“Shadow!”

My ears twitched as I heard a familiar voice, distant and muffled, call out my name. I didn’t respond to it; I just wanted to stay where I was, where it was warm, soft, and peaceful. Oh so soft. Hmmm...

“Shaddddowwww!!”

I frowned. It seemed the owner of that high-pitched voice was determined to find me, as determined as I was to remain hidden. I rolled over on the soft surface I lay upon, holding tightly to whatever cover I had over my head with my forehooves. I could ignore that voice, as I had often enough over the few years its owner had hounded me. Now... to go back to sleep. My ears detected the sound of light hoofsteps coming towards me... oh crud, I’d been discovered. They stopped just outside my shelter and a moment later I heard a light huff.

“Shadow, get your sorry flank outta bed this instant!”

I muttered something in response to the owner of that voice through the fluffy pillow I had firmly atop my head; to be honest, I wasn’t even sure what I said. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to lay here forever and go back to sleep. Whatever she wanted could wait. It was a Saturday, for crying out loud, and we didn’t have class on the weekend. I folded my hooves over my head and attempted to once more go back to sleep. At least, I would have, if somepony hadn’t yanked the covers off my bed and proceeded to dump my flank into the floor with a solid thump.

I opened my eyes reluctantly and blinked, seeing four hooves standing on the ceiling before me. And why were the light panels on the floor? Wait a sec...

Giggling filled my ears, light and foalish. A second later, a face appeared in my vision, one I knew very well, having seen it every day of my life.

“Silly, I told you I’d get you outta bed,” Ebony said with that bright and warm smile of hers, golden eyes flashing with mirth at what she had yet again done to me. My sister, the terror that she is, then stood back up and placed a black hoof against my belly. With a soft push, she sent me flopping onto my back with a slight grunt.

“Now come on, little brother, today is our very special day!”

“Yeah, yeah... not like I’m gonna be able to go back to sleep with you around,” I muttered and rolled over onto my belly, shaking my head to clear out the clinging effects of sleep and head trauma. This made the sixth time this week my sister had seen fit to toss me out of bed. Okay, so maybe I did oversleep a bit.

“Course not, Mama’s got everything planned, and Daddy’s got the day off to spend with us.” My sister smiled happily down at me, practically bouncing in place on her hooves. I couldn’t help it and smiled back; you couldn’t be in a bad mood long around Ebony. The filly knew just how to make anypony smile and laugh.

“Alright, alright, sis, I’m up. Sheesh... it’s not like mom’s gonna throw the party without the guests of honor,” I responded with a smirk and rose to my hooves, shaking myself off before running a hoof through my messy mane. She watched me and smirked, reaching over to help smooth my unruly tuft of hair out before speaking again.

“That’d just be silly, Silly,” was my sister’s usual come back, followed by a hoof pressing against my nose and her honking. I chuckled and wiggled my nose a bit, “Now, did ya think of a good birthday wish?” she asked, grinning, “It’s sure to come true this year, since we’ll have sooooo many candles to blow out. A whole five!” The filly bounced around happily once more.

I grinned back to my sister and nodded my head, reaching down to grip the sheets and blankets of my bed in my mouth and tossing them back up where they belonged. Oh, how I wished I could join them.

“Yeah, I think I did. I wished for...” I oofed as a white glowing pillow slammed into my muzzle and silenced me. I reached up with a hoof and pulled it down away from my eyes, arching a brow to my sister’s glowing horn and scowl.

“Don’t you know how birthday wishes work, little brother?! If you tell ANYPONY they won’t ever come true!” she huffed, and sat down before me, tossing the pillow up on the bed behind me as she gave me her best serious face..

“Ow... alright, alright... sheesh... I know that, silly!!” I rubbed my nose with a hoof before continuing; after all, I had a good reason for telling her my wish. “But, since we’re twins and all, I figured it didn’t really matter. We already know what each other’s thinking most of the time anyway. See? It was a good reason, so hmph!”

A thoughtful look came over my sister's face as she thought of this, which involved her right front hoof rubbing under her chin as she stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth. It was her normal thinking face, so I knew to be silent whenever she wore it. Otherwise she might give me another hit to the head, and Bright said if I got too many of those I’d go cross-eyed or something.

“Yeah, that makes sense, little brother.” She grinned and placed both forehooves onto the carpeted floor, leaning in close to my face, ears perked towards me. “So... what’d ya wish for? Huh? Huh? I bet it was a kiss from Wendy... I seen you looking at her at lunch yesterday.” She smiled and I blushed.

“NO! I... I wasn’t staring... I was just.... um... I wasn’t staring!” I yelled out, stomping my hoof. I could feel my cheeks warm as I tried to explain why I’d been looking at the little filly in our class who sat across from us. I hadn’t been staring. Nope. My sister only giggled and clapped her hooves together happily.

“Aww... your secret’s safe with me, little brother!” she giggled, and stood up, starting for the door to our room. “Soooo?” I blinked and she grinned, “About the wish!” Oh... I blushed again and sorta dragged my hooves as we walked before finally answering her question.

“I kinda wished for us to always be together.” It seemed odd, but she was my sister, despite all the headaches she gave me. She looked over at me, her smile growing. I could have sworn I saw some tears in her eyes. I smiled and looked over to her. “And stop calling me little, I’m as big and old as you, sis.”

“Hehe... you’ll always be my little brother, Shadow.” She gave me a playful nuzzle on the cheek before skipping out the door.

I opened my eyes slowly, the darkness of the room making it seem as if I’d never shut them. A moment later, one of the broken overhead light panels flickered on, casting a pale white light across the room within which I lay. I looked to my side at the form huddled against me, and slid my right hoof out to cradle my sister’s head next to my own. She looked so peaceful, almost like she was sleeping. I gently lowered her head back down to the ground, and brushed a wet lock of her white mane from her face, wet with my tears. I reached up and rubbed my burning eyes, before looking back at my twin.

Quietly, as if afraid I’d wake her, I gathered my hooves under myself and rolled to my stoma, then stopped. I longed to not move again, to just curl up beside her once more and not have to worry about anything ever again. Not raiders. Not my friends. Not my home. Just to stay with my sister. Once more my burning eyes fell upon the still form of Ebony and I sniffed.

I’d failed her.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you... Oh, Celestia... Luna... I wish it’d been me that’d been taken. Why didn’t I go to you when they attacked... I should have been there. I should have protected you...” Tears ran down the already matted fur of my cheeks as I stared at her face. “They need you, Ebony. They need their Overmare... your laughter and kindness. I - I can’t do this on my own, sis... I - I need you. Your daughter needs her mother...”

I promised... I promised to bring her mother back. Her mother would never see her earn her cutie mark, never see her grow up. I’d failed them both.

My head dropped back down to my sister’s body, laying across her neck, and I sniffed, tears running unchecked down my face as the memory of my niece and the promise I’d made to her rose into my head.

“You promise to come back, right Uncle Shadow?” the small filly asked, and I nodded my head to her.

“I promise.”

“Pinkie Promise?” she asked with large gold eyes, and I chuckled softly.

“Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” I went through the motions of the swear which had been taught to my sister and I by our parents.

I lifted my head. I promised to come home... I’m the only family she has left. Looking back down to my sister’s peaceful face, I gently reached out a hoof to softly stroke her cheek. It was so cold. The overhead lighting sparked back into place for a moment and I cocked my head, noticing the smile she wore on her lips, and lightly tracing it with my hoof. She always knew how to make a pony smile.

“Shadow?” a voice called to me from the doorway. When I didn’t respond, I heard hooves coming towards me over the trash of the room. “Shadow... we need to get moving. Carrion said the raiders will be on their way soon. We need to get these ponies out of here.”

“Just... give me a minute, Wild... just a minute.” My voice was hoarse from crying and the words broken. An orange hoof reached up and rested gently on my shoulder, before Wild leaned up and nuzzled my cheek gently.

“Alright... I’ll help Stone get them ready to go...” As quietly as she had come, the winged mare departed, leaving me alone once more with my sister.

“I need to go now, sis,” I whispered softly, rising unsteadily back to my hooves. Closing my eyes, I softly kissed her cold nose and stood up straight. “I need to take care of Sugar for you... I promised.”

Turning away from my sister, I started towards the door, head low to the ground, when something gently rustled my mane. Was there a breeze in here? I stopped and turned back to the dark room and the still sour air within and saw nothing move. My eyes went once again to the still form and lingered for a moment.

“Good bye, Big Sister.” The lighting once more flickered and went dark as I turned and walked from the room, not bothering to look back again. I had to get moving. I had a lot of ground to cover.

I had a promise to keep...

Stepping from the darkness of the ruined bathroom and into the main room, I found the dim flickering lights oddly bright on my burning eyes, and squinted against their glare. I was unsure how much time had passed since my sister had... had.... well, since then. To me, it felt as if hours had passed, but somehow I doubted we would have been given that much respite and, as for myself, time to grieve. The prisoners around me sat quietly, holding near-dead loved ones in their hooves, helping them to eat and drink the supplies my friends had given out. Carefully, I stepped between them, looking for any sign of Stone and Wild. I spotted them upon reaching the center of the room. They stood near the entrance, speaking quietly to one another, both looking oddly calm in the heart of raider territory. They stopped talking when they saw me approach.

My friends looked worriedly at me, but neither spoke. What was there to say? There was nothing either of them could say that would make this any easier on me. It still seemed like some sort of bad dream to me. A nightmare. One I wished with all my heart I would awaken from. But one I knew I’d never wake from. This was my world now. A world without Ebony. A world without hope.

Wild started to say something as I glanced between them, but quickly shut her mouth and looked away. Stone simply nodded his head. The earth pony had lost his brother to raiders; he likely knew what I was going through. For the moment, we stood beside each other, and despite it all, I drew comfort and strength from my friends. After several moments of silence, I looked up to them to ask the question.

“How long do we have?”

“Not long, Ah reckon. Carrion went ta check th’ door we blocked. He’s supposed ta give us a warnin’ when they’re tryin’ ta get inside,” Stone answered, the earth pony looking from me to the huddled ponies in the room. “Shadow, Ah know this has been hard on ya, but - we need ta get movin’ as soon as possible. Some o’ these ponies can hardly walk on their own, and we got miles of sewers and tunnels ta go through to reach anythin’ even remotely safe.”

“How many...?” I asked as I looked back into the dimly lit room. I remembered counting them as we entered, but now I couldn’t seem to recall. Nor could I really focus on my E.F.S. and the cluster of green dots it displayed: there was too much red.

“Ten, three survivors from yer Stable and the rest from all across th’ Wasteland,” the stallion said, looking sadly to the pitiful shells of ponies around us.

“I don’t know how many of them will survive the trip; some are on their last legs,” Wild spoke up. The winged mare looked from the survivors to me, and for a moment I saw hesitation in her blue eyes as she glanced to Stone. Finally, she made up her mind and said whatever was troubling her. “There’s no way we can carry them all and still escape, Shadow. I know both Stone and you want to try and save them, but if we get into a fight with ghouls along the way or if the raiders catch us, they will be a liability, one I’m afraid will get more ponies killed...” As she spoke, I saw Stone tense and grit his teeth. This was likely something the two had been arguing over for a while now.

"Wild, we can’t just leave ’em here for them raiders ta find again!” Stone stomped a forehoof onto the floor loudly, causing a few of the nearby prisoners to flinch away in fear. “It’d be as good as killin’ them ourselves...” he trailed off and glanced to me, mouth open. “...Ah’m sorry, Shadow... Ah...” his ears dropped as he stuttered, looking upset about what had slipped. Despite their disagreement, Wild layed a hoof on the large stallions shoulder.

“Its alright, Stone... I know what you meant.” I looked to the frightened ponies sitting on the floor. Ten lives in my hooves. How do I make a choice like this? Leave some behind to save the others? And who would go and who would stay? As head of security I had been expected to make calls like this before, and my father had been forced to make them himself. The rapid degeneration of the stable meant that accidents had become far more common in the past few years, and sometimes we couldn’t save everypony.

“Shadow?” I looked up as somepony approached from the room. He was limping, having only three legs left to use, with the other ending in a ragged stump wrapped in dirty bandages and strips of soiled cloth. I turned and watched as Turf walked closer and stopped to stand before me as best he could. The unicorn nodding to the others around me before fixing me with a sad smile. “I’m sorry about your sister, Shadow. She was a good mare. She kept our hopes up despite all they did to us and her... if it wasn’t for her, I doubt any of us would still be alive.”

I lowered my head and nodded. Ebony would have done everything in her power to help her ponies. It had always been her way, our mother’s way. It was why she had been such a natural leader, and a great mother. Why both of them had been some of the best Overmares the stable had ever had. Turf went silent to give me a moment before he pressed on with the issue at hoof. One I was currently struggling with and one he seemed to already have an answer too.

“Look, I know you four can’t help us all escape this hell. How you even managed to get in here in the first place must have taken more luck than any pony has any right to have.” He looked back to his fellow captives. “Most of us are nearly beyond saving and will simply slow you down.” The stub of his missing leg twitched and I looked back to his face to say otherwise, only for him to cut me off before I could say so much as a word. “Don’t go lying to me either, Shadow. Your folks raised you better than that and your mother would likely swat you upside the head for doing so.”

