I gasped for breath as my eyes fluttered open to find a pony sitting beside me, her head hanging over my chest. She opened her eyes and smiled languidly, her thick, curly, candy cane mane billowing in the wind.

Her hooves held my left foreleg over my chest so that we both could share the light of my PipBuck.

I regarded her with dull surprise. She had the detonator. She could’ve just disabled her collar and left me there.

“You’re … you’re still here,” I whispered, blinking away the grogginess in my eyes to see her.

Her smile widened somewhat. “I thought I’d see you through.”

I groaned, a dull pain pervading my hazy senses. My stomach felt … tight, as I tried to expand my lungs for air. I glanced down my gory chest and found that Dew Drops’ scarf – bloodied and worn, was wrapped tightly around me.

My eyes widened.

“I had to use your scarf to stop the bleeding. There was just so … much … blood. We’re lucky you didn’t bleed out on me,” she told me, touching my chest gingerly.

‘DD’s scarf …’ I brushed it with a hoof as gently I would with Dew Drops’ mane.

“I’m sorry … I might’ve ruined it.”

I shook my head. “It’s … it’s fine,” I lied. It was the only thing I had left to remember her by. And now it was ruined.

My head shook once more, with grim finality. It had stopped the bleeding. We had nothing but the clothes on our backs, and Candy Cane was proving to be an extremely resourceful mare … making a tourniquet out of the only article of clothing she could afford to remove without either of us freezing to death.

I hid the sullen look in my eyes as I asked, “What … what did you do to me?” I twitched my hind leg, eyeing the gaping hole in my barding. It felt whole, and less … bullet-ridden.

Candy Cane pointed at my stomach. “Punctured digestive tract. Severe hemoptysis and internal hemorrhaging inside your chest cavity. You also had a hole in your right leg. You’re lucky that one went through. You’re even luckier that neither of the bullets struck any vital organs or arteries." She rubbed her gore encrusted hooves through the snow. "I had to dig a little bit to pull out the one in your chest. I needed to extract it before I could administer any potions,” she began, eyeing DD’s blood soaked scarf.

“I hope you don’t mind … but I had to look through your bags for health potions. I didn’t have any on me, otherwise. No magic could’ve healed around that bullet, either way.” Candy Cane levitated out a frighteningly large, blood caked 5.56 round. The mare smiled somewhat as she held the bullet in her magical grip. “Want to keep it as a souvenir?”

I snorted out a jet of mist, vaguely amused as I let my head roll into the powder.

“Nah … I’m good.”

Sterling was right about me needing those apples and potions after all. I lifted my head and cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Where’d you learn to do all that?”

Candy Cane stared at the ashen snow for a moment. “It’s certainly been a while … but I was a nurse before … all this.”

“Thank you, so much,” I breathed, weakly.

“I learned a lot from my father,” she said, chuckling, “I guess you should thank him instead.”

I snorted, laying back down in the snow.

“I would if I met him.”

Candy Cane fell silent as the grin faded away from her face. She looked at me gravely, and then at her hooves.

“Oh … I’m sorry.”

“He taught me a thing or two about battlefield surgery,” she began, as if I hadn’t said anything. “I hope you don’t get an infection, though. I had neither the means nor the time to sterilize your pliers before I could use them.”

“It’s fine … I’m alive … for now. That’s all that matters.”

I peered upward. The rooftops of ancient buildings poked out of the snow beneath us like broken headstones. We were sitting inside of a massive sinkhole, no doubt caused by the balefire bomb's quaking aftershocks.

Candy Cane caught my upward gaze.

“How the hell are we still alive?” I murmured.

Candy Cane sighed, “We’re lucky to have been caught in that storm.”

”Lucky?”

She stuck a hoof through the snow. “If you dig far enough, say ten-fifteen yards, you’ll hit concrete. It’s better than falling face first into solid stone, really.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered. I hadn’t known you could call being stuck in a snowstorm ‘lucky’ until then.

