Leaving the stable.

Fallout Equestria: Cloppenhagen chronicles.

My little pony: Friendship is magic is Copyrighted by their respectable owners, and is used without permission. The Fallout: Equestria universe belongs to Kkat. I only own the OCs and original locations used in this story; if you want to use them, send me a message, and we can talk about it.

Chapter 1: Leaving the stable.

I yawned loudly as I leaned back in my chair at the clinic reception desk; it was the last few minutes of my shift and I was looking forward to getting out of there so I could get home and relax. I looked at myself in the mirror; I was a bleach white earth pony, who was wearing a white nurse’s uniform with a nametag that said ‘Stable 169 nurse: Amora Rosa’; I had a scarlet mane that was hanging down in front of one of my light blue eyes.

I was about to reach under the table to grab a romance novel I read when there wasn’t anything to do, when the terminal beeped, signaling an incoming call, I hit the button and spoke into the microphone “Welcome to the stable 169 clinic, this is nurse Amora Rosa speaking, what can I help you with.”

“Hello Amora, this is the Overmare, and as for how you can help me I wish to talk to you.” A soft, friendly voice sounded from the speakers.

“Oh, hello Mrs. Overmare, what do you wish to talk to me about?” I asked, feeling a little nervous that I unintentionally had done something wrong, but I quickly shook the thought out of my head, no need to be nervous if there was nothing to be nervous about.

“Do you remember a month ago, when you made an application for an adventurer license?” The Overmare asked.

“Yes.” I said excitedly. In the months after the year had started, me and my marefriend Sky Haze had become tired of our monotone life in the stable, and so we had decided to do what many of our fellow young ponies did; apply for an adventurer license that allowed them to come and leave the stable as they wanted, unlike everypony else, who had to fill out forms days in advance to go on a trip outside, while they explored the wasteland to their heart’s content, and hopefully bring home treasures beyond their wildest fantasies.

“Well, your application has been granted, all you have to is come by and sign it.” The Overmare said, sounding happy on my behalf.

“Really, that’s wonderful; I’ll come by as soon as I’m off work.” I said excitedly. Now I couldn’t wait for my shift to end.

“Yeah, about that…” The Overmare’s voice sounded a little embarrassed “Is there any chance you can come over any sooner?”.

I winced “I’m afraid I can’t do that; Doc has asked me not to get early off work, since I’ve been doing it a bit much lately.” I said and scratched the back of my head. Doctor Blazecut was one of the friendliest ponies in Equestria, most of the time anyway; but he was also very stern when it came to work hours, and he didn’t like it when his associates slacked off. I had been slacking off quite a bit in the months after I had placed the application for the adventurer’s license, and the Doc and given me a powerful reprimand. I had felt really bad after said reprimand and decided to give it my very best until the application was either approved of declined.

The Overmare sighed and said “I understand. Anyway, once you get off from work, could you bring your tools over, I accidentally locked myself out of the office when I went to get lunch; I’m calling you from the security office.”.

“Sure, I will.” I said before disconnecting the call. I waited the last couple of minutes, and went to the locker rooms to change into the dress I had been wearing when I arrived that morning. I took a moment before sliding into the plain, red dress to look myself in the locker room’s large mirror wall, just admiring my body, smiling as my eyes reached my cutie mark, which was a red rose, growing around a red cross.

It had appeared during my fifth school year. It was after the end of the day’s classes; two of my classmates had started fighting in the atrium, and to say the least, it ended pretty badly, one of them ended up with a bloody nose and open wounds on his body and face; the other lost a few teeth and also had a lot of wounds on his body. I don’t really know why I did it, but as the fight was going on, I rushed into the clinic and asked for help, and helped the medics out with treating my classmates, and it turned out I was actually pretty good at it; when I got home, both me and my parents were surprised to find that it had appeared, and once I left school, I became a nurse.

I put on my dress and my saddlebags, which held some bits and caps, along a box of bobby pins, a screwdriver and my trusty baton, which I always had with me, just in case. Stable 169 wasn’t normally a violent place but from time to time, there would come a few violent types who wanted to get in a fight no matter what, and thus every adult in 169 carried some sort of melee weapon with them for protection. I snug past the Doc’s office, so I wouldn’t disturb him, and went to the entrance terminal and punched out, before I headed for the Overmare’s office.

“Ah Amora, good that you came so quickly.” The Overmare said with a relieved sigh when I arrived at her office. She was an indigo unicorn with a navy blue mane, and a cutie mark with a scroll, a quill and a stack of bits; she was wearing a brown business suit and a pair of large, round glasses sat on her nose.

“Thank you Overmare, I hope you haven’t waited too long.” I said with a smile, I felt exited to get my license, but first we had a little problem that was keeping me from getting it.

“Of course not darling, I’m just glad you came as quickly as you did.” The Overmare said with a smile.

I couldn’t help giggling a little at what Overmare said, but I quickly cleaned my throat and said “Well, let’s take a look at that lock, shall we.” I sat down my saddlebags, and pulled out my screwdriver and a bobby pin, and started working on the lock.

The Overmare looked at me weirdly and asked “What’s with the giggling?”.

I pulled away from my lock picking and said with a slight smile “I was just thinking about what Sky would say to what you said before.”.

“And what would that would be?” The Overmare asked, motioning for me to elaborate.

“She would probably say something about how fast she could make me ‘come’, so to speak.” I said with a grin and went back to work.

The Overmare snickered lightly at the comment and said “She’s such a naughty little thing, isn’t she.”.

I giggled slightly and finally unlocked the door; I put my tools back in the saddlebag and said “Well that’s why I love her as much as I do.” I felt my cheeks flush a bit as I talked.

The Overmare nodded understandingly, I knew from the newspaper that the Overmare had a husband that she loved more than everything in the world “That’s very sweet. Now, let’s go and fill out the last of your license, so you can go and get ready to leave as I’m sure you want to.” She said and pushed the door open, so we could get into the office. It was a simple matter of filling out the license, I just had to fill out my name and any companions I wished to take with me; so I jutted my own and Skys name down on the license, and after having it placed in a plastic holder, from which it could be taken out if more names were to be added later on, I said my goodbyes to the Overmare and headed to the cantina for our lunch and dinner.

“Sky I’m home!” I called out happily as I entered our apartment.

“In here!” The voice of my marefriend called out from her work room; it was actually a second bedroom that we had stripped the bed and dresser out of, so we could sleep in the same bedroom, and give Sky a place to make her sculptures, we had even gotten some of the technicians to make the door wider and higher, so her larger sculptures could be transported out and be laid down in the much larger living room to be brought to its destination.

I walked into the work room to see Sky Haze stand in front of what I knew was a covered up sculpture, which either meant that she either wasn’t done with it yet, or wanted to show it to me. Sky was a clay red pegasus, with a cutie mark that looked like a sculpture of a pegasus; she had a mane with a mix of dark blue and light blue, and light blue eyes, which at the moment was covered by a pair of security goggles, which in turn was covered in a light coating of white dust; in fact her entire body was covered in dust “Hey sweetie.” Sky said as she lifted the goggles and smiled lovingly at me.

“Hey cutie.” I said as I went over to Sky and nuzzled her cheek, with her nuzzling back, which turned that part of my head a shade of darker white; I stepped back a bit and asked her “What do you have under the cover?”.

“Oh it’s the sculpture that Jasmine ordered for the spa, and I finished it a few hours ago; wanna see it?” Sky asked. I nodded, and Sky pulled the cover away to reveal a statue of a stallion, washing the back of a mare who was lying in a pool; the stallion was erect and rather large, and the mare was in possession of an udder and you could clearly see her genitals “What do you think?” She asked with a big smile on her lips.

I tilted my head from side to side, admiring the piece of art for a few seconds, before I asked “Isn’t it a little risqué for a public place like the spa?”.

“Well, that’s what Jasmine wanted; hay she even paid out of her own pocket, to have some scavengers find the large lump of marble to make the sculpture out of.” Sky said and patted the edge of the pool, looking at it proudly.

“That’s amazing, and gracious of her.” I said as I went over and felt the marble, which left more fine dust on my coat “And I think you’ve done an excellent job, it truly is a beautiful piece of art.” I said and nuzzled her once more.

“I’m glad you like it.” Sky said as she nuzzled back.

We stood like that for a little while, just enjoying the feel of our fur rubbing against each other; I finally pulled away and said excitedly “Guess what happened today.”.

“You found pouch of bits.” Sky guessed.

“Nope, though that would have been nice.” I said and snickered as I pulled my adventurers license out of my saddleback and showed it proudly to my marefriend “Tchadaaa.” I said through my teeth.

Sky gave off a squee of joy when she saw the document, and eagerly asked “When do we leave?”.

I put the license into my saddlebag again and answered “In a few days, just so we can prepare some supplies, and you can get your sculpture to the spa, and I can quit my job at the clinic.”.

Sky nodded and said “Sounds like a good idea. Now, let’s get a shower and get something to eat, I’m starving.” I nodded and we walked to the bathroom to get a bath and talk more about our plans for our trip out of the stable.

O-O-O

“Okay, is everything set?” I asked as I pulled on the blue and black security barding, that I bought from a trader a few months back, along with a small magical energy gun and some spark packs to go with it; it was now in a holster on the barding’s left side, and my baton on the right.

“I think so.” Sky Haze said as she secured her mother’s Enclave armour onto her body. Skys mother was a former Enclave soldier turned Dashite that escaped from her life in the clouds, but got captured by slavers and sold to a rich trader, whom she killed; she then went to Cloppenhagen and started a new life in stable 69 “Did you get all our bits converted into caps?” She asked.

“Yep.” I said as put my saddlebags on.

“Did you remember to ask your mom to come over from time to time and clean up the apartment?” She asked as the last piece of her armor snapped into place.

“Yep, and I made sure to hide our ‘toys’ so she won’t ask us questions about what we’re doing, when we’re alone.” I said with a giggle, before bumping my flank against Sky Hazes.

“Where?” She asked, bumping back with her own giggle.

“In the vent behind the bed.” I answered as I started to look through the inventory in my pipbuck, just to make sure we had what we needed for the trip.

“Good place.” Sky admitted as she secured her own saddlebags, and checked her own pipbuck inventory. We both knew that my mother had a habit of snooping around if she happened to be alone in a place, just to find something that she could ask embarrassing questions about when the person returned; and her finding our sextoys and asking us about it was something I’d really like to avoid.

“Yeah, she might be a snoop, but she’s not going to move around our furniture to find something to make us embarrassed about.” I said as I finished checking my inventory. I suddenly remembered something and asked “Did you remember the altar figures, just in case we have to camp out?” We both prayed to the goddesses Celestia and Luna, a faith that had originated in stable 173, one of the 6 known stables in the Cloppenhagen area, of which 169 was the only one that was still in use; the others, 168, 170,171,172 and 173 had all been dismantled and used to create much of the settlement of Cloppenhagen. The Sun Moon religion, as it was named by the 173 dwellers, was mostly praying to Celestia and Luna for better times, mostly at bedtime, and send a small prayer if you killed someone, to help his or her soul on its way to the goddesses, at least it was for those who was casual about it.

Sky nodded as she finished her own inventory check ”Yes I did, and I made sure they are secure in a blast container.” She opened one of the bags to reveal a small, rectangular metal box, which held the 2 metal figurines of Celestia and Luna, which usually had their place on the altar in our bedroom. She closed the bag and said “Well, if we have everything, then let’s get going.”.

“Agreed, let’s go.” I said and we made our way out of the apartment; after locking the door and turned the key over to my mother, we went straight to the atrium, where we browsed around the traders for a little while, just for fun, before we trotted in the direction of the stable door.

“License or papers please.” A heavily armed unicorn guard said when we came to the control point a few meters from the door. I fished the license out of my saddlebag, and the guard used his magic to levitate the license from my mouth; he scanned the paper before handing it back to me and said “Your license check out okay, but you can’t leave at the moment, we got a situation on our hands on the outside.”.

We both nodded, knowing the rules of the stable fully well, we knew that a trader from the outside, had failed to produce his or her trading papers in the proper fashion, and that meant that the trader’s wagon was to be searched by the guards. Sky and I turned away to talk about what to do until we could get out “I think we should help them out.” Sky said.

“Why, they’re used to this, and they certainly have the man power.” I said as I gestured to the guard corps squad that was standing by to ‘greet’ the trader.

“Come on, it could be fun, and a good start to our adventure.” Sky said, before pulling out her almost patented puppy dog eyes, and said in her most sugarcoated voice “Please.”.

I face-hoofed, I never could say no to those eyes, and they had led me into many naughty situations over the years “Aughh, Okay, but then I get to pick what we do next, deal?” I said as seriously as I could with those eyes looking at me, holding out my hoof so we could seal the deal.

Sky looked like she was thinking about it for a moment, before she extended her hoof and pressed it against mine and said “Deal.” She then walked over to the guard and asked “Can we help you guys out in any way?”.

The guard put a hoof to his chin, looking thoughtful for a moment, before he walked into the control point’s office and talked to someone; he returned not long after and said “Go down to squad, and tell the guy with the green and gold stripes on his barding…” He pointed to a green unicorn buck that was standing in front of the squad “That you’re temporary reinforcements, he’ll tell you what to do.” He then went back into the office and began working the controls for the large, gear shaped door.

We walked over to the squad and Sky addressed the squad leader “Hey, I’m Sky Haze and this is Amora Rosa, we’re temporary reinforcements.”.

The buck looked us over for a moment, before he gave us a brief smile and said in a friendly, but firm tone of voice “Then welcome to the stable guard, go to the right side of the squad and follow my orders.” He then returned his gaze to the stable door, which had started to open.

We quickly found our spots in the squad and waited as the door opened; I drew my gun, and Sky charged the nova surge rifles on the back of her armor, and the security ponies lifted their high powered rifles and machineguns, ready to shoot if necessary.

The door rolled to the side, to reveal a red buck, shrouded in a cloak with the hood up, pulling a wagon with him as he entered the stable “Please halt and get ready for inspection.” The squad leader said loudly enough for everypony in the room to hear. The buck stopped and the leader stepped towards him, keeping his distance “What are you carrying, and how come that you didn’t present your papers in the proper fashion?” He asked.

“I’m carrying machine parts and canned food.” The trader said, his voice sounding like he had been drinking about a 1000 sandpaper martinis.

As the trader started to explain how he had lost the lockbox, which all traders received along with their permit to trade in the stable, something started bugging me about the trader; through my work at the clinic, I had developed a keen eye for details, which I now used it to study the suspicious trader to try and find out it was that bugged me about him. Suddenly it hit me, it was the skin close to the Trader’s mouth, it looked like his coat had been replaced with lizard scales; I holstered my gun and called out to the squad leader “Squad leader, something’s not right about this trader.”.

The green buck turned and asked “What’s not right about him, private?”.

“I think he’s a mutant, the skin at his mouth doesn’t look right.” I said, before I drew my gun again and pointed straight at the trader.

The squad leader raised an eyebrow, but turned non the less and studied the trader thoroughly; he quickly discovered what I had seen, and his horn flared to life, quickly releasing his magical energy rifle from his back, which was equally quickly pointed at the trader in no time, the safety clicking off, along with every other safety in the squad “Take off your hood before we turn you to dust.” He ordered harshly, not wanting to risk having something dangerous in the stable. The trader was taken aback by the sudden change of the situation, and he started muttering silently “Do it!” The squad leader ordered louder, his voice echoing off the walls.

The trader slowly reached a hoof up and removed the hood to reveal his face, and it was definitely a face only a mother could love; scales covered most of his face, and he had strange, rainbow colored eyes with a reptilian slit pupil in them; his hooves looked razor sharp and his mane had mutated into two sets of bony spines down his back, making him look very much like a dragon; everypony, myself included, was stunned by this reveal; as stable ponies we had only ever heard stories about the monsters and raiders that lived in the wastes, we knew that this guy was from the raider gang called the Drake claws, ponies who willingly mutated themselves, but actually seeing one of these ponies in real life was very different from hearing about them.

A smug smile appeared on the Drake claw’s lips, revealing his razor sharp teeth, as he said with his hoarse voice “You just made your biggest mistake maggots.” He took a deep breath and unleashed a bestial roar; the covering on the wagon was ripped to shreds, as 5 more Drake claws got out of the wagon; they didn’t waste any time and started galloping towards us.

“Fire!” The squad leader shouted and as one, we opened fire on the mutants. The shots ricocheted off their thick hides and only managed to slow the monsters down a bit. When they reached us, they started pouncing the nearest ponies, trying to rip the throat out of their victims.

I jumped out of the way as one of the mutated ponies, a bright green mare, tried to pounce me, but even though I managed to move out of the way, one of her hooves still managed to cut through the fabric of my barding and into the flesh at my shoulder. I grunted at the pain, but I refused to let the gun fall from my mouth; I quickly turned to face my opponent, who had gotten to her hooves, and we started circling each other. The mare was the first to make a move, she bend down and jumped at me in an attempt to get on top of me, so I could become an easy kill, though before she reached me, Sky Haze, who was standing nearby, fired her nova surge rifles at her; the mare gave off a pitiful little squeak when the red beams hit her, before she turned into a pile of glowing, pink goo; sky trotted up me and said “Seems we’ll have to get close to them, before our weapons can do any serious damage to them.”.

“Right, now letsh go help the othersh.” I said, Sky nodded and went off to help 3 of the security, who were holding a crimson Drake claw stallion at bay with their batons, while I made my way to the squad leader, who was holding his rifle to the cloaked Drake claw’s throat with his hooves, to keep him from biting him.

The raider was too preoccupied with trying to rip the squad leader’s throat out, so I could literally walk right up to him and put the gun to his temple “Hey dude.” I said, gaining the attention of the raider; he looked at me dumbly, before I pulled the trigger and sent a green bolt of energy into his forehead, reducing the raider to a pile of green glitter.

“You okay sir?” I asked after holstering my gun, and started helping the green buck to his hooves.

“Yeah, I’m fine private Rosa.” He said as he picked his rifle up with his magic; he quickly assessed the situation quickly and said “Private Rosa, go to the wagon and make sure that we don’t have any more surprises in store.”.

“Yes sir.” I said before drawing my gun and ran towards the wagon; as I ran, I took a quick look back and saw the squad leader take care of another Drake claw, reducing him to green dust as well ‘Good job sir.’ I thought before refocusing on my own task. I reached the wagon, and downed a healing potion, to get rid of the injury from before, before I used my hooves to remove the rest of the covering; luckily, there weren’t any more Drake claws in the wagon, just a few machine parts, some empty cans of pears and an empty glass bottle. I decided to help myself to some of the machine parts, I could sell them later in the Cloppenhagen market and get some caps; I also took the bottle, it might be a clue of some kind.

I returned to the guards, who had managed to kill off the last Drake claws with the help of their numbers, and the knowing that they had to get close to the mutants before their weapons could do damage to them, and trotted up to the squad leader “There was nopony in the wagon, only some machine parts, empty cans and this.” I said and held up the bottle.

The squad leader nodded and took the bottle from me “Good job, we’ll get the bottle analyzed, it might be important.” The green buck said and put the bottle in one of his saddlebags; he then reached into the other bag with his magic and pulled out a few spark packs and said “Take these as small token of the corps’ gratitude; this may not have turned out so well if you hadn’t noticed, that the guy had scales around his mouth.” He then saluted me, and I did the same.

I placed the spark packs in my saddlebag and walked over to where Sky, who had lifted the visor on her armor, was talking with some of the other guards “Ready to go Sky?” I asked my marefriend.

Sky said goodbye to the guards and walked over to me “Yeah I’m ready.” She said with a smile. I smiled back, and we started walking out of the stable. Both of us took a deep breath when we exited the cave that served as entrance to the stable; we stood for a bit and looked down at the rebuilt city of Cloppenhagen, which bustling with life. I looked over at Sky, who looked back at me “Race you to the city?” I asked with a grin.

Sky grinned back and said “You don’t stand a chance.”.

“We’ll see about that.” I said, and without warning I started sprinting down the road towards the city.

“Hey no fair.” Sky giggled, before she spread her wings and gave chase, slowly catching up to me.

A/N: Well, that was the first chapter in my Fallout: Equestria side story, I hope you liked it. The reason why I started this fic, was because I thought that not all stories from the wasteland would start with the heroes having to go through some kind of tragedy, in order to start their adventure. But don’t worry, they’ll get to go through their fair share of disturbing/sad/tragic/dangerous situations, but I just wanted them to start out a little different than the other Fallout: Equestria fictions I’ve read. Once again, I hope you liked this first chapter, and I’ll try to put up the next chapter as quickly as possible.

The adventure begins.

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Chapter 2: The adventure begins.

“So, what should we do now that we’re out of the stable?” Sky haze asked as we trotted along the dusty streets of Cloppenhagen.

I shrugged, I for one wanted to get some caps and maybe a better weapon, so I better could defend myself, but now that I thought about it, I realized that I didn’t know how adventurers earned caps when they stepped out of the stable. As we walked around, we eventually found our way to the entrance of the main market, and an idea sparked in my head; I turned my head to Sky and said “Maybe people in the market needs help from a couple of adventurers.”.

Sky looked at the entrance for a moment, before she grinned “Yeah, maybe they’ll need us to take care of an army of rad scorpions or maybe we’ll have to take care of more of those Drake claw guys.” She said, sounding very much excited at the prospect of killing monsters.

I giggled lightly and said “Well, let’s first see if we can actually get any work first.” When Skys ears started to droop, I hastily added “But if working here becomes too boring, we can always go into the wastes and seek some thrills ourselves.” Sky immediately smiled and nodded happily. I smiled back and said “Now let’s go and see what treasures the market holds for us.” Sky nodded again and we walked into Cloppenhagen’s main market.

The first thing I did when we entered the market, was to check my pipbuck’s map; and sure enough, the market’s three main areas, the regular, the gun range and pleasure street, along with the harbor, the hospital West medical and the main gate popped up on the screen. I also started receiving radio signals that were normally unavailable to the stable dwellers, due to the stable’s thick walls and the fact that it was located inside a mountain.

We had entered the area of the market that was normally called ‘The regular’, and as we walked around we quickly noticed the many power armor clad ponies, which served as the city guard and was known as the ‘Hagen Rangers, walking around the city, making sure that aggressive situations didn’t evolve into anything uncontrollable; their armor was painted red with a white hoof print where their cutie marks normally was, the same as the flags attached to the flagpoles on top of the main gate.

One of the shops caught my attention; it was one of the bigger clothes shops I had seen while we were walking, though this looked like it had a finer selection of wares ‘Hmm, I would like a new dress, if only just to have something nice to show Sky the next time we’re having some nighttime fun. And maybe I can get some info on where we can get some work.’ I thought before I told my marefriend that I was going into the shop; she nodded and told me that she wouldn’t be far away from said shop.

I walked up to the store and nodded politely to the blue coated, golden maned earth pony mare who was sitting behind the counter, before proceeding into the store. After a little while, I returned to the counter, carrying a nice, simple, midnight blue dress that I thought was perfect the purpose had in mind “I would like this please.” I said, putting the dress on the counter.

“Of course dear.” The sales mare said as she found some brown paper, and started wrapping up the dress.

I watched her wrapping for a bit, before I asked “Do you by any chance know where we could find some work?”.

The mare looked up from her wrapping, and just then it looked like she actually saw how I was dressed “You’re one of those adventurers from the stable right?” She asked.

“That’s right, just got my license not too long ago.” I said with a proud smile on my face.

The mare nodded and smiled back, as she finished wrapping up the dress “If you walk in the direction of the main gate, you’ll come across a big message board, it’s full of jobs and missions for adventurers to do; that’s a good place to start.” She said and handed over the neatly wrapped dress, which I slipped into one of my saddlebags.

