I followed Night Sky outside into the soft, cold breeze, my hooves sinking deep into the snow that piled up overnight. The blizzard buried everything but the buildings outside, and ponies with shovels were laboring to clear the snow off their porches.

The town was shockingly alive with pony life … although, a life I could never have related to.

For one thing, everyone out there seemed to keep mixing up ‘everypony’ with ‘everyone’.

Or maybe it was just me.

But back in Stable 91, young ponies were never assigned occupations until they received their cutie marks. There, in Dusktown, blank flanks labored with their parents, pulling plows that cleared the immense mounds of snow off the single main road that ran down the town’s midsection.

If there was one thing that was similar between Dusktown at Stable 91, it had to be their main goal: surviving. Just as we survived through the participation of every able-bodied adult pony, those surface dwellers did the same, and more.

All around us, ponies worked together to push away the result of last night’s snow storm. Within ten minutes, a wide path of flattened snow stretched from one end of the town to the next. Now that the road was clear, ponies and their wagons began backing out of their scrap metal garages to begin their travels down its length. Sleepy stores and dimly-lit residences lined the road on either side.

Next to the Rough Riders’ tavern were several shops with a variety of items for sale. We walked past each, stopping for a moment to look inside a gun store that sold boxes of ammunition that I both could and couldn’t recognize. Night Sky shopped for a bit, buying whatever she needed for her merc contracts.

We returned outside into the cold, and I spared a glance at the sky. I cringed, swallowing bile down my throat.

‘Damn. I need to stop doing that.’ But in my sickness, I did see something up there that was rather unusual.

‘Where’s all the pegasi?’ I wondered.

All I saw were earth ponies and unicorns hauling around more than their weight or levitating shovels and other small tools. There wasn’t a single sound of wings flapping in the breeze. No sign of the feather-winged ponies I lived with back at Stable 91.

It seemed as if the surface had been settled by unicorns and earth ponies and only unicorns and earth ponies since the beginning of time. I wondered: was two hundred years enough to forget about the pegasi? Were they blasted into extinction when the balefire bombs annihilated their cloud cities? There wasn’t a single pegasus in the air as Night Sky and I trotted throughout town.

I wondered, hopelessly: was Night Sky the last of her kind?

In a clearing walled off by lines of bent metal stakes was a field of headstones. We walked past it, and I stopped for a moment to watch a mare sitting in the ashen drifts next to three freshly dug graves. She sobbed and murmured incoherently, cradling her head in her hooves.

Night Sky turned to glance over her shoulder, eyeing me curiously. I turned to the mare, then back at Night Sky. She just shook her head and gestured me to follow her.

“What happened to them?” I whispered, trotting beside her.

Night Sky gazed on forward, her face stone cold.

“Zebras,” she said simply, and nothing more.

I gave her a puzzled stare. I supposed it was none of my business, and I left the pony to grieve.

The mare’s sobs faded into wind as we made our way down the town’s only road.

A few yards down the street from the Rough Riders’ tavern was a boot shaped structure that puffed out smoke from its chimney. The windows glowed with a warmth that invited me to enter. Above its door hung a flickering neon sign that glowed with the words ‘diner’. The smell of bread and … ‘What was that?’ It smelled like a steam accident at engineering. ‘Meat?’ My stomach churned with a mixture of hunger and revulsion.

I figured as long as they had something I could eat … I’d survive. So we walked inside, the warmth of a furnace and a hearth loosening my tense muscles. It felt good. It felt good feeling heat against my coat again.

At the bar, Night Sky plopped down onto a stool, and I slumped into one beside her. Down the counter were other wastelanders who eyed my PipBuck curiously.

I smiled sheepishly and waved. They just looked away, chatting among themselves.

“Not too many ponies have seen a stable-dweller before,” Night Sky said, resting her forelegs on the counter in front of us. A light bulb flickered dimly over our heads, and a pony mare with stained overalls unscrewed it with her magic and screwed another one in its place.

