“Nice to see you again, Summer Smiles!” a mare greeted whimsically, tipping her hat.

Summer Smiles glared at her, cracking the door open wide enough for me to see the mare’s face. The two gangsters behind her craned their necks over her shoulder, trying to get a good look at Summer Smiles.

One of them whistled. He liked what he saw.

Summer Smiles bit her lower lip, folding her collar against her neck to hide the blue of her coat. The two cafones snickered at each other as she closed the door slightly.

My hoof crawled up my chest to rest upon my pistol’s holster. But Candy Cane’s hoof beat mine to it. She shook her head at me and I swore under my breath.

Peering over the bar, I saw the Palomino mare cock her head at Summer Smiles.

“Why the long face, Summer Smiles?”

One of the stallions stepped forward and said grinned. “I can give her something to smile about!”

“Pipe down, will ya?” the mare hissed, shooting them a murderous look. They cleared their throats and eyed the floor.

‘Pigs,’ I thought.

She smiled politely once more as they fell silent. “Sorry, they’re new. Unblooded, sorry little young’uns.”

Summer Smiles scowled at them, growling, “It doesn’t matter to you, Dulce.” She planted one hoof on the door and stretched out a foreleg to the doorstop.

Dulce laughed warmly, “Forget about it - of course it doesn’t!” She craned her neck, peering into the inn. But Summer Smiles tip-toed on her hind hooves, leaning in front of the opening, and blocking her view inside.

Giving up, the mare cleared her throat, smirking as she straightened her neck and brushed down her peacoat. “Eh, well, I think you know why we’re here.”

They exchanged brief stares before the mare chimed in once more.

“We gonna have a staring contest here, Summer Smiles? I didn’t come here to play games.”

“No … you didn’t, did you?” Summer Smiles tipped her head at the automatic weapons slung around their chests.

Dulce gawked at her own submachine gun as if she had just realized it was there. “Oh my, this little thing?” she chuckled, prodding it with a hoof.

Summer Smiles glared at her.

“I’m the only pony between you and my fillies.”

She snorted, “The only thing between us and your fillies – no – this inn of yours, are the caps you owe us.” Dulce leaned against the railing outside the door, her accomplices wearing crooked grins.

“Oh, it’s pretty cold out here,” she said frigidly, giving her a hard stare. “We might just step inside for a bit, maybe warm ourselves up by the fire - ya know, maybe check out those caps of yours.”

Summer Smiles gulped as the mare planted a hoof on her submachine gun.

“Because I know you have ‘em.”

The mare cracked a dangerous smile.

“So whaddya say, Summer Smiles?”

I gulped. Candy Cane bit her lower lip.

“T-that won’t be necessary.”

“I hope so,” the mare replied, sparing her submachine gun a glance. “I hate scaring little kids. It’s just such a shitty thing to do, wouldn’t you agree?”

She glanced over her shoulder at her boys.

“Forget about it!” they both laughed.

Summer Smiles’ eyes darted back and forth as she tapped at the doorframe frantically.

“Can … can you just give me a break? Just this once? I’m never late on my payments … I … I’ll get you the money next week.”

Dulce shook her head, pursing her lips contritely.

“Girl, you know I can’t do that,” she whinnied.

The muscles beneath my barding tensed as I saw her glance back inside.

“I …” Summer Smiles gulped, pushing more of the door between her and the Palominos outside. There was a loud thump as the mare outside planted a hoof on the door’s surface and stopped her short.

“I think we need to go inside … maybe say hello to the family,” she growled. “Whaddya say, boys?” The two stallions grinned and shivered briskly.

The mare threw her head over her shoulder and nodded to herself.

“Last chance, Summer Smiles.”

A silent second passed. So the mare tried pushing the door open. But Summer Smiles leaned her weight against it.

“Oh, Summer Smiles …” Dulce sighed as she glanced at her boys. The two stallions grinned at her beneath the shadowy brims of her black hats.

My hoof jumped for my holster. So did Candy Cane.

“Red – ” I shook her free. “Red Dawn!” she hissed as I drew my pistol.

Candy Cane looked me in the eye.

“They’re going to hurt her!” I growled – but she clapped a hoof over my mouth.