“Thanks a lot miss… uhh.” I had forgotten that I didn’t know what the mare’s name was; but fortunately, she was willing to share it.

“Oh, I’m Gold Thread.” She said, showing her cutie mark, which was a spool of gold colored thread.

‘She really lives up to her name.’ I thought, before I said “I’m Amora Rosa, pleased to meet you gold, and thanks for the info.” I handed over the caps for the dress, and a few more as thanks for the information.

“The pleasure is mutual.” Gold said as she counted the caps; she was a little surprised at finding a few caps too much, but after brief explanation she gladly accepted the extra caps, and gave me a friendly smile on the way out.

I found Sky nearby, looking at display of stone carving tools “Finding something you like cutie?” I asked as I walked up beside her.

Sky smiled and nuzzled my head a bit, before answering “I was thinking about buying some new tools, but I think we should save our caps until we have accumulated some more.”.

“Well, it wouldn’t be all that bad to indulge yourself a bit, on your first day out of the stable.” I said a little nervously while keeping my eyes on the tool display, and mentally kicked myself for not thinking practically like my marefriend.

Sky looked down at me, having apparently noticed the nervous tone of my voice, and asked “What did you do?”.

I sighed and said “Bought a new dress for when we got to have some ‘fun’ again.” It actually felt good to get it off my chest, and I soon smiled shyly at Sky.

Sky smirked when she heard the purpose of my purchase, and said “Well then, maybe I could buy a little something for myself…” I thought that she was finished, and was about to suggest what she should take from the display, when she continued “But I’ll wait until I’ve seen what else the market has to offer, I might just find something we both can enjoy.” She gave me a seductive wink, and I knew that she was going to look for something to spice up our sex-life.

I blushed and giggled a bit, but quickly shrugged it off and said “Well, anyway, the pony in the clothes shop said that if we needed work, we should head in the direction of the gate, to find a message board with odd jobs for adventurers to do.”.

“Awesome, let’s go then.” Sky said and soon after, we stood in front of the message board; we both tried our best to find something that would be a good start to our adventure “Augh…” Sky groaned after a while, as she looked from message to message “Where do we start in this mess?” She looked pretty frustrated.

“Hmm.” I mused as I looked at the messages myself; I suddenly spotted a note from the gun range, the weapons district of the market “What about this one?” I asked and pointed at the note; Sky walked over and I read the message out loud “Serge from ‘The gun rack’, requests help to reclaim the warehouse where he keeps his weapons locked up, from a swarm of radigators. The reward is 200 caps and a 10% discount on any purchases in his store.” I looked at the pegasus and asked “Doesn’t that sound like something good to start out with?”.

Sky looked thoughtful for a moment, before she nodded and said “Sounds awesome, let’s get going.” I nodded and tore the message off the message board, and we trotted off towards the gun range.

O-O-O

The gun range was very different from the regular; instead of the more closed up shops that you could walk into, the shops in the gun range had a counter that blocked off any access to the shop, which was understandable, considering the items that was being sold in this part of the market; if you had the caps, you could literally arm a good sized army, and wage war for days.

We quickly located Serge’s shop, not only because of the big sign with a mare that was covered in ammo belts and twirling a revolver, with ‘The Gun Rack’ spelled out in big, black letters underneath it, but also because it had a lot less wares than the other shops. We walked up to the counter, and saw that there was nopony there “Hello, is anypony here?!” I called into the store to try and get the attention of the shop’s owner.

The response came in the form of a foal’s cry, followed by a somewhat frustrated groan from the backroom; there came some shuffling and some hushed whispering, which in turn made the crying stop. After a few minutes, a dust grey unicorn, with a military green mane and tail, and an ammo box cutie mark, came out of the door that separated the shop from what must have been his home “Goddesses damn it, the girl can sleep from machinegun fire, but as soon as a customer speaks a little too loud, she wakes up and cries.” He grumbled loud enough for us to hear, as he walked up to the counter, cleared his throat and said with a small smile “I’m Serge, the owner of this shop, what can I help you fillies with?” The tone of voice he used was the kind that a seller usually used to persuade buyers to buy more than they need, or when he wanted them to buy something they don’t need.

I got the job message out of my saddleback, and put it down on the counter “We are here about the job.” I said in a lower tone than normal, afraid that I might wake up Serge’s foal again.

The smile on the dust colored unicorn’s lips became a little wider by my words “Oh thank the goddesses, I’ve been trying to get rid of those beasts for days. Come with me; I’ll tell you what I need done when we get to the warehouse.” He said as he jumped over the counter and pulled a thick metal fence down from behind the sign, suddenly the size of the thing made a lot more sense.

“What about your foal?” Sky asked as we started trotting towards the warehouse.

“Don’t worry, her mother will take care of her.” Serge said simply.

“Okay.” Sky said, sounding relieved; we both figured that Serge just happened to be in the room when I called, and had left the little one to her mother after calming her down.

O-O-O

“Here we are.” Serge said when we arrived at the lot that surrounded the warehouse; we were near the southwest corner of the great wall, the area of the city where the permanent traders of the city had their warehouses. There was indeed a lot of radigators in the lot, but not so many that the job seemed unreasonable. Serge walked up to the gate and said “You see, a few days ago, these beasts came in through an underwater sewer entrance, and they decided to make their breeding grounds in my warehouse lot; you see, I had forgotten to close the gate that night, and when I returned the next morning, I had to lock the gate so I wouldn’t get eaten. Now, what I want you to do is to kill the lot of them, and smash their eggs while you’re at it, I don’t want to deal with more of those beasts than I have to.” The unicorn floated a key out of his gray vest and started unlocking the gate.

We both nodded, and while I waited for Serge to open the gate, Sky closed her visor and took to the sky and got ready to take care of any radigators that tried to get me when I entered. I drew my weapon and readied myself; the gate opened with the help of Serge’s magic, and the nearest of the large reptiles pounced on me, before I could set foot inside the lot; however, it didn’t get a chance to take a bite out of me, because my personal guardian angel chose that moment, to deliver her divine punishment onto the predator; I looked up and blew Sky a kiss before I ventured into the lot.

It wasn’t long before I was running and jumping for my life, because with every radigator we brought down, there was two or more that tried to sink their teeth or claws in me, which they succeeded in doing a number of times, before I could kick them away and get a new shot in; since I didn’t have much experience in using S.A.T.S, I didn’t really know when to use it and when not to, but I guessed that I would learn in time. The pain that came with my inexperience was remedied with some of the med-X I’d acquired from the stable, but even with the potent chem in my system, it still hurt when one of the beasts bit or scratched me. Sky decided to end her air assault, and come down to ground level and help me out; because her armor was stronger than mine, she held up a lot better against the large reptiles than I did, but that didn’t keep them from trying, but they only succeeded in creating scratches in the surface of the armor.

We finally disposed of the last of the beasts and their eggs; I sat down on one of the dead reptiles, it had been one of the more stubborn ones, which was proven by several cauterized wounds that had been punched through its body by my gun. I opened one of my saddlebags and got a healing potion out; I might have med-X in my body, but painkillers were never a substitute for healing, and I was bleeding quite a bit.

While I drank my potion, Sky walked over and sat down beside me, she lifted her visor and asked “How’re you feeling Amora?”.

I finished the potion and chucked it into one of the destroyed nests, where it made a mix of splats and cracks against the broken eggs; I took a deep breath as I felt my wounds knit back together and said “I kinda feel like a chew toy, but the potion will take care of that; what about you cutie?” I gave her a quick nuzzle as I asked her.

“I’m good, but my armor got scratched.” She said and mock pouted as she showed off the scratch marks on her armored flank.

“Oh, come on here and let me kiss it away.” I said with a chuckle, before I planted a quick kiss on her cheek “Better?” I then asked her and Sky nodded “Now, let’s get back to Serge and get our payment.” I said and got off the radigator, Sky nodded and did the same, and we started walking back towards the gate.

“Amazing job, you two.” Serge said with a smile, when we returned to the lot gate; he opened the gate and stepped into the lot, moving the radigator carcasses as he made his way to us “Go and take a breather outside the gate, I’ll go get my wares.” He said and walked towards the warehouse, flinging the dead radigators away as he did; we silently walked out of the lot and sat down on some nearby crates, happy to be alive and looking forward to getting paid for a job well done.

Serge soon returned with a cloth covered wagon, probably so he wouldn’t attract attention as we walked through the city streets “Say Serge, do you have any energy rifles in your stock?” I asked quietly; I didn’t want to attract attention, since we walked around with Serge’s stock of weapons.

“Yes, I do actually, but can I ask why you want an energy rifle? You seemed to do very well back at the lot.” The gray stallion said as we passed out of the warehouse district and into the housing area that separated it from the gun range.

“Well, a couple of Drake Claws tried to attack stable 169 earlier today, we helped the guards fight them, but my gun barely scratched them, so I really don’t wanna run into more of them, not without some more serious firepower.” It wasn’t because I was all that afraid of those raiders; yes they looked scary, yes they were strong and had razor sharp hooves; and yes, I did hold some fear for them, but if I were to confront them again, however much I wished that I would never have to, I was not going to do so unprepared.

“Sounds reasonable; but let me give you a little piece of advice…” Serge said and stooped so he didn’t have to concentrate on the road, and continued “Always keep your pistol and baton around, or at least something similar; a big gun is nothing if you have to fight everything with it, it’s a waste of ammo, just keep that in mind, okay?”.

“Sure.” I said with a smile; I could see what he meant, no need to shoot flies with a canon.

The rest of the trip back to the gun range was spent in silence, but it was the good kind of silence; me and Sky were walking behind Serge, nuzzling each other, but also keeping an eye on our surroundings, it was a universal truth in the wasteland, that there always was somepony who wanted something others had, even in a relatively peaceful city like Cloppenhagen, this rule applied. We finally made our way back to ‘The Gun Rack’; Serge hoisted the fence back up behind the sign, and together, we started loading the weapon caches over the counter; once we were done, Serge moved the wagon behind the house, before getting back behind the counter “Now, let’s get your payment in order.” Serge said and ducked under the counter, and soon after, I was counting the caps that Serge had put before me.

“Yup, exactly 200 caps.” I said and shook hooves with the merchant pony, before I divided the caps into two piles; I scooped one pile into my saddlebags, and gave the other to Sky, who did the same, I then turned to Serge again and said “Well, it was nice doing business with you Serge, I hope we’ll see each other later, when I have enough caps for that rifle, if you’ll set one aside for me.”.

“Sure kid.” Serge said and gave us a smile. We turned to leave, but we didn’t get very far, before Serge stuck his head out of the shop and whistled, making us turn around and look curiously at him “By the way, if you don’t want to go back to the stable tonight, you can ask Safe Code over there…” He pointed to a red earth pony stallion with an orange mane, who was sitting behind the counter of his own shop, not too far from where we were standing “He rents out rooms for a few caps a night, just so you know” We both nodded and gave the gray pony a smile, and walked back towards the message board.

O-O-O

“Now, what job should we take now?” I asked both myself and Sky as we looked at the many job notes.

Sky, like me, was looking for something that could be interesting “Hey, what about this?” She asked and pointed to one of the notes.

I walked over and looked at the note; it was from the local book store, somepony named Harvest moon needed help in gathering new memory orbs and books for her shop, and was willing to pay good caps for them, 7 caps for memory orbs and 5 for books; in fact, if we found enough, we would have enough caps so I could buy a magic beam rifle from Serge, Sky could buy her little gift to us, and we’d still have enough for us to stock up on ammo, food and chems for a good long time. I pulled the note off the board, and put it in one of my bags “It sounds just like the job we need:” I said and we walked over to the shop, which wasn’t that far from the message board.

“Hey there fillies, what can I do for you, some good prewar stories, or maybe some memories from the past?” The mare standing behind the counter asked us enthusiastically, when we arrived at the store; she was an earth pony with a blond coat, a gray mane, an omega symbol with a moon behind it for a cutie mark, and a smile on her face that more or less reached her ears, making her look like she was on a sugar high.

We both looked at her for a moment, just to make sure that this mare was for real, we had never seen anyone so happy in our lives, so this was a very new experience to us; Sky reached into my bag and pulled out the message, and put it in front of the mare with the words “Actually we’re here for the job you needed help with, miss Moon.”.

“Oh, follow me then.” Harvest said, her smile disappearing a bit at the realization that she didn’t get to sell anything; she waved us behind the counter and into a backroom that was filled with books. We sat down at a small reading table in the middle of the room, with a couple of Sparkle colas, and Harvest started filling us in on what the job was about “A few days ago, a resident here in Cloppenhagen came here to sell me some memory orbs, which looked almost brand spackling new. I of course accepted them and asked her where she had found them. She told me that she had gone exploring a bit outside the city, and that she had come by an old M.O.M hub. She went into the building and found a vault full of memory orbs, and not only that, she found a hidden entrance that led back into the city, that she told me how to find. But, since I can’t leave the shop, I need somepony to go down there and get some more for me, and books if there are any.” She took a quick drink of her cola, before asking “So, are you 2 up for the job?”.

“Sure, it doesn’t sound like too much trouble.” I said and took a drink myself.

“Actually, there is a little thing.” Harvest said, fidgeting a bit with her hooves.

“And here comes the trouble.” Sky said with a smile and took a swig of her cola.

“So, what can we expect inside the hub?” I asked and gave Harvest an approving smile, it couldn’t be much worse than the Drake Claws or the radigators.

“Well, you see; the resident said that in order get into the vault, you need to get to the 3rd floor of the building; there, you need create a temporary key to get the vault door opened…”

“Hold on a sec…” Sky interrupted “I thought this resident already opened the vault.”

“She did, but apparently the vault door is automatic and still working, so it closed after her when she left it, and she says she lost her key, though I’m pretty sure she lied about that.”.

“Sounds about right, hiding the key and pretend it’s gone, so she can milk all the caps she need out of you.” I said, emptying the last of my cola.

“Exactly, but I have a little theory that once a new key has been made, the one before it will be useless, but it’s just a theory though…” Harvest said with a little giggle and continued “But getting hold of a key is the easy part, getting up there is what’s going to be hard; you see, there are zombies in the building, not that many according to the resident, but enough to make it a dangerous trip.” Harvest also emptied her cola and waited for a moment to let the information sink in, before she asked “So, are you still in?”.

We turned away and Sky asked in a whisper “What do you think?”.

“Well, she did say that there weren’t that many zombies in the building; and if she’s anything like Serge, we’ll be out of there with only scratches, and our bags full of books and memory orbs. So yeah, I think we should do it.” I whispered back.

“Okay then.” Sky said before we turned back to Harvest “We’re in.” She said and smiled at the blond coated mare.

“Great.” Harvest said before getting up and walking to a corner of the backroom, and returned with a pair of extra saddlebags, which she put on the table and said with a smile “Here, take these. I’d like to have as much of that vault removed, before somepony else finds it.”.

We gladly accepted the bags and after being told where the hub entrance was, we gave the merchant a quick ‘see you later’ and trotted off towards the sewer that would take us to the abandoned M.O.M hub.

O-O-O

“Yuck, this has to be the most disgusting thing I have ever done.” I said as waded through the Cloppenhagen sewers knee deep sewage; it had been a little under 10 minutes since we left the streets, and descended into the smelly, sludgy and murky tunnels beneath. Fortunately for us, we were in possession of our pipbucks, which was lighting our way with their built-in lights, and showing us the way to the hub with the auto-map system.

“Yeah, it’s gonna take forever to get this stench out of my armor.” Sky said, walking a little ahead of me. I couldn’t blame her, the sludge of the sewer got in through every opening in your clothes, making you feel icky all over. Growing up in the stable, and not having maintenance jobs, meant that we both disliked very dirty places; it wasn’t so bad on the surface, it was just the way nature was, but the sewers were a different story.

I looked at my pipbuck map for a moment and said with a smile “Well, at least we won’t have to deal with this much longer.” We walked for a bit longer, before we came to as set of stairs that led to a heavy iron door. We unbolted the door and pushed it open; the vault area was not all that impressive, it was a white painted concrete room, with a pair of massive vault doors along one of the walls, and a staircase at one end of the room “Nice and quiet, works for me.” I said and closed the door behind us.

“Yeah, but don’t forget that we have to go up to and get ourselves a key.” Sky said and trotted over to the stairs.

“Yeah, but it’s still nice that there isn’t some sort of monster to attack us as soon as we get out of the sewer.”

Sky nodded and put her ear to the door, trying to listen for signs of movement inside the building; after a few seconds of listening, she pulled away and said “Okay, I think the coast is clear, but you better get one of your weapons out, just in case.” I nodded and drew my pistol, loaded a fresh spark pack into it and nodded for Sky to open the door.

The corridor we entered smelled of dust and slightly like something had died in there, and it had the same look as the vault, only with faded posters of Pinkie Pies’ smiling face, I guessed that it hadn’t been all that important to the workers at the hub, what the things behind the scenes looked like. We didn’t the chance ponder much about the interior decoration, before all hell broke loose; we had only just rounded the corner, when a hellish scream rang out through the building, followed closely by the sound of clopping hooves; I didn’t have time to fire a shot, before the zombie was on me, snapping at me with its rotting, yellow teeth. I struggled with the undead pony, and tried to get in a position where I get a shot off, preferably right in its face, but its erratic movements made it an almost impossible task.

Suddenly, the zombie was kicked away by my very angry marefriend, slamming it into the wall and stunning it for a moment; she snorted and growled at it “Nopony hurts my marefriend and gets away with it.”.

I slowly got up, along with the dead pony; I entered S.A.T.S and poured three shots into the zombie’s skull, turning it into green dust. I sat down hard, dropping my gun in the process, and let out a shaky breath; I was scared out of my mind, not because of the attack, but because of the speed the monster had come with, and the fact that in fighting it, it had almost ripped my throat out “By the unwashed balls of Luna, how did that thing find us so fast?” I asked in a voice as shaky as my breath.

Sky lifted her visor and said “I really don’t know, but I think we really need to keep a close eye on our E.F.S’s from now on.” She didn’t look or sound as frightened as me, but then again, she hadn’t been the one who was attacked.

I nodded and took a pair of deep breaths to calm myself down, before I picked up my gun and holstered it, switching it out with my baton “Okay, even if I don’th like thish, I’m not gonna back outh now, noth afther that trip through the sewers.” I said, giving my weapon a few swings before we walked down the corridor, red markings already popping up on our E.F.S’s.

We had only just entered the very festive looking, pink colored lobby when more feral ghouls attacked us, but this time we were ready for them. The first two were put down with a couple of shots, from Skys nova surge rifles; the next got its skull bashed in by my baton, and finished off with a stomp of my hooves. I looked up to see another zombie as it crashed into me, and promptly sunk its teeth into my shoulder. I almost started panicking, as the memories of our first encounter with the walking dead ponies resurfaced, but my will to live was stronger and it forced the fears back under the surface; I smacked the zombie upside down the head, making it let go and fall off me, I quickly got to my hooves, wincing and bleeding from my shoulder wound, and this time I made sure to keep an eye out, while stomping the undead pony’s head in. I dropped the baton and drew my gun once again, slipping into S.A.T.S as two more ferals came my way, sending as many bolts of magical energy as I could into their heads, burning big holes in one of them and reducing the other to green dust.

When I came out of the spell, I watched as Sky as she took care of the last three zombies. She walked over to me, lifted her visor and said “Damn this is so freaky, how did those things know we were coming?” She looked worried and I felt the same, how did those things know where we were, when they couldn’t see us.

I downed a healing potion to deal with the shoulder wound, damn those thing bit hard, and started pacing as I thought it over, what had we done that could have gotten the zombies attention, without them having to look at us. Then it suddenly hit me “Of course, it’s because we stink of sewer, they can smell us and the first zombie’s scream probably also got some attention from the others.” I said in disbelief, I couldn’t believe that we had been so stupid.

“Man, some adventurers we are, we go into a building, smelling like the goddesses knows what, and the occupants just happens to have super sharp senses, by Celestias flaming clit we’re stupid.” Sky said and face-hoofed.

I couldn’t have agreed with her any more “Come, we better find a restroom and get some of this stench off, so we have a chance of seeing them before they see us.” Sky nodded and we started following the signs that pointed towards the toilets.

After a quick cleaning of our clothes with some soap and lightly radiated water, and eating some of the food that brought along from the stable, we made our way up the stairs towards the third floor; we only met three or four zombies on the first and second floor, which we quickly disposed of, since we now had a chance to see them before they attacked and the third floor was surprisingly, completely empty.

We took some time to search the offices for things we could sell or use ourselves later on; we found a number of bobby pins, prewar bits, a few clips of small caliber ammo, porn magazines and some novelty items in the form of plushies, bubbleheads, autographed photos and action figures.

One of the last offices, which had belonged to someone named Dandelion Dust, had a safe built in the wall, so while Sky searched through the drawers and trash bins of the office, I started picking the safe lock, but it turned out to be one of the really stubborn ones, so I ended up breaking four bobby pins, before the lock finally gave in and let me gaze upon the contents within. There was a big bag of prewar bits, an ornate pistol, with dandelions engraved on it, with a few clips beside it and a black metal box, marked ‘R.D Cloppenhagen excavation’.

I took all of the items and put them in my bags, before taking a quick inventory check; the gun had been marked by my pipbuck as ‘Dandelion’s bloom’, and the black case as ‘Rainbow Dash memory orbs and Rainboom speeder’. I cocked an eyebrow at this and pulled the case back out, and put it on the desk; I undid the clasps and opened the lid, revealing four memory orbs and what looked an electronic bracelet beside the orbs. The bracelet had a rainbow colored button, in the shape of a lightning bolt on it, with wires and metal tubes apparently running all the way around it “I wonder what this is all about?” I asked myself quietly before closing the case, and put it back in my bag; I then turned to Sky, who was looking through some file cabinets, and asked “Ready to go Sky?”.

“Yup.” Sky said and closed the cabinet, before following me out of the office. The next office turned out to be the one we were looking for, it was a bit fancier than the others, the desk was bigger and more ornamental, with carvings of pegasi on the legs, there was a large picture of Pinkie Pie behind the nice looking chair, and in a corner was a large, pink machine, which we assumed was the key making machine “Okay, let’s get ourselves a key.” Sky said as she walked over to the machine, and started looking it over to figure out how it worked.

I just nodded absentmindedly, because my eyes were drawn to the picture of Pinkie Pie; she was wearing a tiara and was sitting on a treasure chest, but that wasn’t what drew my eyes, it was many bronze keys on the ground and Pinkie herself, who was sitting with a gold key in her mouth ‘could it be.’ I thought to myself and walked over to the painting; I put a hoof behind it and gave it a good tap, which made the painting swing out, revealing another safe “Sky I think I’ve found something better than a temporary key.” I said and started picking the lock.

Sky walked over and asked “What have you found.”.

“Maybe shomthing that’ll shave us the trouble of figuring out that machine.” I said with my teeth around the bobby pin. This safe turned out to be another tough one, but thanks to a little luck, I only broke three bobby pins before the lock allowed me access to the safe’s contents; I opened the safe and smiled when I saw the small electronic key lying on a small, blue pillow, it looked like a of circuit board in a clear plastic casing, with part of it sticking out to act as the key and three balloons, one blue and two yellow, printed on top of the casing “Shee, I told you it was shomething better.” I said before I put the bobby pin and my screwdriver away.

“Awesome, a master key.” Sky said with a smile that almost reached her ears.

I nodded and carefully lifted the key out of the safe, and into my saddlebag; we then searched the office, not finding anything of our interest, before leaving the office and heading for the vaults. On our way back to the vault room, we ran into a few more zombies who had sniffed us out, and we left with a few scratches, but otherwise unharmed; once we were back in the vault room, we made sure to bolt the door, so we wouldn’t have to worry about unexpected company; we then made our way to the first vault “Well, this is it.” I said as I took off my saddlebags and got the key out, before putting the bags back on and inserted the key into the key reader beside the door.