It shined brighter than the other hanging, bare-wired bulbs around the room and bathed me in a white glow. The spotlight was on the stable-dweller. Everyone gave me a variety of looks, ranging from curiosity to the same hatred Bone Charm showed me at the tavern.

Maybe they were more interested in the bandages that are wrapped around my muzzle. I looked like a fucking corpse. The waitress trotted behind the counter, with a stick of what looked like charcoal and a slip of paper floating in her magical grip.

Night Sky offered to buy me a bowl of … stew. Bobbing inside of it were a variety of vegetables – which I was entirely okay with, until I saw, floating visibly beneath the surface, dark chunks of boiled … meat.

I gulped and shook my head. She shrugged, ordered one for herself, some bread for me, and pushed a few bottle caps across the warm counter. That must've been their currency.

‘Strange.’

“Why are you doing this for me?” I asked her quietly as the unicorn mare slid to me three slices of bread and Night Sky a bowl of soup. Two shot glasses of what looked like vodka, and two glasses of water slid our way, too.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful …” I trailed off, biting into the surprisingly soft, yet crusty bread. “… but … why? Why didn’t you just leave me out in that blizzard?”

Night Sky lapped at her bowl and paused for a moment.

“Ponies have to stick together out here. If we don’t … well, we die.” She answered, before returning to her soup. I watched her chew on one of the chunks of red meat and swallow, much to my suppressed disgust.

“Can’t argue with that …” I brought the water to my mouth, but my PipBuck’s radmeter clicked audibly. I hesitated, and placed it back down on the counter. “But how do you ponies live like this? I was expecting less of an actual town and more of a …”

“Shitehole,” she said, taking the words from my mouth.

“That’s not what I –”

“It’s fine. I expected as much from a stable-dweller,” Night Sky said with a terse chuckle. “This town has trade routes with Poneva and a few towns down south. We trade what we scavenge or make, and buy whatever else we can't make ourselves,” she explained.

I nodded, taking another bite from the bread.

“You said you’re a mercenary. What kind of work do you do?”

She licked at her empty soup bowl and wiped her mouth with a forehoof.

“Anything. Any work we can,” she replied with some resignation.

I blinked. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

My throat was parched and I eyed the radioactive water longingly.

“You can drink that, you know?” she said, “Just pop a Rad-Away if you start feeling dizzy.”

I sighed, shaking my head as I downed its contents. She tossed me a small red capsule, and I tucked it into my bags.

“So you’d kill a pony if that’s what you were being paid to do?” I asked, quietly. “You’d kill someone if that’s what it took?”

“Aye. If that’s what it took, why not? You said you were looking for a Water Talisman. Wouldn’t you do anything to bring one back so everypony in your stable could live?”

I tensed, frowning at my hooves as they rested on the counter.

“Why? Is that what Equestria’s come to?”

“This isn’t Equestria anymore, Red Dawn,” she said, bitterly. “And I’m no trader. I’m no gangster either. I’m a mercenary because I've a choice to live or die on my terms. I don’t need protection along the roads – I've my rifle and my mates for that. I've no need to take orders from some stupid bloke because I take orders from me and myself.”

The waitress behind the counter levitated a pitcher of water to me, and I nodded thankfully as she poured me another glass. “It’s a choice to survive, then,” I said, simply, with some understanding. “To be free.”

“Quite. I’ve a choice to do what I want to do, and I do it all for caps.” She sighed, resting her cheek on a hoof. “I get to choose. And not everypony gets that choice. You and me? We’re lucky. We’re lucky we’re not slaves. We’ve still a choice – we can choose to live or keep on living. It’s why I clobbered you with that shovel. You were wasting that choice on something stupid.” I bit my lower lip at that, pain flickering across my face.