I shut my mouth and nodded; he was right of course, but how could I ask them to stay? Turf seemed able to read what was on my mind, or simply guessed correctly what was bothering me. I knew the fate of anypony staying behind once the raiders discovered the others had escaped. It would not be pretty, nor swift. I’d seen the kitchen back at the a raider’s base.

“You don’t have to ask for anypony, Shadow... a few of the bucks and I already talked it over. We want you to take the mares and the young ones with you. We’ll be staying behind to cover you.”

“Turf...”

“We’ve done made up our minds, Shadow. Besides, you know how stubborn I can be.” He smiled, and I could almost see the old unicorn buck I had trained with under all those bruises and missing teeth. Along with so many other faces. Wendy. Bluebelle. June. Lucky. Ebony. Most were dead, some across the Wasteland.

Wild and Stone stood beside me, silently waiting to see what I would say. I already knew both their opinions on the matter. Wild was a former soldier, and likely had sent her share of ponies to their deaths so others could survive, or been ordered to herself. Stone, while he had survived in the Wasteland all his life and had seen so much, still seemed unwilling to give up on anypony. I knew he wanted to try and convince Turf and the others to come with us, and that he’d damn well carry three of them on his back if he had too. And if I asked him to, he would damn well try. I looked into Turf’s eyes, the eyes a pony I had grown up with, and saw the look in them. We both knew what my answer would be. He’d already resigned himself to this and I to letting him do it. I nodded my head slowly and lightly touched his shoulder with a hoof.

“Alright, gather those willing to stay and we’ll give them what weapons and ammo as we can spare. I’ll see what we can do for healing supplies...” Turf smiled sadly at that and I sighed softly, “...alright...just the weapons and ammo.”

Beside me, Stone looked ready to argue, but the looks in Turf’s and my eyes silenced those arguments. Wild lightly touched the stallion’s shoulder with a slender orange hoof and the rubbed his gray coat gently.

“They will need it,” a harsh voice said from behind us, causing the four of us to jump in surprise. I quickly turned towards the owner of that voice and saw Carrion standing calmly in the doorway to the bombshelter, his eyes glowing brightly in the dim light, “They’re coming.”

As quickly as we could, Stone and I passed out the weapons to those few ponies who had volunteered to stay behind and cover our escape. Neither of us could say much to them, these battered ponies who would give us and their loved ones time to reach the sewers. At most, we wished each one luck and asked if there was anything we could do for them. I also found myself asking them their names and where they were from; perhaps after this was over, I could go to their former homes and let anypony left behind by the raiders know what had become of them.

Of the ponies who would be going with us, there were only six, Tassles and Pip among them. Beside my fellow Stable ponies stood four other mares of varying ages, one still missing her cutie mark, as well as one of her ears from a raider’s knife. All had been abused and beaten by the raiders, and far worse. What was worse, I learned within that span of time we would be leaving more behind than just the frail and crippled stallions. At least another seven ponies from 45 had been taken that morning to work on clearing the tunnel through the mountains, along with thirty or so other captives. Those we had found were the weakest, and had been left to either die by the raiders left to guard them, or for their food.

Seven ponies I knew from home I would be leaving behind to this hellhole. But there was nothing else we could do; as Wild and Carrion pointed out, the raiders knew something was wrong down here. They would be coming in force, and anypony not leaving was as good as dead.

I looked over to Turf as he reloaded a badly worn assault rifle: during the rush to equip them with weapons, somepony had fitted my fellow security pony with a broken broom handle, held to the stump of his rear leg with tape and cord. It was a crude replacement for his missing limb, but then, he wasn’t exactly going to be needing it for long. A grim thought in these grim times.

He looked up from his work, the remains of his horn glowing dimly at best as he somehow held the weapon aloft. Seeing my eyes on him, he offered me a brave smile, and I returned it. Had I failed him as I’d failed Ebony?

The thirty minutes went by painfully quick in my mind, but slowly for others: wives and daughters said farewell to their husbands and fathers, friends hugged friends and a few last words were spoken before the first of the traps Carrion had left behind exploded.

The ghoul had rigged the hallway with any number of lethal trip wires and landmines he had brought with him from his lair. He said the raiders would pay for every inch of hallway they rushed down, and thus far it sounded as if he was a pony of his word.

Turf followed us down the hallway towards the sewer exit. Behind us, another loud explosion shook the narrow walls of the passage, raining dust down atop our heads from the ceiling. We had gone only a few steps more when the first sounds of gun fire roared out. The ponies left to hold the hallway had spotted the first raiders to survive the passage.

“We’ll hold them off as long as we can, boss, just get these gals as far from this place as you can!” Turf yelled out over the clatter of automatic weapons fire and the steady boom of shotguns. Ahead, Stone carried the battered filly upon his back, while helping a mare stumble through the open doorway. The other mares helped one another through, one stumbling a bit as she went. Wild and Carrion were somewhere ahead, making sure the path was clear.

Across my own back I carried Pip: the mare had been unresponsive since the death of her sister, refusing food and water and not speaking since we’d arrived. She seemed to weigh just a bit more then my niece; I could feel her ribs pressing against my flanks as I trotted beside Turf.

“I’ll do my best, Turf...” I stopped beside the door and looked back to my friend, who smiled up to me as he gripped the handle of the door in his fading magic. The key was safely tucked away inside my bag, once the door was shut, there would be no opening it again. Wild had said only a small number of raiders had copies of the key, and had suggested we lock the door behind us, in a effort to slow them down. It also meant we’d be sealing in those we left behind, but then, they had already known how this would end. I hesitated, thinking perhaps to convince Turf to come with us, to call them all back and hope the door would be enough to slow the raiders down. My friend simply smiled and tilted his head.

“It’s the only way, Shadow.”

“I know... I just wish...” But what was there to say? Both of us knew there was nothing the other could do. “Celestia and Luna watch over you, my friend,” was all I could say.

“Good luck, Shadow.” With a flickering glow from his horn, the large metal door slowly closed shut behind me, clicking loudly as it locked into place.

The return trip through the sewers was far less eventful. Either we had dealt with the closest threats already, or else the fact there were so many of us kept the creatures at bay, beyond a small group of radroaches attempting to drag down one of the more wounded mares who had fallen behind us. They were quickly driven off as Stone and myself charged down towards them. Most of the sewers’ inhabits stayed within the shadows. A good thing, too, because those radroaches had nearly killed the rescued prisoners. We’d already used up a good portion of our health potions and food supplies. Stone had been worried about making it back with what we had, but Wild had pointed out we’d be flying over most of the dangers the wasteland had to offer. That is, if we made it out of here.

Nopony spoke, beyond asking if somepony needed help, or warnings about weak sections of the tunnel. A cough or groan rose up every so often from among the ponies we escorted, along with the echoing sound of hoofsteps within the tightly packed tunnels. The near nonexistent weight of Pip bouncing along my flanks as I walked reminded me to be careful where I placed a hoof. The mare had said nothing since leaving the hospital’s sub basement; if not for the steady if shallow breathing coming from her, I would have thought her dead.

I have to admit, my mind wandered for most of the trip through the tunnels under Kanter City. Thoughts of my sister filled my head as we tiredly cantered along the stone floor, the echoing hoofsteps making me think of times spent in the lower sections of the Stable with my sister, playing hide and seek among the maintenance tunnels. Happier times. Simpler times.

We’d become aware of the raiders trailing us shortly after the fight with the roaches: the echoing voices and the odd gunshot from a nervous raider echoed along the ruined brick walls up to us. A few times I had looked back over the prone form of Pip, expecting to see our pursuers turning the corner of the tunnel we had just entered. For the moment, thoughts of my sister faded from my mind as I checked my shotgun’s safety switch. Around the prisoners I had turned it off, since we had been helping them up from the floor whenever they’d fallen, and we didn’t need one getting shot accidentally.

I had dropped back to cover them, while Stone and Wild helped the prisoners and Carrion forged ahead. Looking away from the dark tunnels we’d just passed through, I found myself walking beside Tassles. Unlike Pip, the mare seemed to be doing better since drinking a health potion and half a canteen of water. The further we got from the hospital, the better she looked. She still stumbled, however, and her gaunt frame would need more healing than we could offer before she’d be back to her old self. If not for a limp due to the wounds she had suffered along her flank and under, she’d be keeping pace well enough with us. For the longest time she did not look over at me, instead focusing on the floor ahead and placing one hoof in front of the other. Eventually she began glancing my way, as if trying to work up the courage to ask something she had been worrying over. I knew that feeling; there was something I’d been wanting to ask but had not.

“What happened to the Stable after we were taken, Shadow? I’ve been wondering if everypony had been taken or if they’d been killed. The raiders told us they’d killed everypony else before dragging us off.” Her words were nearly swallowed up among the steady clop of hooves in the tunnel, she had spoken them so softly. I turned and regarded the mare beside me before I answered.

“We fought the raiders until they were driven out. I’m not sure on what all took place, since I got injured when we retook the Atrium from them.” Our hoof steps changed in pitch as we once more began trotting through hoof-deep stagnant water and slime. The stench of decay and algae once more reached my nose as we splashed through the water. “They managed to destroy or steal most of the things we needed to maintain the Stable, however, and within a few days we were forced to abandon it.” Her ears perked up at that and she turned to ask another question that had been on her mind.

“My parents...?”

“...Are fine.” She relaxed at that, and turned to looking ahead of us once again. Pip’s breathing remained steady upon my back, the mare never moving. “I sent them to San Ponsisco, along with everypony else from our home... it seemed the safest place at the time.”

“I heard some of those... things (she couldn’t bring herself to call them ponies, but nor could I: they weren’t) mention it. Talking about wanting to burn it to the ground.” She went silent for a moment before adding, “It's why she’s gathering them. There’s something inside the city she wants.”

“She?”

“Whoever their leader is, it’s a mare, the only mare they seem to have any respect for. I heard them as they guarded us around the mine... or after they...” she trailed off and went silent. I did not press, but she started once more, “Turf said... he said they feared her.” The mention of that name caused us both to go silent, and I prayed that my fellow security pony had died quickly.

We traveled in silence again for another hour before I finally asked the question to which I both wanted and did not want the answer. It had taken me awhile to work up the courage to ask it, but I knew I had to know.

“Tassles, what happened to my sister?” Once more, silence descended upon us as we walked, and she again avoided looking at me. But finally, she began to talk.

“The beatings started almost the second we were dragged to the surface from our homes. None of us were prepared for the brutality of these creatures... I don’t think anypony could have known what awaited us. We were chained together in a line and left to a couple guards as the rest went into the Stable. Some of us thought they’d never be able to take it, but when some came back, they told us everypony inside had been slaughtered. Cooked alive in fires. We’d all seen the smoke... some of us believed...” she lowered her head, tears in her eyes before she pressed on, “But not Ebony. She said there was no way they’d take the Stable, no way they’d get past security or you.” She looked up at me, a slight smile on her face, “She knew you’d not let them harm her ponies.”

I looked away at that. As much as she thought that I’d have been happier in the Stables garden, my sister often commented on how proud father would be of how I ran security. How confident she was in our safety. Tassles continued.

“Over the next several days, they drove us across the plains east. We didn’t know where, and they wouldn’t tell us. On the trip, several of us were raped and beaten- I...” she shook her mane and clenched her jaw.

“You don’t have to go on...” I started, but she shook her head once more and swallowed before proceeding.

“When we reached the city, they dragged us into a large open building that I heard one of them call a stadium, and herded us together in the center. Everywhere we looked, they stood watch over us. A couple fired over our heads or into the ground near our hooves. There were several other captives there as well, all looking as battered as us. We huddled together and waited for whatever they had in store for us. What happened next... I’ll never forget until the day I die.” Her voice shook as she continued and I looked worriedly over to her.

“The frightened whispered words of dozens of ponies went silent as a group made its way towards us from the opposite end of the stadium, they had a spotlight shining on them from overhead. There were only five of them; however, most of us focused upon the larger four figures. They looked the most deadly... but how wrong we were. They were armored from nose to tail in thick armor, like the Steel Rangers we learned about in school, you remember them?” she asked me and I nodded, “These were no heroic warriors. Their armor was painted as black as pitch with red markings all across it; I think it was from blood. They had spikes and blades worked into their armor and wore large weapons across their back. They were completely silent, so much so that I thought maybe they were robots until one got close and I could hear him breathing.” She shivered and went on.

“Then whatever they were escorting came to my attention. At first I thought it was just some pony wearing a cloak. A mare, no larger than Ebony or myself, she was standing beside me, attempting to soothe the ponies around her. The dark figure moved slowly around the clustered ponies, almost all of which were unicorns. Most shyed away from her, shaking with fear. A few nodded their heads and were quickly taken away by nearby raiders. The first I knew of her presence near us was when she seemed to just appear between your sister and I. I couldn’t see much of her, even that close. The long dark robe she had over her body covered nearly everything about her. As she shifted to look at Ebony, I saw a purple and white curly tail poking out from below the cloak, but nothing more. She was focused on your sister, who didn’t look away... she just returned the stare.”

I smiled at that; my sister was not one to let a bully bother her, and more often than not, I would be on the losing side of any stare down.

“She never spoke to your sister, never asked her what she’d asked everypony else. She just stared at her, before finally turning away to look at me. My heart stopped. Oh sweet Celestia... her eyes... they were black. Empty pits. I- I couldn’t look into them, and dropped to my knees.” She shook and attempted to collect herself.