The three lights on the key reader lit up as it recognized the key, and the door gave off a series of loud clonks as the bolts slid back into the door, before it opened, revealing shelves full of memory orbs, each with a label that told who had been the owner of the memory “Jackpot.” Sky said as we walked into the vault.

“Jackpot indeed.” I said and we set to work on collecting orbs in the extra bags that Harvest had given us; once the bags were full, we got out of the vault, and I took the key out of the reader and the door closed.

“Should we take a look in the other vault? It might have something interesting inside.” Sky asked and I couldn’t help but agreeing with her; we were in a place that hadn’t been touched for 200 years, so goddesses help us if we didn’t take a bit of everything with us before we left. I inserted the key in the other key reader, and the results were the luckily the same as before, only this time, the shelves inside the vault were filled with books instead of memory orbs.

Sky immediately went to look at the titles of the books, while I took the time to read a bronze plaque that was nailed to the first of the bookshelves; it said that the books in the vault were unchanged editions, if the taboos that had been put on them were ever lifted ‘Well, at least they had hope that the world would go back to normal.’ I thought before I went out between the bookshelves to look for interesting books.

We ended up finding a lot of books to sell, and a few we wanted to keep for ourselves, among those we wanted for ourselves, were a Zebra hoof to hoof combat book, a book on how to modify weapons to become even more lethal than they already were, using methods that Zebras used, a ‘Zebra sutra’ love guide and a lock picking guide, what that did there I didn’t quite know, but I took it anyway; and so, with full bags, we closed the vault and went back to the sewers, where we bolted the door and started our trek back to Cloppenhagen.

O-O-O

Night had fallen when we reached Harvests shop again. The gray maned merchant was sitting outside her now closed up shop, drinking a cola and enjoying the relatively warm night; she looked up and smiled when she heard us coming “Hey you’re back, so were you lucky? Tell me, tell me.” She asked excitedly, her smile once again reaching her ears.

“And a good evening to you too Harvest.” I said with a tired smile as we game to a stop in front her “Could we talk inside, we don’t want to lose our cargo, when we spend so much time getting it?” I asked, I felt just about ready to collapse from the weight of my bags, and from all the work I had been doing.

“Oh sure, sure come on in.” Harvest said and opened the door for us. We spend some time telling what had happened in the hub, with Harvest listening so intently that we at one point thought that she had forgotten to breathe. After completing our tale, we gave the extra bags back to her so she could sort out the orbs we had collected, while we sorted through the books, just so we wouldn’t accidentally give her the ones we wanted for ourselves. Harvest was tried to count up the orbs for a good 20 minutes, but it seemed that she was either tired, or just too excited to count properly, and in the end she let out a frustrated sigh and said “Listen fillies, I just can’t count right now, would you mind terribly if you have to wait until tomorrow to get paid?”.

We looked at each other for a moment; Sky just shrugged and turned back to the book she was reading; I turned back and said “Fine by us, and if that’s the case, then we’ll go find Safe Code and get some sleep.”.

“You’re staying at Safe code?” Harvest asked as soon as the words had left my mouth.

“Not really, but we heard that he’s renting out rooms, is there something wrong with that?” I asked and scratched the back of my neck.

Harvest Moon quickly shook her head and said “No, no, of course not, it’s just that, his place is not the cleanest of places.”.

“But we don’t know anywhere else to go.” I said and started fidgeting with my hooves.

“Then it’s a good thing that you met me.” Harvest said as she walked around the table and over to the door “Come along, I’ll show you a better place to stay.” She said and opened the door. We quickly gathered our stuff and followed our new merchant friend out the door, and after locking it, Harvest led the way to what would be the place we would stay for the night.

The place that Harvest had talked about turned out to be Gold Threads shop, Harvest walked to the door and knocked a few times until Gold opened; they talked for a little while, before we were let inside. Gold told us the price for the room, which was 10 caps a night for two ponies, and after saying goodbye to Harvest, we paid Gold the agreed caps and was showed to our room.

The room was quite nice, it was made from a bedroom from one of the torn down stables, but the walls had gotten a coat of pink paint, and there was a nice, light blue carpet on the floor, the bed was just like the ones back in the stable, but that was okay for the both of us.

We said goodnight to Gold Thread, and once we were alone, we went to the bathroom and gave our barding and armor a good wash, and once we had hung it up to dry, we went back to our room and laid down in the bed; I snuggled up to Sky, who put her head on mine after kissing the top of my head, I gave her neck a quick kiss, before I closed my eyes, and as I laid there in the final moments before sleep overtook me, feeling the soft coat and feathers of my marefriend, it felt like all the horrors I had experienced that day had never existed, I felt in all sense of the term, at peace. I snuggled a little closer, and soon fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

A/N: I finally got this done, and I apologize for the long wait, but I none the less hope you enjoyed it, and that it wasn’t too rushed, but if you think so, you’re welcome to tell me so, and I’ll try my very best to correct it. As a little bonus, I’m including a bit of information on Cloppenhagen, and I’ll be doing this for each chapter I complete. Once again, I hope you liked the chapter, and hopefully I’ll have the next up a little sooner than this.

Stable 169: The only stable in Cloppenhagen that’s still in use, every other stable was scavenged for equipment, dismantled and used for building materials for either the city itself or the grand wall; it offers cheap medical help and possibilities for trading among the inhabitants. Trade however, requires trading papers that can be obtained at the entrance to Cloppenhagen; these papers must be kept in a lockbox, that is provided by the city guard, at all times; if a trader fails to present the papers, the trader will be refused entrance to the stable; if a trader presents the papers from anywhere else than the lockbox, the trader will be allowed access to the stable, but his/her wares will be checked by the stable security. If illegal wares are found, the trader will be thrown out of the stable, or if said trader becomes aggressive, he/she will be given a warning; if the aggressive behavior persists, the trader will be shot and the wares will be taken into custody and later be distributed to the inhabitants of the stable. Inhabitants with an adventurers license is allowed to leave and enter the stable at any time they wish; any other inhabitant of the stable must fill out a special form that takes a few days to process, to leave the stable.

The main market: The central part of Cloppenhagen that lays north of stable 169; it is one big market where traders and business people can freely buy, sell and trade. City guards called ‘the Hagen Rangers’, who is dressed in scavenged, fully functional Steel Ranger armor patrols the streets to make sure there aren’t any fights. The market is divided into 3 areas.
The regular:
For buying and selling food, books, memory orbs, clothing, chems and potions.
The gun range:
For buying and selling guns, ammunition and armored clothing.
Pleasure Street:
The place for anyone who looks for a good time, prices varies from place to place, but if you have the caps, there is nothing you can’t get in the districts; there are also a lot of places that sells sex toys for use on the road or to take home.
The main market also has ponies that are willing to provide shelter for anyone who needs to lay low for a couple of days, or just needs a place for the night, be it to heal up or if there is a bounty on their heads.

Wasteland rescue, part 1

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Chapter 3: Wasteland rescue, part 1.

It was early in the morning when we heard the sirens, but since we were both tired from the day before, we just snuggled closer and tried to drown out the noise; it wasn’t until Gold Thread opened the door and started banging on it, that we woke up and looked sleepily at her “Amora, Sky wake up quickly!” She yelled into the room.

“What’s the matter Gold?” I asked as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, Sky was just sitting up in bed, looking like she was trying to figure out where she was.

“We’re about to be attacked by the Unity’s Alicorns. Quickly, get into your barding, we need to get to a shelter before the Hagen Rangers start shooting.” Gold said with a slight panic in her voice.

That message woke us up a lot more and we scrambled out of the bed and headed for the bathroom. Sky turned in the door way and said “Go ahead Gold, we can defend ourselves if we have to.” The blue coated mare nodded and hurried out of the house towards the shelter. We quickly got in our barding, got our bags and weapons and walked out of the house, making sure to close the door so nopony would be tempted to sneak in and take something that wasn’t theirs.

We were following a group of other ponies on our way to the shelter, when search lights lit up all over the city; me and Sky looked took a moment to look up at the sky, the sight that met us was ominous to say the least, about 12 or so winged horses with horns on their heads were flying in from the north, and they looked ready to bring death down upon the city “Sky, can I make a suggestion?” I asked my companion as we looked at the exciding, but also frightening display.

“Yup.” Was all Sky could say, as most of her attention was on the magnificent creatures in the sky.

I didn’t get to ask anything, before a brilliant, blue light exploded in the middle of the squadron of Alicorns, followed shortly after by machinegun fire “Run!” I cried and we ran down the street like all the other panicked ponies.

We were almost at the shelter, when Sky yelled “Look out.” And pushed me to the side; looked back at her in time to see a dark green Alicorn hit the ground.

The alicorn’s hide was full of bullet holes, but somehow, she was still trying to get back up; I didn’t have any intention of letting her do so, and immediately stomped her skull in until she stopped moving. I took a deep breath, just to calm myself down, before I took a step back and looked at my handiwork; the alicorn’s head had become a mess of blood, bone and gray matter, and I couldn’t help but feel a little sick, looking at it, but since I didn’t feel any special pity for the creature, I quickly shook off the feeling. The only part of the alicorn’s skull that I hadn’t pulverized, was the part where the horn was attached, I picked it up and decided to keep it as a souvenir.

After stuffing the horn into my bag, I walked over to Sky and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and said “Thanks for the save, cutie.”.

“You’re welcome dear.” Sky said and gave a small smile, before we continued through the city, with the sounds of the Hagen rangers’ gun fire clashing with the alicorns magical attacks all over the city.

O-O-O

We were almost at the shelter, when we heard a hysterical scream from one of the alleys. We hurried down the alley, but we were too late and all we saw was a pony in a cloak, running towards the gate of the city with a foal tied to his back; we didn’t waste much time and took off after the cloaked pony, but it was running a lot faster than us and when we reached the gate, it had disappeared ”Damn it, where did he go.” I said and hit the frame of the gate with my left hoof.

Sky sat down and leaned against the gate frame “Amora, I’m tired.” She said quietly.

“I know Sky, I’m tired too.” I said and sat down myself; I really wanted to go to sleep, but at the same time I wanted to go after the kidnapper ‘but to get to the kidnapper, we’d need a tracking spell or a map, or something… like… that.’ I nearly facehoofed when I realized my own thought, but instead I checked my auto map and sure enough, a dotted line had formed from our location, to somewhere in what we in Cloppenhagen called the raider territories. I gently nudged the half asleep Sky awake, and said “Let’s go and find a shelter somewhere and get some sleep, and then we’ll save that kid:” Sky nodded and we started walking, and thus taking our first steps outside the walls of Cloppenhagen.

We found some shelter in an old mattress wagon a mile or so away from Cloppenhagen, and got ourselves a few more hours of sleep, we then had a quick breakfast before we continued along the route my pipbuck had plotted out for us.

We spent most of the day walking, only running into the occasional bloatsprite, which we quickly disposed of with the help of my baton and Skys hooves; we reached the kidnapper’s camp when the sun had just started to set, a quite beautiful sight actually, with the sun’s rays painting the cloud cover in glorious red, orange, gold and purple colors. Drake claw guards were patrolling the torch lit camp, and it was at that point that we realized the Drake claws we had fought in the stable, was not the best that the raider clan had to offer; these guys were completely covered in scales, no coat what so ever and they had horns growing out of their foreheads, the stallions had bigger horns than the mares, many of the stallions also had large fangs hanging out over their lips, giving them an even more dragon like appearance, and it scared me right to my very core, if the ones back at the stable were strong, then how much stronger were these “Those guys look even scarier than the ones we fought in the stable.” I whispered as we overlooked the camp from the hill that we had made our outlook, trying to find out where the raider had taken the foal.

Sky nodded with a scared expression on her face, which I imagined I mimicked perfectly. Sky suddenly poked my shoulder “Maybe the foal’s in there.” She said and pointed down into camp, I followed her hoof and spotted a cage made rebar and razor wire, with a piece of wall on top of it to make sure that the cage couldn’t be lifted, and there was definitely movement in there, though we couldn’t see who was making the movement.

I nodded, it did seem logical that they had put the foal there, until they needed him/her. We waited for the guards to pass the cage and go back to do whatever it was guards did when they weren’t patrolling, before we went down to the camp and snuck up to the cage.

When we reached the cage, we saw two ponies inside, but none of them were the one we were looking for. One of them was a dark brown unicorn stallion with a gray green mane and magenta eyes, he was wearing a long, brown coat and a sun hat; the other pony was a navy blue unicorn mare with a silver mane and dark green eyes, and a bronze gear for a cutie mark; she was dressed in a body armor vest and a wide brimmed hat.

I lightly tapped the bars, getting the two ponies attention, the brown unicorn immediately came over and asked “Who’re you, are you here to save us?” The unicorn mare made her way over to us and looked as hopeful as her cellmate.

I took a quick look back at Sky, who shrugged, making it me who decided if we should save the two or not ‘Hay, if there is a chance for us to save a few more ponies, then I say we do it.’ I thought and said “I’m Amora Rosa, and that’s Sky Haze…” I said and gestured at my marefriend, before I continued “And I guess we’re here to help you out too.” I gave them both a reassuring smile before I asked “What’s your names?”.

“My name is Zodi Gazer.” The dark blue mare said and smiled happily, probably at the prospect of being rescued.

“And I’m Hoofer Hooves.” The dark brown stallion said and reached a hoof through the bars for us to shake; after shaking hooves with both of us, he asked “So, what are you doing here, if you didn’t come here to save us?”.

“Well, we actually came here to rescue a foal that one of those Drake claws kidnapped from Cloppenhagen.” I explained, and Hoofer and Zodi immediately started looking a bit sick “Did you see him or her?” I asked, feeling nervous at the sick expressions on the two unicorns’ faces.

Zodi shook her head and took a few deep breaths to calm herself down, and said “One of those monsters came in earlier today with that poor filly tied to his back; they had just barely untied her, before the leader came and took her to his tent, and… and.” Zodi shivered with disgust at the thoughts running through her head, and I could pretty much guess what had happened, and it made me feel as sick as the two unicorns looked.

I put a hoof through the bars and patted Zodi on the shoulder and said “It’s okay, you don’t have to say anything.” Zodi smiled and nodded her thanks; I then turned to Hoofer and asked “If I can get you out, will you help us save that filly?” We could really use any help we could get.

“Of course we will.” Hoofer said with determination in his voice.

Zodi nodded her agreement, and then said “But we’ll need our weapons, so you should get them first; they’ve got them in the tent over there…” She pointed towards the only tent that had two guards stationed in front of it, they were both stallions, one was gray and the other violet, before continuing “And once you’re inside, look for a sniper rifle with gems on the barrel, and a set of power hooves.”.

I nodded, and soon we were sneaking towards a large rock near the tent, and once there, we observed the guards for a moment “So, got a plan to get past the guards?” Sky asked once we had made sure that none of the other guards came to that area of the camp.

“As a matter of fact I do.” I said and started undoing my saddlebags.

“And what is this plan exactly?” Sky asked as she watched me, as I put my saddlebags on the ground.

“I’ll lure them over here, and then we’ll dust them.” I said as I started undoing the clasps on my barding, giving my marefriend a little show as I undressed.

Sky looked worriedly at me and put her hooves on my shoulders, and asked “And what if they attack you instead? I don’t want to lose you Amora.”.

I gave her a reassuring smile, before I gently removed her hooves from my shoulders, and said equally gently “Don’t worry too much about it, if they’re desperate enough to kidnap a foal and rape her, they’ll be more than willing to follow a nice little flank like mine.” I placed a small kiss on Skys forehead and asked “Ready to show those guys who’s the most dangerous ponies around?”.

Sky took a deep breath and seemed to find her more adventurous attitude once again “I sure am, but if you get hurt, I’m gonna give you such a spanking.” She said with a cheeky grin and gave me a quick nuzzle, before I went out from behind the rock, and started trotting towards the guards.

Once I was near the border where the darkness met the light of the camp, I slowed down and started putting a little more swing into my hips, trying to make myself look a little saucier. I was apparently doing a pretty good job, because the guards immediately turned their heads towards me when I entered the camp “Why, hello there boys, care to help a lonely scratch her itch?” I asked in my most sultry voice and gave them a good look at my assets, while I looked back at them and fluttered my eyelashes for good measure, just so they couldn’t possibly be in doubt about what I had in mind. The guards immediately nodded and I beckoned them to come with me, which they did like two obedient and horny dogs ‘Bucks are so easy when they haven’t had sex in a while.’ I thought to myself as we walked out of the camp

It was pretty easy to lure the two monster guards back towards the rock, all I had to do was swing my tail to and fro, so they could see my genitals and they followed me, no questions asked. Once we were past the rock, I stopped and lifted my tail while I looked back at them and smiled, giving them the impression that I was ready to be taken “He, he, he, we’re gonna have a good time, little cutie.” The gray guard, who was the bigger of the two, said with a fanged smile and that rusty voice that I had first heard in the stable, and it sent shivers down my spine. He started to approach me, and his, for a good word, huge stallionhood standing at full attention, and I couldn’t help but feeling frightened at the thought of him plunging that thing into me.

The gray guard was standing right behind me, and was ready to mount me, when I heard the blessed sound of Skys nova surge rifles charging and her angry voice saying “Hey bucks, get your dirty hooves off that filly now.” I breathed a sigh of relief as the gray stallion moved away from me to face my savior.

The violet stallion snickered and said to his comrade “Looks like we’ll have both wings and legs tonight, we sure are lucky, huh.” His voice had a lighter tone to it, but that just made his voice sound like a piece of metal that was being scraped against another piece of metal.

“Certainly looks like it.” The gray stallion said and licked his lips, as the two calmly walked towards my marefriend; Sky stood her ground, waiting for the opportune moment to attack, but she was also shaking lightly out of fear of the two monsters, and I knew I would too, since I had felt the same fear just seconds ago when the gray guard had tried to mount me.

I suddenly realized that the two guards weren’t paying attention to me: they apparently thought that I would just stand there like a good little mare, while they overpowered another mare; no way in hell was I going to any such thing. I snuck up behind them, and just as they got ready to jump on Sky, I lifted both front hooves and gave the two guards a hard kick to the balls; they stood still for just a moment, before they fell to the ground with a pathetic whimper ‘Well, I guess these guys do have a weak spot after all.’ I thought to myself with satisfied smile on my lips.

My action evaporated any fear sky had felt for the two stallions, and she instantly stepped as close as she could to the still whimpering monster ponies “Say goodnight pussies.” She said and fired her weapons right in their faces, reducing them to pink goo; she then turned to me and said “Well, that went about as good as it could.”.

“Yeah it did, but I doubt that it’s gonna be that easy to take down the rest.” I said as I walked over to my barding and saddlebags, and slung them over my back, I could put it on properly once we were inside the tent.

“Wow, this is quite the storage they got in here.” Sky commented when we entered the tent, and I very much agreed with her; the tent was full of shelves, filled to the brim with everything from weapons, to saddlebags that still looked full, and various other things that the Drake claws had taken from their prisoners over time.

I put my barding and saddlebags back on, before we started looking for our new allies’ weapons. It turned out that the sniper rifle and power hooves had been stashed away in the back of the tent, but that just gave us the opportunity to raid the shelves for anything useful, such as ammunition and explosives, which we found plenty of, both in the saddlebags and lying loosely around on the shelves, I even found something I had been looking for, a pair of magical energy rifles; they were both damaged, but I took them anyway, Serge could probably fix one with parts from the other for a small payment.

I immediately put the power hooves in my bags, but took a few seconds to admire the rifle; it was a dull black, most likely to reduce the chance of others locating the shooter in combat, it had a white dove painted on one of the sides, and rows of gems, set in a spiral pattern, was embedded into the barrel. There were four slots on the top of the weapon where spark batteries could be inserted; I assumed that the slots represented the number of shots it could fire before needing reloading. I snapped myself out of my admiring, and slung the rifle over my shoulder and we were soon sneaking back towards the cage.

O-O-O

“Oh thank goodness you’re back; I was worried you’d been killed.” Hoofer said with a relieved look on his face when we returned.

“Nah, all we needed was a bit of Amoras feminine charms and a bit of my firepower.” Sky said and leaned casually against the cage bars.

“Yeah and a good kick to the balls.” I snickered as I handed the rifle and power hooves through the bars, along with a good helping of spark batteries. I waited for the guards to pass again, before I snuck to the front with a bobby pin and my screwdriver at the ready; it luckily turned out that the lock was such a crabby model, that it almost sprung open the second I inserted the pin ‘Hurray for shitty locks.’ I thought with a smile on my lips.

I got the cage door open, with the help of Zodis and Hoofers levitation magic. We did this, because not only was the door heavy, it had never seen anything that remotely looked like a drop of oil, so it screeched and squealed no matter how it was moved, and we knew that if we made too much noise, then we’d have the entire camp on us in no time flat, but we managed to get it open without making too much noise “So, what now?” Hoofer asked as he attached the power hooves, getting ready for action.

“We still have that foal to save, so that’ll be the first thing we do.” I said and pulled out my gun.

“Oh goddesses damn it.” Zodi said angrily behind us.

We looked back to see that the navy blue unicorn had opened small lid on the side of her rifle “What’s the matter Zodi?” I asked and walked over to her to get a look at what had agitated her.

“Those bastards have broken the focusing gem in my rifle, and I don’t have a replacement.” Zodi said and pointed into the small compartment.

I looked inside the rifle, and sure enough, there was a yellow, cracked gem inside. I almost immediately reached for one of the rifles on my back, but decided against it ‘What if only one of them has a working gem, then they’ll have no use to me, maybe if…’ I grabbed my pistol and held it out towards Zodi and asked “Could you use this as a replacement?” I figured that if both rifles had functioning focusing gems, I could always transfer one to the pistol; if not, then I’d have a functional rifle and until I found a replacement gem, I could use Dandelions bloom as a sidearm.

Zodi grabbed the pistol with her magic and examined it for a moment, before she said “I think I can rig my rifle to work with the gem, but I need time and a screwdriver.”.

I nodded and dug into my saddlebags, finding my screwdriver, and Dandelions bloom; after handing the tool over, I popped a clip into the ornate gun and turned to Sky and Hoofer “Alright, let’sh save that filly.” I said and cocked the gun; Sky charged her rifles and Hoofer pushed the brim of his hat up a little, before we trotted out into the light of the camp to begin our toughest fight yet.

The camp guards took one look at us, and immediately let out a feral roar, which alerted the entire camp to our presence, and soon we were facing 8 pissed off Drake claws, including a dark red one who was larger than the others, and who I believed to be the leader. I took a deep breath and asked “Sho, you guysh ready for thish?”.

“Nope.” Hoofer said and cracked his neck.

“Not at all.” Sky added, turning to face a green monster mare that was slowly approaching her.

“Well in that cashe, let’sh give them the fight of their livesh.” I said and my two companions started their attack. I went into S.A.T.S to get an overview of the situation; three of the monster ponies were attacking Sky, while two others were attacking Hoofer, which left me with the last two raiders, one red and one gray, and the dark red leader ‘Okay first I’ll get rid of the helpers, and then I’ll take care of the leader.’ I thought as I lined up the shots.

I then released the spell and let my shots fly, but got quite the surprise when the dandelion markings on the gun lit up, with a blue light when the hammer slammed down on the bullet casing; the next thing I saw was the bullet leaving the barrel with electricity crackling around it, and when it struck the gray monster raider. The bullet flattened against the monster’s tough hide, and I heard a sharp crack when the electricity was released from its metallic vessel, making the raider wince visibly, as powerful as the shock looked, it only made him stop for a few seconds before he was back up and running towards me again.

