limbs felt so distant, everything forgotten at the ice cold stab to my heart. I knew how he felt all too well...

“You don’t have to continue,” I whispered, slumping in the wheelchair and looking away.

Rough Night shook his head. “It was just, too dangerous,” he answered. “There were other ponies we had to take care of, ones who still had a chance.” Raising a hoof, he held it in front of his mouth for a moment, then wiped it across his muzzle. Propping his chin atop it, he looked at me intently. “I haven’t had the willpower to go back yet, even now that we’re all feeling much better. I don’t think I could ask anypony here to abandon their partners to go find mine again.”

“I’m sorry Rough,” I muttered. “I’ve been there, myself. Lost and my... our mother, we-” Blinking, and coughing slightly, I just nodded. “Same thing.”

He returned the nod, but said nothing.

Together we sat in silence.

After a long while, staring past him at the darkness outside. “So, when you got back... your Queen?” I asked, just wanting to break the silence.

“She was happy to have us back,” he answered, standing up and walking over to me. “She’ll want to meet you and your friends.” A red glow, his magic, lit up behind me. The wheelchair started to move forward as he pushed me toward the window. When I was close enough to see out it, at the interior of The Cinch below, he stopped and walked to stand next to me. Pointing at the M.A.S. building across the opening below, he leaned down next to me. “She’s in the lobby there. Tomorrow, we’ll have to tell her we’ve finally gotten into the hospital.”

“So, what’s she like?” I asked. “Your Queen, that is.”

“You’ll see when you meet her, but... she’s not happy with me,” he answered. “Losing my partner was a serious problem.”

That seemed, weird. A pony dying was always a terrible thing unless they were the type of pony Amble was... But Sweet Dreams, the ruddy little earth pony? He wasn’t anything like Amble. He’d just been a victim of the Wasteland and its lack of mercy. So, why blame the dark blue stallion standing next to me? I didn’t want to ask. I’d get an answer whenever we met her...

“Why are you in a wheelchair?” he asked, placing a hoof on the grip behind me and twisting the chair gently.

Feeling my stomach twist around inside me, I squirmed and gasped. “Please stop!” I snapped, sheepishly biting at my lip as soon as the words passed it. “Sorry, it just hurts. I might have paralyzed myself and needed some surgery. I’m in recovery.”

“That explains why you’re in a hospital, then...” he mused. “It was nice of your sister to let us in... This place had been on lockdown for generations.” He shrugged. “At least that’s what I heard when Sweet Dreams and I joined...” Shaking his head, he released his magical grip on my chair and stepped forward to stand next to me again. “A lot of ponies, a lot of my friends, were hurt in the siege. We needed the help.”

“Your friends aren’t going to hurt my sister, my friends, or me... are they?”

“We’re not that desperate,” he chided. “Love has always been a tenant of this community, it’s why we’ve lasted for so long.” Shrugging, he smiled for the first time since I’d seen him in the doorway. “And the lack of radiation here.”

Lack of radiation? That was... weird. I was almost positive that The Cinch, the Ministry Buildings, had been the target in Blackhoof. So the entire complex should have been especially deadly from magical radiation. The Cinch just kept getting weirder...

My legs started to itch again. Why were they so fucking itchy?

To distract myself, since I couldn’t scratch it anyway, I looked out the window at the ground below. Directly opposite us was the M.A.S. building, which had several more windows and massive doors in the front of it. Even in the dark of the night, I could make out almost every detail, thanks to unicorns standing at the doorways and lighting things up with their horns. Several lanterns dotted the ground between the buildings, all surrounding a massive statue in the center. At one time it must have been a pony, but thanks to two centuries of wear and tear, and the end of the world, all that was left was what looked like legs.

Between the six buildings, around the lanterns that lit up the area, and surrounded by the wall, were dozens of tents. There were all sizes of them, and all colors, most of them looking mismatches and made from whatever the Wasteland had to offer. They covered the majority of the space below, with small gaps that made up roads zig-zagging between them. One... corner, of the circle settlement was tentless, but I couldn’t tell why because no lanterns lit up that area.

The Ministry Buildings all looked as I expected from the backs. The massive black monolith building of the Ministry of Awesome was featureless on every side. The factory-looking M.W.T. building just looked more like a factory, with huge doors that were open and a few ponies milling in and out of them. The spiral-designed M.O.I. building looked identical to what I’d seen before, with whatever door it had to get inside blending in perfectly. What stood out the most was the sixth building....