“Don’t,” she spelled out for me. “Red Dawn – don’t!” But I wrenched away from her, gun in hoof.

Candy Cane clenched her jaw. I glared back. I said nothing as I stared at my pistol’s safety and Summer Smiles pleaded for them to leave.

“Please … I don’t have much left,” she begged. “How am I going to feed my fillies?”

“Not our problem,” Dulce snorted.

“You have to understand!”

“Oh, I understand Crystal Empire clear, Summer - and you do too!” The mare jabbed a hoof at her. “You owe us, and you’re gonna pay us!”

“I can’t … I-I can’t!”

Dulce shook her head. “I know you have a bag up there somewhere, Summer. I saw it that last time we were here.”

Summer Smiles was shaking all over.

“There isn’t much left!”

“Oh? Then we’ll take whatever you got,” the mare hissed. “You’re a neighborly mare, aren’tcha? You’ll help us anyway you can, am I right?”

“No!” Summer Smiles tried closing the door shut.

But the mare outside threw herself against it.

“Think of your girls, Summer,” she hissed, “You don’t want them seeing what happens to ponies who don’t pay what they owe?”

“Just leave us alone!” she cried, struggling to force the door closed.

“We keep this place safe, Summer!” Dulce growled, heaving her shoulder into the door, “Maybe your girls won’t be so safe sleeping in their beds tonight!”

The Palomino thumped her hoof against the door, trying to force it open. But the door wouldn’t budge. Summer Smiles wouldn't budge.

“Don’t make this hard on yourself, Summer Smiles!”

“Please!”

“Quit fucking around!” she screamed back.

Summer Smiles moaned as she heaved the door closed. She was so close. But the two stallions outside stepped forward.

The door crashed open, hurling Summer Smiles into the floorboards.

My ears pinned themselves to the sides of my head. I sprung to my hooves -

But Candy Cane forced me back down.

“They’ll kill us all!” she hissed at me.

“Fuck!”

Summer Smiles screamed as she slammed into the floor.

I grinded my teeth and peered around the bar, my headache returning as my temples hammering inside my skull. I glared at the three black hats that stood in the doorway. Dulce looked down at Summer Smiles, shaking her head.

She snorted, leaning against the doorway with a foreleg.

“You’re makin’ this real hard for yourself, Summer.”

Summer Smiles moaned pathetically and rolled onto her back, a thin rivulet of blood trickling down her brow.

Dulce tipped her black hat over her eyes, and chuckled.

She glanced over her shoulder, sighing, one eye gleaming beneath the shadow of her fedora.

“Come on, boys. It’s cold outside.”

“WAIT!”

My heart leaped inside my throat.

“WAIT!” Summer Smiles shrieked. She scrambled to her hooves. “Wait here. I have the caps … please just wait. Here.”

Dulce glared at her.

“You have five minutes.”

Summer Smiles said nothing as she pushed the door closed.

“FIVE MINUTES!”

She stood there for a moment, trembling upon her hooves.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

Hooves slowly clopped across the floorboards as Summer Smiles made her way upstairs. She stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking back at us in turmoil, cornered as if there was a gun to her head. There would be one soon if she didn’t deliver. Another fraction of her savings was going to be spent paying those bastards the money she didn’t owe them.

I pressed my back against the bar, clenching my jaw as I heard her hoofsteps fade away upstairs. My eyes flicked to Candy Cane’s, and she followed my movements warily as I brought my PipBuck to my muzzle.

Grifter’s voice echoed in my thoughts.

'… 435, 436, 437 … Uhh ... uhh... Fuck! Lost count …'

I’d lost count of what I had in my bags as well, Grifter.

I sifted through my inventory. Not too long ago I trampled Grifter beneath me and stole from him a sack of caps. There had to be hundreds in there. My PipBuck confirmed my suspicions. Nine hundred and twenty caps. I had nine hundred and twenty caps logged in my inventory.

Why I snatched it off his desk, I didn’t know; it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe it was to spite him? To tell the Palominos that that money wasn’t theirs? That they were a bunch of thieving parasites?

My eyes slowly left my PipBuck’s screen, firm and resolute.