‘By the goddesses, this gun is enchanted, awesome.’ I thought to myself as I released the rest of the shots into my two attackers. The second and third shot had the same effect as the first one had, but the fourth shot penetrated the red raider’s hide, and he fell over, spasming as the electricity seared his flesh and stopped his heart; a quite gruesome sight, but I didn’t have time to think about it as I still had one more of the monsters to take care of.

I dropped the gun and drew my baton before stepping to the side, and bashing him over the head with it; even with his thick hide, he still put a hoof to his head to ease the pain, which gave me the opportunity to turn and give him a solid buck to his side, sending him sprawling onto the ground, though that was mostly because of smack I had given him over the head, since my buck weren’t that strong, at least not by earth pony standards, but they had gotten me out of a pinch every once in a while.

I was about to walk over and finish the job, when I heard what sounded like a mix of a small cannon and an energy weapon being fired at the same time; I then saw a red and white flash, and the next thing I knew, the guard turned pink and glittery before falling into a pony shaped pile of glittering ashes. I turned to see Zodi standing on top of the cage, with smoke coming from the barrel of her rifle; I could only see one battery in the impressive weapon, so I guessed that the crystal from my gun couldn’t handle more than one shot, and had to cool down before the next shot. I smiled and gave the sniper a quick salute, which she returned.

As I turned to face the leader, I looked to my comrades to see how they were fairing; sky had eliminated two of her three opponents but was having trouble with the last one, who was wielding a sledgehammer with almost deadly precision, forcing my marefriend to jump around, to get out of the way of the potentially deadly weapon.

Hoofer was still taking care of his opponents, but that wasn’t what caught my attention, it was the way he was doing it; he was standing on his hind legs, using his front legs to parry and hit his opponents, his stance and the wide, powerful swings he used, reminded me of pictures I had seen of bears and Ursa majors in books, back in the stable’s library; if I hadn’t remembered that I had the leader to deal with, I could have watched him for hours, but instead I picked up my gun and loaded a fresh clip, just to be on the safe side, before I focused on the leader, who for some reason hadn’t moved an inch since we started our attack, he just stood there and looked at me like I was a bug, ready to be squashed by him “Okay mishter, ready to get your assh handed to you?” I said as I readied myself to charge at him.

The leader simply chuckled; at least that’s what I assumed he was doing, because it sounded more like hoarse coughing, rather than laughter “Then come at me little one, so I can violate you, before I kill you.” He said, his voice made me feel like someone had doused me with ice water, but I stood my ground, the thought of the hurt filly in the tent keeping me from turning tail and run.

‘Alright, this is it.’ I thought as I charged at the dark red pony, knowing that I had to get close to him in order for my bullets to penetrate his hard skin; however, I quickly regretted my decision to use a frontal attack for this opponent, because I got close to him, he opened his mouth and sprayed me with a blast of fire. I screamed and leapt to the side as the flames singed my hide ‘Well, that was very stupid.’ I thought and unloaded a couple of rounds into the leader, but the bullets just flattened against his skin like they had with the other raiders; but fortunately the electricity still stunned him for a moment, thus giving me a little time to think of a way of incapacitating him.

Suddenly I remembered, I already knew of one sore spot that these monster ponies had; I quickly turned tail and ran between the tents, getting out of the leader’s sight “What’s the matter little one, not too brave now that you have seen my power!” The leader yelled after me, following up with another round of his icy laughter. As I hid in the shadows, I watched him slowly advance on my friends before hurrying around the tent so I came up behind him.

‘Okay, this is it. Bullets, don’t fail me now.’ I thought and galloped towards the big, dark red pony, he was apparently only focused on my friends, because he didn’t notice me until I jumped and slid under him; I quickly twisted around and gelded him with a couple of bullets. The leader fell to the ground, screaming in agony while blood squirted from where his family jewels had been; I got back up as quickly as I could and walked up so I could look the leader in the eye, while I pushed Dandelions bloom to his temple “Die you fucking child moleshter.” I said coldly before I put a bullet through his skull.

He thrashed around for a few seconds, while the electricity surged through him, frying his brain; I then holstered my gun and took a few deep breaths to calm myself, before I walked over to my friends, who had dispatched of the last Drake claws “Everypony okay?” I asked.

“I’m okay.” Hoofer said as he sat down on a rock.

“Me too.” Zodi said and ejected the spark pack from her rifle, before sitting down next to Hoofer.

“Well I for one could have been better.” Sky said and showed off her left wing, which was hanging limply beside her body.

“Oh my gosh.” I gasped and hurried over to my marefriend, and started examining her wing “Oh my poor little Sky Haze, who did this to you?” I asked as I carefully felt around the obviously broken limb.

“It was that last Drake claw bastard, ih, she got one lucky shot and, ow, now my wing’s broken.” Sky said, wincing every time I pressed down on the sore spots of her wing.

I nodded before I stood back up and said to her “I’ll fix you right up, but I want to check up on the filly first, is that okay?” Sky nodded, understanding that the foal might be off worse than she was; I gave her a quick kiss on the mouth, before I walked over to the leader’s tent. I was about to walk in when I remembered all the weapons I had on me and how I must look with my singed hide, so I left my gun, baton and the two rifles at the tent flap, no need to come in and scare the poor thing by looking like I had come to kidnap her myself; I then brushed myself off, opened the tent flap and walked in.

Extra:

Raider territories: The part of the area between Cloppenhagen and the surrounding settlements with the Cloppenhagen crater in the middle is known as the raider territories, this is where the ponies who doesn’t want civilization has banded together to rob the area of its riches. Some has banded together in large groups, of which the largest are the Gold strikers, the Drake claws and the Devilfish, while others are in very small groups that robs lone ponies, or small groups or the occasional trader. This part of the territory is also home to a large population of ghouls and zombies, you may be lucky and find some friendly ghouls, but they are most likely to attack as soon as they see you.

Drake claws: Sometimes called the scourge of Cloppenhagen, as they are some of the most dangerous raiders in the area; they have become this dangerous because they use a concoction of taint and dragons blood to mutate themselves into half pony, half dragon hybrids, though it takes several doses to become a full hybrid. They have extremely hard skin that even magical energy weapons have difficulties penetrating; they can spit fire and their hooves are very sharp. They breed their own dragons so they always have a fresh supply of blood. When a prisoner is taken, they are converted, and often end up joining the gang as a result of the stress the mutation puts on one’s mind.

Wasteland rescue, part 2

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Chapter 4: Wasteland rescue, part 2:

The first thing that hit me when I entered the tent, it was the smell that hung in the air. It smelled like blood, semen, sweat and urine and I could guess where at least two of the smells came from, and it made me sick to my stomach; not the smells themselves, I was used to them from the clinic, it was the thoughts of what had transpired in the cloth room that made my blood boil.

I almost felt like going back out and put a few more bullets in the carcass of the leader, but I didn’t because of the second thing I noticed; it was the foal, lying on the pile of mattresses that served as the tent’s bed. She had her head turned to the canvas and was sopping softly; She had a pale pink coat and an orange mane, which were both matted by sweat.

I set my saddlebags on the ground, and walked over to the foal; she apparently heard me coming, because she immediately stopped sopping and every muscle in her body tensed, she apparently thought I was the leader who had come back to do more to her. I stopped in front of the bed, trying to decide what to do so she wouldn’t be afraid of me, definitely didn’t want to try and pick her up or do anything with my hooves for that matter, I might just end up making her hysterical and very possibly kick me; I decided on doing what my mother did to calm me down when I was afraid of something as a filly, I started nuzzling her mane. Little by little, she started to relax and slowly turned over to see who I was “Who are you?” She asked after a moment, her voice sounding weak and timid.

“I’m Amora, what’s your name, sweetie?” I asked with a comforting smile and sat down on the mattresses beside her.

“Peach Rose.” The filly said, giving me a small smile; she suddenly looked nervously at the tent flap and asked in a shaky voice, while also covering her muzzle with the blanket “W-what about the monster ponies, a-aren’t they after you?”.

“Don’t worry Peach, me and my friends has taken care of them, they won’t bother the wasteland anymore.” I said and put a reassuring hoof on her shoulder.

“R-really?” Peach asked hopefully as she let the blanket drop so it wasn’t covering her muzzle anymore.

“Really.” I confirmed. The expression on the pink foal’s face changed from worried to happy, and she started sitting up to hug me, but before she got very far off the pillow, she winced and fell back with a pained expression on her face "Peach, what’s wrong?” I asked and nuzzled the foal’s cheek to comfort her.

“My ‘special place’ hurts.” Peach sniffed while looking a little embarrassed about talking about the most private area of her body.

“No wonder, when you think about what that monster did to you.” I said, giving the foal a final nuzzle before making her lie down again, I then got off the bed and retrieved my bags; I found a healing potion and a syringe of med-X, and walked back to the bed “Here, drink this, it’ll make the pain go away.” I said and gave Peach the potion, which she happily drank; after the potion had disappeared down the foal’s throat, I held up the syringe and asked her “Do you want a little something to help you fall asleep?”.

Peach looked at the syringe with the same expression I had seen on other foals’ faces, when I had to give them shots at the clinic, but the difference between the clinic and here, was that Peach had a choice whether she wanted it or not. Peach looked back and forth between me and the needle for a few seconds, before she held out her leg and said “It’s better than having nightmares.” I nodded, knowing what her nightmares would consist of in the following weeks, before gently taking her leg and injecting about half of the med-X into her; it was about double the dose I would normally give a foal, but the point of giving the pink foal the medicine wasn’t to numb pain in her body, but to make her sleep.

I helped tugging Peach in and once she lying comfortably in the bed, I said “Listen Peach, I’m gonna stay with you until you fall asleep, but if you wake up and you see either a red pegasus or a dark blue unicorn, or a brown unicorn in here, don’t be afraid, it’s my friends and they are as nice as me.”.

“Okay.” Peach said and laid back on the pillow.

I spent the next few minutes, sitting beside the foal and humming a little lullaby to her until the med-X took effect and put her into a deep sleep. I disposed of the syringe and potion bottle, before I gathered my stuff and walked out of the tent to see that my friends had cleared the camp of the corpses, which was probably for the best, since corpses wasn’t exactly the healthiest thing to be around in the long run.

I picked up my weapons and walked over to my friends who was sitting by the large campfire in the middle of the camp “So, how is she?” Sky asked when I was within earshot.

“Physically she’s good; I gave her a healing potion just in case that bastard had been too rough on her. As for her mental state, well, I think she’s gonna have nightmares about the Drake claws for months, if not years.” I said as I sat down by the fire; I felt a little bad that I couldn’t do more for her than healing her body, but the thought about how happy her mother would be to see her filly again, made me feel better again. After getting a little warmth from the fire, I turned to Sky and said “Okay, let’s get that wing fixed, shall we?”.

“Yeah, let’s.” Sky said and started undoing the clasps on her armor.

I went over and started helping my marefriend out of the armor; while we did this, I waved Hoofer over and asked him “Could you go to the supply tent and find a bottle of alcohol? I think we’re gonna need some.”.

“Sure.” Hoofer said and trotted off to get the requested bottle. I opened my bags and got out one of the last healing potions we had, along with our last syringe of med-X; I then had Sky lie down and placed the potion in front of her, before got on her back and injected the painkiller into the area where the wing and shoulder met, getting a small whimper from my marefriend, as she wasn’t as used to injections as I was; we then waited for the drug to take effect, and for Hoofer to return. He returned a few minutes later, carrying satchel and a single saddlebag with him “Here you go one bottle of quality booze for the mares.” He said and levitated a bottle of clear fluid, with an Ursa Major and the words ‘Ursa vodka’ on the faded label, over to me, after which he said “When you’re done, I wanna show you something weird I found in the tent.” he then walked over to Zodi and pulled out another bottle, which they started to share, guess that is what you need after being freed and killing your captors.

I nodded, before I unscrewed the lid of the bottle and handed it to Sky “Take a few swigs of this, and then we can get that wing back where it belongs.” I said and put my hooves in the right position so I could push the wing bone back into the socket.

“Oki doki.” Sky said and started out with a sip, just in case the alcohol was too strong for her, before taking two big gulps and putting the bottle away; after all, it was mostly to calm her down so she wouldn’t be nervous when I pushed the bone back in place.

“Right then, I’m putting the bone back in place now, be ready to drink the potion as soon as I tell you to.” I said.

“Okay, just give the word.” Sky said and popped the cork on the potion bottle.

“Alright, 1, 2, 3.” I counted and gave the bone a firm push, which along with a squeak from Sky relocated the bone, I suspected that the squeak was more due to the icky feeling of the bone being relocated, than anything else “Drink it now.” I said while holding the bone and wing properly in place, so it would mend in the right way when the healing magic took effect. Sky nodded and downed the potion as quickly as she could. We then waited for a few minutes before I got off Sky and said “Try flapping your wing a bit.”.

“Okay nurse Amora.” Sky said and giggled a bit before slowly flapping her mended wing while I observed the joint, just to make sure I didn’t have to dislocate and relocate it again.

I happily confirmed that the wing was where it should be; I stepped around Sky so I was face to face with her and said “There, you’re good to go again. Now, would you be a huge sweetheart, and find us a place to sleep for the night, hmm.” I finished by placing a gentle kiss on my marefriend’s lips. If I knew Sky right, which I did, then we both needed some ‘fun’ time after a day of wandering the wastes, and fighting the monsters within it.

“Sure thing, nurse Amora.” The red Pegasus said with a smile on her lips, before pushing them against mine in another, slightly rougher, kiss, sending little jolts of pleasurable electricity through my brain “I’ll go find us a tent. I’ll put my bags in front of it so you know which one it is.” She said and pecked me on the forehead, before picking up her gear and bags, and wandered off to find a fitting tent for us to snuggle up in.

‘Goddesses how I love that mare.’ I thought with a smile before I walked over and sat down beside Hoofer and asked “So what was it you wanted to show me?”.

Hoofer opened the saddlebag he had brought with him, and levitated what looked like a potion bottle out of it, except for the fact that the content of the bottle looked like it was rotten “What do you think has happened to this potion?” Hoofer asked as he floated the bottle over to me.

I took the bottle and examined the contents a bit by tilting it from side to side, the former potion moving from one side of the bottle to the other, like a big glob of molasses, and my guts clenched at the thought of how the potion smelled in this condition; it was definitely not how a healing potion was supposed to look. I set the potion down and said “To be honest, I’m not sure what to make of it, though I am sure of one thing, you would end up sick instead of healed if you drank this stuff.” I looked at the saddlebag and asked “Was there anything in the bag, that could give us a clue as to where it came from?”.

“Umm, let’s see what else we have in here.” Hoofer said and opened the bag, and started looking through the contents “There is an assortment of grenades, clips for a machinegun, some sugar apple bombs, and a ’Wasteland survival guide: Hoofington edition’.” Hoofers brows furrowed and he pulled the guide out of the bag “Why does Hoofington need a separate survival guide?” He asked more to himself than to us.

“I’ve heard stories about how dangerous that place is, so it kinda makes sense that you would need a different guide for that place, than the rest of the wasteland, and it also makes sense to me why the potion is in the condition it is.” I said as I studied the book while Hoofer flipped through the pages with his magic. All the information I had about Hoofington, came from the traveling merchants that came to the stable, and they all more or less said the same thing; the Hoof, as many called it, was a royal treasure chest, waiting to be opened; however, it was also hell on Equestria, filled with all sorts of monsters, taint, something call enervation, which would kill you if you stayed too long in proximity to the source of the necrotic magic, and of course the magical radiation left behind by the bombs, which had apparently fallen everywhere in the city. I shivered a bit at the thought of a city being wiped out by balefire bombs, what a nightmare that must have been; I then got back on my hooves and said “Well, I’ll go find Sky, see you guys tomorrow.”.

I was about to walk away and find the tent, when Zodi spoke up “Wait, Amora, can I ask you something?”.

“Sure, ask away.” I said and sat down again.

“What was that gun you used when we were fighting? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.” Zodi said, her eyes locked on to the holster that was currently holding the engraved pistol.

“Well, I found it in a safe in outer Cloppenhagen; I had no idea that it could enchant bullets with lightning, so I’m as surprised about it as you are.”.

“Okay, well, could I be allowed to study it while you and Sky get some ‘sleep’?” Zodi asked while giving me a cheeky grin.

“Of course you can.” I said and pulled the gun out of its holster, and handed it over to the navy unicorn, before giving her the same cheeky grin that she had given me and said “That is, unless you want to join us.”.

Zodi’s cheeks immediately lit up, and she almost dropped the weapon in her hooves while looking utterly shocked at me. Both Hoofer and I couldn’t help but laugh a bit at her, since she obviously didn’t get that I was just teasing her. After a few moments, she shook herself out of her stupor and said shyly “I… I’m afraid I’m not into stuff like that, bu-but have a good night anyway.” She gave me an equally shy smile, before turning her gaze to the engraved pistol in her grasp.

“That’s okay, I was just teasing anyway.” I said and smiled at Zodi, making her calm down a bit and smile back at me. I was about to trot off and find the tent where me and Sky would spend the night, when I remembered Peach and asked “I almost forgot to ask, could one of you keep an eye on Peach Rose, the filly we rescued, just in case she wakes up?”.

“Sure, I’ll keep an eye on her; the poor dear should not have to wake up alone, not after what she’s been through.” Hoofer said and looked in the direction of the tent, where the filly was sleeping.

“Thanks Hoofer.” I said with a smile, before trotting off to find Sky. Since the camp wasn’t all that big, it wasn’t hard to find the tent that Sky and I would spend the night in, and I was glad that she had chosen the one furthest away from the campfire, that meant that we wouldn’t have to worry about how much noise we would be making with our nightly activities.

I left my bags and weapons outside the tent, and walked in to find Sky lying on a couple of spread out mattresses, her armor lying neatly in a pile at the foot of the makeshift bed; I stripped out of my barding as quickly as I could, while also giving my marefriend a little show, before I laid down beside her and gave her a kiss on the lips “Well, I got us a foalsitter, and I made sure that little Peach Rose know who we all are, so we’ll have all the night to ourselves.”.

“Sounds very, very good.” Sky said and kissed me back, before climbing on top of me. She licked her lips and looked hungrily at me before she leaned down and kissed me roughly, almost violently, but I didn’t mind; Sky always liked starting out rough and then slowly going gentler, until finally, when you were almost pained by horniness, she would make you experience pleasure beyond your wildest dreams, at least that was my opinion.

Sky broke the kiss, panting heavily while staring at me like a hungry manticore; she then started planting smaller kisses on my chin and neck, each time sucking hard on my skin, along with little bites on my neck that made me shudder and moan from pleasure.

She slowly worked her way down my body, and her bites were equally slowly being replaced by gentle nibbles of her lips, and her sucking kisses by gentle pecks on my skin. When she reached my nipples, she started putting her tongue to use, going in gentle, small circles around my hardening knops, and while the motion was enjoyable, it was painfully slow and wouldn’t allow me release, not by a long shot.

After a long session of Skys licking, where she had slowly moved to my nether regions and was now nipping and licking at my outer lips, my body was begging for release, my loins were burning, I was sweating and my moans had transformed into whimpers. Sky looked up at me and asked teasingly “Do you want me to end this?” I gave a little squeak and nodded vigorously, or as much as I could, given how clouded my mind was with lust.

“Ah, ah, ah, you have to use your words, or else I can’t understand you.” Sky said in a sing-song voice before going back to her licking; she didn’t do it to be evil, it was so she could give me as much of her love as she could.

I inhaled a few times and finally managed to whisper “Yes. Please.” I then fell back on the mattress, panting and whimpering.

Sky looked up at me and winked, before snapping her tongue up and let it pass over my clit once. I felt like I was hit by a lightning bolt and all the tension that had been building up in my body left me in a sudden rush of relief, followed by my mind going somewhat blank and me closing my eyes. Sky crawled up beside me, while I took some deep to regain at least some of my strength “How’re you feeling cutie?” She asked when I finally opened my eyes and looked at her.

“I feel like an angel just kissed me.” I half whispered with a smile, struggling a little with the words since I hadn’t quite recovered yet.

“Then I guess I did my job right.” Sky said and pecked me on the forehead.

“That you did.” I said while still smiling at my marefriend. I looked up at the tent ceiling, taking a few more deep breaths and said “Give me a minute, and I shall return the favor.”.

“I’m looking forward to that.” Sky said in a seductive voice, while snuggling up to me.

“And I’ll make sure to deliver.” I said and snuggled back.

O-O-O

A cool morning breeze found its way into our tent, and sent a light chill up my spine; I opened my eyes and looked into the smiling face of Sky, who had her forelegs around my waist, while mine were around her neck. I looked at my marefriend’s tranquil face for a few more second, before I gave a happy sigh and closed my eyes again, thinking back on last night; it had certainly been a night of giving and receiving for both of us, and we had enjoyed every second of it; I giggled a bit at all the naughty things we had accomplished and snuggled a bit closer to Sky, while I wished that we could stay in bed all day and repeat our antics when night fell once again.

But however much I wished for it, I knew we had work to do before we could lie down and have fun again. I sighed and opened my eyes again, before I gently shook Sky until her eyes opened “Come on mom, just 5 more minutes.” She said with a yawn and put her head on shoulder.

I chuckled a bit, I found her so cute when she wasn’t all awake, but we had to get up and get ready to head back to Cloppenhagen, so I gave her another gentle shake and said “As much as I would love to be it, I’m not your mom and we have to get up now cutie.” I finished off by kissing her forehead.

Sky opened her eyes again and moved away from me to stretch and yawn, she then leaned back and kissed my forehead while putting her legs around my neck, and said ”Right, We need to get Peach back home, though I think it can wait until I’ve done this.” She pulled me close and placed a kiss on my lips, which she held for the better part of half a minute, before she pulled away and started getting out of bed.

I followed suit, and we were soon donning our armor and barding respectively “Sky.” I said to gain her attention, while helping her with the straps on her hind legs.

“Mhm.” Sky said and tightened a strap on her front leg.

“I had such a great time last night.” I said and tightened the last strap and moved on to the next leg.

“So did I, though I hope that next time we get the opportunity, we get to do it in a room instead of a raider camp.” Sky finished with her front legs and did a quick check of her armor with the interface in her helmet.

“I can only agree, though it was a lot of fun.” I said with a smile, once again thinking back to the night before, while I finished up on Skys hind leg straps.

“He, he, yeah, it was.” Sky chuckled, obviously thinking the same thing I did.

We stepped out of the tent and into what passed for the morning sun in the wasteland, which wasn’t much with the everlasting cloud cover that covered it. We picked up our weapons and saddlebags, and went to the newly lit campfire, where Zodi, Hoofer and Peach was sitting to ward off the morning cold, Peach was sitting in Zodis lap, making herself comfortable; several food cans was lying on the ground near the fire, indicating that the three had already been up for a while ”Hey fillies, slept well?” Hoofer asked when he noticed us coming.

“Very good, how about you guys?” I asked as we sat down by the fire to get some heat ourselves.

“I slept like a rock, there really is nothing like sleeping in a real bed again.” Hoofer said with a satisfied look on his face.

“Amen to that.” Zodi said, playing with Peaches mane.

“That’s good.” I said as I opened my bag and found some of the stable food I had, which was made out of grass, apples and oats, all grown in the stable, compressed into the form of a cracker, they tasted alright and had all the nutrition you needed for a healthy diet.

While I was eating, Sky had gotten up and walked over to peach, and gave her a kind smile “Hi, you much be Peach Rose, I’m Sky Haze.” Sky said and held out her hoof for the foal to shake.