The strange pink thing I’d seen before we got inside the hospital was actually a pony’s head. It looked like the mare in the posters I’d seen before, but without the white stripes in her mane. The huge unblinking eyes and too-big smile on her face was unbelievably creepy in the dull light from the lanterns below. It sent a shiver up my spine, which made everything tense up and hurt again.

Behind that was... a park? I couldn’t really tell in the darkness. No lights, no laterns, nothing... It was just pitch black behind the fence that blocked it off from the main settlement within the walls.

I twisted and looked at Rough Night.

“Home sweet...” he started, but stopped before finishing the phrase. “Welcome to The Cinch, oldest settlement in Blackhoof, safest place in the city to be. We’ll do our best to make sure everypony accommodates your... current situation.” Clearing his throat, he backed away toward the door. “I’m going to get the doctor to help you back into the bed. You should get some sleep. Meeting the Queen will be important, tomorrow.”

“Uh huh...”

“It was good to see you again, Hidden...”

* * *

Panting and heaving, I hung my head. My everything burned more than I could have ever imagined. Even the parts of me that didn’t really have any feeling were hurting. I didn’t know whether it was my mind playing terribly mean tricks on me, or if I’d hurt myself so bad that the pain was somehow managing to go beyond the physical form. Whatever it was, I almost regretted it.

However, getting into the stupid wheelchair all by myself was enough to make it be only ‘almost.’

I stared out the window at the dim light of the morning, with what little managed to get through the cloud cover lighting the room up just enough that I could see. After being helped back into the bed for a nightly checkup by Saccharin, I’d quickly passed out. It’d been a nice talk with Rough Night, but being up just took so much out of me. For some reason, I just felt tired...

This morning though, I’d managed to get into the chair entirely by myself. While my hind legs weren’t cooperating completely, I had just enough movement in them when wriggling my hooves and hocks together in unison that I managed to get into a good sitting position that was mostly comfortable. Aside from the burning of everything under my skin pressing against both natural and synthetic hide, it was rather nice.

I looked down at my hind hooves, admiring the fact that there weren’t any shackles wrapped around them. A small smile crossed my lips. At some point I’d need to ask Saccharin or Lost or whomever had them to give them back so I could do... something? They needed a proper send off, being melted down into bullets to put into Amble’s head, or maybe turned into a special hammer to break off Sunbright’s horn completely.

Pushing thoughts of revenge from my mind, I leaned back in the wheelchair and focused on breathing. The pain was slowly fading, so long as I didn’t move, and if I kept my breaths shallow it wasn’t too much to bear. Now I just needed to figure out how to move.

Forcing my forehooves up, I patted them against the hoofrest and the wheel. Every other time I’d gone somewhere, somepony else had been pushing me. How was I supposed to move the damn thing myself? I couldn’t wrap my hooves around anything to push, and I didn’t have any cheater magic to force the wheels forward so.

Eyes going wide, I groaned. “Fuck!” I snapped. I was still stuck, just now I was stuck in a chair instead of a bed. I couldn’t even get across the room to get the book I’d thrown before. What good was a wheelchair if I couldn’t wheel myself places? “Damn unicorns and their cheater magic. If I had a horn like mom and Lost and-”

“If you had a horn, Hidden, I don’t think we’d be in this situation in the first place,” chided my sister. She walked into the room and stopped once she was beside me. With a little smile on her lips, she nuzzled my cheek. “Is this what you’ve been up to this whole time? You know if you keep this up you’re just going to be stuck on bedrest for even longer.”

Turning to look at my sister, and nuzzling her cheek back, I noticed she had her armor on under her saddle bags. Leaning away, I looked her up and down. It was hard to recognize it as the same metal armor that we’d been gifted by the Steel Rangers back when we first left Stable Sixty. The metal plates, that had once been held together with mesh and straps, were now attached directly to a purple leather jacket with a zipper running up the inside of her foreleg. The plates over her back and chest were now attached at her sides and shoulders by thicker leather straps and steel buckles. Altogether, it looked good. It matched her mane and without the gaps between the different pieces, it would protect her better too.