“Glad I was right, though,” she nodded to herself, hanging her head as she closed her eyes. Candy Cane looked about ready to collapse. She wasn't the only one. I don't think I'd ever been skull-tapped that many times in a single day. Despite the ever-present pain that was throbbing inside my skull, the dull twinges inside my chest cavity, and the lightheadedness of blood loss, I was still somehow able to stand.

With stars in my eyes, I rose to my four hooves, crunching through the now unyielding snow drifts. She heard my shuffling and turned her head to see me.

“What are you doing?” she asked as I reached for the detonator.

I squinted at it carefully, glancing at her before tapping a button on its surface. Her collar whined – and went dark, the pulsing red light on its shell fading to black.

She realized she was holding her breath, and let out a trembling sigh.

“Thank you …” she began, but stopped when she saw me fishing through my saddlebags. “Now … now what are you doing?” Candy Cane asked.

I retrieved a wire cutter and a screwdriver, and started toward her.

“Red Dawn, what are you going to do with those?”

“I’m taking that thing off your neck.”

She held out her a hoof in between us, shaking her head.

“I-I’m fine with it around my neck … it can’t explode anymore.”

“Candy Cane –”

“Red Dawn, please, you’ve done enough … I don’t want to risk tripping the explosive,” she said quickly, backing away from me.

I looked at her pleadingly.

“Candy Cane … do you really want to keep that thing around your neck? It might not be able to detonate remotely, but that bomb is still hot.” I took another step toward her, and she took another back. “Whenever you look in a mirror, do you really want to see that fucking thing?”

She froze, trembling, her chin quivering as she stared, teary-eyed into the snow. Candy Cane’s hoof crept up her neck to touch the collar that was still wrapped tightly around her throat. It was a mark.

But it wasn’t permanent. “I was an engineer at my stable … I still am.”

“I-I don’t suppose you know anything about bomb disposal?”

I sighed. “No … though I’d imagine it’s like cutting a machine’s power supply so that it can’t work anymore.”

She shook her head furiously. “No ... no! It’s not the same! If you cut the collar’s power supply, it activates its failsafe and pops anyway!” Candy Cane shook me pleadingly with horror in her eyes. "I've seen it happen so many times ..." she cried. “Red Dawn, I think I can live with it … it's like it's not even there!"

“That’s because you’re used to being a slave. You might be free now, but you’re still in chains!” I glared at her, and she glared at me. “Besides, you have a fucking bomb tied around your neck for fuck’s sake … isn’t that enough to make you want to have it removed?”

She cut canyons into the snow with her hoof, shaking her head incessantly.

“CandyCane ... you told me to trust you earlier. And I did, and we survived because you had a hunch that there was powder down here.” I tucked the tools into my chest pocket and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Now you have to trust me.” I thought for a moment. “I can fix this …”

I always have. I was the Goddesses-damned fixer pony for Celestia’s sake.

Candy Cane gazed at me hopelessly with her uncertain, bloodshot eyes.

“You’re sure?”

I nodded. “I can do it.”

“You’re 100% positive?”

I clenched my jaw. “I can do it.”

Candy Cane chewed on her lower lip, staring at her hooves.

“I can do it ... but only if you trust me.”

She looked up and stared into my eyes, her entire body trembling.

“Okay,” she breathed, “Okay … but be careful.” Her horn glowed with a silvery sheen and a hovering orb of white light materialized over her head.

I nodded, but didn’t say another word as I curled a hoof around my screwdriver and slowly loosened the collar’s screws. Delicately, I used the tool to pull apart the collar’s casing.

I peered into its innards and spotted a black wire within. I inched the shell apart, watching as the wire straightened out.

As it straightened out. As it straightened –

‘Fuck!’

I let go just a millisecond before I pulled it taut. I could hear her whimpering faintly over the pounding in my temples.

I gulped. That was the trigger. The tripwire that detonates the bomb.