“H-hi miss Haze.” Peach said shyly while reached out and shook hooves with Sky; once the hoofshake had ended, Sky ruffled Peaches mane, making the foal giggle, before she sat down beside Zodi and started small talking with the foal and Zodi, while also getting something to eat.

I finished my meal and asked Hoofer “So, where are you gonna go from here?”.

“For my part, I want to go back to Fillygrad and see to my plants, and I’m pretty sure that Zodi wants to go back as well.” Hoofer said as he looked at the fire.

’I think I’d do the same thing if had been imprisoned for any amount of time.’ I thought as I nodded in understanding; I then got up and walked over and sat down beside Zodi “So, did you find out anything interesting about my gun?” I asked, I really wanted to know how it enchanted the bullets.

“Yes I did.” Zodi said, before passing Peach over to Sky and pulled Dandelions bloom out of a saddlebag, which I figured she had acquired from the supply tent “After analyzing it with one of my spells, I discovered that the markings on the gun is a permanent spell that charges any bullet that’s put into the chamber, with lightning; I also think it has a repair spell, but I fell asleep before I could look more into it, sorry.” She said an handed the gun over to me.

“That’s okay, now I at least know something about it.” I said after holstering the gun. We spent some more time around the fire, just making small talk and playing a bit with Peach, before I said “Well, we better get moving, if we want to reach Cloppenhagen before tomorrow.” I got up, along with Sky and Peach, and adjusted my saddlebags, getting ready to go.

“Why walk all the way to Cloppenhagen, if there is a quicker way, if you come with us to Fillygrad.” Zodi said as she and Hoofer too stood up.

“And what is this ‘quicker’ way Zodi?” Sky asked as she put on her own saddlebags.

“Well, I have built a motorized wagon back in my lab, which can get you back to Cloppenhagen a lot faster than if you walked; so if you’re willing to spend a few hours of walking to Fillygrad, and a few more while I charge the car’s energy cell, then you can be back in Cloppenhagen before nightfall.” Zodi offered as she slung her riffle over her shoulder.

Me and Sky looked at each other, trying to figure out if we should go with our new allies or not. On one hand, we had never seen a vehicle that wasn’t drawn by their owners, or had been destroyed by the bombs; on the other, Zodi did seem to be rather tech-minded, so she might have had the know-how to put a car together from scratch. Sky finally shrugged and said “I’m leaving this one up to you.”.

“Okay then.” I said and thought about it for a second, before taking quick decision and said “Let’s go with Zodi and hoofer; if nothing else, we can restock on food, chems and ammo, before we make our way back.”.

“In that case, lead the way Zodi.” Sky said and smiled at the dark blue unicorn.

“Right then, follow me my friends, tom my lair of science!” Zodi boomed happily while pointing in the direction of the Fillygrad settlement, before she walked off with me, Sky, Hoofer and Peach in tow.

We had walked for about an hour, when we felt a tremor in the earth, which felt like it was coming closer and closer “Wha-wha-what is that?” Peach asked anxiously as she hid behind my hind legs.

Hoofer looked up, having apparently been in deep thought and not noticed the rumbling in the ground, before Peach brought it up; he looked out at the horizon, where a dust cloud was rising and his eyes went wide “Oh shit!” He cursed and looked around, frantically.

“What’s going on Hoofer?” Zodi asked, sounding frightened.

“It’s the zombie herd.” Hoofer said, making all of us feel afraid of our lives, at least from I could gather from the expressions on everyponys faces, and we all started looking for a place to hide. If the size of the cloud was any indication, this ‘zombie herd’ had to be huge, and from me and Sky previous encounters with those creatures, we’d rather want to hide from them, rather than try and fight them “Quick, this way.” Hoofer yelled and galloped towards a couple of rocks nearby.

We figured he must have noticed something, so I helped Peach up on my back, and along with Zodi and Sky, we followed Hoofer over to the rocks, where we discovered an old moving van that was stuck between two of the rocks. Hoofer pried one of the hatches open and we got inside as quickly as we could, with Hoofer closing the hatch.

Me and Sky lit our pipbuck lamps and we looked around the van; the van had obviously been on job when the bomb hit outside Cloppenhagen, with all the furniture and boxes scattered around the van’s haul “Well, we might as well make ourselves comfortable.” I said and went to a box where I saw a pillow sticking out and started pulling it out; the others nodded and were soon helping me building a little nest out of pillows for us to lie on, we even found a box full of plush toys, which we let Peach look through; while we were doing this, the thundering of the zombie herd were coming closer and closer, and by the time we had gotten ourselves comfortable on the pillows, we could hear them as clearly as if we were standing outside.

“Wow, that sounds like a lot of zombies.” Sky said and hugged Peach, who hugged back while holding a pink unicorn doll that she had found among the plushies in the box.

“It sounds scary.” Peach said meekly.

I moved over beside Sky and nuzzled the foal while saying “Don’t you worry sweetie, as long as we’re in here, they can’t hurt us.”.

Peach nodded and nuzzled me back briefly, before laying her head down on Skys back and closed her eyes. We stayed in the van for about ten more minutes, just to make sure that the herd had moved on, before we crawled out of the van and continued our walk toward the Fillygrad settlement.

A/N: Well, there’s another chapter done, I am sorry that it took so long, but I’ve had a busy 2 months, but now that my vacation is right around the corner, I’ll have a lot more time to write. On another note, should I change the rating for this story, I’m a bit unsure if I have led this story into mature territory, so I’d like it if you could help me out a little; thanks in advance.

Extra:

The zombie herd: The zombie herd is a huge group of zombie ponies, that tramples through the territories in search for fresh pony meat, and they attack anything living, which makes it very dangerous to go up against them; however, they have been running in the same pattern throughout the territories ever since they became undead, so it fairly easy to avoid them if you want to. The best tactic when faced with this gruesome herd is running and hiding until they pass by.

From Fillygrad to Cloppenhagen.

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Chapter 5: From Fillygrad to Cloppenhagen.

“Wow, I’ve never seen so many plants in my whole life.” Peach said as she pressed her nose to one of the glass panels of one of the many greenhouses of Fillygrad, her eyes big as saucers.

We had arrived at the settlement a few hours after our clash with the zombie herd, and once there, we had split up; Hoofer went to his house, which wasn’t far from the entrance gate, which had a giant sign with the settlement’s name on it, the lower part having gotten a fresh coat of paint, hiding the rest of the sign’s text, and Zodi went to her lab, a big, looming building about a kilometer away from the settlement; we went to the small market, and spent a good part of the caps we had on chems, bandages, ammo and food, both fresh and preserved; now we were walking around, looking at the little miracles of flowers, grass, fruit and vegetables that happened in the greenhouses of the settlement.

“We have back in the stable, but I don’t think we’ve ever such a big variety of them before.” Sky said as she too looked into the greenhouse, her eyes as big and curious as Peaches.

I chuckled at the display of curiosity; they both looked so cute with their noses pressed to the windows, and their wide eyes looking at the sprouting life within; after a while, watching the two watching the vegetables got a bit boring “Come on you two, as fun as it is to watch vegetables grow, I think we should head over to Zodis, so she won’t have wait for us, once she’s charged her wagon.” I said, getting the twos attention.

“Sounds like an idea, better be early than late.” Sky said after prying her eyes away from the greenhouse window; she went over to me before she turned to Peach and asked “You coming Peach?”.

“But I wanted to look at the pretty plants some more.” The little earth pony whined as she looked pleadingly at us with huge puppy dog eyes.

We both chuckled at the display of cuteness, before I said “But don’t you want to go back to your mommy again sweetie?” My words had the desired effect; peach took one final look at the greenhouse interior, before she ran over to us and tried to push us in the direction of the lab, which was a futile task since we were larger and stronger than her, while babbling about how her mom was waiting and looking for her back in Cloppenhagen.

Sky chuckled as we started to walk towards the exit and Zodis laboratory “How did you do that? I mean, convinced her to come along.” She asked in a whisper.

“I’ve learned a few tricks, treating foals at the clinic.” I whispered back, along with a return chuckle and a nuzzle, which was returned lovingly by my marefriend. Peach had stopped trying to push us and was now happily skipping in front of us, while humming a happy little tune.

When we reached the gate, we saw Hoofer about to leave with a small box of vegetables and flowers on his back “Hey Hoofer…!” Sky called, making the brown unicorn turn and smile as we approached him “Where are you going?” She asked when we reached him.

“I thought we could have lunch in Zodis lab while we wait for that energy cell to charge.” Hoofer said as we started walking past the gate guards and out the gate.

“Sounds good.” I said, licking my lips along with sky; it would be the first time I tasted any food that wasn’t from 200 years ago. Besides the nutrition crackers the stable produced, all the traders that sold food in the stable, only had the preserved food that they found in the ruins of the old cities, so fresh food was something we both looked forward to taste. I walked up to Hoofer and said “Hoofer, can I ask you a question?”.

“Sure, go ahead.” The gardener unicorn said and directed his attention from the laboratory to me.

“Well, I’ve heard a good deal about Fillygrad on the radio, about how well your harvest has been and so on, but how can you grow plants out here with when the soil is as irradiated as it is?” I asked as I took a quick look back at the settlement before focusing back on Hoofer.

Hoofer tipped his sunhat back a little, before he answered “When I arrived, along with the first settlers, this place was the ruins of a giant shopping mall, and we decided to start our settlement there, since we could use the concrete and glass, and other things to build houses out of. But the best thing happened when cracked open the asphalt, which we wanted to melt down and use for the roofs, we discovered that the soil underneath was somehow untouched by the radiation, and we decided to use that to our advantage; we bought seeds and sunlight talismans from the zebras in Cloppenhagen, and we were lucky enough to find and buy a water talisman from a salvage fisher in Mare’s cove, who found it on one of his trips out to the cove’s shipwrecks, and it has given us clean water to this day. We then went to work, building greenhouses, planting the seeds and building an underground water tank where we could get water from, it was hard, but it was worth it.” Hoofer finished his story just as we arrived at Zodis laboratory. He knocked hard on the door and we waited for the scientist to open.

It wasn’t long before we heard the sound of sliders being pulled back and a single lock being unlocked, before the door was opened and the navy blue unicorn stuck her head out “Hi guys, I was just wondering when you’d show up.” She said and opened the door entirely so we could walk into the building “Oooh, you brought lunch.” She said when she saw the box that Hoofer was carrying.

“Oooh, pretty colors.” Peach said when she saw the inside of the lab. The walls looked like someone had exploded a bomb full of different colored paint, and then left it to dry; to me, it had its own unique charm, though it wasn’t a place I’d want to live in.

“Yeah, this place is really psychedelic, how did you do that thing with the paint?” Sky asked as she looked interested at the palette of color splotches.

“Well, after I finished painting the other rooms, I had a lot of leftover paint, so I decided to get a little creative; I found some plastic bags in a storage room, and filled them with paint, and threw them at the walls, thus making this pattern. Now let’s go to the main lab and get something to eat, while the energy cell finishes charging.” Zodi said and started walking down one of the corridors, with us following close behind.

“You better not get any ideas for our home missy.” I whispered to Sky as we walked. I knew when she got that look of interest in her eyes, she got ideas and wanted to make them reality.

“Don’t worry, I was thinking about doing some sort of artwork with paint throwing involved...“ Sky said and gave me quick peck on the cheek, before she continued “I like our house just the way it is.”.

“Good to know honey.” I said with a smile, and returned the small kiss. I was happy that my marefriend was not about to repaint our house, and that she had found inspiration for her next project. It wasn’t long before we entered what Zodi called her ‘main lab’; the walls were colored a light gray with small scorch marks here and there, probably from experiments gone wrong during the time Zodi had lived in the huge building.
In the middle of the room, there was a table with 6 chairs around it, on the table itself, there was a gas burner, a coffeepot, a tin marked ‘Coffee’ and 6 mugs with different colored hearts on them. At the far wall was an enormous tool bench, with what I assumed was just about every single tool you’d need for whatever it was that Zodi did around the laboratory. To the right of us was a table with a taken apart energy rifle and other parts I couldn’t recognize; underneath it were boxes with what I assumed were spare parts, and other things Zodi didn’t need that often. And finally to our left, there was big, bulky, red colored machine; it gave off a steady hum, while multicolored light danced through the various glass tubes on the exterior of the machine.

“Well, here we are, sit down while I get some plates.” Zodi said and walked back out into the corridor.

We walked over and me, Sky and Peach sat down, while Hoofer levitated the box from his back onto the table, before sitting down himself. Zodi returned a few moments after, levitating 5 plates alongside her, she sat down and placed a plate in front of each of us; soon after, we were eating the plants and vegetables from Hoofers box, with the brown stallion explaining to us what the plants were called, and me and Sky were enjoying them immensely, at least from what I could gather from the expression on my marefriend’s face. There were so many different flavors, and all of them were just about the best thing I had ever tasted, from the perfumed, slightly bitter taste of the tropical flowers, to the sweetness of the yams, and of course there were classics like apples and carrots, all of them were a symphony of flavors in my mouth, and I enjoyed every single one of them.

While we ate, I tore my attention away from the lovely food on my plate, and looked over at the dark blue mare and asked her “Zodi, can I ask what you do here?”.

Zodi swallowed the piece carrot she had been chewing on and said “Well I repair things for the settlers; you know, weapons, farming tools, things from the prewar world, you know those sorts of things, and in return, I get caps, spare parts, sometimes food and whenever a merchant who deals with machine parts and the like comes by, the settlers sends them this way.”.

I swallowed the large tropical petal I had been chewing on while listening to the inventor mare, and said “Wow, sounds like you have a really good life here.”.

“Yeah it’s okay, but it can become a little dull from time to time, but after meeting those Drake claws, I want life to be really dull for a while.” Zodi said and dug back into her lunch.

It wasn’t long after we had finished our lunch, that the machine stopped humming and a hatch opened, revealing a glowing, blue green rod of crystal with runes edged into it and a metal cap at the end, which also had arcane runes engraved onto it.

Zodi levitated the rod out of the machine and led us to the garage, which was in the eastern part of the building. In the center of the room was Zodis motorized wagon; it had 2 seats in the front and a sofa like seat in the back, which were set in the middle of the contraption, 4 doors which granted access to the vehicle, and metal plating that made up the sides, roof and also covered its quite big metal wheels; the engine, which was mounted on the back part of the wagon, was an impressive piece of work; it looked like some sort of bug shell made out of metal, though I couldn’t for my life remember where I had seen such a shell, with clear plastic tubing running to it from a clear plastic container, which held a weird, fluorescent blue fluid; more crystal glyphs had been inserted into strategically placed slots along the upper part of the engine, and though I couldn’t even begin to guess their function, I could figure out the they helped the engine run.

“Wow, this is… I don’t even know what to say about it, it’s just so new to me.” I said as me, Sky and Peach walked around the vehicle to get a better look at it; I made a little stop at the front, and noticed that it was hollow and held 2 folded up harnesses, which I guessed was for if the wagon ran out of energy “How did you make this thing?” I asked once I had had my look.

“When I found this place, I also found some blueprints, left behind by a Doctor T.T. Whooves, they had all the information I needed to make this, from the engine, to the energy cell, even a feature that lets it fly with the help of up to two pegasi, and of cause, the charging station for the energy cell, which, if you’re curious, works by spinning two drums in different directions, which I do with a spark battery; I then add a spark of magic, which is then multiplied over 100.000 times, at least according to the blueprints; the energy is then absorbed by a large gem, placed at the bottom of the drum chamber, and sent into the energy cell, thus charging it. There is also a smaller gem in the chamber that’s connected to the battery that recharges it, so I never have to switch it out. Dr. Whooves must have been a brilliant pony for his time to have gotten the ideas for these things.” Zodi said as she opened a section of the motor with her magic and inserted the energy cell. The runes started lighting up one by one, before going out again; only the ones closest to the wagon itself remained lit.

“Amazing, I’m impressed that you managed to find all the parts for this thing out here in the wasteland.” Sky said as she came to a stop beside me, having satisfied her own curiosity about the contraption.

“Yep it sure is, and believe me it was hard; the body, wheels and seats for the wagon were easy to come by, but the parts for the engine and steering took me the better part of three years to find and assemble.” Zodi said as she closed the engine and walked over to her rifle, which stood in one of the corners of the garage with 4 spark packs loaded into it; I figured she had found a replacement gem in her collection of spare parts, that could handle repeated firing, as opposed to the gem from my beam gun, which could only handle one shot at a time from the mighty weapon. Zodi picked up the rifle and walked over to us, handing it over to me and said “Take this, we might run into raiders on the way, and then it’s better to hit them before they can hit us.” She then opened the door to the left front seat and got in.

“But I’ve never used this kind of weapon before.” I said and looked at the impressive weapon, I held in my hooves.

“It’s really not that different from using a gun, you just use the scope, and brace yourself a little more for the recoil than you would with a pistol.” She said with a reassuring smile. Her horn glowed and a compartment in the roof opened; small crystal rod, enveloped in Zodis dark blue magic, floated down and inserted itself into a slot behind the steering wheel. The motor started humming and all its runes lit up, this time staying lit.

”Would two of you be so kind and open the gate?” Zodi asked as she closed the door; Sky and Hoofer nodded, and while they went over to the roll-up gate to open it, Zodi turned to me and Peach, and said “You two jump in the back, we’ll be off faster if we don’t have to get everypony in at the same time.”.

I nodded, seeing Zodis logic, and opened the left side backdoor with my mouth, helping Peach onto the soft seats, before I got in myself and shut the door. It was a bit odd, sitting upright and leaning against the seat, as opposed to how a pony normally sat; Peach had opted to lying down on her part of the seat, like she was about to take a nap.

Sky and Hoofer opened the gate, and Zodi drove the motorized wagon out of the garage, the motor not giving of any more noise than when the dark blue unicorn started it, though the wheels did screech a good deal against the gravel; I looked over the inventor’s shoulder to see how she made the machine move, it turned out that there were 2 pedals on the floor of the wagon, Zodi kept one down to make the wagon move, and she pressed the other to stop; there was also a stick to her left with some crudely painted numbers beside it, I had no idea about what it was for but I figured at it was something important.

Sky got into the backseat beside Peach, and removed her helmet, while Hoofer used his magic to close the gate, before he took the last seat in the wagon beside Zodi and asked “Say, could we stop by Fillygrad? It’s just, if we’re going to Cloppenhagen, I’d like to have something to defend myself with, so I don’t end up like last time.”.

“Sure thing Hoofer, first top on the Cloppenhagen express, Fillygrad.” Zodi said and started driving towards the settlement. Once we were at the settlement, Hoofer got out and returned a few minutes later with his means of defense, which turned out to be a sledgehammer; once he was back in the wagon, we set course for Cloppenhagen.

O-O-O

The first hour of the trip home went by without anything happening, so we used the time to talk and enjoy ourselves. When the subject of our small talk turned to caps, an idea suddenly hit me and I tapped Zodi on the shoulder to get her attention “Zodi, I was thinking, now that we have a means of transportation that can get us back to Cloppenhagen before nightfall, could we maybe make a quick stop at that Drake claw camp, and get some of that salvage from their supply tent? We’ll split all we get for it between the four of us; how does that sound?” I asked.

Zodi looked thoughtful for a few seconds, before she said “Okay everypony, we’ll take a toilet and snack break at the Drake claw camp, and then we’re heading straight for Cloppenhagen.” I plotted a course with the help of my pipbuck, and relayed the instructions the wrist mounted computer gave me.

By the time we reached the camp, my back was aching from sitting like I did in the wagon; I wasn’t used to sit like that, so it put a certain degree of stress on my spine, and so the first thing I did when I exited the vehicle, was to stretch out along with Sky and Hoofer, who was as used to the wagon as I was, to remove the strain the trip had put on our backs; Zodi and Peach stood and watched us stretch, as Zodi was used to the weird way of sitting, and Peach had been laying down the entire time.

Once we were done stretching, we walked to the supply tent to get the things we would sell once got back to the city. We quickly agreed that one of us should keep guard, just in case we got uninvited guests, and Hoofer volunteered; he also promised to look after Peach, who was using the time to play with the earth pony doll she had taken with her from the moving van. Me, Sky and Zodi then went into the tent and started looking through the shelves.

I had just finished filling a bag with comics and magazines, and was leaving the tent, when a radroach slithered out from under a shelf and hissed at me; the sudden appearance and hissing of the insect, made me squeak and jump back into a shelf. A couple of glass bottles, filled with a ruby red fluid, fell from the top shelf, and shattered against the other shelves and the ground, the contents splattering over my legs, breast and face, some of it ending up in my mouth as well, but at the time I was too shocked to notice. I sat down and took a few deep breaths to calm myself, when I heard both Sky and Zodi call my name, and their hoof beats coming in my direction “I’m okay; it was just a stupid radroach that scared me.” I said as I checked myself over for cuts from the bottles, more out of instinct from my nurse training than anything else, I’d rather be sure I didn’t have glass in my lower legs and hooves than risk infection. After making sure I didn’t have any glass stuck in me, I looked up and saw Sky and Zodi with shocked expressions on their faces, and I could see why with all the red fluid on me; I swallowed once and said “Don’t worry, I know how it looks, but none of it is mine.”.

“Oh thank the goddesses. For a moment there, I thought you had slipped and cut yourself on some broken glass.” Sky said and walked over to me; she dug into the bag she had around her neck, and pulled out a large bottle of water, which she opened and started pouring over me, cleaning off the fluid that was on my face and legs, making my Geiger counter in my pipbuck tick slightly because of the light radiation in the water, though my barding would need some cleaning once we got back to Cloppenhagen. Once my coat wasn’t red anymore, Sky closed the bottle and put it and the remaining water back in the bag and said “There, good as new.” She then gave me a quick peck on the forehead before walking off to gather more things for us to sell.

Zodi gave a sigh of relief, before giving me an equally relieved smile, before walking off herself.

I took a final deep breath before I got up and found a package of radaway, which I gulped down, before carefully stepping over the broken bottles and what remained of the fluid, and walked to the tent exit; I opened the flap and took a quick look back at my marefriend, who was standing with her back to me “By the goddesses I love that mare.” I said to myself and giggled for a few seconds, before I went outside to put the bag in the wagon.

Since Zodis wagon didn’t have any place to store the many bags, we resorted to strapping the bags we filled to the roof of the wagon with some rope we had found in the supply tent; after a good half hour, we had gathered all the things that we wanted to take with us, and after a quick eating- and pee break, during which I decided to add Hoofer and Zodis names to my adventurers license, which would save us the trouble of having Hoofer and Zodi spend time filling out trading papers in the gate’s guard station, we were back on the road towards Cloppenhagen.

While we were driving, I turned on the radio in my pipbuck, and tuned into a local station called ‘The Cloppenhagen Voice Radio’ or CVR for short, the announcer, a stallion who called himself Silver Tongue, had apparently just finished a news report, and was now announcing the next 3 songs he would be playing, and soon after that, the soft tones of a cello filled the vehicle; it was a song called ‘Moonlight sorrow’ by a prewar musician named Octavia, and it was probably one of the best pieces of music I had ever heard. We didn’t get to hear much music in the stable, as the selection that the intercom radio had was very limited, and hardly any merchants came into the stable with new music, so it we would usually hear the same music for months, just played in a different order, and it was a welcomed change when a new song was finally played.

I suddenly heard a loud ping coming off the side of the wagon, followed immediately by Peach squeaking and hiding at the bottom of the wagon to avoid getting shot.