“What was it she was asking the others?” Madeyes had been the name Carrion had given for the leader of the raiders. Was it this mare Tassles had met?

“She never asked me, simply smirked and patted me on the head like a foal and walked off to another group... Pip told me she’d asked for ponies to join her cause in restoring Equestria to it’s former glory, under its one true ruler.”

I arched a brow to this. One true ruler? Princess Celestia perhaps? She’d ruled Equestria for more than a thousand years before her sister returned to her side, and only a few years after she had stepped down from the throne and allowed Princess Luna to take control.

“A few ponies from the other groups joined them, but not a one from the Stable would,” she said proudly, and I nodded my head. We’d always been a close community within the Stable, each depending on the other for their continued survival. Even outside the Stable, it seemed that same sentiment had held strong, “After that, we were taken to the hospital and started work on repairing the building as well as the others they used throughout the city. A few of us were singled out, your sister included, for extra work, taken by train to a collapsed tunnel. We worked for hours with no food or water. If we wanted it... we had to do favors for the guards.” Her shoulders slumped a bit. “It’s not like we had any choice; most of us who’d been taken had already been raped several times...”

I once more felt my anger rise, gritting my teeth tightly as we walked, the stench of the tunnel forgotten.

“The tunnel itself was highly radioactive in places, and your sister and a few others they deemed as trouble makers were forced to work in those areas by hoof...” Tears formed at the corners of her eyes as she spoke. “She joked with us, tried to keep us focused on taking care of ourselves, while all the time getting sicker and sicker. She used to say it was all a plan to make herself undesirable for any of the twisted bucks who watched us...”

My ears folded back and I shut my eyes. Sweet Celestia...

Tassles could finally say no more, and once more the group fell into silence as we made our way through the tunnel. After another hour of wandering, we finally came to the end of the maintenance tunnel we’d been following and spotted the rust covered subway tracks disappearing down the new tunnel we would be taking. It seemed we were at last coming close to the station and freedom, but there was one problem.

The maintenance tunnel we’d been walking through had been set higher up along the wall than the subway tunnel. A ladder had once allowed access to both tunnels along the wall, but the metal rungs had either been ripped away or simply fallen off over time. And while the height was not that great, the weaker ponies would likely sprain an ankle or break a leg if they attempted to drop down. It meant we’d need to help them down one at a time, and this cost us time.

It was during this that those tracking us finally caught up, and seized upon our vulnerable state. I was just lowering myself down from the ledge of the maintenance tunnel when all hell broke loose around me.

The panicked cries of our rescued ponies filled the subway tunnels as bullets of every shape and size started zipping past our manes and tails, impacting the ground in front of our hooves with small puffs of pulverized stone. As my hooves touched the ground, I turned and began running up the tunnel, along with the others.

The harsh laughter of the raiders chased us as we raced down the tunnels towards the subway station where we had entered the city just hours before. The raiders were not far behind, and it was looking more doubtful by the second that we’d make it out of this place with our lives.

“Keep moving, everypony!” I yelled over the chaos; it was quickly turning into the Atrium all over again. Frightened ponies ran as quickly as their battered bodies would allow, eyes wide with thoughts of being taken by the raiders again. Pip still rode upon my back; despite all the noise, she hadn’t said a word. She was still alive, as I felt her forehooves grip my neck as tightly as they could to keep her from falling off. At least she still wanted to live.

Stone galloped beside me, his head lowered as he gripped a filly by the scraps of clothing she still wore, with a wounded mare across his back. My friend’s flanks bore a number of flesh wounds from grazing shots. Thus far nopony had been hit badly; the raider’s poor aim and frenzied nature a blessing. But it would only take a single round to the leg to bring any one of us to our knees, and then it would be all over.

Dim flickering emergency lighting flashed past as we took a curve in the tunnel, passing a badly dented subway car laying upon its side. Bullets struck its rusted metal undercarriage and sent up a flash of sparks. I barely paid it, nor the skeletons scattered around it, any heed as the tunnel began to straighten out once more.

A lone figure stood out within the tunnels: Carrion frantically waving his forehoof to the left side of the tunnel, his assault rifle floating beside him as he did so. Was he waving us back? Was he planning on standing there and unloading into the raiders? Then I spotted them, a small row of disks laying upon and around the rail lines, hastily covered with bits of nearby trash.

Landmines.

Seeing them himself, and being on the outside, Stone began angling towards the left-most section of the tunnel, so that the ponies between us had no choice but to turn with him as he herded them away from the traps and into a narrow space. Carrion slipped into step beside us, the ghoul hardly looked winded, a slight grin on his face as he called out to me.

“Fuckers get a surprise in a moment! Might buy us a few seconds.”

All I could offer the ghoul was a nod of my head as we pressed onward, my heart hammering in my chest as we ran. Just ahead I spotted the opening that would lead us out into the station. From there it would be a mad dash across the shattered remains of the loading platforms and into the unfinished tunnel.

Our hooves had just crossed into the station when the first explosions roared from back down the tunnel followed by yelps and cries of pain. It seemed the raiders’ lack of concern for their own safety continued, as the next few seconds were followed by more sounds of hooves striking pressure plates and shrapnel ripping into chests and stomachs. Not a good way to die, but then, these were raiders.

The first rescued pony had just gotten her hooves up on the passenger loading platform when the first raiders swarmed in behind us. A bullet zipped within inches of my face and struck her in the flank in a mist of red, sending her crumpling to the dirt-covered floor with a cry. One of the other mares hesitated and began to slow, until rounds bounced off a nearby dust-encrusted trash can and she took off running once again.

For a moment, I thought about running past; if we slowed, we’d be overtaken by raiders in seconds. She lay there, struggling to rise, rounds impacting across the station as more raiders rushed in behind us. She turned towards me, fear on her face, and for a moment I saw Ebony laying on a mound of trash, asking me to put her out of her misery; worked to death, her body broken, abused, and battered by the raiders that chased us.

Without missing a beat, I turned towards the platform she lay upon and charged across the open. Stone and Carrion lead the others on, the unicorn turning to spray a hail of 7.5mm rounds into the mob behind us. The thunk of bullets impacting flesh and the grunts spoke of hits, while the clatter of stumbling hooves told me he’d bought me a few more seconds.

The last few yards I took in leaping bounds as I jumped onto the platform the mare lay bleeding upon, still attempting to crawl to safety. At the sound of my hooves striking the ground behind her, she cried out and turned, expecting perhaps to see a raider. Her eyes widened as she saw me running towards her.

“Quick, climb on!” I yelled over the din of weapons fire and screaming, dropping down beside the wounded mare on my knees and leaning against her for a moment. She hesitated, and I yelled, “Hurry!” As she began to slide towards me, I felt Pip shift and saw her hoof from the corner of my eye, reaching to wrap around the mare’s neck. Pip pulled her up beside herself, releasing my neck to hold onto the injured pony.

A warning from Carrion was all I had before I heard the clop of hooves behind me. I yelled out, “Hang on!” and bucked with all my might. My rear hooves impacted the face of a charging raider and caved in his skull with a jarring crunch of bones. The body toppled back over the platform and rolled onto the tracks as I once more took off running. I darted between the support pillars of the station, old rotting posters turning to dust as bullets struck. As I weaved around one already-broken pillar, it exploded into chunks of concrete, showering myself and the mares across my back with sharp fragments. It seemed somepony had a high powered rifle and knew how to fire it.

Good for them.

I lunged off the side of the platform and back onto the tracks to avoid making myself such a clear target. My hooves pounded into the rusted rails and rotting beams of the tracks as I neared the twin tunnels leading away from Kanter City. Stone and Carrion had just plunged into the darkness of the left tunnel, the unfinished one. Thoughts of crossing the narrow bridge under fire with half-starved, wounded mares rose in my mind, but I pushed it aside. We had to reach it first.

Looking back, I saw dozens of raiders behind us, the lighting of the room reflecting in their maddened foaming faces and wide yellowed eyes. In their eagerness to reach us, they trampled over the prone bodies of their fallen comrades; some dead, some wounded. How could anypony hope to stand against this? I saw the flash of muzzle fire as several fired wildly at me. Rifles, assault rifles, even a few battle saddles roared out, all with poor aim. This was going to be close...

“COME AND GET IT, YOU BASTARDS!!!” The yell shocked me enough that I stumbled across one of the wooden beams, nearly falling on my face. I quickly recovered, as the mares across my back cling to one another and me tightly. Jerking my attention back towards the tunnel, I saw Wild stepping out from the darkness, blue eyes narrowed and her mouth clamped around the firing bit of her battle saddle. The twin barrels of her weapons snapped forward and roared to life. The bright, strobing muzzle flashes lit up the mare as she poured sheer firepower over our heads at our pursuers. For a moment, the raiders were not the most frightening thing in the tunnel.

Behind us, I heard the rounds impacting bodies and those bodies bursting from the high powered punch of the pegasus’ rifles. Teeth all but biting through the metal bit, she swept the station behind us in a deadly barrage of fire. Brass casings smoked as they were flung from the ejection ports on either side of her, landing all around her hooves. Even the crazed raiders were thrown back in disarray for a few seconds at this sudden hellish assault, giving me enough time to reach the tunnel.

“Stone took the others ahead with Carrion. The ol’ rotten bastard planted a few more surprises for our friends back there, so stay on the tracks and don’t set hoof off them!” the pegasus yelled around her firing bit, starting to back up into the tunnel. As I rushed past her, I heard her stop firing and turn to follow me, our hooves echoing along the tunnel’s walls as silence descended upon us.

The respite did not last long, as we had hardly gone two dozen steps when we heard the sound of pursuit behind us. Beside me, I heard Wild mutter under her breath.

“Determined fuckers...”

I had to agree with her. They seemed intent on following us until we either died, they caught us, or we killed them all. Only two of those outcomes seemed likely, and neither were good for us.

The unfinished tunnel soon proved itself to be a blessing to us, as the raiders’ numbers began to funnel them into narrow sections of the passage. We could hear swearing as raiders tripped one another up in the tight confines, or over the unfinished tunnel floor. Or running afoul of one of Carrion’s landmines (how many did he have in those bags? Hopefully enough.).

We managed to gain a bit of a lead on our pursuers once more thanks to that; plus, we had now passed the last of the mines and could once more run unworried of blowing ourselves up. This helped as well, since we could avoid the sections of the tracks that been been damaged by cave ins and earthquakes. At last, I spotted our friends ahead, Carrion leading a wounded mare across the narrow bridge to the other side. I skidded to a stop and nearly collapsed, my body coated in sweat and dirt.

“Ya’ll got any grenades left on ya, Shadow?” Stone asked as he trotted over to me, his gray coat damp with sweat. His cowpony hat was dark with perspiration and tilted back a bit, showing his mane plastered to his forehead.

I could only nod my head in response as I reached for my water canteen. It was nearly empty, having given most of it to the prisoners. My legs shook as I managed to fight the urge to sit down and spill the two mares off my back and onto the floor. Sensing my condition, Wild stepped up beside me and helped Pip and the wounded mare to slide off my aching back. Somehow, Pip had gotten the wound on the flank of the other mare wrapped in bandages she’d gotten from my saddlebags. The shy surviving twin smiled weakly up at me, before Wild began ushering them towards the bridge.

The bridge. It would was our most hazardous obstacle, but it would also prove to be our salvation. If we blew it up, the raiders would either have to find some other way to cross, or attempt to build a bridge themselves. Given the maintenance of their armor and weapons, I put little faith in anything they built.

“Good, ‘cuz Carrion’s fresh outta explosives... never seen a pony pull so much stuff from his packs.” At any other time, I might have cracked a joke at my friend for that comment, but given the past few hours’ events...

The sound of pounding hoofsteps reached our ears and caused mine to twitch; it would seem our rest was coming to an end. Across from us, Wild helped the wounded mare over the bridge, hovering just beside her as she stumbled across. Pip was slowly making her way on her own, careful of the edges. Carrion stood in front of the mares on the other side, reloading his rifle as he waited for Wild to bring the pony she was helping to him.

“We’re gonna be crossin’ that under fire...ain’t lookin forward ta that prospect, Ah don’t mind tellin’ ya,” My tired friend said, wiping his forehead with the back of one of his hooves as we approached the natural rock bridge. Nor was I.

Stone was just about to set hoof upon the bridge when a machine gun opened up on us, rounds dancing across the ledge and over the bridge. I was dropped as a single round struck my shoulder guard, lodging into the armor and impacting my flesh like a hammer. Celestia that stung like hell. Stone took cover to the right behind a heap of stones piled up while the tunnel had been dug. On the bridge, Pip and the wounded mare dropped to the ground, and Wild was forced to drop down below the edge of the cliff to keep from getting blown out of the sky. Across the rip in the earth, Carrion scurried for cover as the captives fled further back into the tunnel.

Shit. I have to get up, I’m a sitting duck laying here like this.

With a grunt, I rolled back towards the tunnel and away from the bridge, my flank bumping into something metal. As quickly as I could, I pressed my back up against a rusted, overturned mining cart, rocks still inside where the workers had left them. No sooner then I moved, then a fury of shots struck my metal cover, pinging off the orange colored undercarriage. Gripping my shotgun, I checked my E.F.S. and saw a number of red dots coming from behind us.