“She’s right,” added Saccharin, interrupting my thoughts. She sounded quiet, as if she were far away, but I couldn’t see her from where I was facing the window. Scanning the reflection, I found her standing just outside the doorway with a clipboard in that weird arm-thing of hers. It still looked incredibly freaky, but she’d managed to alter her Stable jumpsuit in such a way that I couldn’t see the big... hole... in her body where it popped out of. Sliding the clipboard back into a slot against the door, she trotted in. “Thanks to regular checkups, you’ve been recovering swiftly, but too much too fast will mean you’re not going to do well in the long run. This isn’t something you can force.”

“I don’t care,” I whined, nickering in frustration. “I hate being stuck like this.” I flailed my forehooves aimlessly, weakly, in front of me. It hurt, forcing everything, and made the itching come back, but I didn’t care. I was going to use and abuse what little range of motion I had.

“Well, look,” Lost interrupted before I could whine any further. “If you behave, I’ll show you something I’ve been working on...” She smiled, patting her saddlebags with a hoof.

I’d been so focused on complaining and feeling sorry and annoyed at myself that I hadn’t even seen them. Flicking an ear and looking over at her, I smirked. “Is it the new armor?” I asked.

When I turned to my sister, Saccharin walked over to my other side. From the pockets of her Stable jumpsuit she pulled some medical tool that I didn’t remember the name of, and put it into her ear. Holding one end with a hoof, she pressed it to my side. “Breath deep while you two chat,” she instructed, wheezing. “Do it as naturally as you can.”

I nodded.

“Well, since we’ve been stuck here so long, and I’ve had too much time to think... I figured it was time to for a little upgrade,” Lost said with a smirk. “I found some old clothes in the lost and found downstairs, and borrowed a suture needle, some thread, and some other tools.” Her horn lit up a bright blue, and the flap of her saddlebags lifted. “Needless to say I’ve been busy.”

“So, you’ve spent the time I was stuck here making yourself new armor?” I asked, sulking a little and trying my best to not sound hurt. As I talked, I made sure to focus on my breathing as Saccharin moved around the strange feeling tool on my back and chest. “It looks good on you.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but that’s not the only thing I’ve been keeping busy with.” Horn glowing, pulled a tattered brown jacket, covered in different colored patches from her saddlebags. My jacket, recognizable the instant I saw it. “I fixed all the holes, and I used your armor to reinforced it from the inside.

Staring at it, I wiggled my forehooves toward her as best I could to grab at it. “Thanks Lost...” I whispered. “But, why the inside?” I asked, breathing deeply.

“Okay, your lungs are good,” Saccharin interrupted. “I’m going to check the anchors now. This might hurt.”

“I figured it was better if ponies don’t see that you-”

“Ow! OW!” I yelped, cutting my sister off.

“-have armor on,” she finished, deadpan. “Are you okay?”

Sheepishly, I looked at the pale yellow earth pony mare. She’d tugged on my hind legs, both at the same time, and it hurt so bad. I wanted to cry over the pain, but blinked away the tears. Instead I whimpered and nodded. “I’m okay. Armor under is good...” I moaned, groaning halfway through the pitiful noise.

“Sorry,” Saccharin muttered. “I had to test. Just forelegs now and then I’m done.”

Lost lowered the jacket down across my hind legs, covering where Saccharin had tugged. Out of sight, out of mind... “I figured this way we’d attract less unwanted attention. If we look like we have nothing to take, fewer ponies are going to risk starting a fight. Nothing to gain means it’s not worth potentially dying, right?” she answered. “Plus this keeps us from having to strip down whenever we enter a town.”

“Thanks Lost, I lo-” I started, only to be interrupted by a full body shiver against my will. My forelegs pulled back reflexively as Saccharin fiddled with them. I leaned to the side, away from her, as she pressed her hooves into my shoulders and chest, kneading around at the parts where the anchors met flesh. “Love it.”

“I’m worried there’s deterioration of your natural muscles, is all,” Saccharin informed us. “I’m just trying to be thorough.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine...” I reassured her. “It just hurts...”

“It won’t be like that forever, Hidden,” Lost said, resting a hoof on my shoulder. “Speaking of, I’ve had a lot of time to talk with Rose about being back at the Ministries, and I’ve had a lot of time to think...” she said, lowering her hoof and looking away from me. “Once we’re done here and you’re healed, I think we need to sit down and have a serious discussion about our futures.” She sounded uneasy, unsure of herself.