I looked out the window and saw at least 6 raider ponies, I couldn’t see more than the 6 because of the dust cloud they were kicking up, but I guessed there were more, armed with shotguns, pistols and knives, galloping towards us; one of the raiders fired at the wagon again, and I quickly withdrew my head so it wouldn’t get blown off; I turned to my companions and yelled as I grabbed Zodis rifle “We’ve got raiders on our tail!” I then leaned out of the window, Sky doing the same while donning her helmet, her nova surge rifles powering up once the helmet was in place; I put the rifle’s mouthgrip in my mouth, and took aim at our pursuers; not long after, me and Sky were blasting the raiders with lethal beams of magic. I missed a good deal of shots at first, but as we fought, my missed shots came fewer and further between, plus it turned out that my hunch about there being more than 6 raiders, turned out to be correct, because when the first few fell to our shots, more stepped out of the dust; thanks to Sky, who did an excellent job at defending the right side of the wagon; and Hoofer, who helped me change spark packs when the rifle ran out of energy, it didn’t take long until the remaining raiders turned tail and ran back to whatever hole they had crawled out of.

O-O-O

The rest of the trip was relatively peaceful, only interrupted by the occasional attack of a few members of the local wildlife, which me, Sky and hoofer took care of, depending on how close said wildlife came to the wagon, and when the sun was about to touch the horizon, we arrived at the city gates.

I got out of the wagon, and went and knocked on the huge gate; after a short while, a door beside the gate opened, and one of the heavily armored Hagen Rangers stepped out and said in a more or less monotone voice “Welcome to Cloppenhagen, if you are new to the city, please follow me to the guard station, so an ID can be made, and if you’re a trader, a trading permit will be provided, so you can trade within the city wall; if you wish to trade in the stable, we will can provide you with a special permit. If you’re already a citizen of the city, or have been here before, please present your identification for verification.” I nodded, and quickly got my adventurers license out of my saddlebags, and presented it to the power armored pony before me; the guard looked the paper over for a moment and said, in a voice that didn’t sound like he was reading from a script “We’ll open the gates shortly, so you may want to go back to your vehicle.” He then went back through the door, which closed automatically behind him a shortly after.

I started walking back to the wagon, but as I did, I felt a little woozy, like I was getting a cold or something; I shrugged it off as me either getting used to being outside, or getting used to driving in the wagon. I got in the wagon and said to Zodi “They’re getting ready to open the gates for us.”.

“Okie dokie, I’ll drive a little closer then.” Zodi said and proceeded to do just that, and as we started to move, the woozy feeling in my head and stomach started to go away.

As we neared the gate, the huge metal slaps started to swing open, just enough to let us through, and once we were past, the gates closed with a loud ‘clonk’ that made the earth shake a little. Zodi was about to drive into the city proper, when a Hagen Ranger stepped out and waved us over to the side. Since none of us wanted piss off the power armored ponies, with massive weapons on their backs, Zodi obeyed the gesture and pulled over to the ranger, and killed the engine. The armor clad pony walked over to where Zodi was sitting and said “Identification please.”.

“But we just showed it to the guy outside, why do we have to show it again?” Zodi asked a little annoyed; I could agree with her that it was very odd that we had to show our ID twice before we could enter the city.

“We’ve had to step up security after the last attack on the stable, so we have to check your identification again, and we’ll also have to do a quick search of your wares, to make sure you’re not hiding anyone. Now, may I please see your identification?” The ranger asked, holding out a hoof.

“Just a moment.” I said and quickly found my license once again, I then handed the paper over to Zodi, who in turn handed it over to the ranger.

The armored pony took the license and looked it over, apparently looking back and forth between us and the paper, at least that’s what I figured, with the amount of time he used to look at the document, he finally turned his head back to us and addressed me “I see that there are only four names in your license, but you have five ponies in your vehicle, care to explain that?”.

“Oh yeah, it’s the filly here…” I said and put a hoof on Peach Roses shoulder “She was kidnapped, and we’re taking her back to her mother.”.

“Is she a citizen of Cloppenhagen?” The ranger asked as he handed the license back to me.

“Just a sec.” I said and turned to the light pink filly. I put my hooves on her shoulders and asked her “Peach, does your mommy live here in Cloppenhagen?”.

“Yeah, mommy’s always live here.” Came the filly’s immediate answer, along with a big smile on her face.

I gave the filly a warm smile, along with a peck on the forehead, which made the filly giggle, before I turned back to the ranger and asked “Well?”.

The ranger stood like he was thinking for a moment, before he asked “What’s her name?”.

“Peach Rose, Why?” I asked.

“I need to look through our files to verify her identity. It’s going to take a couple of hours, so you have to stay here, but you’re welcome to visit quartermaster Bronze Wire over there…” the ranger pointed to a large, bunker like structure that was built into the wall, on the left side of the gate “He’ll get you something to eat, and he’ll be more than happy to do some business with you, while you wait.” The ranger gave us a nod and walked off to the guard station, which was a building that looked very similar to the mess hall/shop, but only half its size.

“Well, I guess we’re stuck here for the time being, so let’s go get some food.” Zodi suggested before opening the door and started walking over to the mess hall.

“Sounds like an idea to me.” Hoofer said and quickly joined the inventor in her walk over to the mess.

“I think I’ll take a bit of the stuff we got from the camp, and get us some caps.” Sky said before she got out of the wagon herself.

I was about to get out myself, when I felt Peach tuck at my sleeve; I looked down at the pink foal, who looked like she was about to cry, and asked worriedly “What is it Peach.” ‘Could she be worried that the Rangers can’t find her name?’ I thought as I looked at her big, sad, purple eyes.

“Wha-what if they can’t find my name, then, then I’ll never see mommy again, and I’ll have to live outside the wall forever and, and, and…” her voice trailed off as tears started running down her cheeks and she buried her head in my chest, and let her tears flow, with her labored breathing as the only sound.

I started massaging her back gently, until her labored breathing slowed and was replaced with a gentle sniffing, I then pulled away and locked eyes with the foal “Don’t you worry about that Peach, of course they’re gonna find your name, and then you’ll be home with your mommy before you can say ‘Fluttershy’.” I said and gave the pink foal a nuzzle, which made her giggle “And if not, me and the others are not going to rest, until you’re safely back home.” I declared in an overly dramatic fasion, which made the foal giggle even more.

Once Peach calmed down from her giggling fit, and had been quiet for a little bit, she looked up at me and asked “Amora, will you hold me a little, like mommy does when I’m afraid?”.

“Of course my little cutie, come here.” I said and scooped her up into my lap and held her gently against my chest, and even though I didn’t have a foal of my own, at that moment, it really felt like she was.

After a few minutes of sitting like this, peach looked up at me and said “Amora.”.

“Yes.” I said and looked down at her.

“I wanna get something to eat now.” She said and rubbed her belly.

“Right, let’s go then.” I said and opened the door; I set Peach down on the ground, before getting out myself; I grabbed a bag full of comics and magazines and walked over to the mess, with Peach following me closely; as we walked, the woozy feeling I had had outside the gate returned, and it felt worse than that time.

A/N: Sorry that this came out so late, but my personal life and the weather has been against me, but I’m still here and try my very best to be faster about the next chapter. I know that there is a lot of exposition in this chapter, but that was more to get some eventual questions out of the way, and I promise that there will be a lot less in the next chapter. Well, hope you enjoyed the chapter, and I’ll see you next time.

Extra

Fillygrad: A small settlement to the North West of Cloppenhagen. The town is one of the few that has managed to make indoor gardens and uses them grow vegetables, grass and fruit, and makes a profit by selling their produce in Cloppenhagen.

Individual raider gangs: The individual gangs of the raider territories usually consist of 5 to 20 members; they use most of their time roaming the wasteland to find ponies they can rob. Many of them use chems to become more aggressive than they already are, and thus they can be hard to fight.

Visiting west medical.

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Chapter 6: Visiting west medical.

We entered the mess, which looked like a mix between an actual mess hall and a diner, with 2 counters at the back, one to the far right, and the other to the left, with some chairs in front of one of them, and a lot of tables with 6 chairs around them, scattered around the room; all tables in the room had the same red tainted metal tops, and the chairs were all of the same design ‘Must have gotten their hands on them, when they emptied the Stables in the area.’ I thought as I followed Peach to the counter with the chairs, where Zodi and Hoofer was sitting, and after putting my magazine bag down, I helped her into one of said chairs.

I then rang the small bell on the counter, and soon after, a blonde coated unicorn mare with a slightly darker blonde mane and orange eyes, came out from the kitchen “Hi there, what can I do for you two?” She asked cheerfully with a smile on her lips that matched her tone.

“Well, the little cutie here is hungry…” I said as I stroked Peaches mane “And she’s had a couple of rough days, so I think she’s deserved something really good to eat, do you think you could provide something like that miss…”.

“Lemon Butter, and sure, if the little cutie has had a hard day, then she should have something special to eat.” Lemon leaned down, so she was at eyelevel with Peach and asked “What’s your name little cutie?”.

“Peach Rose, Miss Lemon.” The pink foal said and giggled a little out of shyness for the new mare before her.

“Okay little Peach, what would a little cutie like yourself like to eat?”

Peach looked thoughtful for a few seconds, before she exclaimed loudly “I want cake!” She then seemed to remember that I was the one who was paying for her meal, and turned to look at me ”I-if it’s okay with you Miss Amora.”.

I chuckled a bit, which further agitated whatever virus I had contracted in the wasteland, making me feel even more sick than before, but I sucked it up and kept on smiling at the foal “Of course it is.” I said and gave Lemon a confirming nod, along with a friendly smile.

Lemon smiled back and said “Then I’ll go and get a piece right now.” She then turned and started walking into the kitchen. For the first time, I noticed her cutie mark, which didn’t, like I had first thought, have something to do with cooking, instead it was 2 orange shields that was positioned to form a heart, with a sword of the same color going through them.

‘Maybe she’s a soldier that’s been assigned kitchen duty.’ I thought as I looked at the blonde mare as she reached the kitchen door, then I suddenly remembered 2 thins I had forgotten, and said “Lemon, before you go.”.

“Yes?” She asked, turning slightly to look at us.

“I just wanted to know how much the cake is, and where I can find Bronze Wire, as I want to do some business with him.” I and smiled at the waitress.

Lemon smiled back and said “The cake is 10 caps, and Bronze is at the other counter, doing business with another mare.” She then walked back into the kitchen to get Peaches treat.

I found 15 caps in my bags and handed them to Peach with the words “When lemon comes back, give her those caps and tell her that she can keep the change.” And with a happy nod from the foal, I picked the magazine bag back up and went over to the other counter, where a bronze red earth pony stallion, with a light brown mane, was finishing his business with Sky “Did you get a good price?” I asked once I was within earshot.

The clay red Pegasus turned and walked up to me with a smile on her face, and said “Yeah, I got 227 caps for a bag of action figures and glue, plus I got another 100 for a some of those office supplies we got from the M.O.M hub.”.

“Nice job cutie.” I said and gave my marefriend a quick peck on the cheek, which she returned before walking over, and taking a seat at the other counter beside Peach, who was still waiting for her treat. I walked up to Bronze and asked him “Are you ready for some more business, Mr. Bronze Wire.”.

“Ah’m always ready to do business, little Miss.” The red stallion said with a thick appleloosan accent.

“Good…” I said and put the bag on the counter “Because I got some goods that are just begging to be sold.” I opened the bag and slid it over the counter to Bronze, and said with a smile “And my name is Amora Rosa, by the way.” The red stallion nodded and promptly started to look through the contents of the bag.

After examining the contents for a few minutes, Bronze Wire turned his attention back to me and said “This looks like a mighty fine lot, but Ah have to look through ‘em to check the quality, so Ah can give you the best possible price, that okay with you Miss Rosa?”.

“Sure, I’ll wait, it’s not like I have anything else to do at the moment.” I said with a shrug. The red stallion took the bag and went over to a corner, and started pulling out magazines and comics, one after another to check the condition. I decided to take a seat near the counter, where I dug out the lock picking manual and started reading; though I still felt sick, the sitting down greatly helped, and reading the manual distracted me from thinking about it.

I hadn’t been reading for long, before I heard the clink of a bottle being sat on the table. I looked up to see Lemon Butter standing with a tray in her levitation field; I then looked back to see a nice, cold sparkle cola standing beside the manual “Why?” I asked, looking back at the blonde unicorn.

“A thank you for the tip you left me.” Lemon said with a smile, before turning and walking back towards the kitchen, her tail swinging to a fro as she did, giving me a good glance at her goodies.

I couldn’t help myself from looking at her backside for a moment, before taking a good sip of the carrot flavored soda, and going back to reading the manual “She does that to more or less all mares who comes in ‘ere.” Bronze said from where he was looking through the magazines.

“It’s just too bad that I’m already taken.” I said and smiled, while still keeping my eyes on the pages; after a few seconds of silence between us, I closed the book, took another sip of the cola and turned to the red earth pony “Just out of curiosity, is she looking for ‘the right one’ or does she just want some fun?” I asked.

Bronze didn’t look up from his work as he spoke “She’s just in it fer the fun, but Ah wouldn’t find it impossible if she one day found a gal she’d spend her life with, though Ah’d say that day is not coming anytime soon.” A small chuckle escaped him as he kept on working.

“Is that so…” I said with a chuckle of my own “Maybe me and my marefriend should ask her out for some fun one of these days.”.

“You do that, she’s been quite alone lately.” Bronze said as he finished examining the magazines. He put them back into the bag and walked back up to the counter.

I put the manual away and put my saddlebags back on “So how much am I going to walk away with, Mr. Wire?” I asked as I walked up to the counter.

“Well, most o’ the magazines are in pretty good condition, some of them are almost mint, but others have seen better days, an’ with that in mind, I can offer you 164 caps for the whole lot, what do you say Miss Rosa?”.

I took some time to think about the offer, before I reached a hoof up and said “I say you have a deal.”.

Bronze nodded and bumped hoofs with me to seal the deal “Ah’ll go get your payment then.” He said and took the bag into the backroom, and returned a few minutes later, with a box that was making a light clinking sound from the caps it contained “Here ya go Miss Rosa, 164 caps.” Bronze said and pushed the box over the counter to me.

I looked into the box and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was divided into little sections, with 20 caps in each, making it easy for me to count the little metal discs, and confirm that I had received the correct amount; after I finished counting the caps, I emptied the box into my saddlebags and said “It was a pleasure doing business with you Mr. Wire.”.

“You too Miss Rosa.” Bronze said and gave me a friendly nod.

I nodded back before putting my saddlebags back on, and walked over to my companions, and sat down beside Sky “Well, now I just want that ranger to come and tell us that we can go into the city.” I said and gave a sigh of annoyance.

“Don’t worry honey, I’m sure he’ll come really soon, and tell us that we can go and take Peach back to her family.” Sky said and gave me a peck on the cheek. I smiled and returned the peck, before leaning against her shoulder and closed my eyes.

O-O-O

An hour went by before the door to the mess opened, and the ranger stepped inside. We all turned and looked as the armor clad pony made his way up to us “So what did you find?” I asked, leaning against the counter as my dizziness and nausea had steadily gotten worse over time.

“We found a missing persons report, put up by her mother; the reason it took us so long to find it, was because it was one of the first, out of many, reports we had typed in the day after the alicorn attack, but everything is in order now, and you’re free to leave whenever you’re ready.” The ranger said and gave us a nod, before leaving the mess.

“What was he talking about?” Peach asked, looking confused at the leaving ranger.

“He said that you’re going home to your mommy.” Sky said with a smile and ruffled the foal’s mane.

“Really?” Peach asked and looked up at my marefriend with wide, hopeful eyes.

“Really, really.” Sky said with a confirming nod.

“Yay!” Peach exclaimed happily and literally jumped out of her seat; she ran to Zodi and started pulling on one of her front legs while she said excitedly “Come on, come on, come on, mommy’s waiting for me!”.

“Okay, I’m coming, I’m coming.” Zodi said, chuckling as she got off the chair and let the pink foal lead the way out to the wagon.

Me and the others laughed as we started walking out of the mess, but when I was about to walk through the door; I looked back at the counter, and an idea popped up in my head ”You guys go on ahead, I think I forgot something back at the counter.” I said to Sky.

“Okay, but hurry up, I think Peach is going to explode from excitement, if we let her wait too long.” Sky chuckled before she trotted up to the others to deliver the message. I gave a little chuckle myself, before I hurried back to the counter, where I grabbed a napkin and wrote a message for Lemon.

Dear Lemon.

When I come by your place again,
let’s get a room and have some fun.

XXX Amora.

I left the napkin on the table and hurried out the door “So, what did you forget?” Sky asked when I entered the wagon.

“Apparently nothing…” I said as the wagon started moving “But hey, better safe than sorry, right?” Sky nodded before putting a leg around me, and gently pulling me into an embrace, which I gladly allowed her to. With help from Peach, who was sitting on Hoofers lap, giving directions, we soon arrived at the pink foal’s house, which was located in the regular.

The second Hoofer opened the wagon door, Peach jumped out and ran to the door, and started banging on it while yelling “Mommy, mommy, I’m home.”.

Me and the others laughed a bit at the foal, as we also got out of the wagon; we walked up to the house as the door opened to reveal an orange coated earth pony mare, with a green mane and the same purple eyes as her daughter. The mare looked at Peach for a few seconds, before she wrapped her hooves around the foal and started crying uncontrollably, Peach following suit soon after. After some time had passed, the mare pulled away to look at us, and said “Thank you, thank you so much for bringing my foal back home.”.

“You’re very welcome ma’am.” I said and gave Peaches mother a smile, which the others mimicked.

The mare stood back up and wiped her eyes, before she walked over and gave each of us a hug, in thanks for bringing her daughter back; once she was done hugging us, she walked back to Peach and asked her to go inside, she then turned to us and said “Wait for me, I’ll be right back.” She then disappeared into the house.

“What do you think she’s getting?” Hoofer asked as he took the opportunity to have a look at the surrounding buildings.

“She’s probably getting some sort of reward for us; you tend to get that, when you do something for somepony in this city.” Sky said casually.

“Wow, I guess Cloppenhagen truly is a city of trade.” Zodi said as she sat down to wait for the mare’s return.

“It sure is.” I said and sat down as well, my nausea having gotten worse on the way, so I really didn’t feel like standing for too long.

Shortly after, Peaches mother returned, carrying something wrapped up in a piece of cloth; she put the cloth bundle in front of us and unwrapped it, revealing a beret with a tree and a horseshoe embodied on it in silver thread, and a combat knife in a sheath with a silver emblem of the sun and moon on it “These items has been in my family since before the war, I want to give them to you as thanks for bringing my little girl back home.” She said and pushed the item towards us.

I looked at the items beret and knife for a moment, before I reached out and gently picked up the items “Are you sure you want to part with these, I mean with them being your family heirlooms and all?” I asked as I looked at the 2 items.

“I’m very sure, and I’m also sure you’ll put them to good use.” Peaches mother said before she walked back to the door, but before closing it she said “Keep saving the innocent, it’s the only way we’ll have a better tomorrow.” She then closed the door behind her.

“What do you think she meant by that?” Zodi asked as she looked at the door with a confused expression on her face.

“She meant to keep doing good things for people.” Hoofer said as he turned away from his looking at the city “It’s a quote from a ministry of peace poster.”.

“How do you know that?” The navy unicorn asked

“I have one at home.” Hoofer said and sat down.

“Oh.” Zodi said and nodded.

I suddenly felt my stomach give a lurch; I quickly handed the knife and beret to Zodi, before I stood up and walked a few wobbly steps, and finally emptied the contents of my stomach out onto the road. Sky trotted over to me and rubbed my back, as more half-digested food left my mouth “What’s the matter cutie?” She asked worriedly.

I coughed a few times, and spat once to get rid of some of the acidic taste left in my mouth, before I said “I really don’t know, I think I may have contracted something when we were at the camp, maybe, maybe, augh.” My head started to hurt, and I vomited again.

While I was still catching my breath, I heard hoof steps coming towards us and when they stopped, I heard Zodis voice ask Sky “What’s wrong with her?”.

“She said that she thinks that she caught something back at the camp, but she doesn’t know where she got it.”.

Zodi was quiet for a little bit, before she asked, addressing me “Could it have something to do with that blood you got on you?”.

I took a few steps back and sat down, taking a few final deep breaths, before I looked up at the inventor unicorn and said “It could be, if I swallowed some of it, which is a possibility given the circumstances, but I wouldn’t think that I would get sick this fast.” I took a few quick breaths to keep myself from throwing up again.

“It could be that there was something in the blood that made you sick.” Zodi said and looked thoughtful for a moment, while she talked to herself “But what could it be? Maybe, maybe…” She trailed off for a few seconds, before it looked like a light went off in her head “That’s it, you probably got some of that mutagen crap that the Drake claws uses on you, and that’s what is making you feel sick.”.

“That does explain a lot actually.” Sky said.

I nodded and then coughed a couple of times, before I said “Yeah it does.” I slowly got up, so as not to agitate my stomach further, and started slowly walking towards the motorized wagon, while I said ”We better go get me some medical attention as quick as possible.”.

“Right, let’s go.” Sky said while she, Zodi and Hoofer walked with me up to the wagon. Sky opened the door for me so I could get it, which I did very slowly, so we wouldn’t have to clean the wagon later; all the while, Zodi and Hoofer got in and started up the vehicle. I laid down on the seat and lifted my head so Sky could get in, and once she was seated, I put my head in her lap and closed my eyes “So where should we go...” I heard Sky ask as the wagon started to move.

“How about your stable?” Hoofer suggested “I mean, they have medical files on her, and some top notch equipment, so they should be able to help her, right?”.

“Logically yes, but they don’t know very much about the things that can make you sick in the wasteland…” Sky said while she gently stroked my mane “So I think our best option would be to go to west medical and have them check her out.”.

“Right then, west medical it is.” Zodi said before she started the wagon, and drove off towards the city hospital.

O-O-O

“Okay, we’re here.” Zodi said after a long while and I felt the wagon coming to a stop, and the engine went silent.

I opened my eyes and lifted my head, and immediately felt like throwing up again, but a few, deep breaths, while Sky got out of the wagon, took care of that, at least for the moment. As I slowly got out of the vehicle, I used the time to look at the huge hospital building; it was made out of concrete, which had been painted a pale yellow, and above the entrance was a large metal ‘Ministry of Peace’ logo, which was painted pink ‘Wow, that’s special, but it does make it look very inviting.’ I thought with as me and my friends made our way to the entrance; as we walked, I noticed a number of Hagen Rangers guarding the entrance and the hospital grounds ‘I guess an important place like this needs a lot of protection.’ I thought as we walked past the heavily armored ponies, who gave us a quick once over before going back to guarding the entrance, and into the hospital.

The inside of the hospital looked almost brand new, the walls had gotten a new coat of white paint, and the floors had, from the looks of it, been cleaned very recently. Sky went ahead of us and walked up to the counter, and rang the bell which summoned a nurse, a yellow earth pony stallion with a blue mane, and a roll of gauze for a cutie mark; he was dressed in a green uniform with a name tag that read ‘Echo Blue, nurse’ “Hello and welcome to west medical, how can I assist you?” Echo asked with a little smile.

“My marefriend has been exposed some mutagen, and she’s become very sick because of it.” Sky said and pointed to me, as we arrived at the desk.

Echo nodded and grabbed a pen with his mouth, and wrote something down on something behind the desk, before putting the pen down again “I see, and what’s your name miss?” The yellow stallion asked, directing his attention to me.

“Amora Rosa.” I said, sitting down on the floor to rest a little.

“Okay then, Miss Rosa, if you and your friends would be so kind and take a seat, then I’ll contact one of the doctors, and have someone come here to escort you.” Echo said and walked over to a terminal, and started typing something on the keyboard.

I got back up and walked, together with Hoofer, Sky and Zodi, over to a couple of sofas that served as the lobby’s waiting area; as we sat down, the skin on the parts of my body that had been in contact with the mutagen infused blood, started to itch, and I guessed that it was my body’s way of saying that it was starting to mutate, but I didn’t want to scratch myself, since that might just make it worse.