Stone rose from his pile of rocks, rifle held firmly between his teeth, as one hoof held the end, steadying the shot. He fired, a red dot disappearing from my sight; the round had barely left the gun when he fired again, and again. The earth pony got off another three rounds before he was forced back into cover.

From across the bridge, I heard the clatter of a assault rifle firing. Looking back, I saw the weapon floating just above where Carrion was taking cover, the ghoul risking his life by peeking over the edge of a pile of rotting wooden timbers. Beside him, one of the wounded mares snapped off shots from one of the dead prison guard’s rifles; she wasn’t hitting much, but it was distracting them.

Two red dots made it further then any of the others, and both appeared to be heading straight for Stone, I rolled over to my left and aimed my shotgun, just as two raiders broke into view. I hit S.A.T.S. and at once time slowed. For a moment I was distracted by the number of lines in the air, until I released those were bullets. Fuck... that’s a lot of bullets. I locked onto my targets; seems my ability to kill had gotten better, since my ability to hit them had risen from 75 and 80% to 95% now. I targeted their bodies with two rounds apiece and released the spell.

The frozen lines once more moved too fast for the eye to see, and I added four of my own to the storm of shots. My shotgun roaring as four solid slugs ripped into pony flesh. The flimsy armor scraps the two wore did nothing to stop the blows; ribs broke, organs burst, and blood flowed. The two raiders crumpled to the ground, hooves lashing out at the air and ground as they died. I hurriedly rolled back into cover as somepony turned their attention back on me.

Stone snapped off a few quick shots before being forced back down, and as he did I rose up and fired off another four rounds into the approaching horde of raiders. I downed two, and made a third stumble as his knee blew apart under him. Dropping back behind the cart, I narrowly missing having my head removed by that machine gun. I’d spotted him further up the tunnel as I’d fired: an earth pony stallion wearing a battle saddle, bullets raining down from his back as he held the trigger with a death grip and a mad gleam in his eyes.

Ears twitching from the gunfire and bullet impacts on metal, I snapped open the drum and started reloading the weapon. There were already a number of holes in the sides and bottom of the cart; while it had once been rugged enough to haul heavy loads up and down the rails, the years had not been kind to it. It rocked as another round struck its side, leaving a dent. I had just snapped the drum shut and readied the weapon to fire when I glanced towards the bridge.

Wild was dragging the wounded mare over to their side of the bridge, leaving a trail of red on the ground from a fresh wounds. Pip lay still in the center, hooves placed over her head and a number of fresh holes in her hind quarters. She tried to remain still, as any movement drew the crazed attention of the raiders.

“Go! Ah’ll cover ya!” Stone yelled over the noise, waving a hoof back towards the bridge and the wounded mare.

‘What about you?!” I yelled back, not ready to leave another pony behind. Carrion and Wild moved to either side of the far end of the bridge and began firing at the raiders. Wild’s battle saddle ripped into stone and pony alike as the mare moved around to avoid being hit.

“Get ’er across and cover my flank when Ah make a run of it!!”

Looking back to the bridge, I saw a number of rounds tear into the ground just behind Pip’s hooves. The mare shook in fear and shock as her wounds bled. She needed a health potion or she’d be dead soon. I looked back to Stone and nodded my head.

“Don’t make me come back for you!” I called out. As he rose up to fire, I scrambled to my hooves and made a mad rush for the bridge. Behind me, I heard the steady report of Stone’s rifle and the thunk of flesh being hit, or the yell of a wounded raider.

Bullets sprayed dirt all around me as I charged out across the bridge, hooves sliding in the loose stones that covered it. Luckily I managed to avoid falling into the black depths, and skidded to a halt beside Pip. The pony looked up in surprise.

As I reached out a hoof to pick her up, I heard an odd sound coming from the direction of the raiders, like a loud whoosh. Looking back, I saw something hurtling towards me and yelled out, “Sweet Celestia!” I instinctively dropped down atop Pip, causing her to grunt in pain, and felt the rocket streak overhead. The explosive impacted the ceiling with a orange ball of fire and smoke, showering us with rocks and chunks of burning metal.

Following the smoke contrail back to its source, I saw one of the raiders from the hotel's kitchen, wearing the broken remains of Steel Ranger power armor. A smoking rocket launcher sat upon his flank from a working battlesaddle, the second tube pointing straight at me.

Fuck...

Scooping Pip up into my hooves, I tossed her onto my back and took off running towards a yelling Carrion, the ghoul waving a hoof frantically for me to hurry. Wild was turning to bring her guns to bear on the armored pony, and had just begun reaching for the firing bit when I heard the thump of a rocket being fired. My hooves dug into the rock bridge as I scrambled to reach the other side, but I knew it was already too late. I couldn’t outrun a rocket. From the corner of my vision, I saw it corkscrewing through the air. But as it came screaming in, it began to dip lower. Maybe... It suddenly dropped from sight below me and impacted the bridge.

The explosion beneath my hooves flew up to meet me as it vaporized the stone bridge. Bits of shrapnel and rock pelted my chest and stomach, and I could feel them striking my riot armor and my unprotected bits. Oddly, I hadn’t noticed I’d been flung backwards by the blast, or that Pip had been tossed from my back. I saw my combat shotgun spinning past my face, broken in half, the neck strap ripped free from my neck. The ceiling spun past my eyes as I flipped around, seeing Stone’s shocked face back across the chasm. The chasm I was now falling into. I heard somepony yell my name.

Sorry, Tiny... guess I won’t be able to keep that promise... was the last though going through my head as the darkness rose up to envelope me.

Darkness. I found myself floating, suspended within a void of pure darkness. I was unsure if my eyes were even open, it was so dark. After blinking them a few times, I at last accepted what I was seeing. Nothing. Was I dead? Was this what happened to a pony when they died? Nothing? At last, I could take no more of staring into the abyss and shut my eyes.

As I stood, or floated, or... whatever I was doing there, I tried to recall how I’d come to be here. My memory was a bit hazy after the rush through the tunnels. I could recall bits and pieces of what had happened. I remembered the explosion beneath me, of being tossed into the air by the shock wave. I remembered falling into a deep bottomless pit. Had that been what killed me? Had I broken my neck when I struck the bottom?

I remember...

“Ebony...”

The sound of my own voice surprised me, and it had been a very eventful few minutes. I could hear myself talk. Could the dead talk? As I mulled that question over in my head, I realized I was no longer floating or standing. I had settled upon something solid. I could smell something familiar upon the faint breeze I felt rustling my mane, a sweet smell that made me think of home. The scent triggered a memory deep within my mind, from what seemed so long ago, another life. Of a holiday spent with my parents and sister, baking sweets...

I began to notice other things happening around me; after the void, it seemed my senses were under assault. My ears twitched as I heard the music, so faint I could just barely hear the gentle notes of a song. But, try as I might, I could not seem to name the gentle tune, nor hear it any more clearly despite how hard I strained. Was being dead supposed to drive one mad with half-recalled memories? Was I even dead?

Finally, I could take no more, and carefully opened my eyes. The darkness that had surrounded me at once fled from a soft light coming from just above my head. Blurry shapes and images loomed out from the light all around me, but I could not yet focus enough upon them to tell what or who they might be. The soft glow held steady with a low hum of energy. I knew that sound. Blinking my eyes to clear them, the details of the world began to resolve into more detailed shapes and I turned my head to take them all in.

The walls were a lifeless gray, made of thick sturdy metal that would forever keep us safe from the horrors beyond them. At least they had. Old, well-worn furniture sat neatly around the room, soft green cushions with their yellow flower patterns covering most of the chairs and couch sitting across the floor, as old as the walls themselves and passed down from generation to generation. Photos hung upon the wall; these, at least, were more recent than anything else within the room, and most of familiar faces and events. One, however, drew my attention, sitting proudly in the center of the living room wall. A mare and stallion sitting in front of twin children, a happily smiling family of four. The stallion’s coat was a deep red color, his dark brown mane cut short, keeping it from his warm green eyes. As he did so often in my memories of him, he wore his old security uniform, the same his father had worn. The faded 45 just barely visible upon the collar. I would not get a chance to continue that little tradition, since it was too badly damaged in the fire that would later claim the life of my father.

The mare leaning against him had a soft purple coat, her pink and white striped mane tied back into a loose bun just behind her ears, golden eyes as bright as the smile she wore upon her muzzle. She was always ready with a kind word if one of us had a hard day at school, or if we skinned our knees. Nurse Mint would later take on that role, and while she did a fine job, she could never replace the mare in the photo. She gazed down at the two small forms before her.

Between them sat a young colt and filly, both black as midnight with white manes and gold eyes. As thick as thieves we had been, even at such a young age. My sister had a habit of always getting her way; however, she also had a habit of sharing whatever she had with others. And of getting me into trouble. I’m sure it was her idea to forego the use of fork and spoon and use our hooves and mouths. I went along with it as always. Both their muzzles were covered in birthday cake that sat upon a table before them, two candles with smoke lazily drifting out of sight.

A sad smile formed across my face as I gazed up at the old photo, before rising to my hooves unsteadily. Was this the afterlife? My parents’ quarters? Perhaps one of the few places I had always felt safe and happy, with my family. If this was death, then I could perhaps think of no better place to be sent.

Looking more closely at the room, I noticed something odd about it. It appeared to be decorated for a party. Black and purple streamers hung from the ceiling, while balloons of the same colors and more drifted above tables and lamps. Bowls of candy and treats sat scattered about, along with a bowl of fruit punch and sandwiches. One item above all seemed to be dominant: a single reptilian eye. From balloons to placemats, it seemed to be everywhere. As I looked over the room, filled with so many memories, my ears twitched from the sound of laughter. I turned towards the far right doorway, where the kitchen would be.

I took a few hoofsteps closer to that doorway, wary of whatever I may find beyond it. I froze as the laughter was replaced by somepony humming a soft gentle tune, one sung often to my sister and I when we had trouble sleeping. Sung by our mother. It had been the song I’d heard as I lay on the floor. I stood and simply listened to the calming song, unwilling to interrupt the singer, yet wanting nothing more than to rush inside and hug my mother tightly. Was dad here too? Ebony? I took several more steps towards the kitchen, ready to see my mom once again. But a voice from just behind me stopped me in my tracks.

“Hello again, little brother.”

Turning quickly on the spot, I saw my sister sitting before me in the living room, looking as healthy and happy as the last morning we saw one another in the Stable. Her stable jumpsuit hugged her upper body, clean and as blue and yellow as always, her pipbuck looked newly cleaned, screen and buttons shining in the light, and a smile sat upon her face as her golden eyes fixed upon me. So the fall had killed me, and this had to be real...

“You're not dead, little brother. It’s not your time yet. You still have much to do,” Ebony said, as if reading my mind. But then, we had a habit of doing that sometimes. She smiled up at me as I drew near, but the smile did not quite reach her eyes, and something within them told me she had a lot she wanted to tell me, but could not. She looked away from my stare and I blinked. She had never looked away before; it was normally me who flinched. Her gaze wandered the room around us and her tone changed a bit.

“We always did love Nightmare Night. Do you remember, little brother, how mom would spend hours in the kitchen making cupcakes and candies for all the children all around the Stable? We’d always make our costumes match a theme, like the one year I talked you into being Princess Luna so I could be Nightmare Moon.” The smile on her face warmed as she recalled that year. “You made a rather pretty princess.”

I blushed a bit at that; the other colts had called me a filly for weeks after that one. I think that’s when Brightblade started seeing me a bit differently as well. I always seemed to let my sister talk me into those sorts of things. Looking back up to my sister, I tilted my head and asked the only question I could think of to ask. I was loathe to end this moment of peace, just being here with her in our parents home, but I had to know.

“If I’m not dead, then... what happens now, sis?”

Ebony turned back to me, her smile turning sad once again and her ears dropping as she stared into my eyes, tears forming in hers. “You go back, little brother.. .it’s time to wake up...” She leaned forward and kissed me lightly upon the cheek.

Ebony, my parents’ quarters, and the peace that all those things brought me faded into the darkness, leaving me alone once more within a void of nothing.

As I felt myself slipping away further, I noted that not all had left me, that the soft tune remained...

The lonesome notes of that song continued to play as life slowly returned to my battered and bruised body. The tone had changed from the familiar sound of my mother’s gentle humming to that of a flute, and I could feel my ears twitch to every change in the notes. Other sounds also began to make themselves known to me: the crack and snap of a fire burning nearby, the rustle of the wind upon cloth and the groan of a building settling around me. The distant howl of some far away animal out within the wasteland rose above the music for a moment. Perhaps it was just the events of the past few hours clouding my judgement, but it sounded pitiful and lonesome alongside the music.

A soft groan escaped my lips as I carefully opened my eyes, unsure of what I would see this time. My parents’ home? The faces of my friends? The face of my sister? Once more, my eyes were unfocused and I found myself staring blearily about the room in which I was. I was not lying outside, but within a building; of that much I was sure. Slowly, as the music continued, the darkness was banished by the flickering light of the nearby fire. The scent of burning wood filled my nostrils as I lay upon the floor, covered by something soft and warm. An attempt to rise so I could better see my surroundings was met with a jolt of pain through my sore body and I lowered myself back to the floor.