I couldn’t blame her... She’d always had me to worry about, and now she had a whole little group to think of. Xeno would be coming back soon, and Fine Tune was still... somewhere in the hospital. Rose, too? Would she come with us or was this where we parted ways? She might run off to find the original Rose, and if we didn’t go with her, that might mean we’d never see her again. The Steel Rangers were up in the air, too. So to speak. Did Lamington still want to take a look at the M.W.T. building? And if he found something that made him want to move his family here...

I’d been so preoccupied with being frustrated, I hadn’t even started to look at the big picture.

The sound of hooffalls brought me from my thoughts. The others noticed too, and together, the three of us looked toward the door.

“Lost Art?” called a mare’s voice. “Hidden Fortune?” The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. When an olive-colored mare walked past the doorway and stopped to stare back at us, it clicked. Spade, the mare who’d been taking orders from the difficult-to-understand griffon in the mines. She squinted, looking us over. “You two. Come with me.”

“We’re busy,” I said, flatly denying her request.

“The Queen wants to see you. Now.”

Curt as always, she snapped her tail behind her and stomped a hoof. The glare she shot at us left no doubt in my mind that she wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer.

“What?” Lost asked, seemingly stumped.

“The Queen wants to see you,” Spade repeated. “Best not keep her waiting. Come with me, both of you.” She stomped a hoof. “Now.” Motioning for us to follow with a wave of her head, she looked at Saccharin. “You stay here to keep looking after our ponies. We’ll bring them back after.”

Saccharin backpedaled and stood behind Lost and me. Crouching and shivering, she looked at me. “You’re well enough for a trip across the courtyard. Just don’t overexert yourself,” she said quietly, a high pitched whine erupting from her nose as she talked. Eyes widening, she dug out a syringe of Med-X from her jumpsuit with the horrifying arm thing. Offering it to my sister, she nodded. “I don’t trust the locals, even if they haven’t done anything yet. I’m good to stay here.” She nodded repeatedly, waving a hoof for us to go.

Lost rolled her eyes, while her horn began to glow again. Adjusting my jacket across my hind legs, and folding my forelegs over it, she spun the wheelchair around and pushed it toward the door. “We’ll make this quick,” she said, sounding agitated.

Spade said nothing once we exited the room into the hallway, and we followed her in silence. Whatever Lost wanted to talk about would have to wait. Spade led us down the hall and to the elevator. The three of us piled into it, and the button was pressed to take us to the ground level. Once we were there, and the door had opened, she continued to lead my sister and me to the main entrance that faced the courtyard of The Cinch.

I’d expected to see Fine Tune sitting at the windows next to the main doors, staring out them with his hoof through the blinds holding them open so he could see. Even though I’d seen him there ever since we arrived in the hospital, he was suspiciously absent. Granted, he could have just transformed into somepony else and managed to mingle... Maybe he got hungry and went off to suck some happiness out of the locals?

At ground level, the place looked much the same. The lanterns still glowed in the dim light of the morning, and very few ponies were up and walking about. Most seemed preoccupied with their routines, though a few would look at us as we passed. They all smiled, looking so content with their lives and their mornings. It was nice, if a little weird for the Wasteland.

The tents hid all sorts of things underneath, from stands with symbols and pictures showing what was being sold, to simple beds and resting areas. There were counters, cooking areas, everything I could think that a town might need. Somepony was cooking breakfast, and it smelled delicious. Like... something spicy that I couldn’t quite place. Sweet, with just a bit of bitter kick over it.

I inhaled sharply, taking it in.

The air was warm, and not just from the lanterns. It wasn’t hot by any means, but considering even in the summer I was used to wind that cut through the ruins of old Equestria and often times was just enough to make a pony shiver, this was nice. Was it the walls of town that kept it out, and instead everything actually had the chance to get comfortable? My mane seemed to cling to my forehead, which started to sweat from the warmth. It made me breathe heavily, and my sister looked to be taking the heat just as well.

She smiled at me, before furrowing her brows and looking at the back of Spade’s head.

A deep brown earth pony stallion trotted over from one of the tents, one surrounded by massive bookshelves covered in rotting books. He stopped next to Spade and kissed her on the cheek. “Morning Love,” he cooed, smiling and staring at her with half-lidded eyes. “Busy morning?”