It didn’t matter now. They stole that money.

And now it was time to give it back.

Candy Cane’s jaw dropped, speechless as I bit my teeth around the bag’s neck and yanked it out of my bags. Words were lost on her lips as I held it in the air before me. She had never seen so many caps at once.

“How – where … how much?” she murmured with wide eyes.

I shrugged, jingling the caps inside.

“Enough.”

Summer Smiles hoofed it step by painful step downstairs, a bag of caps jingling between her teeth. Fresh tears were streaming down her rosy cheeks as she made her way down the steps, each creak in the floorboards like a stake driving into her gut.

That must’ve been some of the last of her savings.

I knew what she was thinking. 'How were those two fillies going to eat?'

I waved a hoof at her as she reached the bottom, and motioned for her to come closer. She trotted toward us, uneasily. Then I held out to her the bag of caps.

The mare stopped in her tracks, her small pouch dangling precariously from her mouth. Summer Smiles gasped.

Her bag tumbled to the floor and erupted in a shower of bottlecaps.

“What’s going on in there?” Dulce demanded as she swung the door open with a hoof. The freezing winter breeze blew past her, showering the floorboards with fresh powder and welcoming in the wasteland wind.

Summer Smiles appeared oblivious to the winter storm that was blowing into her home. It didn't matter. Not at that very moment.

“What …”

I held my leg out farther. “Take it.”

Her eyes darted to my hooves, then mine, clenching her jaw. Summer Smiles' mouth said no, but her bloodshot eyes said yes. She needed it. For her sister's orphaned children.

“Summer Smiles!”

She swung her head to the door, broken from her trance like state.

“I’m gettin’ real angry!”

Summer Smiles wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sniffled. “S-sorry. I … I just dropped my bag. Give me a minute.”

She knelt down beside me, biting the heavy bag, gingerly. Her teary gaze met mine, and she hesitated, narrowing them at the spoils that she clenched between her teeth. I cracked a faint smile, and nodded.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

I looked her in the eyes.

“You need it more than I do.”

She pursed her lips, looking like she was going to break down into tears once more.

I didn't need shit like that to get what my stable needed. I didn't have to pay taxes, and I didn’t have kids to feed. I was adamant that she take it.

I sighed when she didn’t. The damn bag was starting to get heavy.

"Go on," I said, softly, with a sheepish smile.

For the first time since we'd arrived, I saw it in her eyes. A sliver of hope flickered behind the windows to her soul. Something inside of her pushed her onward. She needed it. Her sister's ... her foals needed it.

She took it from my open hoof.

Summer Smiles rose to her fours, trotted to the door, and gave the sack of caps to the Palominos outside. There came an astonished gasp as Dulce seized her spoils and shook, her ears perking at the sound of the glorious jingling – music to her ears.

“This … this is … a lot," Dulce gawked. She cleared her throat, composing herself. The mare glanced at Summer Smiles as she shuffled nervously on her hooves. “Give us a few minutes. We’ll count this up for ya. We ain’t a bunch of welchers,” she grinned courteously, hoofing the bag to her subordinates. Her eyes never once left Summer Smiles’ apprehensive face. “One hundred caps, boys.”

I was expecting the cafones to take the whole damn bag and scurry off with it.

But they didn’t. A few minutes passed as the Palominos counted their money. When the deed was done, they unceremoniously dumped Summer Smiles' dues into a saddlebag. Dulce smiled courteously before hoofing her back the sack of caps, one hundred caps lighter.

“There ya go,” she said graciously, tipping her hat at her, and turning around to take her leave. "I'm glad we didn't have to do something neither of us would’ve liked." The looks on her subordinates' faces begged to differ; they looked to be itching for a firefight.

Or for a taste of Summer Smiles.

“Like … likewise,” she choked, sweat freezing across her forehead.

The mare held the bag in her hoof, frozen, and unable to speak. She looked on, distantly, as the Palominos started down the steps.

“You be a good girl, now,” the mare called over her shoulder as Summer Smiles pivoted around sluggishly and shoved the door closed with a rear hoof. The inn was colder now, and a pile of hoof-trodden snow lay before the door.

But there was a different kind of warmth melting the ice between us all.