This time, with one hoof, I parted the collar’s case with my screwdriver as my wire cutter slowly descended into the wiry crack. I squinted through the shadows, positioning my right forehoof slightly so that Candy Cane’s magelight could shine through.

What I saw made me gulp.

That … wasn’t the tripwire.

Or maybe it was. I didn’t know, because there were three other wires. Black wires. And they weren’t color coded – and all four of them were tie-wrapped together.

One of them was the tripwire. The other three belonged to the circuit.

It was insane.

I wondered what shit for brains of an electrician completes a circuit without indicating which wire was positive, negative, or ground. They’re supposed to be color-coded.

Normally, when you wire a circuit incorrectly and the relay is connected to a light bulb, you get shocked.

But with that collar … you’d lose a hoof. Or both.

Or a head.

There was no way in hell it was assembled by hoof. Nobody could’ve been dumb enough to wire a circuit like that. Not without mixing up the negative with the positive and walking away without a few missing limbs.

I thought for a moment.

I realized that the device couldn’t have been utilizing a direct circuit, because it’d detonate if the circuit was severed. There had to have been some kind of mechanism inside that pulled the tripwire anyways if the circuit went dark.

‘Shit.’

I wondered how much worse it could get. I shook my head. The last time I entertained that possibility, I got mobbed by a horde of robot sentries. I shook my head even harder and sighed.

All I needed to do was cut the wire that wasn't part of the circuit.

I needed to geld that tripwire.

With another gulp, I lowered my wire cutter into her collar, biting my lower lip as I scrutinized the black wires.

I pounded into my mind again and again the fact that if I severed the circuit manually, I’d do the dirty deed myself.

'Boom.'

I clenched my jaw so tightly I nearly popped it out of its socket.

I lowered the wire cutter inside.

My eyes darted back and forth between the four wires.

I chose one wire among the cluster of black death-sentences – wire Alpha, and followed it deep into the collar’s shell. A curse hissed between my teeth as I exhaled frustratingly. It and the other three, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta looped around the circumference of the collar as one single coil of black wires. But what mattered to me was where they ended.

The cluster of wires terminated beyond my line of sight. I shuffled on my hooves, trying to get a better look, and found that the cluster separated at the collar’s radius. My teeth grinded together as I cursed the manufacturer of that death device once more.

Bravo and Delta were split in such a way that they formed a confusing black knot with Alpha and Charlie, further obscured by the shell’s uneven shape.

“Red … Dawn?” Candy Cane whispered.

I ignored her as I tried to focus, studying the loose knot of wires – trying to figure out which wire was which. In the wasteland's eternal night, it was near impossible to tell which wire went where. Black wires inside of a black shell weren’t exactly the easiest to differentiate even with Candy Cane’s magelight.

I closed the collar and retrieved another screwdriver from my tool bag. This time, holding it open, I used a screwdriver held in my left hoof to play with the knot, prodding it in an attempt to separate them enough for me to tell which one was which.

After several minutes of checking, rechecking, and poking, I found that Charlie was connected to the inside of the collar, while the others separated and looped around the collar’s circumference.

It had to be the tripwire.

My eyes marked Charlie for a gelding.

I replaced my left screwdriver with a wire cutter and slowly descended upon Charlie, my tongue poking between my lips as I tried to concentrate. One wrong move could bend the casing in two – pull the cluster taut, and splatter me in Candy Cane’s brains. One wrong snip could paint me red just as easily as the latter.

I hesitated – inched toward it – hesitated and inched some more. I paused, my confidence bobbing up and down like a ship sailing a turbulent sea as I tried to think it through, as I tried to reassure myself that that was the one, that that was the –

“Red Dawn?”

I jerked away from her.

“SHIT!”

I looked down. The wires. My hoof. It trembled as my screwdriver held the collar open for my eyes to see the wire that was pulled taut within.

It was Charlie.

A thin line of sweat streamed down my forehead. I let out a breath I realized I was holding in. I could feel Candy Cane's anxious gaze upon me.