Allowing my eyes the time they needed to adjust, I focused upon the rise and fall of the ceiling, the wind rustling the canvas like material of whatever somepony had used to patch a hole in their roof. As my eyes slowly began to adjust, I could see the wooden support beams running across the ceiling above me, the fire light sending the shadows between them dancing in my vision.

My eyes trailed down from the shifting scenes above me to the crackling flames of the fire as they rose and fell. I tracked them down to the base of the flames, and the burning logs they consumed steadily, turning the bark as black as my coat. The fire was within a stone fireplace along the wall and appeared to have been used for some time, judging by black soot covering many of the stones and the much floor. Feeling more strength returning to my limbs, I turned my head to see what I was laying upon. A thread-worn, but very soft blanket with similar odd designs woven into it by skilled hooves. It was made of a soft brown cloth, with red, yellow, and black zig-zag lines running across the top and bottom. Ponies and strange, large, horned creatures were depicted upon the blanket: harvesting apples together, working fields of green grass and gold wheat under blue skies. It almost looked like photos of how Equestria had looked before the war. Almost too beautiful to lay upon.

Buffalo. My tired mind at last placed the odd creature beside the pony. Movement from the other side of the fire drew my attention away from the blanket and to a large shape I had missed before. As I sat watching, I saw they were the source of the music that had so eased my mind. Eventually, the final notes of the song trailed out across the still, warm air and the figure lowered the flute from their lips. For a moment, I got a glimpse of a thick brown coat and short black horns in the flickering fire light. The flute was lowered to the floor beside them, and they moved a bit more into the light; or rather, she did.

She was larger than I in both height and weight, and I imagined larger than Stone. Her coat was far thicker than a pony’s, a rich amber color; despite its seemingly unruly curly thickness, I could see the muscles just beneath. She was likely stronger than either myself or Stone. Around her neck, she wore a odd necklace of green jade stones and colorful beads. It looked old to me, like the sort of thing one would have passed down to their children. Well-worn cloth armor covered sections of her body. Strapped to the armor was a pair of chipped and scratched yellow painted shoulder pads. They looked like pieces that you’d see on a suit of Steel Ranger power armor.

At last she seemed to take notice of me looking at her and turned grey blue eyes towards me. Her face was calm, and bore a neutral expression upon it. Short black horns rose up beside her perked ears, and she had a headband wrapped around just below them, bearing the same designs as the blanket I lay upon. Black-tipped white feathers were sticking out from just behind it, and the band pushed her mane out from her face. Like her coat, it was a deep brown in color.

“I feared perhaps you would not wake when you slipped away into a deep sleep. My name is Spirit Walker,” she said, bowing her head in greeting. Despite her size, her voice was both light and gentle. “Do you require water?” she asked.

My attempt to answer her question was a harsh garble of words that came from my sore and dry throat. All I could do was nod my head meekly and offer a small smile. She returned the smile as she rose and approached a pile of equipment along a wall of the room, consisting mostly of my gear. My armor and saddlebags lay beside one another, along with my still-holstered revolver and rarely-used assault rifle. Of my trusty shotgun, I saw no sign, and wondered what had become of it. However it was not my packs she began to rummage, but another pair beside my own.

They were far more fancy looking than my saddlebags, with beadwork upon the outside in the image of a large bird of some sort, using black stones. A more recent addition to the packs was one with three pink butterflies sewn onto the sides. There was also a battle saddle beside the packs, fitted with a single rifle on one side, with a ammo box on the other. Unlike Wild’s, it did not appear to retract and appeared to be of a smaller caliber than the pegasus’. Beside this was what appeared to be an axe of some sort, feathers and beads draped loosely across the metal head. It appeared as sharp as Stone’s knife...

I shut my eyes when I thought of my friends. Everything reminded me of them, and I wondered what had become of them. My memory was still cloudy as to the last few minutes I had spent with them. I remembered the mad rush through the sewers of Kanter City, and the fight with the raiders in the subway station through which we’d entered the city.

As I heard her approach, I opened my eyes and spotted the canteen she was holding up to my lips. I thankfully swallowed a mouthful, feeling the dryness of my throat relieved. She pulled it back and screwed the lid back into place. Finally, as she was putting the canteen back, I managed to ask, “Where am I?”

“My people use to call this the Gorge of Lost Souls, but now most simply call it Wastefall Gorge, a former pony settlement.” She must have caught my confused look as I attempted to place either name with a location on any of the maps I’d seen of the area, she added, “About twenty miles south of Kanter City?”

Twenty miles? South of Kanter City? That’d put us only a few miles from Sticks than, the place we’d landed to hide the sky chariot. Had I walked all the way from there to here? I lay my head back down atop the blanket and groaned. Staring up at the ceiling I sighed and attempted to recall all that had happened, searching for some clue. Thankfully my savior managed to fill in a few details for me.

“I am not surprised you do not remember all the details of your injuries and harrowing trip down the river.” I blinked. River? She continued and the missing pieces began to fall into place. “It was late evening when I discovered you and another washed up along the banks of the Tartarus River. I did not know either of you, so I assumed you must have been escaped slaves from Kanter City. It was and still is the only major city still used by ponies. Also, since the river flows through a network of underground caverns there before finally emptying out here, it seemed the most likely answer to where you had come from. You were near dead from drowning and wounds you had suffered from a fall into the waters, as well as several blows to the head from rocks. Luckily both our ancestors were smiling upon us as I had enough potions with yours to repair the damage you’d suffered.”

With her every word, a memory slid slowly into place. The river. The bridge across the chasm. We were fighting the raiders at the chasm in the unfinished subway tunnel. Pip went down in the center of the bridge, pinned down by the fire. Had she been hit? I didn’t know. I had to get her to safety. Stone told me to go get her, that he’d be right behind me. I reached the mare, and was attempting to get her up onto my back when one of the raiders fired a rocket at us. It missed and hit the bridge - it must have destroyed it and tossed me into the chasm where the river waited - wait, she said she’d found two of us. I scanned the room and saw no sign of anypony else. Looking back to the face of Spirit Walker, I found my answer in the saddening look of her grey blue eyes, and hung my head.

“I’m sorry, she did not survive whatever happened to cause you both to end up in the river. Her face and neck were ripped through with shrapnel, from a grenade or other explosive device. I believe she was dead before she hit the water.” The buffalo turned and replaced the canteen back atop her saddlebags and began slipping the large packs across her back. Outside, the wind began picking up, causing a window just below our equipment to rattle.

Not Pip too? How many more ponies have I lost today? Turf and the hoof-full of stallions who had stayed behind to cover us were surely all slaughtered. Wild, Carrion and the rescued prisoners were on the safe side of the collapsed bridge, so there was no way the raiders could have reached them, unless they managed to shoot them. But Stonehoof, he would have been trapped on the side with the raiders, with no way for him to cross. Maybe Wild had managed to fly him out, or enough of the bridge had survived for him to make it across. Something told me I was just grasping at straws, but I quickly told it to shut the buck up. I rose uneasily to my hooves, feeling my body protesting at the every movement I made, but make them I did. I had to find them.

“What are you doing?” the buffalo asked, turning away from buckling on her battlesaddle. She moved across the creaking floor as I attempted to stand and laid a hoof gently to my shoulder.

“I have to get back to Kanter City... find my friends...” I grunted between my teeth as a host of pops issued forth from my sore body. Well, at least all my limbs seemed to return to their proper places. Despite all the potions she had used and bandages wrapped around those smaller wounds, I still felt as if I’d been run over by a chariot. Not far off, given what a trip down an underground river must have been like.

“It is night, the coyotes and radscorpions will be out fully, looking for easy prey.” While she did not say it, I still heard the ‘of which you are’ she left off. She looked from me back to the window. “You will do your friends no good if you stumble into a gully and break your neck.” With a grunt, I finally stopped trying to rise and she lifted her hoof from my shoulder.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke, and we simply sat before one another as the wind rattled the cracked window and the fire behind me snapped loudly as a log broke apart. Finally, she broke the silence.

“If you are so ready to return to search for your friends, than wait until the morning when your wounds will have mostly finished healing and there will be light.” she hesitated for a moment before going on, “I also have business within that evil place.”

“What business do you have in Kanter City?” I asked, arching a brow as I looked up from the floor to Spirit. She looked away from me and to the window.

“The raiders took something of mine that I wish returned.” She rose to her hooves, towering over me. She started towards the door to the room, which I hadn’t noticed since it had been behind me when I’d woke up and opened it, “I must go out and finish my search of the settlement for supplies, please, stay inside the saloon as some of the local wildlife have started coming within the walls of the settlement to search for food.” She left the door open and disappeared down what I assumed was a hallway to the outside.

Curious, I rose to my hooves once more and approached the window. It was near complete darkness outside. But there seemed to be a storm gathering far off to the east, among the mountain peaks that I’d seen the first day I set hoof on the surface. The flash of lightning was bright enough to light the landscape around me, and in those brief flashes I saw the settlement of Wastefall Gorge. Former settlement.

A small cluster of buildings stood below me (it appeared I was on the second floor of the saloon), similar to those I’d seen in Crossroads. These appeared to be made of stone, with wooden support beams and frames. I could see a number of homes and a few stores. Nearly all of the buildings bore some sign of fire damage, likely where the raiders had attempted to set them ablaze. In the next flash of lightning, I could see empty buckets and pots lying scattered about, where the owners of those homes had attempted to put out the fire. Broken barricades erected by those same ponies stood in roadways and alleys. They had fought to save their families and stave off the horrors of the wasteland. They had failed in the end, it seemed.

A light from below me drew my attention away from the broken homes and to a lone figure setting out into the street. Spirit Walker moved away from the building I was in, and began to walk down the empty street towards a group of larger buildings near the center of town. Had this been her home? I looked from the buffalo to the ruined room around me. What little furniture had been in the room was broken, splinters and bits of paper and personal items lying scattered across the floor. One item stood out, and I moved away from the window to get a closer look. There, just under the end of the ruined bed, was a small hoofmade doll. Reaching under the broken bedsprings, I pulled it out with a hoof and held it up in the light.

Mismatched button eyes stared back at me from the hoof-stitched doll of a small smiling buffalo. Her mane was dirty from dust, but a yellow ribbon was still tied within it. I gently set it back atop the bed, brushing the dust from its mane, and looked back to the window. Perhaps in many ways, she and I were a lot alike.

I looked then to my equipment laying upon the floor beside my hooves and reached for the armor to begin repairing it. I doubted I’d get much more sleep tonight.

The next two hours passed slowly, so I did what I could to pass that time. After looking over my battered armor, I began to repair what I could on it. There were several deep cuts and dents all across it; most shocking of all was my Stable Security badge, which had melted somehow. With a sigh, I began to work on the riot armor and look over my surviving weapons. It seemed Spirit had dried them all out and seen to their care. I found a piece of the shoulder strap for my shotgun still clinging to my armor. The loss of the weapon was a heavy blow: it had been with me ever since I’d joined Stable Security and had meant a lot to me. It had saved my life already a number of times on this trip. More practically, it also meant I had ammo for a weapon I no longer had.

Standing up, I approached the window once more and watched the distant light show as the storm raged within the peaks of the distant mountains. My eyes wandered back down to the empty streets below, wondering how long it was going to be before Spirit returned. I doubted she had abandoned me here; she had gone through a lot of trouble to help me. Another hour passed, and still no sign of my rescuer. By now I was growing tired of sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Rising to my hooves from where I had been sitting beside the warming fire, I made my way to the door and out into the hallway. The building looked similar to that of Rose’s saloon, but smaller in scale and perhaps not as well-maintained. To my right was a row of five wooden doors, all broken open in the frenzied attack of the raiders. To my left was two sets of stairs at the end of the hallway, one leading down to the first floor and the other to a third. The building had likely already been searched both by the raiders and Spirit, so I decided to head downstairs.

The steady clop of my hooves as I descended the stairs seemed to echo loudly within the remains of the first floor bar. Most of the windows had been broken out, with only shards of glass still remaining in many of the frames, reflecting the light from my Pipbuck as I passed it across the walls. The double doors that once had kept out the wind and rain lay shattered across the middle of the floor, riddled with bullet holes and stomped by ironshod hooves. Muddy and bloody hoofprints crisscrossed the wooden floorboards, moving around broken tables and barstools. There were a number of scuff marks alongside those hooves, where ponies had been dragged out into the street. Scattered all about the barroom were broken, empty bottles of beer and whiskey, and whatever supplies of food the settlers had stored in the building. It seemed the raiders had thrown quite the party after taking this place.

I carefully made my way across the floor, hooves lightly stepping across large pieces of glass and wood, only to crush smaller, unseen bits as I lowered them back down. Bullet casings went rolling away from my steps, to come to a halt in large piles of debris or into long-since dried stains of blood. It looked as if the ponies who had called this town home had made their final stand within the saloon.

Once more I thought of how similar this place was to Crossroads. It made me wonder how the little town was doing. Was it still safe from the raiders? Were its walls and guard ponies still protecting it? It also made me think of my friends, friends I had met within that town. Would I have to return there by hoof, to tell Rose and Lillie that Stone wasn’t coming home, that I’d gotten him and Wildfire killed?

With my attention on my friends’ fate, I did not see the broken chair in my path until I stumbled across it and landed in a heap against the bar, my head ramming into the sturdy wooden counter with a solid thud. At once, pain shot through me from the impact and I felt a rush of anger follow it.