The two mares stared at me in silence. I caught Candy Cane’s gaze, and saw that she was wearing that same look she’d worn when I dismantled her bomb collar.

“Thank you, Red Dawn,” Summer Smiles began, making her way to the bar, still shaking. "Now they'll leave my family alone for a bit." She laid the bag of caps down on the counter and pushed it towards me.

I shook my head, and slid it back, much to her surprise.

“It’s yours now,” I insisted. She just stood there. So I nudged it toward her with a hoof when she didn’t budge. “I … I think you need it more than I do.”

She parted the bag’s lips, and peered inside. It was a decently heavy bag. It was hers now. But she still couldn’t believe it.

Summer Smiles looked at me for a moment, before asking again, “Why are you doing this?”

It bothered me because I didn’t know why either. I thought - finally out of the moment, realizing that I could’ve used those caps to buy myself rations for a week, or maybe some ammo for my pistol. Maybe even a new bulletproof vest, which I desperately needed. A part of me was regretting that decision, now.

Those caps – my money – my loot – could’ve funded my journey.

My journey. For some reason, I was growing fond of helping out random, unimportant ponies. Like … Candy Cane? Summer Smiles? But somehow, everyone was important to someone.

Even me.

I thought, 'How was helping Summer Smiles going to help me?'

When I didn’t answer, she pursed her lips and asked, “How much is in there?”

I poked it. It was still about as heavy as it was when I took it out of my saddlebags.

“Eight-hundred and twenty caps.”

Summer Smiles curled a hoof around its neck, her leg trembling.

“This’ll last us months …” she murmured. The mare blinked, and shook her head. “I can’t take this. It’s not mine.”

I sighed, growing irritated with her stubbornness. Kindness seemed to be an alien concept in the wasteland. "If you don't want it, I'll just leave it there. I don’t want it weighing me down when I’m jumping off buildings with Candy Cane,” I smirked, glancing over at Candy Cane whose astonished grays continued to stare through me.

Our host just stood there, quietly, trying not to look at the bag. So I nudged it again, and again, and again, until it banked precariously off the counter’s edge and she was forced to hold it with her hooves.

I smirked.

With a sigh, Summer Smiles finally relented, clutching the bag tight.

She regarded the bag of caps with grim relief. "Thank you, Red Dawn. Doodle and Hops can eat for a while longer now, thanks to you." The mare paused, hesitantly. "Candy Cane might just be right about you," she murmured, looking away. "There aren’t that many ponies who'd just give out caps like that around here."

"Eh, they weren't mine to begin with. I stole them from the cafones."

That left her dumbfounded and speechless. Several long seconds passed and she shook it off and brushed my foreleg with a hoof.

"Goddesses bless you, Red Dawn. Sugar Rum would’ve kissed you for this …” I shrugged, my lopsided smile stretching across my left cheek.

“I need some time to think about this. The Orphanage I mean." She turned to Candy Cane. "I … I don't suppose you two were planning on staying here for a while?"

"We were hoping we could." Candy Cane held out a hoof. "If you'll have us, of course?"

I couldn’t help but notice as Summer Smiles' name finally matched her likeness. The mare cupped Candy Cane’s hoof in hers as she smiled.

"I could never say no to you ..." Summer Smiles said, softly, still holding her hoof. She blinked, let go, and fixed her gaze upon me. "Not to either of you," she added. “It’s the least I can do.”

She cocked her head at me and eyed me from head to hoof in the silence that followed. My brows furrowed as I wondered why she was looking at me like that. Then I realized that I was swaying back and forth.

I was starting to feel ticklish in the noggin again. I let out a languid sigh, and rubbed at my tired eyes.

"I'm sure you'd like a place to sleep,” I heard her say.

“That would be wonderful."

Candy Cane held my shoulder with a hoof to still my swaying. "We won't be here for long,” she said. “We don't want to be a burden."

"No worries … please … stay – stay for as long as you'd like." She glanced at the door one last time. “It’s the least I can do for an old friend … and a … maybe a new one, I think.”

I averted my gaze from hers. I knew what she was thinking.

But I still didn’t believe it.