The wire was bent upwards, half of its length nearly yanked out of the shell itself.

‘Dear Celestia.’

“Fuck. I-it’s fine,” I stammered, sweating like I was staring down the barrel of a gun. “I can do this … just hold still, and let me focus.”

I glared at the collar, Candy Cane’s light orb beaming down the crack. My eyebrow cocked at what I saw. With Charlie yanked out of place, I saw the other three with renewed clarity in Candy Cane’s magelight.

“Alpha, Bravo, Delta…” I whispered, prodding them with my wire cutter. ‘Which one, damnit?’ I screamed inside my head, ‘Which one!? “Alpha, Bravo, Delta…”

“Red Dawn …”

“Candy Cane, please – shut up for fuck’s sake!” I snapped, silencing her before she could say more. I gulped and tried to still my shaking hooves.

I shifted my right foreleg. 'There'. All four terminated in the same general area, curling downwards and into the device. But with Charlie out of the way, I could easily see what exactly they were connected to without all four’s shadows getting in my way.

Beneath the wires were two shapes – a large cube, and a smaller cube: the smaller one was what I presumed to be the wire separator.

The wires looped through it, separating them individually. Only the pony who designed it knew which face separated what – the positive, the negative, the ground, or the tripwire. A wire – strung through the fifth face connected the separator to the larger cube, which I concluded was the bomb itself.

“What the fuck,” I murmured.

I checked and rechecked, tracing the coil from one radius to the next. My eyes scrutinized the collar’s entire circumference. There was no fifth wire. There couldn’t be one.

That meant that the fifth was either Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, or Delta – strung through the separator and connected to the bomb to serve as the mechanical detonator … the trip wire.

There was only one way to find out.

Replacing my wire cutter with a pair of pliers, I sighted wire Delta. I glanced at Candy Cane, eyeing me nervously as she shivered inside her peacoat. A layer of frost had formed over her forehead where sweat had beaded up and solidified in the frozen air. Her hooves shifted beneath her as she fiddled with a chunk of ice in an effort to keep her mind off of being decapitated.

“Alright … let’s do this.”

I clamped down on Delta.

Streams of sweat traced lines of clean brown coat across my grime-encrusted face. I glanced at Candy Cane once more. She was watching me kill her. I closed my eyes.

And pulled.

Candy Cane squeaked, whimpering as she felt her collar jerk slightly.

Nothing. The wire that connected the separator to the bomb didn’t move an inch. I gulped. I pulled Charlie earlier. So that left two of them. My pliers hovered between Bravo and Alpha.

I wiped away the sweat from my face with my sleeve so that it wouldn’t freeze. The last thing I needed was to shiver from not just apprehension, but from the cold, too.

I watched Candy Cane as she clenched her teeth and trembled upon her hooves.

Tears were runnning down her cheeks. She knew that she could die at any moment. It'd have been a lie if I'd told her she was going to be okay.

It was a fifty-fifty chance I’d pull the wrong one. But those were the best odds I’d ever had since coming out there. They were the only odds I had left to take.

I clamped my pliers around Alpha.

“Red Dawn!” she cried out.

I yanked the wire taut.

Her screams echoed out into the city.

I would have screamed too if I hadn’t realized that Alpha belonged to the circuit.

Candy Cane stared at me, trembling uncontrollably.

There was only one wire left.

I took a deep breath and curled a hoof around my wire cutter, lowering it into her collar. I held my breath, my hoof trembling uncontrollably as the two blades wrapped their edges around the final wire.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want Candy Cane’s skull fragments ripping into my eye sockets. My mouth clapped shut … I didn’t want her brains splashing into my mouth, either. I imagined her head exploding, splattering me with gore and gray matter as doubt began to scrape incessantly at my thoughts.

I took a deep breath and held it in.

I curled the wire cutter closed.

Snip.

CRACK!

I screamed.

And nothing. Nothing. My heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. I waited as my racing heartbeat slowed to a trot. I opened my eyes, and Candy Cane's terrified gray eyes widened to saucers.