“Fuckit!!!” I lashed out at the bar with a hoof and struck it hard, cracking the top and breaking a piece off the edge. Not content with that, I stomped the hell out of the chair that had tripped me, my hooves rising and falling violently onto the twisted remains, “Fucking piece of shit, Celestia damn you!” It was no longer a chair, but a raider, a raider that had taken my sister from me. Turning away from the splintered ruin of a chair, I slammed my hooves atop the bar and swept off broken bits of glass and wood onto the floor. Breathing hard, I looked up and was surprised to see the figure staring back at me from a broken mirror behind the bar. I froze and my eyes widened.

Bandages were wrapped around my head, a small red stain just behind my right ear. My black coat was a mass of cuts and bandages, and what bits of fur that were visible was scruffy and frazzled. My mane and tail were in little better shape, uneven from close calls and high doses of radiation. It was a dirty grey color instead of the white it had once been. My eyes were more red then yellow, now, with a crazed look in them. I had scars along my cheek and muzzle.

Fucking hell... I look like a damned raider... I look like Ebony after the raiders had... had...

In the mirror, the red tinted eyes began to tear up, and with a twisted snarl, I reached for the first thing at hoof and tossed it at the remains of the mirror with a cry. It shattered loudly into a dozen pieces that showered the floor behind the bar in sparkling bits of glass. Leaping across it, I stumbled into the broken bits and cut up my legs, but I ignored the pain, instead stomping the glass into the floor as a hundred reflections of myself stared hatefully back.

“Fucking hell, it should have been me! Why’d it have to be Ebony?! Why?!” I vented my frustrations to the room in a loud string of curses, each more colorful than the last, before finally stumbling to the floor with a sob. Everything that had happened within the past few days finally caught up with me: leaving home, sending my friends and family away to a city that may as well be on the other side of the world from me, losing Ebony, Stone, and Wild; all the deaths, all the killing, all the horrors. A pony can only take so much; only so much before they break.

I dropped onto my side in the middle of the broken pieces of glass and cried.

According to my Pipbuck, only thirty minutes had passed since I dropped to the floor, my sorrow spent for the time being. I neither felt better nor worse after my breakdown, just... there. Lowering my gaze from the green glowing screen I sniffed and rubbed my nose with a hoof before standing slowly up on scratched and bloody legs. As I did, my Pipbuck pressed against the side of the bar and struck a button, switching the radio on to the last station I’d had it at. Loud music at once began filling the silent saloon as it likely had before the attack. I didn’t really catch the song, both because my attention was elsewhere and because it was ending; however, I did catch the voice that came across next. It was hard not to.

“How’s everypony doin’ out in post-apocalyptica tonight!!! It’s your pal Three Horns here, signin’ in from sunny San Ponsisco...oh wait, that’s not the sun, just the glow of the radiation I see out there.

“Alright, so what’s ol’ Three Horns got for you tonight, my little ponies? Well, it’s a bit of news. I know, I know, you're ready to turn the station to somepony else right now, but for once, the news ain’t bad!

“I’ve gotten some reports all the way out from Crossroads of a lone gunpony out doin’ a bit of good. Seems the good ponies of Crossroads were having a bit of a lizard problem, a rather LARGE lizard problem if what I’ve been told is true. Well, what's this lone gunpony do? No, he don’t run the other way! He goes out and deals with the problem with a couple rounds of lead and a whole lotta balls. And what's he do when he comes back and is offered a reward for his trouble? Gives it away to the needy ponies of Crossroads, that’s what.”

I blinked as I realized she was talking about me and the geckos. Had Rose somehow gotten ahold of this Three Horns? Drying my nose, I sat up and listened as once more the pony on the radio began to speak.

“Now, lets be honest, kids, how many of you woulda’ just turned down a reward for riskin’ your hide for strangers? Hmmhmm, not many, and ol’ Three Horns ain’t about to say she’d not have to think about it a bit before turnin’ over a rattlin’ bag of caps.

“If you’re listen’n, lone gunpony, good job. You saved a whole lotta ponies with that. Now, onto some more music...”

Another upbeat jazz song began to play, but I reached over and clicked the radio back off, a bit stunned. I’d not really thought about the ponies I’d helped back in Crossroads. Oh, I thought of those little green bastards, but not of the ponies. I looked down to the floor, and to a single piece of glass that had survived my angered frenzy earlier. In that shard, I saw once more a golden-eyed, white maned pony setting out to save his sister. It had been his only reason for leaving his friends and remaining family behind. Not out of a desire to do good. But that same pony still stopped to help those ponies he encountered along the way, regardless of the risks. Had I really managed to do some good out here?

I was about to stand up fully and trot back around the bar when I spotted something sitting just below the bar top. Curious, I pushed my hoof down to see what it was. I could feel something, a raised section of a shelf just under the countertop. As I pressed up on it, a soft click caused my ears to twitch, followed by the sound of wood rubbing against wood. I blinked and jerked my head to the ceiling just a few steps away to my left as a door slid open. A hidden compartment?

Rising up, I slowly approached the opening, gazing up into a dark room beyond. I looked down to my Pipbuck and reached my left hoof over to click on the light when another noise echoed from above, followed by more scraping sounds. Looking up, I had just enough time to realize something was sliding down directly at my face and to open my mouth to swear when it struck me.

THWAK!

“SON OF A BITCH!” I roared and stumbled backwards into the bar, my left hoof holding my nose where a ladder had slid down into it. I sniffed, smelling and feeling a bit of blood running down my nose and lip, and grunted. I looked back up to the ladder once I was sure my nose had not been broken (again!), and to the dark room above. Dropping my hoof away from my face, I placed it atop the ladder and began to pull myself up into the room without hesitation.

As my head rose above the ceiling of the bar and into the opening, I lifted my right hoof up and pressed the button on my Pipbuck with a bloody nose. It cast a dim, pale light across the floor and walls of the room. It was hardly a large space, barely bigger than my bathroom in the Stable. Dust covered everything within the room, and there were no signs of any recent activity. It would seem both the raiders and the owners of the saloon had no idea what was just above the bar, and it made me wonder who had built this place originally.

Climbing up the final few steps, my light shone around the room and I could see more than just dust and cobwebs. I saw an old, worn, battered desk sitting off to itself, a still glowing terminal upon it, along with a metal cabinet and trunk and photos along the wall. The floor below me groaned at my sudden weight as I took a few steps towards the furnished end of the room. Mindful that nopony had been up here in some time, I carefully worked my way across to the desk.

It was typical desk, made of a dark black wood and finished with silver metal handles. Atop it was a lamp, a number of dust-covered pencils, long-dried pens, paper, and the odd book. There were also four drawers and a small compartment just above where a pony would sit, likely for the keyboard to the terminal. Reaching out, I opened the drawer and sure enough, one slid out on a tray with squeaky wheels. Tapping a single key with a hoof, I looked up to the softly glowing screen and saw an odd symbol appear before me: a six pointed star with the more familiar sun and moon emblems within it. The star reminded me of a sheriff's badge from one of the old western movies we had in the archives of the Stable, surrounded by a circle. I looked away from the symbol to a waiting entry box that was flashing before me; it appeared to be waiting for the password to be entered. I frowned. I was never very good with this sort of thing, but still, it was either this or go back downstairs and wait some more.

I’d seen Ebony hack into mom’s terminal enough as a child whenever she wanted to try and find out about our birthday presents. Basically, enter a few letters and see what stuck. Only try it a couple times, because if you entered the wrong password enough, it would lock up the entire system. Back out completely and the tries would reset. My first few attempts were dismal failures. But then, all I could really do was type in random words and names. I hurriedly backed out before I could mess it up, as I continued to try, I glanced up to the photos along the wall looking for some clue.

They were not all what I was expecting, as a few appeared to have been taken after the bombs had fallen and Equestria had been nearly destroyed. There were two such photos and my eyes were drawn to them.

The first showed a brown and white spotted earth pony stallion standing before a saloon; by the looks of the windows and door, it was this very building. Around him were a number of other ponies; unicorns, earth ponies and even a few pegasi. They all looked haggard but happy to be alive. The stallion in the center of the photo, however, caught my eye. He was dressed in armor similar to my own battered riot gear. But where mine had my Stable number and security badge, his had that six-pointed star. While I couldn’t see it very well, I imagined it had the sun and moon emblems etched on it. He held a combat shotgun in one hoof, and once more I keenly felt the loss of my own weapon. A brown cowpony hat sat atop his head at an angle.

The second photo was of that same stallion, but this time there was a mare with him, a unicorn. They were both smiling to one another and it looked like some sort of party was going on behind them. Ponies laughed and held up bottles of beer or water to the pair, and I realized it was a wedding photo. The remains of a cake could be seen just at the edge of the photo, and there seemed to be a number of new ponies that I had not seen in the first.

Turning my head to the left, I looked over the other photos. It seemed that these had been taken during the war.

There was stallion again, in armor and clothing similar to the first photo, but appearing a bit younger. There were others dressed like him nearby, all wearing that six pointed star badge and carrying a number of weapons. This was not just a photo; it appeared to be a faded newspaper clipping, the date a few months before the bombs would fall. It was hard to make out the words below the picture, for they had faded with time, but it seemed the pony and some group he lead had discovered a Zebra plot to do something in Hoofington. I glanced to the pony standing before the others and blinked. He was shown standing before none other than Princess Luna herself, ruler of Equestria, and Princess of the Moon. She seemed to be pinning a medal to the pony’s armor.

Another was earlier than the newspaper clipping: it was of the spotted stallion signing up to the army. He stood inside a army recruitment office alongside a number of other ponies. There was a large red stallion with a blond mane off to one side; I’d seen him before in history books, but his name escaped me. One pony I did recognize was Princess Luna, again, seen in the photo standing near the younger looking stallion. Both were smiling broadly and, oddly, he seemed to be offering her a bag of candy, which seemed to be the source of the laughter.

The last photo I could see from where I was sitting and that the light from my Pipbuck reached was much older than the rest. It was of a dark forest, taken at night, where several foals stood in front of a stone statue of Nightmare Moon. They were all dressed in costumes that reminded me of that happy holiday. Behind the children stood three adults: a purple unicorn mare wearing a odd outfit with a pointed hat with bells and a long grey beard (must have been some kind of country music star or some crazy old pony, I guess), a yellow mare standing beside the unicorn, dressed up as a Scarecrow, and, a bit surprisingly, a Zebra dressed up as a witch. They all stood smiling at whomever was taking the photo, the children grinning. Hmm, was that a large pink child in a chicken outfit in the back?

One of the young ponies caught my eye, however, both due to where he was in the photo and because I’d seen him in all the other photos thus far. A young brown and white spotted colt stood atop the statue with a large grin and a bag full of candy. He was dressed as a pirate, a rubber sword tucked into a belt at his waist. Just behind him was a much more happy looking Princess Luna, wearing fake fangs in her mouth and floating a piece of candy up beside her. At the edge of the photo, written in a childish scrawl and in thick black marker, was ‘Favorite Princess ever!’.

I turned back to the screen, and the blinking cursor waiting for me to input the correct password, I had one try left unless I backed out. Of course, I could be at this for Celestia knew how long typing in random things. Twenty six letters, with seventeen spaces for a possible word or name or series of words. With a glance to the photos, I scanned them slowly, noting something about nearly all of them. My eyes fixing upon the oldest of the bunch, before I turned back to the keyboard and typed out my last attempt. Without a second thought I hit ‘enter’.

The terminal began powering up as information started loading up on the screen, a number of folders and messages waiting to be opened. I leaned back from the desk and smiled slowly. The password had been, ‘Favorite Princess.’

After a few more items popped up, a notice appeared in large, important looking letters. Normally when this had happened back home, I’d call for someone to fix my terminal...

‘Connection Error: Cannot connect to Canterlot Server for updates: Searching for alternative...

‘Connection Error: Cannot connect to Equestrian Marshalls Server for updates. Searching for alternative...

‘Connection Found: Ministry of Hope, San Ponsisco, connecting...no updates found for last 58462 days... please contact administration for updates... your virus software may be out of date. Click here for more options.

I arched a brow at that, and wondered what the Ministry of Hope was, or had been. I’d never heard of it before; all I’d ever heard of were the six Ministries that had help run the country before the war, headed by six powerful mares. The other thing that caught my eye was the name, San Ponsisco. Was this where this unfamiliar Ministry was based? Finally, the error messages winked out and I pushed aside my questions on as I scanned the screen for anything useful among the files and logs on the terminal.

It seemed whoever had owned this terminal (the spotted stallion being the most logical one) had been a security pony of some sort. Police perhaps? Most of the files I opened seemed to be on criminal activity in and outside of Equestria. There were names of ponies, griffins, zebras, diamond dogs, and a number of other species listed with all with their criminal history. Another file seemed to be a list of addresses for known zebra terrorist cells within Equestria and dates to raid them. After several minutes of reading, I turned to the logs and opened them.

There were a large number of logs saved on the terminal, from simple messages from other ponies, to personal entries and unfinished reports. So many that it would take hours to go through each one. Instead, I skimmed across them for anything that would stand out to me. After a few minutes, I simply skipped to the bottom of the list and saw a couple with dates after the bombs. I decided to look in on the personal logs and opened the first one I saw.