A few minutes passed, and another nurse entered the lobby; the mint green earth pony mare walked over to us and asked “Amora Rosa?”.

“That’s me.” I said weakly and got off the couch.

“Dr. Grace will see you now.” The nurse said.

“Okay.” I said and walked up to the nurse, but before either of us could start walking out of the room, a thought occurred to me and I asked the mint green mare “Um, can I bring one of my friends? I’d like to have someone familiar with me.”

“Sure, if it makes you feel better.” The nurse said with a small smile.

I nodded my thanks and turned to my marefriend and asked her “Sky, will you come with me?”.

The red Pegasus stood up and smiled happily, before walking up to me “Sure I will cutie.” She said and we started following the nurse through one of the 4 main hallways that lead into the hospital itself.

We followed the nurse, until we came to a door with a name plate that read ‘Dr. Bandage Grace.’ on it “Walk right in.” The nurse said and opened the door for us.

The office we walked into was painted white like the rest of the hospital; there were a couple of MoP posters on the walls, an examination couch, that was sitting against the left wall, a small pile of pillows at the right wall, a medicine cabinet and a desk with a big leather chair, in which sat a light purple unicorn mare, who must have been Dr. grace, with a purple and light blue mane that almost looked black; she was wearing a doctor’s coat and had a pair of thin, square glasses place on her nose. The mare got out of her chair, and walked over to us and said, while shaking our hooves “Hello, I’m Dr. Bandage Grace, which one of you is Amora?”.

“That’s me.” I said as I finished shaking her hoof.

“Well then, let’s get you over here and have a look at you.” Bandage said and followed me over to the couch, while Sky went over to the pillows and sat down on one of them “If you would please take off your barding, so I can examine your body.” Bandage said before walking over to the pillow pile to get a few for us to sit on while she examined me.

As I got out of the barding, I noticed that the skin where I had come in contact with the mutagen, had become unusually red and was peeling off, almost like I had seen lizards do in a movie I had seen when I was still in school “Ugh, this definitely doesn’t look good.” I said to myself, I could only imagine how my face looked at that particular moment in time.

Dr. Grace quickly returned with 2 pillows in her magic grip; she put the pillows on the floor, and motioned for me to sit. I did so and the doctor started looking over the mutating areas of my body, and after a few minutes, she looked at me and said “It looks like you’ve come into contact with some taint, though it doesn’t look quite like other encounters we’ve had with the stuff; would you mind telling me what happened when you came into contact with the mutagen?”.

I nodded and relayed to Bandage what had happened from when we arrived at the raider camp, up until we decided to go to the hospital. Once I had finished my story, Bandage looked thoughtful for a moment, before she got up and walked over to the medicine cabinet, and returned quickly with a needle, connected to a test-tube, floating beside her in her magic grip “I’m going to take a blood sample so we can find out what was mixed into that mutagen.” She said and held up one of my front legs, getting ready to extract some blood; I nodded my permission and sat silently and patiently for the time it took for Bandage to extract the blood from my leg “You don’t have much against needles, huh.” The doctor pony observed as she withdrew the needle from my leg and looked at the contents, which now looked like the contents of the bottles that had been splattered over my body.

“I’m a nurse myself, kinda comes with the territory.” I said and rubbed the place where I had been stung by the needle.

“Oh, that explains a lot.” Bandage said and walked over to her desk, and sat down “It’s going to take some time before we get the results of the test, so I’m going to put you in a room until we’re ready to treat you…” She said as she typed something into her terminal “Also, I wanted to ask you if you had any memory orbs with you?”.

“Sure we do, but why do you ask?” Sky asked with a confused expression on her face.

“Well we want to make your friend’s stay here as painless as possible, and normally we would give her a shot of Med-X and have her sleep, but since you have some memory orbs with you, I’ll have a recollector brought up to her room, and then we’ll use one of your orbs and have her ‘sleep’ that way.” Bandage said as she finished typing on the terminal.

“I see, that way you won’t have to waste medicine that could be put to better use elsewhere.” I said and nodded in understanding.

“Precisely.” Bandage said and got out of her chair, floating the test-tube beside her as she walked over to me “I have sent for a nurse to take you to your room; I have to go to the lab and get this sample analyzed, but I’ll see you later when you wake up.” She said before walked out the door.

I nodded quietly, before I walked over to Sky and grabbed a pillow, and plopped down beside my marefriend “I sure hope they can get that shit out of me, so I don’t turn into one of those monsters.” I said and looked at one of the happy looking Ministry of Peace posters, promising a better future.

“Don’t worry…” Sky said and put a hoof on my shoulder, pulling me into a gentle and comforting hug, and said “They’re professionals and they know what they’re doing, I’m sure they can cure you somehow.”.

O-O-O

“Are you comfortable, Miss Rosa?” The nurse asked as she fitted the recollector onto my head. It had been a about 15 minutes since we had left Bandage Graces office, and I was now laying in the bed of one of the many patient room of the hospital.

“Yeah I am, all things considered.” I said and adjusted the tiara like device a little bit myself, so it was as comfortable as possible.

“Excellent.” The nurse said before she turned to Sky and said “Now, if I could have the memory orb please.”.

“Right.” Sky said and dug into my bags, retrieving the box with the rainbow Dash orbs, and walked over to me “Which one do you wanna see?” She asked as she opened the box. I looked at the glass like orbs for a few seconds, before I pointed to the one on the upper left corner. Sky turned to the nurse holding up the orb I had selected and said “Here you go.”.

The nurse took the orb and turned to me “Okay, are you ready to be sent into the memory, Miss Rosa?”.

“I am, at least I won’t have to worry about that irritating itch anymore.” I said with a slight chuckle. The nurse nodded and inserted the orb into the recollector, and as soon as it was in place, the world went black around me.

Extra:

West medical: West of the main market is a big hospital called the west medical. This medical facility provides medical assistance, along with potions and chems, though at higher prices than Stable 169, but it is much better and they have a machine that can remove taint, though the process is slow and takes multiple treatments to purge the subject completely. The outside is patrolled by Hagen Rangers, and the inside of the building is protected a guard corps called ‘the Reaper Surgeons’.

Future dreams or past visions.

View Online

Chapter 7: Future dreams or past visions.]

o0o0o0o

I had once been told one of my grandparents, who was a unicorn, that it was weird going into a memory orb, since you essentially were entering another pony’s body, but I had to admit that my first time in a memory wasn’t that bad, probably because I had entered an earth pony mare, which made me feel right at home.

Once I had gotten over the amazement of being in a new body, I started to orient myself as best as I could, given that the mare wasn’t moving all that much, but a few things became clear to me, the mare was gray with a lighter gray tail, dressed in a light blue business suit with a royal blue tie and a white shirt, and she was apparently wearing glasses; she was sitting in a seat of some kind, and I could also hear the sound of rapid hoof steps and wheels scraping against the ground, and I concluded that the mare was sitting in a pony drawn wagon ‘Well, this is not that bad for a memory, though I would wish that my host would move a little.’ I thought after a little while of the mare not moving an inch, just staring at her hooves.

As if some unknown deity listened to me, we suddenly heard a voice from across the wagon, that made the mare look up “How’re you doin’, you seem so quiet, Silver spoon.” The speaker was a blue pegasus with magenta eyes and a rainbow colored mane; she was dressed in black business suit with a purple shirt, and on her jacket pocket was a small pin in the shape of her cutie mark, a blue, yellow and red lightning bolt, shooting out of a cloud.

“It’s just that…” The mare, Silver Spoon, said and reached up with one of her hooves to scratch behind her ear in thought, before she said “It’s my first assignment as your assistant, miss Rainbow Dash, and I guess I still haven’t gotten over the fact that you actually hired me…” The gray mare looked up at her employer before continuing “I mean with all the shitty things I did back in Ponyville, I’m surprised that you’d even accept request for employment.”.

Rainbow got out of her seat, and into the one beside us; she put a hoof on our shoulder and said “Yeah, I know it doesn’t make a lick of sense, and I have to admit, when I first when I saw your request for employment I almost threw it out, but then Rarity showed up and told me that you had just given Diamond Tiara a scolding that could send monsters back through the gates of Tartarus, in the middle of Canterlot square of all places, and that actually convinced me to take an extra look at your application. Actually, it makes me wonder, what got you angry enough at her to do something that? Rarity never told me.”.

Silver scratched behind her ear her once again to recall what had happened that day, before she said “It started a few months ago, you know when we officially declared war on Zebrica…” Rainbow nodded and the gray mare continued “Well She started up her hating of one specific thing again, something she hadn’t done since we moved to Canterlot, but as soon as word got out that we were at war with the Zebras, she started being mean to every single Zebra she came across, and to be frank, it started getting on my nerves; I mean it was kinda fun when it was just about the cutie mark crusaders, but this was just horrible, she would be rude to them, walk into them on purpose, hay she almost beat one of them to death one time; it just got worse and worse, and I became more and more afraid for my life, so I secretly started making preparations to leave my former friend; I asked my mother for money to rent an apartment and pay a couple of months’ worth of rent, which she agreed on since she could feel that I truly was afraid; it was also then that I wrote the job application. Then a week ago, Diamond and I had gone out for a walk and we had decided to go shopping, and the best shopping places are of course in Canterlot square, but once we arrived we came across a Zebra family, and of course Diamond had to go over and harass them; up until that point, I had kept in the background, either because I didn’t want to make her angry at me, or because I was too afraid of what she would do to me if I did it when she was in one of her ‘moods’, but that day, when I saw her kick the Zebra father in the face, and then starting lunge out at the filly, something in me snapped; I walked straight up to and smacked her, and, well the rest you know.” The gray mare ended her tale and just stared at her employer, who looked like she was still processing the new information that had been given to her.

Rainbow finally sat back in her seat, making herself comfortable, and said “I think that was a good call, we don’t have a lot of trust from the local Zebras as it is, and if more ponies turn on them like that, we’re going to have even more trouble on our hands; but if we can show that there are ponies who’re willing to stick up for them, then, when all this is over, we won’t have a bunch of mistrusting Zebras who would rather stab us in the back than anything else…” The rainbow maned mare looked from her assistant and out the window of the wagon, before continuing “And I hope our little excursion here to Flankfield will help us end the war before it can escalate.”.

Silver Spoon nodded her agreement, and looked the same way as her employer, and we saw what I would personally label as a typical mining town; it consisted of small, wooden houses, a few stores, also made out of wood, and through the little gabs between the buildings, we could see 5 large holes in the side of the mountain, all of whom had their entrances supported by large rafters, I assumed they were mines, but what the inhabitants were mining for I didn’t know.

The wagon drove through Flankfield, up a wide road and came to a stop in front the last mine “Minister Dash, we have arrived.” A voice said from outside the wagon.

“Thank you.” Rainbow called back and started straightening out her suit, which had become a bit ruffled; Silver Spoon did the same, just to be sure that she looked proper as well “Okay, show time.” Rainbow said once she was satisfied with the properness of her suit; she then opened the wagon door and walked out, my ‘host’ following closely behind. I noticed a couple of guards jump off the wagon and started following us, probably in case of an attack from the Zebras of this era.

As we neared the mine, a stallion with a light brown coat, a spiky, darker brown mane and tail, and light blue eyes, wearing a lab coat, which covered his cutie mark and hard hat, came out of the mine and stopped at the entrance, lifting the helmet in greeting “Good day minister Dash, how have you been since we last saw each other?” The stallion asked with a thick Trottingham accent, once we had made our way to the mine entrance.

“I’ve been awesome like always Time Turner; and how about you old friend?” Rainbow asked and shook hooves with the brown stallion.

“I’ve been pretty good, all things considered.” Time Turner said and smiled at the minister as they finished shaking hooves “And I see that you decided to hire Silver Spoon as your assistant.” The brown stallion said, addressing the minister as he turned his head towards my host, with a look that gave me the feeling that they knew each other, and gave her a quick smile, which I felt her return.

“That I did, and she hasn’t disappointed me yet.” Rainbow said proudly and gave gray mare a light slap on the shoulder.

“That’s good to know.” Time Turner said before he trotted over to a small shed, where a dark brown earth pony stallion handed him a pair of hard hats, and quickly returned to us “It’s not that I don’t want to stand around and chat, but we should get going before somepony from O.I.A finds out where you actually were going.” he said as he handed one helmet to Rainbow, and the other to Silver.

“Right, I don’t want that jerk, Goldenblood, to get his grubby hooves on my plan, and twist it to his own needs.” Rainbow said and put her helmet on. Silver Spoon did the same. All three lit a small light on top of their helmets, and we started our expedition into the depths of the mine.

We walked for a long while in silence, the only sound around being that of the miners, breaking gems out of the rock walls, and I was beginning to worry that this was going to be it for the rest of the trip, when Silver Spoon walked up beside Time Turner and asked “Doctor Whooves, can I ask you something?”.

“Sure, we have the time for it, and it’s been a while since we saw each other last.” The brown stallion said with a wide smile.

“How is Dinky doing, it’s been a long time since I saw her?”

“She’s doing fine, she started running the Ponyville library a few weeks after you left, and she’s having a lot of fun with it; hay, she even takes time out of her week to read stories for the foals, so they can forget about the war, at least for a little while.” Time Turner said before taking a quick stop at a mine cart to take a look at its contents.

“That sounds good, giving the foals some time away from reality.” Silver said with a nod and a small smile, as she passed Time Tuner, who quickly finished his inspection of the gems, and fell into step beside my host ”Do you think I could come by at some point, you know, for a visit? I really want to see how things have changed in Ponyville since I left.” Silver said after a few seconds of silence.

“Sure, you’re always welcome, and I’m sure both Dinky and Derpy will be glad if you came to visit; Dinky more than most, since you two became such good friends during your last year of school.” Time Turner said with a smile.

“Yeah, I’m actually really happy that Diamond Tiara was sent off to Canterlot that year for private tutoring; it gave me the choice to either be alone for an entire year and do nothing, or find some new friends, and in the end I chose the latter; I also think it was the best choice, I mean, I got a kind and smart friend, and I got to meet you and Derpy.” Silver said, returning the smile.

“That’s good to hear.” The brown stallion said and put a leg around our shoulders and gave us a loving squeeze, which I felt was very appreciated by Silver Spoon. He suddenly looked at a section of the cave wall, which, by close inspection, looked a little smoother than the rest, and let go of us while saying “Ah, we’re here.” He went over to the wall section, and lightly kicked a small stalagmite, which caused red runes to appear in a door pattern on the section of wall; the rune covered section then simply disappeared, leaving a doorway for us to walk through, along with a blast of hot air that made my host’s skin feel uncomfortable for a few second. We walked into the chamber beyond the doorway; it was round with several purple suits hanging from hooks on the wall, with a raised, circular platform, covered in runes that were currently inactive. The brown stallion went over and picked up three of the suits, and handed one to each of us.

Silver Spoon looked at the suit for a little bit, before donning it; the feet of the suit was covered in some sort of black material that I didn’t recognize, but I could guess it was designed to keep out and resist heat, given the blast of heat we received when we entered the room. Silver Spoon donned the suit, and pressed a small button on the collar of the suit, making bubble of blue energy appear around her head; various readings and gauges appeared inside the ‘helmet’, which I couldn’t read or understand, but I could guess that they had something to do with how the suit was holding up.

Silver looked over at Rainbow and Time Turner as they too activated their helmets; we then walked onto the raised platform, which Time Turner activated by tapping an hourglass, that had been etched into the metal, which lit up with the same red light as the doorway had, along with a spider web of runes of the same color that spread from the hourglass out, covering the entire platform; the platform then started to move downwards, and for the first few minutes, all we could see was plain metal walls, which then gave way to a huge underground cave, with an enormous river of lava running through it, which was lit up by enormous spotlights, that was pointed at more ponies in purple suits, who was loading rocks into a pipe that went into the ceiling of the cave, where someone was probably retrieving and transporting them out of the mountain “Wow.” Was all my host could say as she looked at the wonder of nature before her, mirroring my own reaction perfectly; being a stable dweller for most of my life, I had never been outside very much, so seeing something like this was really special to me.

“Yeah, it really is something.” Rainbow said with a smile, as she put a leg on our shoulder. We soon reached the bottom of the cave, and one of the worker ponies, a pegasus by the looks of it with the two lumps bulging from the back of her suit, put down the rock she had picked up started walking over to us. Rainbow walked down from the platform, with my host and Whooves following closely behind her, and shook hooves with the pegasus while she said “Hello Geowing, how is our little excavation coming along?”.

“Quite well actually,” Geowing said as she finished shaking hooves with the rainbow maned pegasus “we have found all the lodestone necessary for project rainboom to succeed, and more if need be.” A confident smile spread over her lips as she spoke.

“Excellent,” Rainbow Dash said as walked over to one of the lodestones, and picked it up triumphantly “This is the first step towards peace with the zebras, and we will make sure that it will last.” Geowing, along with Silver Spoon, Whooves and some of the workers started applauding her.

I suddenly noticed something out of the corner of one of Silver Spoon’s eyes; it kind of looked like a pony with a mane and tail out of fire, but before I could get a good look at the creature, it seemed like the world was sucked down a drain, leaving only darkness behind.

o0o0o0o

The memory had apparently ended, and I opened my eyes to see the room I had been in before I went into the memory. I reached up and let my fingers wrap around the tiara ‘Wait, fingers.’ I thought, leaving the recollector alone and looked at my hoof instead, but instead of a hoof, I saw a dragon’s front paw instead; its scales were white like my fur, and the claws were red like my mane; I pulled my other leg out from under my duvet, and found a matching paw attached to it. I looked at my new appendages for a long while, my breathing becoming increasingly ragged, before let out a scream of sheer terror.

A/N: Hey everybody, I’m finally back and I’m ready to get on with this fiction again. I know this isn’t the longest chapter I’ve written, but it is an important one. So, I hope you liked it and hopefully the next chapter will be a lot longer, and I’ll see you all later.

On the road to the past.

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Chapter 8: On the road to the past:

The sound of my scream had hardly fainted, before the door to my room burst open, and Sky and Doctor Grace entered “Amora,” Sky said with concern in her voice, snapping me out the shock I had been in, and put a leg around my shoulders for comfort “it’s-it’s gonna be okay.”.

“How, how is ‘this’ gonna be okay?” I asked, my voice hysterical, as I looked up at my marefriend, and held up my new dragon paws for her to see “I look like one of those Chrysalis fucking Drake claws!”.

Sky looked at me intently for a few seconds, before she pulled my paws close to her chest and said “Okay, I don’t know how this is going to be okay, but one thing you should know is that I’ll there with you every step of the way.” She then let go of my paws, so she could lean in and place a quick kiss on my nose, before moving away so Dr. Grace could examine me. Knowing that my marefriend had my back no matter what, made me feel a little better about the situation, but not by much.

“So, how bad is it doc?” I asked as the unicorn doctor as she looked me over.

“Well, we got the taint, the stuff that was making you sick and itchy, purged from your body, but we ran into a complication along the way.” Bandage said as she checked my eyes.

“What kind of complication are we talking about?” I asked as I felt a new rush of panic surge through my body.

Bandage finished checking my eyes, and moved to check my newly acquired paws and claws, while she said “The other ingredient in the concoction you were sprayed with, was dragon’s blood; and though we were able to remove the taint, so you didn’t end up one of the Drake claws, the blood has its own unique magic, which apparently is absorbing the qualities of anything it comes into contact with, and apparently the effect accelerated when we removed the taint, and that leaves us with your current situation, which is you becoming a half pony, half dragon hybrid.”.

I looked from the doctor to my marefriend, who had sat down beside my bed, listening to Bandage and being ready to comfort me if I started getting hysterical. I took a few deep breaths, trying to get myself as calm as I could before I looked back at the doctor and asked “How, uh, how much of a hybrid have I become?”.

Doctor Grace let go of the paw she had been examining, and looked thoughtful for a few seconds, as if to decide how best to give me the news she said “At this moment, we estimate that you are about 65 percent pony, and 35 percent dragon; luckily, those 35 percent are mostly cosmetic changes, though we have also seen some changes in your muscles and spine, making them stronger than the average earth pony, and your eyesight has significantly improved as well, so those are very beneficial changes.”.

“But, I don’t want these changes, is there no way of turning me back?” I asked, my voice becoming panicked and hysterical once again.

“I’m afraid not,” Doctor Grace said and sat down at the foot of my bed before continuing “you see, we don’t experience with your kind of case, since most, if not all, who becomes a Drake claw, either joins the gang because of the psychosis that comes with the transformation, or because they do it out of free will to gain power, or they run off and are subsequently shot by guards or travelers who takes them for wild beasts.” She then jumper off the bed and walked up to sit beside me “So there really isn’t anything we can do for you,” She gave me a friendly pat on the shoulder “I’m sorry.”.

I let my head fall back onto the pillow, and started to cry softly into the palms of my paws. Sky began stroking my mane, while she tried to reassure me that everything would be alright. A good 5 minutes went by, before I finally regained enough control to stop crying; I dried my eyes with the back of my palm, and sniffed a couple of times to clear my nose. I laid there; just staring at the ceiling, with Sky was still stroking my mane softly, while I tried to figure out what to do with myself, occasionally looking at my new bleach white paws, with their ruby red claws. I finally came to the conclusion that even though I really didn’t like my new form, and I had felt like killing myself when I saw it for the first time, I would just have to live with it, and it also helped that I knew that Sky would support me all the way through.

I gently pushed my marefriend’s hoof away and sat up, and addressed the doctor “Doctor Grace, where can I find a mirror, so I can see how much I’ve changed?”.

“If you go to the right outside in the hallway and go all the way to the end, you’ll find a door marked ‘Showers’, we have some big mirrors in there that you’re more than welcome to use. But now I must leave you, I have some more patients to look after, but I’ll come back later for another checkup.” The doctor unicorn said with a friendly smile and walked towards the door. Just as she was about to open said door, she stopped dead in her tracks and turned towards us again, and said “Oh I almost forgot, you don’t have to worry about changing diet, you may look a lot like a dragon, but you’re still mostly pony.” I nodded in understanding, and the light purple mare gave me a nod in farewell, before opening the door and walked out, closing it behind her with her magic.

I laid back on the pillow and closed my eyes, as the light in the room was starting to hurt my eyes, probably a side effect of my enhanced vision ‘I gotta get some sunglasses once I’m discharged.’ I thought and took a deep breath, before I opened my eyes again and pulled the duvet off my body, and that’s when I saw just how much of a change, 35 percent dragon could make in a pony.

My body had a mix of scales and fur, with the fur growing between the scales, making it look like my coat was a lot shinier than it was before; my tail had become longer, about a meter or so, but was still as thin as it had been before my transformation; other than that, the back part of my body was exactly like it was before.

I slowly set my hooves and paws on the ground, with Sky watching me intently; my legs felt wobbly, most likely a side effect of my treatment, and when I tried to take a step, I lost my balance; luckily, Sky was there and caught me before I initiated a painful relationship with the floor “I got you, I got you.” She said before draping one of my front legs over her shoulder, and helping me keep my balance as we walked out the door and down the hall towards the showers. Once we entered the showers, Sky sat me down on one of the benches in the changing room; she then sat down beside me asked “Are you gonna be okay cutie?”.

I chuckled a bit and gave her a quick nuzzle, before I started moving my legs around a little, to get the blood flowing, while I said “I think I’ll be okay Sweetie, once I’ve moved my legs around a little.” We sat like this for a while, with me moving my legs around, once in a while trying to put a little weight on them, while Sky sat and watched, once in a while playing around with her pipbuck.