I looked down at her hoof and saw that she had crushed the chunk of ice beneath her.

She slowly turned to face me, her trembling threatening to drill herself into the snow.

“W-what d-did you do?” she stammered, breathlessly.

I said nothing as I took my screwdriver and undid the collars screws, wrenching it apart, dismantling it, undoing the mark of her slavery.

It crunched uselessly into the snow.

We stood there next to each other for what seemed like hours as Candy Cane fought with her brain to process what just happened. Her eyes darted back and forth between me and the bomb collar that lay at our hooves, dumbfounded.

She exhaled suddenly, rubbing her eyes vigorously with her hooves, clearing away whatever hallucination inducing grogginess she thought was plaguing her clarity. Then her hoof slowly crawled up her chest, reaching for her neck. Her hoof stopped just below her throat – as if her collar was still there.

Candy Cane touched with delicate disbelief the matted indentation that had been trapped beneath her bomb collar. She rubbed at her flattened coat, her breathing intensifying as she struggled to grasp that it wasn’t there anymore.

That her chains were broken.

“I’m ... free …” she whispered, rubbing a hoof against her gnarled hide. “I’m finally free …” Candy Cane turned to me, slowly, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. “You did it,” she murmured. “You … you really did it.

“YOU DID IT!” she screamed, running into me with the force of a charging stallion. Candy Cane hugged me, squeezing her legs tight around my chest as she wept into my coat.

“I … I did it …” I murmured as I lifted a leg and wrapped it around her too. An ecstatic grin slowly stretched across my face.

Candy Cane pulled away, her face and my neck soaked with her tears as she held my shoulders with both her hooves. “Thank you so much … thank you – thank you – thank you!” she cried, “You saved my life … freed me from that horrible place and my collar … I’m finally free … I’m finally … FREE!”

She yanked me close and hugged me some more. The tighter she squeezed, the harder it became to suppress the warm, victorious laughter that fought its way through my lips. I stared off into the ashen clouds, praying for a sign. Praying for the Goddesses to tell me that I had finally done good.

“Thank the Goddesses that’s over with."

I wrapped my other leg around her and hugged her tight.

“Thank you … so much,” Candy Cane whispered, her tears glistening in the silvery magelight. “I never thought I’d ever be…” She paused, growing fond of the word she hadn't used to describe herself in years. “I never thought I’d ever be free … again. Again … it’s been five years. Five. Years. I-I never thought …”

She looked away, shaking her head. The mare brushed her matted coat, trying to fluff it up to no avail.

Candy Cane gazed at me with teary eyes. “I’ll never forget … I’ll never forget what you did for me, either … thank you, again.” She hung her head silently and dabbed at the snow with her hoof. “I wish there was some way I could repay you, because my words can never be enough.”

I lifted her head up with a hoof. “Don’t even mention it. Seriously.” I smiled, chuckling, “You’re free now. That’s all that matters.”

The mare swept her mane out of her eyes, wiping her face vigorously with her sleeve.

“Is it though?” she murmured, with uncertainty.

I said nothing, wondering the same thing as she touched her neck gingerly like she had never seen her own coat before.

“Now what?” I asked, quietly. “Now what will you do?”

Candy Cane looked at her hooves, thinking.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t know. Most of my friends and family are either dead or in slavery. Most of them probably think … I’m dead …” Candy Cane sniffled, strands of her mane falling before her eyes. “I don’t know … I don’t know what I’ll do, Red Dawn.”

We stood there, a bleak silence hanging over us as she stared at the ashen drifts with empty eyes. I thought for a moment, tapping my chin.

“Maybe … maybe you can come with me?” I said.

She cocked her head at me.

“Come with you?”

I nodded, saying, “I can barely survive out here on my own.” I stared off into the sky, watching the gray clouds hang over the frozen earth. “It’s a harsh world out here. It’s even worse trying to survive out here alone.”