But seeing someone smile … seeing someone in that frozen hell smile made my livid flesh and the graying soul beneath just a little warmer. It felt …

… good. For some reason I’d almost forgotten how that felt. The frozen wasteland air made people numb.

But it felt good seeing Summer Smiles, well, smile.

Still, it was far from being a good day. At least for her. If we took her up on her offer, I was certain that she couldn’t be burdened with our stay. With her sister gone, she had more important things to worry about than a stranger sleeping in her home.

"If you'll let us stick around, I could pool whatever caps, food, or supplies I come across," I added.

Candy Cane nodded. "We'd like to pull our own weight," she offered. "It'll be like old times …"

The mare exhaled with a sigh of relief, hugging her. "That's more than I could’ve asked for." She paused for a moment and scanned the bar with a sour look in her eyes, her savings still scattered across the floor. She let out another sigh, this time scorning the dusty, neglected walls around her.

"This place is just despicable. Sugar would’ve hated to see you coming back to my inn like this. I have empty rooms upstairs, but I haven't cleaned them in months ... ever since I closed this place down, I kind of just forgot about everything we didn’t use."

I waved it off with a hoof. "Whatever you have, we’ll take it. I've been sleeping in metal boxes for the past week. Any bed to lay in is a bed nonetheless."

Candy Cane bowed her head. "Anything is good enough for me.”

Summer Smiles nodded, hesitantly, grumbling under her breath. She wanted the best for her guests.

“Let’s get this pony upstairs before he drops dead,” Summer Smiles chuckled at me.

"Huh?” I yawned, rubbing my eyes.

“He’s been beat up pretty bad.” Candy Cane touched a hoof to her chin. “How he’s still standing, I don’t know.”

“After that sinkhole, I don’t know either, Candy Cane,” I said, rolling my bloodshot eyes.

Summer Smiles waved us forward. “Come on, I’ll show you both to your rooms upstairs.”

“Let me just get my bags.” I trotted over to the door where I left them and enveloped them in my magical grip.

Stars exploded in my eyes.

Fire shot through my nerves - my brain - and I careened face first into the floorboards.

I scrambled and flopped around like a fish out of the water, clawing at the floorboards - my face - something warm trickled down my muzzle -

My eyes shot open and I saw through a pair of darkening windows painted with blood.

I fought the urge to scream as Candy Cane galloped to my side.

Someone beat me to it. Summer Smiles’ scream was a petrol bomb that blew up the inferno inside my skull.

“What the hell’d you do, Red Dawn?!”

I couldn’t answer. There was a drillbit in my brain, and every agonizing second that ticked by it drilled deeper. I groaned, my limbs twitching erratically as my consciousness threatened to sleep forever.

“I’ll never get used to being an earth pony,” I wheezed as the two mares wrenched me back to my hooves.

I saw Candy Cane glare at me through my bloody, squinted eyes. “You don’t have to be …” she said. “Don’t go around trying that until after you’ve slept this thing off!”

“What’s wrong with him?” Summer Smiles asked, wincing.

“He has magical burnout,” she said, grunting as she propped me up against the door behind me.

I gasped for breath, clenching my eyes shut as my brain melted inside my skull. A burnout was like having a muscle cramp. But inside your brain. And I was getting sick and fucking tired of that useless horn of mine.

I shrugged them off, irritated with myself. “It’s … I’m okay. I can … I can walk.”

I took a feverish step forward and nearly fell on my face once more, prompting Candy Cane to lean up against me. A long, drawn out sigh wheezed out of my lips.

"Fucking … stupid horn … let’s try this again,” I murmured as I started for my saddlebags. But Candy Cane held out a hoof in front of me.

“I can get those for you –” she began, but I waved her off and reached for them myself. This time, I curled my hooves around my bags’ straps and hurled them over my back with a grunt.

I looked up, and found that the two mares were staring at me again.

“What?”

Summer Smiles covered her face with a hoof, muttering to herself.

“You’re getting blood on my floor.”

I stumbled around in almost complete darkness, the only light coming from the open door that led to the hallway behind us. I shuffled blindly across the floor, and ran into something solid.

Whatever.