‘Log Entry #1

It’s been over a week since everything's gone to hell. Equestria’s still burning; great clouds of black smoke can been seen for miles around in every direction. All the major and minor cities were hit within a couple of hours, or at least, that’s what I can piece together from the survivors I encountered.

Everypony I’ve ever known...gone.’

The log ended suddenly, and I well knew what he had been going through. I looked up from the glowing terminal to the dark empty room around me. So many messages from the dead, from ponies that, against all odds, survived the end of the world aboveground, only to have to face the horrors of their new world. It almost made one unwilling to check terminals and read letters left in ruined buildings. Almost. With a sigh, I looked back and clicked the next entry.

‘Log Entry #2

Been a month since I last wrote something down on paper or a terminal. I’d become so used to writing reports over the years it’s felt odd not to continue somehow.

We’ve all settled in here at this abandoned mining town. We’re lucky we found this place, since I doubt we’d have survived out there for very long. Out there... some have taken to calling it the Equestrian Wasteland, and I suppose that’s as good a name as any for it. It sure as hell isn’t home anymore.

There were around thirty of us, originally. Four days ago, a family stumbled onto the road down here and we took them in. They’d escaped the death and desertion by hiding in an old mine shaft near their home. This part of Equestria has always been thick with them, which was one reason criminals always fled out here to hide from us. Odd, I’m the one hiding in them now.

Goldenapple said our supplies are beginning to run low and suggested we send out some search teams to look for food. Midnightglow said it was still too dangerous to send ponies out into the radiation, but we’re running out of food.

I’ll be going out tomorrow with a small group to search for supplies.’

‘Log Entry #3

Madness. Pure, madness. That’s all that seems to exist outside this little bastion of peace and harmony. All that seems to be left of the Equestria we all knew.

My little group set out north, towards Kanter City and the small towns between us and it. None of us expected the city to be spared the wrath of the zebras, and Midnightglow warned us not to go anywhere near it. That mare can be so bossy at times...

We came across the wreckage of a sky chariot knocked out of the sky; by the looks of the bodies, it had happened weeks ago. Still, it seemed to be a supply shipment for one of the local military bases, and we found a large number of weapons and ammo. A good thing too, since I was beginning to run low for Luna’s Ruse here. Fortunately I don’t need to worry about the gauge of the shell, as she’ll hold any size. It was also luck we found the weapons, as not an hour later we were attacked by a band of ponies wearing cobbled-together armor and weapons. They were covered in blisters and sores from radiation poisoning and I can only guess their minds had been affected as they threw themselves recklessly at us. I had to yell at the others to fire; they’d never killed a pony before... I suppose I was lucky to be somewhat knowledgeable in that field. Yeah. Lucky.

We came across a hill where we could see across the plains to Kanter City. It was as I feared; the city must have taken several direct hits by balefire bombs. Weeks after the war ended and it’s still burning. Luna have mercy on anypony left in that hell.

When we ran across signs of another larger group of crazed ponies, we turned back and headed for home, making sure to cover our own tracks as we went.

Tomorrow I’ll have to see about getting some sort of defences set up in case they stumble upon us.’

‘Log Entry #4

Had that dream again last night. I was beginning to think it was just some stress over what happened three months ago. The bombs. I try not to think about it much. Dreaming of my old bosses like this; they keep asking me to do something, but it’s like I can’t hear what they’re saying...

Forget it, I’m going to patrol the town.’

Thus far, there hasn't been much of use; interesting, perhaps, but nothing I could use. Nothing that could really help me out of the mess I found myself in. I looked over and saw only a single entry left on the terminal. Might as well...

‘Log Entry #5

‘It’s been a year since Equestria and everypony I knew burned, but life in this small section of the Equestrian Wasteland is good. We have fresh water coming from somewhere up north; how it’s not been radiated is beyond me, but I thank Luna every night for it. We managed to set up a small wellhouse for the water to gather in. Goldenapple has finally managed to work more vegetables from our small garden with the help of Harvestmoon. It looks like our food troubles will finally be over and we’ll maybe have some extra to store for later. That mare has been a lifesaver since she entered town with her family not long after we arrived. I know Golden is happy about her being around, though I’ll have to ask them not to get caught messing around in the garden at night again. Not everypony likes the idea of extra flavor to their carrots.

Axel, Lucky Break, and myself went out a few days ago looking for any signs of other survivors in the surrounding hills, or any of those Stables that Scoot and the girls built. We found neither. There’s nothing out there for us to find, I’m afraid. We’re it. At least those insane ponies seemed to have all died off.

Luna’s Ruse is locked up safely once more, out of reach of little hooves. I think I’ll leave the rest of my things in the cabinet as well. There isn’t really any reason to wear them anymore and no pony knows of this private little space of mine. Well, perhaps one does.

Well, I’d best log off, I can hear Midnightglow calling me to dinner. I don’t think I’ll bother coming back up here after today, unless there’s something important I have to do.’

Finishing the log entry, I looked up from the terminal and across the desk at the dust-covered cabinet. It hadn’t been disturbed for a very long time, like everything else in this room. Had the last pony up here been the author of that log entry? Perhaps there’d be something useful up here after all. Only one way to find out, I suppose.

Rising up, I moved around the desk and towards the cabinet, the floorboards creaking below me as I went. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the key had been left in the lock, and arched a brow. That was rather odd; had he forgotten to take it with him when he’d left? I reached for the handle and pulled the doors open with only a small groan of old hinges. While I had some idea what lay inside, the sight of it still caused me to sit down on my rump with enough force to kick up a cloud of dust and send me into a coughing fit, waving a hoof in front of my still sore nose. Once the air had cleared, I shone my light into the cabinet and stared in wonder.

Inside the gun cabinet, sitting upright in a slot, was an early model and very well-cared-for combat shotgun. However, this was far more than just a simple weapon, it was a work of art. Unlike my old weapon, it was a bit larger in shape and the stock was made of a dark, almost black, wood. The stock plate, barrel and drum was made of a dark metal that seemed to swallow the light from my Pipbuck. Around the barrel and near the drum, silver scrollwork had been added to give the weapon a flash. A silver plaque on the wood stock proudly displayed the name, ‘Luna’s Ruse.’ It appeared freshly oiled and maintained, as if somepony had done maintenance work on it the night before. Again, I wondered why the key had been left in the lock.. .this wasn’t something you got issued from the military or police. Or something you could have just walked into a gun store and bought... at least, I don’t think you could have.

With shaky hooves, I reached into the cabinet and withdrew the weapon. It was surprisingly light, far lighter than my original, even though this one was larger. The black cloth shoulder strap slid down across my foreleg as I held the weapon up near my face, looking it over. I turned it, this way and that, looking at every bolt, every seam. With a flick of a hoof, I clicked open the drum. It moved smoothly open, despite having not been cared for in a hundred or more years. Inside I saw odd bluish-purple runes carved into the metal near the slot for the shells and the end of the barrel. Unicorn magic perhaps?

Remembering what I had read in the log entry about the survivors finding ammo and it fitting inside despite the size, I reached into my saddlebags and withdrew a number of rounds for my old weapon. As I expected, they were too small for the slots.

Still.

I slipped one into the opening of the drum and found that it somehow fit perfectly, even though nothing appeared to have changed about the weapon and the remaining slots still looked too large to fit the shell. I slid a second, a third, and a fourth into the weapon and found that they all fit. Confound this gun, it drives me to drink. I finished loading the drum and flicked it closed, the drum giving a satisfying click as it closed home. I looked up from the weapon and saw four other items sitting within the cabinet.

First was a box of shotgun shells, 10 gauge buckshot, sitting on the bottom shelf inside the cabinet. Far more powerful than the 12 gauge I had used all my life. These went into my saddlebags, where the autosorter on my Pipbuck did its duty and displayed that I now had twenty 10 gauge rounds ready for use. The next two items I had somehow expected to find. One was a worn old cowpony hat, dark brown in color. It was similar to Stone’s expect for the yellow braid around the base of the hat, and the gold crossed rifles pin sitting in the center. It was the same hat I’d seen the stallion wearing in the photos beside the desk. Near it was a spotless, silver, six-pointed star. A ring around the points of the star had the words proudly displayed, ‘To Protect and Serve Equestria. In Harmony and Friendship we Trust.’ Across the star itself was two further words, ‘Equestria Marshalls’.

The final item in the cabinet was a simple note, hastily written and placed where whomever removed the shotgun would see it. It was yellow with age, but still legible after all this time.

‘Even after all these years, I find it hard to deny an order from my old, long-dead superiors. Even if they are just in a dream. Besides, one of them can be very convincing when she’s not being herself. On the off chance they were telling the truth, I hope you find these items useful. But remember this:

Friendship and Harmony. Defend those weaker than us, and serve those who defend the weak. Trust in your friends; in this new world we live in, friendship is more powerful than any gun. Treat them well and together nothing can stop you.

Uphold the ideals ponies once stood for and may the grace and wisdom of Princess Luna and Celestia be with you, my friend. Whoever you are.’

Pipsqueak, Equestrian High Marshall

in service to her Royal Majesty, Princess Luna

The note fluttered slowly to the ground from my hoof. I blinked, unsure how to react to what had been written upon it, and looked back to the shotgun in my other hoof and the items left inside the cabinet. Had these really been left for me? It seemed... impossible to think so. How had he even known?

Finally, I simply snorted and scooped the note back up, pushing it into the cabinet beside the star, and started to close the door. It couldn’t have been meant for me; perhaps it had been meant for somepony else he’d known, but they simply never came for it. Or maybe he was just crazy.

As the door began to shut, the light from my Pipbuck caught on the star and reflected the light back in a silver flash. I hesitated for a moment.

It’d be a shame to just leave them though...

Sitting quietly within the saloon’s main room, I looked over the reassembled weapon that lay before me on the table. While it had not needed any work, I still felt the need to give the finely crafted weapon some basic maintenance. Also, it helped take my mind off things, and familiarized myself with the new gun. Beyond a few new screws here and there, as well as it being a bit larger, it was almost the same as my old shotgun. The magic ruins were an added touch, however. I discovered that beside the drum changing size to fit the ammo I loaded, the barrel would also shift in shape. Somepony had spent a good deal of time making this weapon.

I glanced over to my right hoof as I laid the screwdriver down atop the table; it was well past midnight, according to my Pipbuck. I looked back up to the doorway, and to the silent darkness beyond. Spirit had yet to return, and I was beginning to wonder where she’d gone. My eyes wandered from the door to the rest of the saloon. I’d spent a bit of time cleaning the place up, sweeping the broken glass and bullet casings into the corner. I looked to the bar, and to the ceiling behind it. With the ladder once more retracted and the door slid shut, it was hard to even find that hidden compartment again. I suppose that even if I’d lived here all my life I’d never really notice it, and even the switch to open it was barely larger than a cap. If I hadn’t been eye level with the shelf...

The flash of lightning from outside once more lit up the room, the dim light from my Pipbuck and a salvaged lantern I’d found drowned out in the brief flash. I blinked my eyes and shook my head slowly to clear the afterimages of the flash from them. Thus far it had yet to rain, but the storm seemed to be growing closer.

Picking up the shotgun, I slipped it around my neck and stepped towards the porch of the saloon to glance out into the dark empty street. Broken barricades and overturned carts littered the area around me. Taking a few steps outside, I heard the rattle of spent shell casings rolling across the wooden boards beneath my hooves. Approaching the steps that lead down to the street, I scanned the road in both directions, seeing nothing but dark homes and broken dreams of peace. Then I caught sight of a small flame up on a distant hill, flickering in the mild breeze blowing the scent of rain down from the mountains.

Setting my hooves upon the gravel roadway, I began to walk towards that lone hill, and the dim light coming from atop it. The walk was not a long one, for the town was not very large. But it took me past many of the homes of the ponies who had once lived here; broken homes, now. Some were half-burnt, while some entirely torched if the fires had not been doused in time. Everywhere were signs of the fighting that had taken place in so small an area. Of the deaths of ponies. It was like walking through Stable 45 after I’d woken, seeing the shattered doors, and burnt rooms. The scent of death. I turned away from the sights, and focused upon that little hill.

The path climbed steadily up, and I had a better view of the town around me as I went. I could clearly see the wall that had been erected around the town. It was nowhere near as large as the one around Crossroads. Looking back, I could see the remains of the gate that had once stood near the entrance to the little gorge. It was shattered on its side, blasted by rockets or some other explosives.

Finally, I crested the hill and found myself within a small, orderly row of stone markers. Or at least, they had been orderly, before the raiders had taken sledge hammers to most of them. Holding my right hoof up, I shone the light onto the first stone I saw laying in thick brown grass, and saw a name had been engraved upon it, along with a picture of the pony’s cutie mark. This was a graveyard and this was somepony’s headstone, defaced.

Goldenapple. Two large apples stood beside one another, thought there was no color to the stone, I could well imagine them being a golden yellow.

I lowered the light and looked back up to the source of the flickering glow I’d seen down from the saloons door. There, I found Spirit Walker, holding a candle in one hoof as she sat before a newly marked grave with a simple wooden marker. Carefully, I made my way over towards the buffalo, mindful of where I stepped. As I went, I looked over the names laying on the ground; some faded by the weather, others destroyed by raiders.