I pulled Dew Drops’ scarf from my chest, flecks of dried blood fluttering to the snow. Pursing my lips, I wrapped it around my neck, solemnly.

“My stable lost its water talisman a while ago. So my friends and I came out here to find a replacement … without it my stable will die,” I told her.

Candy Cane nodded, knowingly.

“What happened to them?” she asked, her gaze softening.

“This scarf … it’s all I have to remember my friend by. She … she was taken by snow furies. So were the others. We were ambushed, and butchered because we weren’t ready for what was outside those doors.

“Ever since then it’s just been me, and my gun, and this scarf against the entire wasteland.” I uttered a grim chuckle, “It seems like that, at least. I barely hoofed it to Poneva alive.”

“I’m so sorry about your friends …” she whispered, staring down at her hooves, “And your scarf …”

I shook my head. “She would’ve wanted me to actually stay alive to finish what they started, anyways. I have you to thank for that.” I thought for a moment, running my hoof through my mane. “You seem to know a lot about this city – this wasteland. Maybe you can help me?”

“How?”

“I ran into Grifter while looking for the Orphanage. He promised that if I helped him, he’d give me the location of one of their hideouts. He gave me this.”

I eyed the coordinates he gave me, opened up my PipBuck’s map, and pointed at a map marker.

The mare’s expression turned grim. “No … no you don’t want to go there.” She poked my PipBuck’s screen with a hoof. “That’s a metro tunnel overrun with feral ghouls.”

“Feral … what?”

She shook her head. “You would’ve walked there to your death. They would’ve ripped you to pieces.”

“Son of a bitch …” I was a loose end. That cafone bastard tried to kill me.

Candy Cane cocked an eyebrow.

“What … what do you want with the Orphanage?”

“When I arrived here, I found a water talisman … well not exactly. I spoke with the head pony at the World Tree.”

Her eyes widened at that.

“You met Sterling? He never lets anyone inside the World Tree.”

I nodded. “He’s been working with the resistance to take down the other plantations. He wants his hooves on their tech; apparently they can purify water without water talismans.”

Candy Cane frowned, adding, “It’s always been a mystery how they can yield so many crops without the equipment the World Tree has.”

I paused for a breath, and continued. “Sterling says that if he had their technology, he wouldn’t need water talismans anymore. But that’d mean that the plantations would need to lose them, first. And if they did, he’d be able to spare me one or two or thirty of his water talismans.” A hopeful fire burned in my eyes. “He could give me enough talismans to keep my stable going for centuries.”

“Would he really just give up all his water talismans?” Candy Cane asked. “Those things are as rare as moonrocks.”

My expression turned grim. “It’s the only chance I have left. Without this talisman, everyone in my stable is going die. For all it's worth, I’d do anything … anything to save them all.

“I figured I’d join the resistance. Sterling said they always need hooves to keep the movement running. They’re the ones fighting the damned plantations, after all.”

I sighed, wearily.

“My stable doesn’t have much time. I’ve been around the city. No one gives a shit about the plantations. No one wants to do shit about them,” I spat. “At this rate, hell will freeze over twice and my stable will be rotting a mile below the earth. I can’t sit around on my hooves and waste my time – waste my stable’s time, waiting for the city to roll over.” I pursed my lips, and stared at her with a grim resolve.

“I want to join them. I want to join the Orphanage … and … and help them do … something.”

“The Orphanage, huh?” she whispered, intrigued. “And you want me to help you find them, then?”

I gave her a gloomy chuckle.

“I don’t want your help … I need your help. I can’t do this alone.” I looked at her hopefully as the harsh wasteland wind buffeted our disheveled manes. “If we join the resistance, we’ll be able to save all your friends at the Scullion. We’d be able to save them all.”

Candy Cane’s eyes glistened with distance hope.

“If I join you, you need to promise me … promise me that we’ll save them too.”

Something powerful ignited behind her eyes as she clenched her jaw and glared balefire into the snow.