“Seeing The Queen,” she answered, raising a hoof and brushing it against his cheek.

In an instant, his expression changed. He nodded, closing his eyes. “Give Her my best,” he muttered, eyes darting toward my sister, then me. Taking us both in, he looked back to the mare and kissed her cheek.

She kissed him back, the corner of her mouth curling into the faintest hint of a smile. “I will,” she said, before walking past him.

We passed by several tents, and the further toward the M.A.S. building we got, the warmer it seemed to get. The smell in the air was stronger, meaning we had to be getting closer to whoever was cooking. In front of us was the massive skyscraper, with actual doors to go through now that we were facing the front. It towered above us, but I was too busy focusing on the three sets of doors, tinted so dark I couldn’t see through them, before us. They were up a short flight of stairs, only a few steps that led up to a little flat platform, which was flanked on either side by benches, each angled to guide us to the entrance.

Spade walked up the steps and across the platform, her hooves clicking and clacking against it with each step she took. Turning back to look at us, she scowled. “Queen,” she yelled, raising her hoof and clanking it hard against the glass door. “Your visitors have arrived.”

Lost and I shared an uneasy glance back and forth, before we both turned to the massive set of darkened doors.

A sickeningly red glow enveloped the grip of the door. It looked like no magic I’d ever seen before. Even from the bottom of the few stairs I could see that it didn’t hold in a haze like my sister’s or any other unicorn’s telekinesis. Instead it seemed to shift about, wavering and fading almost like it was about to be blown away. The door pushed open, and a tall mare with an incredibly long horn stepped out into the light. She squinted, eyelids flickering in the dim light.

Her dark green skin barely clung to her body, gnarled and twisted. What was left of her prismatic mane looked tattered and unkempt, as if she’d just given up on it. Her horn was warped, angling to one side slightly. The swirled design I’d seen on every other unicorn had few indents left intact, as if it’d been worn smooth through the centuries since the world ended. Her eyes were fogged over, hazy and reflecting the light that broke through the clouds. A dull glow poured from her mouth, reminding me all too much of one horrible looking mare I’d met before. Dry husks of hooves scraped across the platform, and the wispy red glow of her magic disappeared, letting the door slam shut behind her. She took a few shambling steps forward, unfocused eyes slowly finding my sister and me and looking directly at us. Her lips twisted into a smile.

Two massive wings flared out to her sides, each only having a hoofful of feathers remaining. She took a deep breath. Her smile disappeared. Letting her wings drop and hang loosely, framing her, she uttered something with a raspy voice, too deep to make out. Dryly she rolled her jaw back and forth, licking a rotten tongue past her few remaining teeth.

“So,” the ghoul alicorn rasped hoarsely. “I heard through the grapevine you helped my dear subjects escape our Steel Ranger ‘friends’ at that factory...”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Footnote: Level Progress 33%

“So, did you hear, something horribly distracting will show up soon.”
“Distracting? For us, this whole adventure has turned into a distraction.”
“We have our reasons for going where we go and you know it!”
“A game is coming out, our story might slip by the wayside.”
“What!”
“No!”
“Crii!”
“I need to know how it ends!”
“You’ve waited this long, and there’s still... wait, hold on. There’s how many chapters left?!”

Fallout Equestria: Treasure Hunting

by Hnetu

Chapter 1: Following Hearsay

Chapter 2: Lessons Learned

Chapter 3: How The Wasteland Works

Chapter 4: Monster

Chapter 5: The Buried Past

Chapter 6: Dissimilar Metals

Chapter 7: Losing Something Special

Chapter 8: What Makes Ponies Tick

Chapter 9: Sanctuary

Chapter 10: Lead A Pony To Water

Chapter 11: Make Her Drink

Chapter 12: The Way Back

Chapter 13: Necessary Actions

Chapter 14: Choices

Chapter 15: A Look In The Mirror

Chapter 16: Group Dynamics

Chapter 17: There's No Place...

Chapter 18: What Lies Beyond

Chapter 19: The Cost of Living

Chapter 20: Chasing After

Chapter 21: What's Truly Precious

Chapter 22: Treasures Not Gold

Chapter 23: Absence Makes The...

Chapter 24: Consequences

Chapter 25: Where Ministry Mares Walked

Chapter 26: The Best Treatment