The heavy obstruction that greeted my face with an audible thump rattled and shook. I was too tired to care. All I wanted to do was to find the bed that was supposed to be in that room.

A light switched on, and the obstruction revealed itself to be a dresser. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught Candy Cane’s worried stare, her hoof hovering over a switch on the wall.

“Thanks.”

Candy Cane watched, silently, as I set my bags down next to an old bed that lay beneath a shuttered window. I could hear, faintly, the wind moaning outside.

The air inside was chilly, but thankfully not bone-gnawingly freezing like it was outside, especially with the storm blowing over us. I was glad I was inside that time.

The room was furnished with a table with an uneven leg, a dresser that was missing a drawer, and a cracked mirror. I didn’t bother looking at it. It didn’t take a mirror to tell me that I looked like shit.

I felt like it too.

I was a sorry sight to look at. Candy Cane knew it. She’d toweled me down earlier with a wet rag to clean up the blood. But I still looked like shit, and I really needed a bath.

“I think I got it from here,” I told her as she stood in the doorway. But she didn’t move an inch. The two mares had helped me upstairs, because I was apparently too loopy to walk up a flight of stairs on my own.

Summer Smiles had left to check on the fillies, but Candy Cane had stayed.

I rummaged through my bags, pulling out my Stable 91 jumpsuit. It was clean. I hadn’t worn it since I’d left home. And I wasn’t about to wear my bloody security barding to bed. I ran a hoof up my chest and curled it around the zipper beneath my collar. I frowned, Candy Cane’s shadow still stretching across the floor next to me. I glanced over my shoulder, head cocked.

The mare just stared at me, slightly confused. I coughed and Candy Cane blinked twice.

“Oh … I … okay,” she said, looking away.

‘You can leave, you know,’ I wanted to say. Whatever. I sighed and shed my battered barding. My teeth chattered, rifling the inside of my skull and joining the dull pain that throbbed in my head. I wondered how long it’d take for me to grow out my winter coat. Everyone else but me seemed fine without being bundled up indoors.

With a zip, I slipped into my blue and yellow jumpsuit, the number '91' emblazoned onto my sides.

I turned, and found myself unsurprised. “You’re still there,” I chuckled, as Candy Cane turned her head back to me.

She smiled, faintly. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t fall on your face again.”

I sighed and flopped onto the bed with a groan, laying my head down on the pillow. My eyes fluttered closed. Soft. The blankets were cold beneath my flesh, but the bed was soft. It had been a while since I’d lain down on something like that. I almost felt like I was back at home. Almost. Almost.

I took a deep breath and imagined I was lying in my bed. I imagined Dew Drops lying next to me, snoring softly as I closed my eyes and began to drift off into a peaceful slumber.

Then I felt the air above me shift. My bloodshot eyes flew open and I eeped.

Candy Cane was staring down at me.

“Shit …” I murmured, tucking my legs to my chest as she placed a hoof on my forehead.

“Your fever’s gotten worse since I last checked. Give me a minute.” The mare trotted away, disappearing outside. She returned shortly after with a wet towel, which she draped over my forehead. Candy Cane sighed, “There. Is it cold?”

I shivered, pawing at the blankets under me before pulling them over my numb flesh.

“Y-yes,” I managed, as I felt my headache begin to wane.

“Good,” she murmured, relieved. “That should cool you down. I don’t want you having a meltdown inside that skull of yours.”

“Thanks, doc,” I said, staring up at the ceiling.

She stood there for a few heartbeats, looking like she had something to say.

“What you did earlier … I’m glad Summer Smiles didn’t have to give them her caps. Doodle and Hops mean the world to her,” she whispered.

I sighed, wishing she’d just leave me be so that I could sleep. I mustered through my headaches a lopsided smile, and nodded, but the towel slipped down my face. Candy Cane chuckled, somewhat amused, and tugged it back onto my forehead. I shivered, my muzzle wet with icy water.

“You made me a pony again, Red Dawn,” she said, tenderly, staring into my heavy eyes. Candy Cane nudged my shoulder with a hoof.

“So I’ll help you become a unicorn again.”

I had already fallen asleep by the time the light flicked off and the door creaked closed.

Footnote: Level 6
XP: 250/3450