My eyes widened as a different mare growled, mist jetting out between her bared teeth, “Promise me … that we’ll put an end to the Palominos. If we die, I want to die doing the right thing. Now that I’m free, I won’t stand by and watch them force anymore people into slavery.

“I want to tear them down, Red Dawn. After everything they’ve done to me … I-I … I …” she shook her head, tears welling out of her eyes. She sniffled. “No … I won’t be like them.” Candy Cane stomped her hoof into the snow and bowed her head.

She looked up at me, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I want to help people. Can we do that?”

I lowered my eyes to my hooves, a long breath whispering out of my lips.

Help people. Help the people of the wasteland. The same people who turned me away when I was trying to look for the only source of good in that wintry shithole.

Most people didn’t even care about the plantations. Many couldn’t give a damn if the guy next to them was dragged away into a ditch and shot in the head. They were content with that life so long as they could keep on living.

But Candy Cane was different; I wanted to admire her. I wanted to admire her heart. She had the kind of heart that got people killed. It was a heart like that that nearly got me killed. Good things never happen to good ponies.

And yet there she was, still standing. Maybe not for long. But there she was …

The difference between Candy Cane and I was that the resistance was just a means to an end. Everything I did was for my stable. But because of that little diversion with slavery, I’d risked the lives of nearly three hundred ponies for just this one mare.

If I died, all hope for my stable would have been lost. I wondered once more … why?

Why? My heart rationalized that it was simply the right thing to do. But my brain wondered, ‘What kind of stupid fucking logic was that?’

I could’ve died.

Again.

But it didn’t matter to her. She was free. She could've done anything she wanted … but she wanted only this: to help people, people that didn’t even want her help.

She had hope that the wasteland could turn around, even if she was the only person doing the turning. She was the hope nobody wanted.

I saw it in Sterling, and now I was seeing that in her.

I held out a hoof.

“We will,” I said, finally. “We will … I promise. Even if it kills us.”

Candy Cane took my hoof and shook it, a determined smile stretching across her lips.

“Thanks, Red Dawn.” She thought for a moment, pursing her lips. “I … don’t know where to find the Orphanage,” she confessed, hesitantly. “But I do know this city. I’ve escaped from the Scullion so many times that I’ve had the time to explore almost every nook and cranny in the outer city, and some parts of the inner city. All I need is a point in the right direction and I can take you there,” she said, smiling hopefully.

“I know somepony who was actually in the Orphanage,” Candy Cane chuckled. My brows furrowed as I cursed Grifter’s name under my breath. “She runs an inn in Old Town. She can probably tell us how to find them.” The mare noticed the dark circles around my bloodshot eyes. “Maybe she’ll even give us a place to stay for a bit.”

I really needed a break. Not a nap, not a few hours of shut eye. No. I needed to rest.

“You know her?” I asked, wobbling on my hooves.

She reached out with a hoof and held me still.

“She and her family took me in once ...” Candy Cane nodded to herself, smiling. “She’s a good mare.”

‘Finally,’ I thought. I was finally I was getting somewhere.

“That sounds like a plan.” I sighed, rubbing my eyes. “Much better than asking random people on the street, that’s for sure,” I muttered, bitterly.

I looked around us, panning my PipBuck’s light across the shifting white dunes. We were in a massive sink hole.

“Well … first of all, how do we get out of here?”

Candy Cane peered up and into the city above us, her eyes darting back and forth, searchingly. She lifted a hoof and pointed at the rooftops that poked out of the snow. Rooftops that were high and close enough to jump in between.

‘Oh Goddesses,’ I moaned inside my head.

Candy Cane smiled.

“I have an idea.”

Footnote: Level up.
New Perk: Guerilla Pony - Your sneak attack criticals with revolvers, pistols, carbines, and submachine guns (whether guns or magical energy weapons) all inflict an additional 20% damage.

Author's Notes:

Are you liking this story so far?

If so, please upvote it! Thank you!