She did not bother to look up as I approached, her head bowed before the marker and the freshly-turned soil before her. My Pipbuck clicked mildly, but I ignored the low radiation warning as I read the name upon the marker.

Doctor Brightheart. His cutie mark had been carved just below the name, a heart with lines radiating out from it with a small medical cross in the center.

Off in the distance, thunder rumbled among the peaks of the mountain, the cool breeze coming from that storm rustling my mane and tail as it blew across us. Neither of us spoke for a time, until finally her voice broke the silence.

“I never knew my parents; when I was a young calf, I was left upon the edge of Wastefall. A kind young stallion found me, and took me into his home that night without a word. Nopony could ever find any trace of my true parents. He raised me as if I was his own daughter, and I loved him as my father.” She smiled sadly at the marker. “The stallion who found me had known buffalo before from his travels across the wasteland, not being from Wastefall originally. He managed to teach me much of my people’s ways. He also taught me of medicine, being a skilled doctor himself. When I was old enough, I left to try and find my parents, promising to come home when I learned of their fate. The information I gained was that the last known buffalo tribe to roam the wasteland had been either killed by the raiders coming from the east, or taken as slaves to work in their factories. I was devastated, but at least I knew I could return here. Return to my father.”

Slowly, she rose up, after placing the candle down upon the soil, and turned to look out across the destroyed town, the broken ruins of homes and shattered gates. Broken dreams.

“I returned a few days ago to find that raiders from Kanter City had attacked and killed anypony that opposed them and took the rest as slaves.” She looked down, “They killed my father as he defended the wounded in his home.”

Slowly, I approached the grieving buffalo and lightly placed a hoof upon her metal-armored shoulder. Her grey blue eyes lifted from the ground, tears in them.

“You seem to understand. I had begun to think there were no longer any ponies left in this part of the wasteland that could show kindness.”

“I’m not actually from around this part of the wasteland. I’m from across the desert to the west...” And so, once more I told my story, all of it. I had no reason to distrust this buffalo; we had more in common than I could imagine. I told her of the attack on my home, of those taken away to Kanter City. Of meeting Stonehoof and Wildfire in Crossroads, of the geckos at the well. The journey into Kanter City and of my sister’s fate. Of the ambush at the bridge, and my plunge into darkness. I left out the odd dream of my sister, unsure just what it had been and not wanting to seem crazy.

“So, you wish to return there looking for your friends?” she asked as I finished my tale, and I nodded my head. She looked back to the marker in the flickering light of the candle and was silent for a moment.

I looked up from the gravestones to the distant glow of the storm, then slowly turned my head northward, to the distant Kanter City. I couldn’t see it from here, but I knew it was there, like a dark, rotting wound in the landscape, drawing any life away from around it.

“Then I will come with you.” I turned back from looking off northward to the buffalo beside me. “There is nothing left for me here, and if any of the kind ponies who once lived here are still alive, I owe it to them to try and find them.” She looked back to the marker, adding “It’s what my father would have wanted me to do.”

I nodded my head slowly, thankful for the help, although I wondered if there would really be anypony left for us to save. I can’t imagine they looked too kindly upon my friends for their part in saving those prisoners and killing the raiders guarding them. I started to turn away when I caught sight of a stone marker laying beside my hoof. Looking closer, I saw a familiar name, and although his cutie mark had long since faded away, another mark above his name was still there.

Pipsqueak. Above his name was a six pointed star.

Beside it was another marker, in a bit better shape if not for the massive crack that ran across it where it’d been struck by a hammer.

Midnightglow. Her cutie mark appeared to have been a moon half-hidden behind clouds.

I brushed the dirt from both stones and stood for a moment, looking down at them, before carefully lifting them from the dirt to set them upright.

“Thanks,” I whispered to Pipsqueak’s stone, before trotting off beside Spirit to the saloon.

The next couple hours before dawn were spent quietly within the saloon as we each attempted to get what rest we could for the journey ahead. Either in sleep or in the privacy of our own thoughts, we rested beside the warm flames of the upstairs fireplace. For me, this would be the second such trip I would undertake to the dark ruins of Kanter City. I glanced up from the dancing flames to the dark window beside the ruins of the bed. Darkness lay beyond it, the storm having died out an hour before, leaving the ground dry but the air cold.

Near the corner of the room, Spirit sat before a single glowing candle, eyes closed. She appeared to be meditating, and had not said a word in the past two hours. Finally, sleep began to creep up on me as I laid my head down on the blanket and stared up at the shadows dancing once more across the rafters in the ceiling. As my eyes began to close, I silently vowed to myself and anypony listening that come tomorrow, I would save my friends, or die in the attempt.

The following morning’s dim light brought with it a light, damp fog that clung to the low streets of the ruined town. During the night, the heavy, moist mountain air had rolled form from above to settle within the gorge. It gave the already-depressing, quiet town a haunting appearance I would not soon forget.

Standing upon the hill overlooking the ruined collection of buildings, it appeared as if the graveyard and I were adrift in a sea of clouds. My head turned slowly from observing the town to the lone grave I had just finished covering in soil. I stood finally and looked to the simple wooden marker placed at the head of the grave.

Pip. Her cutiemark was a single butterfly within a heart.

She had looked so peaceful in death, just as relaxed as Ebony had been when I sat with her. But then, Pip was going to once more be able to see her twin sister, her mother, and her father in the hereafter. The horrors of the wasteland could no longer harm her.

I had copied the files she’d had on her Pipbuck onto mine, to give to her friends back home whenever and if ever I returned.

Home.

Looking away from the small grave, I glanced over the hillside to my new traveling companion, and I saw her place something small at the base of a wooden marker. The small, hoofmade doll I’d found the night before sat beside the marker of her father's grave. She bowed her head and whispered something softly into the wind, before rising slowly to her hooves and turning back to me.

“We should get going. It will take us several hours to reach Sticks... are you sure they will be there?” she asked as she approached me, her hooves lightly trampling into the dry soil. Grey-blue eyes settled on me as she looked into my face, any trace of the tears she had shed the night before gone, in their place a steely determination, one I was well familiar with. I offered her a small smile and nod before answering.

“Wild will have likely gotten any survivors with her to safety before doing anything else, and the safest place we all three knew of was the garage in Sticks.” At least, I hoped she would. There was no doubting that the pegasus was brash, brave, and stubborn. But she was also a former commander in the Enclave, a soldier. She knew how to look after ponies she commanded and I truly believed she’d get the survivors back through the subway tunnel to Sticks before trying to rescue Stone. That is, if she hadn’t managed to drag his large flank across the crevasse under fire. Spirit considered this before finally bowing her head to me before speaking.

“Very well, let us go then. We have done all we can here.” She turned away and began heading towards the ruined gates, not giving my appearance a second look. But then, she’d not known me for very long.

I glanced back across the lonesome graveyard, left to fend for itself now that there was no pony to look after it. My newly-acquired hat rustled in the morning breeze that blew down from the peaks above town. I reached a hoof up and adjusted it upon my head, still not used to wearing it. But it did keep my mane from my eyes, along with any rain.

From the ruined tombstones, I glanced down to my repaired armor. Many of the dents and scratches had been fixed or mended enough to last until I could have somepony look at it. However, it was to the six-pointed star sitting just above my heart that I looked to. It had replaced the old, battered, and half-melted Stable Badge I had worn for so long. In truth, it had broken while I’d been attempting to repair it. It seemed... fitting to replace it with this.

Checking the shoulder strap for Luna’s Ruse, I started after the buffalo; trotting towards the gate and the journey northward.

After climbing up the road out of the gorge, we turned north and began a steady gallop. My sore legs at first protested the ground-eating pace we set, but after awhile it seems the aches had been worked from all four and I was focusing more on our surroundings as we passed them.

This far south, there seemed to be little sign of pony habitation, either before or after the war, just miles of flat, dry plains. Small rocks rose up every now and then to break the bleak landscape, but little else. No ruined towns. No destroyed carts. There didn’t even appear to be a road, past the gorge. I suppose it was how the survivors had managed to stay hidden so long within that small depression in the ground.

With little else to occupy it, my mind began to drift to the note I’d found in the saloon, hidden in a place nopony had likely been in since shortly after the war had ended. Had it really been meant for me? Or was it simply an odd random occurrence?

I frowned, feeling the familiar thump of a shotgun against my chest armor as it bounces with every step and the unfamiliar feeling of the hat perched upon my head. Why had I decided to wear it and the badge? Neither offered much protection from bullets or crazed wildlife. While the hat was slightly useful, I had managed just fine without one. So why did I feel like I should take them? Was it the note?

Whoever Pipsqueak had been, he seemed the type of pony I could be friends with; his sense of duty to his fellow ponies was something I could well understand. While there had been little information on the Marshalls in the Stable’s history records, what little there was made them out to be heroes of the west.

They had been formed by Princess Luna in response to the rising attacks on western towns and settlements: towns and settlements responsible for minor war production, be it food, medical supplies, or weapons. Everything was vital to the cause. Wandering the flat countryside between towns, the Marshalls offered help to anyone who needed it, not just ponies. They protected the towns from the increasingly bold and dangerous outlaws that had begun to plague western Equestria.

But they had become most well-known in this part of the country for their part in stopping a plot to instigate the buffalo to rise up and attack the pony cities and towns. The plotters meant to kill several dozen buffalo children and place the blame upon the Equestrian army. The Marshalls had also been instrumental in halting a plan to destroy Hoofington, if the photo in the saloon had been anything to go by.

So why was I wearing their badge and a hat that once belonged to one of their leaders? I glanced down to the star attached to my chest armor. Despite the lack of bright light, it still seemed to shine, and I smiled.

Why? Because it felt right. And goddesses above, nothing in this wasteland had felt right to me since coming to the surface.

Within several hours, the ruined towers of Kanter City began to rise up from the distant horizon, shrouded in the haze of dust and heat. My dark blue and yellow jumpsuit under my riot armor was soaked with sweat, forming dark rings around my shoulders and back. My mane was plastered to my face and neck, but we did not stop. My traveling companion seemed to not even be phased by the heat, or the long trip. If I remembered correctly, buffalo were some of the most able cross-country runners in Equestria. Most of their life was spent stampeding from one feeding ground to the next. They had few villages, living the lives of nomads.

It was late afternoon when Sticks began to appear, and within the next hour we had come across the cracked and half-buried pavement of a highway. Faded and wind-chipped yellow and white lines ran across the black roadway, passing by below me as we ran. The semi-smooth roadway managed to increase our pace, as we had better traction and fewer hidden pitfalls to worry about. It was the sound of distant gunfire, however, that spurred me on faster.

The harsh crack of a rifle echoed across the flat landscape, sounding like it had come from just ahead, within Sticks. The sound was followed by the bark of assault rifles and I could see smoke rising up from somewhere within the collection of half-finished wooden frames and ruined homes. Spirit turned to look at me, her eyes locking with mine as if to ask what I wanted to do. My answer, as always, was a simple one. There were ponies in need of help, likely my friends. They were being attacked by the scum of the wasteland. Raiders. They were not ponies. They were just animals that needed to be put down.

With a snort of hot air through my nostrils, I tossed my head and increased my pace, hooves thundering across the pavement as I charged forward into the outskirts of Sticks. With by now practiced ease, I lowered my muzzle to the shotgun and flicked the safety off, before snapping my teeth around the firing bit. Spirit, close on my tail, began reaching for the firing bit of her battlesaddle, the buffalo starting to lag behind within the close confines of the ruined town. My smaller size allowed me to take corners far more quickly and easily.

Either by memory or luck, I managed to navigate the maze of ruined buildings. I weaved my way around toppled homes and piles of forgotten building materials until I spotted the building where the sky chariot had been hidden when Stone, Wild, and I attempted to find a way into Kanter City. It was still there, parked within the small, dark garage. Now, however, the door was open and the dark metal hull of the chariot was being struck by a number of rounds. Taking cover behind the metal hull of the chariot were a small number of ponies, with a dozen or so raiders firing into them while they laughed cruelly.

Behind me, I heard Spirit slow, as she no doubt sought a place to fire on them. It was the smart thing to do. Draw the raiders’ attention on us, and give those inside the garage time to recover. It’s what I should have done. I didn’t.

Instead, I spotted a group of raiders with a familiar tattoo on their armor. The pony skull shaped grenade. There were four of them, clustered around a fallen roof, and my eyes narrowed in upon the closest. His twisted, spiked armor had a number of trophies hanging from it, from ears to bones, but it was the new one hanging from a chain on his side that caught my attention. Turf’s head.

The world turned red and, with a snarling roar, I threw myself towards him and the other three raiders, pulling the trigger of Luna’s Ruse as fast as I could...

Welcome to Level 10!

Perk Added: Bloody Mess: With the Bloody Mess perk, characters and creatures you kill will often explode into a red, gut-ridden, eyeball-strewn paste. FUN! Oh, and it might also do 5% more damage with all weapons, but who cares about that? It’s time to kick flank and chew bubblegum, and the wasteland’s all outta bubblegum.

Author's Notes:

Editor and Chief: TheGamefilmGuruman

Editor: Avi

Pre- Reader: MagicLlama

Pre- Reader: Bronyken

Original Cover Art: TimeForSP

Current Cover Art: MisterMech Go. Worship his work.