After a long 10 minutes had passed, according to the wall clock, I was finally able to walk around, only looking like I was slightly drunk, and walked over to the part of the room that held the mirrors, with my marefriend following me, and looked at myself. I was pleasantly surprised that my transformation wasn’t as extensive as I had thought; my muzzle still had its original shape, and when I opened my mouth, my teeth were still flat, plant and vegetable crunching, just like before; my ears were also the same as before, only that they were covered in the same mixture of fur and scales as the rest of my body.

“Well, this isn’t as bad as I had feared.” I said as I took in my new appearance. I turned to Sky and asked “What do you think Sweetie?”.

Sky looked at me for a moment, before she nuzzled me and said teasingly “Well, you’re not as handsome as you were before, but I guess you’ll do for now.”.

I chuckled and gave her a light push on her shoulder, being mindful about my claws; I then gave her a quick nuzzle and said just as teasingly “Okay miss ‘I’m not good enough for the dragon/pony hybrid’, let’s go back to the room, and you can tell me what happened while I was out.” Sky giggled and followed me out the door. As we walked, my thoughts drifted to Zodi and Hoofer, and asked her “Where is Zodi and Hoofer by the way?”.

The clay red pegasus scratched her head in thought for a moment, before she said “Hoofer said he had some things to do around town, I don’t know what though, he was very vague about it; Zodi went to sell what we salvaged from the raider camp, and get your riffles and your gun repaired, so she should be back pretty soon.”.

I nodded as we reached the door to my room; I found it kinda weird that Hoofer would just walk off without telling us anything about where he was going, but I shrugged it off as him wanting to get something for his own private use. I opened the door and we went in; I settled down in my bed, and Sky sat down on the pillow she had been using when I woke up; once we were settled in, Sky asked me “So, what did you see in that memory orb, by the way?”.

I laid back for a moment to collect my thoughts on what I had seen in the artifact “I was in a small town called Flankfield, a pre-bombing mining town by the looks of it…” was all I got out before Sky interrupted me.

“Isn’t there a settlement up north that’s called that?” She asked, trying to remember.

I thought for a moment, before I remembered something and said “Yeah there is, one of their merchants sometimes comes to the stable to sell raw gems for us to process into ammunition, or for use in our machines; they must have taken the name of the town when the settlers came out of the stables to looked for a home, to honor the ones that lived there before or something like that.”.

“Yeah, I remember now, though it has been a while since one of them has been by, weird.” Sky said, nodding her head “Anyway, where were you on that memory?”.

“Right, right.” I said and continued “Well, I was in Flankfield, and I was a mare by the name of Silver Spoon; she and Rainbow Dash, you know, the element of loyalty.” Sky nodded “Well, she and Silver Spoon was in Flankfield on some sort of mission; they met up with this scientist called Time Turner, who led them into the mines, to some sort secret mine where they were mining some, uh, magical stone, I think, called lodestone; I don’t know what it is exactly, but it seemed important to them, but that’s not the strangest thing that happened.”.

“What was it then?”

“Right the memory was about to end, I saw something weird, it kinda looked like a pony made out of fire, but I didn’t see much more before the memory ended,” I laid back on my pillow and looked at the ceiling as I thought back on the memory.

“That does sound really weird; I don’t think I’ve ever heard about anything like that before.”.

“Yeah, and I think I want to investigate it when I get out of here.”.

“But it was over two hundred years ago, it can’t still be alive.” Sky said with doubt in her voice.

“Maybe, but I still want to go, and maybe there is a clue as to what Rainbow Dash and Silver Spoon needed with the lodestone,” I sat up and looked at my marefriend “What do you say Sky? One more adventure, and we’ll take it easy for a while after that, get back to our normal boring jobs and lives in the stable.”

Sky thought for a moment; then she smiled and said “Hay, why not, but you have to promise me that it’s this and no more, okay.” She held out a hoof, which I took to seal the deal.

I then asked her what had happened while I was in the memory orb; she said that not long after I had entered the memory, Bandage Grace, along four nurses had come into the room; Bandage had told Sky about the taint and dragon blood mix, and the possibility that I would still mutate after the taint was out of my system. After telling the doctor that it would be the lesser of two evils to get the taint out of me and let me mutate from the dragon blood alone, I was placed on a stretcher by the four nurses, and I was taken to the taint remover, a big, white, coffin like machine, with different colored gems on the inner sides and the lid; I had been lowered into the machine and for the next hour, the machine had hummed and lit up the room with a soft, blue light from a huge gem on the back of the machine, eliminating the taint from my body. Once the process was done, I was removed from the taint remover, and put back in the room to wait for me to finish my mutation, and for the memory to end, and thus we came full circle.

After Sky ended her tale, I gave her a peck on the cheek and said with a smile “I’m so glad that you were there to take care of me.”.

“You’re very welcome.” Sky said and returned the kiss.

I laid back on my pillow with a sigh and said “Well, this has been a long day, and I’d like to get some sleep.”.

Sky nodded and stood up from her pillow “I understand, I’ll go and meet up with Zodi and Hoofer. Is there anything I can get you while I’m out?” She asked as she made her way to the door.

“Yeah, if you would be a real sweetie and get me a pair of sunglasses and something to cover my feet, so people won’t get scared when they see me.” Sky nodded with a smile before she opened the door and left, closing it as she went. I turned, facing the window, and closed my eyes ‘I wonder what’s inside that cave.’ I thought as I drifted off to sleep, a sleep full of thoughts of the past.

O-O-O

Early next day, Sky came back with a pair of sunglasses and a pair of black hoof covers so I could hide my dragon paws when I was outside, plus I could give anyone who came to close an nasty surprise.

Once I had donned my armor and new accessories, we walked to the lobby where I was discharged, and we walked out of the building and into the regular, where we headed for Golden Thread’s shop; the shop owners of the district were opening their stores for the morning customers which were already starting up. Of course some of the ponies and zebras we passed, looked at me curiously, but I shrugged it off, as I knew that it was my new tail they were looking at, and while we walked, I decided that if someone asked me, I’d say that I had an accident with some taint, which weren’t exactly a lie, I would just neglect to tell them that it was taint mixed with dragons blood that had caused my transformation.

On our way to the clothing store, Sky told me that she had asked Zodi and Hoofer if they would help us with our adventure in Flankfield, and that they, after coaxing, had agreed; this made me feel more at ease, as I knew it could get dangerous really fast.

When we rounded the corner to the part of the district where Golden Thread’s shop was, we saw Zodi sitting on the front of her motorized wagon, while Hoofer was sitting in the front seat, apparently ready to go adventuring. Zodi got off the wagon’s front and walked to meet us, she had a strap of some kind around her right shoulder and neck, which was connected to the energy rifle she had gotten repaired for me; when she reached us, she held up her hoof, which I bumped with my closed paw, after which she took the rifle off her shoulder and handed it to me, along with my pistol while she said “It’s good to see you again Amora.”.

“And it’s good to see you too.” I said with a smile as I took the pistol, which I put in my saddlebag, and the rifle, which I inspected quickly before I slung it over my shoulder “Well, let’s go.” I then said and we walked over to the wagon.

“It’s good that you’re okay, Amora.” Hoofer said as me and Sky made our way to the backseat.

“You too Hoofer.” I said with a smile and bumped his hoof.

We got into the wagon, and drove off towards the city gates and towards our adventure in Flankfield

A/N: Well that’s another chapter done, not the most exiting one I’ve written, but don’t worry, the next one will have a lot more action, plus a little surprise for all you readers, so have a good one until next time.

Flankfield showdown part 1

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Chapter 9: Flankfield showdown part 1:

The sky was darkening slightly, when we parked behind some rocks, about a kilometer away from Flankfield. On our way there, we had come across a trader, who told us that the settlement had been taken over by another big raider gang, called the Gold strikers, and we had decided that in order to get into the mines, we would have to join the gang; and maybe we could sabotage whatever it was they were doing at the settlement while we were there.

The trip to Flankfield had been relatively quiet, we had only encountered a single raider gang, which was quickly taken care of by me and Sky. We got out of the wagon and started our walk towards the settlement “It is kind of weird though.” Zodi said a few minutes after we had left the rocks.

“What is?” I asked and fell into step with the inventor.

“That we didn’t meet more raiders than we did along the way, we should have run into at least one or two small gangs along that route.”.

“Maybe the drake claws want to be the top gang in the territory, so they’re ‘recruiting’ the lesser gangs as cannon fodder.” Hoofer said with a shrug.

I gave the brown stallion a ‘what’ look and asked him “What makes you say that?”.

“Because it’s what they usually do, take ponies and make them like them, and the guard back in Cloppenhagen said there had been an attack on the stable plus there are now fewer raiders on the roads, so I just put two and two, and that is the conclusion I came to.” Hoofer said, giving us another shrug. I could see the logic and gave the unicorn a nod; the gardener unicorn smiled before he walked to the front of our little group as he was to take on the role as our leader.

A pair of raiders, clad in clothes that looked like they were taken straight out of a western, stood guard outside the heavily repaired gates when we arrived; one of them, a lanky, mustard yellow unicorn, stepped forward and said in a very southern accent while pointing a shotgun at us “Now y’all just stop right there.” We obeyed the order, as we didn’t want to be on the gang’s bad side from the start; the guard walked closer to us, looking us over like he’d never seen a pony before, before he asked “What’re y’all doin’ out here in these parts?”.

Hoofer stepped forward and said with as gruff a voice as he could manage “We’re raiders, and we wish to seek refuge with the Gold strikers.”.

“And why’s that?” The raider asked, leveling his shotgun with Hoofers head.

“We’ve been hearing rumors about other raider gangs disappearing all over the territory, and that the Drake claws are behind it, and since we don’t want to end up like those monsters, we’d join your gang, so we can feel protected and you gain some new members.”.

The yellow unicorn looked us over for a few moments, before he said “Wait ‘ere.” He then walked over to his partner, an orange earth pony, and whispered something to him; the earth pony then knocked on the gates once, the trice and then once more; the gates opened a few seconds later for him to walk through.

‘That must be their secret code.’ I thought and sat down along with the others.

After about 15 minutes, the earth pony returned and told us that their leader wanted to see us, and we were lead into the settlement. As we walked through the collection small cottages, I saw that the entrances to the mines had been fenced off, and a bunch of ponies was sitting, in chains, under a tarp that had been pulled over a part of the fence like a makeshift roof; guards were standing around the chained ponies, keeping them seated with their rifles and shotguns.

I didn’t get to study the prisoners for long however, as my attention was drawn back to our group when the guard asked Hoofer “So what’s the deal with ya lady friend with the long tail?” The question made me feel uncomfortable, but I kept my tough façade up and looked like I didn’t care that they were talking about me.

“She had an accident with a barrel of taint, she was lucky to get away with a long tail and nothing else.” Hoofer answered, sounding like he cared about me as a fellow raider, and nothing more.

“Well, Ah guess nobody is safe in that big hell we call a wasteland.” The guard said thoughtfully as we came to a stop in front of the largest of the buildings in the settlement, which looked like some sort of town hall. The guard opened the huge door and motioned for us to enter.

The building interior was a mess, the walls were smothered in graffiti, and pieces of cake and other foodstuffs littered the floor and the long table in the middle of the room, where several raiders were eating. There was a throne like chair at the end of the hall, on which a muscular, purple red earth pony stallion with, with icy blue eyes, and a large, turquoise bushy mustache, mane and tail was sitting lazily; he was dressed in a long, tattered, black coat, a gray neckerchief and on his head was a bowler hat.

The stallion sat up a little on the throne as we approached him so he looked even more imposing than he already did “So, these are the greenhorns who want to join our little family.” The stallion drawled as he looked us over an intense stare, like he was trying to gaze into our souls. After gazing at us for a few moments, he got up off the throne and said “Well, if y’all gonna join our gang, you must be able to give us somethin’ in return;” he took a few steps towards us and crossed his arms “so, what do you have that we can use?”.

Hoofer took a deep breath before also taking a step forward and said “Well then, let me introduce you to everybody,“ He motioned towards Sky and said “This is Thunder Blast, our power armor expert, she may not be all that subtle, but once you give her a job, she gets it done.” The boss just fixed the armor-clad mare with an intense, calculating stare, which my marefriend didn’t seem to react to, as none of us could see her face because of her helmet, before motioning for Hoofer to continue. The brown stallion then motioned to Zodi “This is Shade Gear, our excellent sniper and repair mare, she can fix more or less anything, given she has the materials, of course.”.

“Of course.” The raider boss said and fixed navy blue mare with the same intense stare for a few seconds, making her shy away slightly, before allowing Hoofer to introduce me.

“This is Bleeding Cross, our medic; I can’t count how many times she’s pulled us back from the brink of death without access to clinic grade equipment.” Hoofer said, purposefully exaggerating my abilities to make me look good to the boss..

“That’s maighty impressive.” The huge stallion said before also fixing me with his intense stare, which made me shy away a little, like Zodi had done, it felt really uncomfortable; once he was done staring, he turned his icy gaze upon hoofer and asked “An’ what about you, what’s your specialty?”.

Hoofer held the stallion’s gaze as best as he could, while he said “I’m Burst Leaf, and I’m the brawler of our little group, and I was second in command until our boss was taken by the Drake claws a few days ago, and I took it upon my myself to get us to safety, and your gang seemed like the safest place for us to go.” He gave a slight bow to the boss to emphasize his plea.

The purple stallion walked back to his throne and started pacing, looking deep in thought and mumbling to himself; this went on for a few minutes, before he walked back to us and said wit the slightest of smiles on his face “Well, welcome to the Gold strikers, I’m Armor Breaker, and I’ll be your boss from now on.”.

“Thanks a lot, boss.” Hoofer said and was about to hold out a hoof for a hoofshake with Armor , but the purple stallion had already turned and was walking back to his throne.

Once he was seated again, he waved a raider over and whispered something to him. The raider walked over to us and said “Follow me, I’ll show y’all to your room and give you a rundown of the rules we have this here place.” He then walked towards the door, and we followed him out “All right then, let’s go over what we do ‘ere and what yew can and can’t do.“ The raider said after we exited the town hall and headed towards a series of wooden houses not too far from the large building “first of all, yew always listen to what the boss tells ya, and yew always do what ‘e tells ya to do, or else, yew’ll will get punished, and trust me, yew don’t want to be punished by the boss;” The raider shivered at the apparent memory this brought to the forefront of his mind, before he cleared his throat and continued “second, we all work in the mines when we’re not out, raiding settlements and the like, but as members, yew ‘ave the easier task of either breakin’ rocks out of the walls for the slaves to carry out of the mine, or checking the quality of the gems we find.” The raider stopped in front of the fenced off area where the slaves were sitting and said “And lastly, if you want some nightly fun, you can take any of the slaves with you, as long as the boss hasn’t claimed said slave already.” The raider lead us the rest of the way to the houses and showed us to the one closest to the mountain, and told us that this was where we would be living until we either got killed, or ceased to be useful; he then left us to make ourselves at home.

The interior of the house wasn’t too bad, but it still bore signs that other raiders had been living there, like marks of knives having been imbedded in the walls, and tribal like marking that had been spray painted on the walls, floor and ceiling. We sat down at the dining room table and Sky said “Okay, we’re in the gang, now what?”.

We sat in silence for a while, and a plan slowly started to take form in my mind “I think I know how we can help the settlement.”.

“Okay, how?” Zodi asked.

“We first need to get one of those ponies they keep locked up near the mines, and ally ourselves with him or her, so we can start staging a riot; then we need to know where these raiders keep their weapons, and find a way to get them to the prisoners so we can set the riot into motion; it’s going to take a while, but I think we can do it.” I said and leaned back in my chair, allowing my companions think my idea over and add to it, or dismiss it if they wanted to.

“That is actually a pretty sound idea.” Hoofer said with a nod before asking “So, who does what?”.

I thought it over for a moment, before I said “The three of you go and find out where they keep their weapons, and maybe get an idea about how many guards there are, possible ways for us to get in, and how many weapons they have in storage; while you do that, I’ll head over to the slave pen and bring back one of the prisoners, while doing the same thing.”.

“You sure you’ll be okay on your own, cutie?” Sky asked in a worried tone.

“I will, the raiders here will most likely see me as a taint freak, but if any of them tries anything” I said before flexing my claws “I’ll give them some very unpleasant nicks, that they’ll remember for sure.” Hoofer gulped and scooted a bit away from me at the last sentence, holding his hooves over his crotch; this made me, Sky and Zodi laugh, and in turn made Hoofer’s cheeks turn a little red, though he was soon laughing along with us as he realized his own silliness.

Once we were done laughing, we took a couple of hours to rest up, and eat some of the food we had brought with us, before we split up and I headed for the slave pen. The trip to the pens went off without a hitch, though as I had expected, I got strange looks from passing raiders as I walked through the streets of the settlement, but I just ignored them and focused on my destination. I opened the gate to the pen and headed for the area with the tarp “’Ey look, it’s one of them newcomers.” One of the guards said as I approached.

“So it is.” The other guard said before taking a couple of step forward, and asked “What’re yew doing ‘ere newcomer?”.

“I came to pick up a little plaything for tonight.” I said with a sadistic smile on my face, along with a cute little giggle, just to keep up my façade as a pony you didn’t want to mess with.

The guards couldn’t help but laugh themselves, thinking about what I wanted to do to the poor soul I picked; the guard, who had addressed me, stepped aside and said “Well come in then and take yer pick.”.

I nodded and walked past the guard and under the tarp. The slave ponies looked miserable, their bodies were laced with wounds, both fresh and healed, either from a whip or the dangerous work they did in the mines; their clothes were little more than rags and to boot they looked incredibly malnourished, like they only got a bare minimum of food so they could stay alive; even though I felt bad for them, I kept up my façade, and asked “Are there any feminine males among the slaves?” The two guards gave me a confused look, and I facehoofed, of course these guys wouldn’t know too many big words, so I cleared my throat and tried again “I was asking if any of the stallions looks like a mare?”.

Realization finally seemed to dawn on the guards and the one had yet to address me said “Well, there ain’t no mare like stallions, buuut if ya want somepony that looks like a mare, but still has a stallion’s, uhhm, ‘equipment’, then yew could try the cock-mare.”.

I raised an eyebrow and asked “The what now?”.

“The cock-mare; she has both mare and stallion bits,” The other guard said as he and his partner started walking over to the slave ponies “Wait here, we’ll go get her for you.” They returned soon after with a sky blue pegasus mare with an orange mane and tail; she had golden eyes and was dressed in the remains of a once yellow dress, which didn’t quite cover her thundercloud cutie mark, which had a red lightning bolt coming out of it, along with an explosive slave collar; the two guards brought the mare over to me and forcibly turned her around, they then lifted her tail so I could see that she indeed had the ‘equipment’ of both sexes. The guard looked at me with grin and asked “So, what do ya think, newcomer?”.

I took a little time to look the mare over. Even though she was malnourished, she was still quite hot in my eyes, and her extra equipment was nice bonus, though I didn’t plan on doing anything with the poor dear. I turned to the guards and said “I’ll take her.”.

“Alright then, just remember that she has to be back tomorrow.” The other guard said before he pushed the mare over to me; he and his partner then walked back to their posts, and that’s when I noticed the key ring that was hanging from his saddlebag; it had three keys in it, one of which looked like it would fit in the slot on the slave collars ‘I better remember that for when the others come back.’ I thought before I turned towards my ‘plaything’ and said in a harsh tone “Come along, slave.” The mare shook with fear as I addressed her, but she followed me none the less.

After a short, uneventful trip, I opened the door to the house and forcefully pushed the slave mare into the sitting room, where she curled up on the floor and stuttered “P-p-p-please, d-don’t hurt me.”.

I closed the door and walked over to the mare, taking off my hoof covers as I did “Don’t worry; I’m not going to hurt you.” I said friendly as I sat down beside the mare, and gently stroked her mane.

When the mare felt my paws, her eyes became wide as saucers, and with a high-pitched squeak, she scampered as far away from me as she could, which was only a couple of meters, into the nearest corner “What, what the fuck are you?!” She asked her voice hysterical and panicked.

I looked down at my paws, and realized that I had forgotten how other ponies, especially those who had only seen me with the hoof covers on, might react to my new appearance, so I turned my back to the mare and placed my paws firmly on the ground, before I said as calmly as I could “I, uhh, I had an accident with some Drake claw mutagen,” I looked over my shoulder and saw the mare trying even more to become one with the wall, by standing on her hind legs and pressing her body against the wall; I turned away again and continued “But the guys at west medical got the taint out of me before I went crazy, but the other stuff that was in the concoction stayed in my system, and that’s why I look like I do now.”.

I heard the light clop of two hooves touching down on the floor, and shortly after that, a shaky voice that asked me “S-so you’re from Cloppenhagen?”.

I turned my head and saw that the mare had come down from the wall, and was now sitting on the floor, her body still really tense. I turned slightly, making sure not to show my claws so I wouldn’t seem threatening, and said “Yeah, I’m from stable 169.”.

“But if you’re a stable dweller, then why are you here in this hellhole? Did they throw you out, so you had to become a raider?” The mare asked me with a confused look on her face.

I couldn’t help giggling a bit at the rapid fire questions before I answered “I’m here with a couple of friends to help you take back the settlement; and no, I wasn’t thrown out of the stable, I just haven’t been home since I went on this adventure.”.

“It’s going to be hard to take back the settlement; most of us have given up hope of ever getting it back; that includes me too.” The mare said with a sniffle, as tears started to fall from her eyes.

‘Poor filly, she must have been through so much humiliation, since those raiders came here.’ I thought as I stood up and slowly neared the mare so as not to frighten her; I sat down beside her and held out my paws “If you need a shoulder to cry out on, I’m here for you.” This seemed to be all the incentive that the mare needed, because as soon as the words had left my mouth, she wrapped her hooves around my neck, and buried her head in my shoulder and started sobbing heavily, while letting her tears flow freely; I gently put my paws on her back, and started rocking her back and forth, while also rubbing her back.

After a long while of sitting like this, the mare’s tears ended, and her breathing became a little lighter; she released me, and I did the same. She sniffed a couple of times, while also drying her eyes, before she said “Thanks (snif) I needed that.”.

I simply gave her a smile and said “You’re very welcome.” And that was when it hit me that I didn’t know the mare’s name “So, what’s your name?”.

The mare sat back against the wall, where she took a couple of deep breaths to calm down completely, before she looked at me and said “I’m called Helia.” she gave me a slight smile and asked “And what do I call a dragon pony like you, who wants to rescue me and the settlement I live in?”.

I giggled a bit, before I said “I’m Amora, nice to meet you Helia.” I held out one of my paws for the blue mare to take.

“Likewise.” Helia said and shook my paw with her hoof, which felt kind of weird since I had to wrap my fingers around the hoof in order to shake it.

Once we were done shaking appendages, I stood up and stretched, my back legs felt like they were about to fall asleep, before I asked “Well Heleia, now that we have gotten to know each other a little better, how would you like something to eat?” ‘The poor dear must be starving.’ I thought as I gave her a friendly smile.

Helia’s stomach started growling at my words, and she got to her hooves and said “That sounds very good right now.”.

I giggled a little, before I put a leg around the pegasus’s shoulder and said with another smile “Then let’s go into the kitchen and find you something to eat.” Helia smiled back before we walked into the kitchen.

A/N: And that’s (finally) another chapter done. Once again, I’m really sorry that I didn’t get it out sooner, but whatever powers that drives the universe seems hell-bent on keeping me from finishing a chapter on time right now; not only do I get a writer’s block that only just now seems to let up, but I also has to get a cold that makes me lose my lust for writing. I hope everyone who’s reading this story can forgive me for this, and I promise that I will do all I can to make sure that the next chapter is out on time.