“Being alive’s all that matters. You can’t save your stable dead, Red Dawn,” she said softly, resting a hoof on my shoulder. “I’m a mercenary and I choose to live and continue doing what I need to do to keep on living.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It sounded perfectly reasonable in my head.

“You’ve a choice to live, and that means you’ve got to do what you need to do, Red Dawn. Maybe even if that means you live and some poor sod doesn’t.” She snorted, the faintest of smiles creasing her lips. “Personally, I don’t just go around taking any contract. I take ones I know matter to us ponies in Dusktown. If it means I’ve got to kill a bastard, I make sure she deserves it.”

“That’s … commendable?” I said, unsure.

“There’s no escaping it, Red Dawn.” Night Sky took another sip. “Out here, killing’s just part of living,” she said with a disturbing calmness that sent shivers down my spine.

I frowned at her, bothered by that statement. But I shook away the doubt from my mind. I pushed away my fears, because a darker part of me felt that I was just being naïve. If I was going to survive, I needed to be strong. I needed to do what needed to be done. “Whatever it takes,” I said finally.

“That’s the spirit.” She took her shot glass and held it out to me. “Cheers - to life.”

I almost tried levitating mine. I sighed, exasperated, and did the same, and our glasses clanked.

“To life.”

After helping her carry her supplies back to the tavern, she sent me below the floorboards to the basement to peruse their armory to arm myself for tomorrow’s contracts. Well, I guess it was an armory. It was mostly just a bunch of tables set with disassembled guns, random parts, tattered barding in need of repair, and boxes full of ammo and magazines. I wrinkled my nose at the scent of cordite and oil as I came down the stairs.

‘Whoa - what the hell is that thing!?’ I almost said that out loud.

The youngest member of the Rough Riders, a griffon, meandered around the tables, sifting through boxes of gun parts. The gray-feathered griffoness saw me come down the dim stairwell and gave me a sideways glance with her green eyes.

“You’re the pony Night Sky picked up, aren’t you?” she asked as I stared at the strange white markings on her face, instead of her eyes.

I blinked, fidgeting on my hooves, took a deep breath, and gave her a sheepish grin. “The one and only.”

The half-bird-lion thing - I mean, the griffon, walked up to me, her raptor claws clacking loudly against the wooden floor.

“What are you doing here?” She kept her distance.

I snorted. As if a bandaged up, half lucid pony was going to do anything remotely dangerous. Besides ... she was a griffon! A griffon! From the story books ... the raptors of Griffonstone!

And I was talking to one.

Trying not to stare at her lithe, alien form, and her wickedly sharp talons, I said, “I’ll be tagging along with your ... uh… your crew for a little bit.” Her brows furrowed at that. “Night Sky said you could help me pick out a gun?”

She tapped her beak with a claw and nodded.

“Uh, sure. I guess.” The griffon gestured for me to follow her and we waded through the junk to the far end of the basement. We came to a room lined with lockers. A dim light bulb flickered over a table at the center of the room. “Anything not in a locker is up for grabs.”

I blinked, eyeing all of the locked lockers. Everything was in a locker though. I walked over to the table and found a 10mm pistol lying among a heap of scrap metal and discarded parts. It’d have to do.

It was convenient too. I pulled up my PipBuck and sifted through my inventory. I found that I still had fifty three 10mm rounds stocked up. I stared wearily at the 10mm rounds in my bags, knowing how heavy the kick would be without a shoulder stock.

I really wished I still had my carbine.

I levitated the pistol – ‘balls!’

I mean, I bit down on its mouth grip and tested its weight. I wasn’t used to doing ... well … anything without my magic. It was a few pounds heavy, not too much for me to handle, I hoped. I’ve never shot a gun from my mouth before.

“Well I should be good –” I turned around and the griffon wasn’t there anymore. I waded through the rubbish and saw her leaning over a table in the main room, poking a black box. “What’s that for?”

The gray plume of feathers atop her head bobbed as she looked up. “Oh, this? Well, it was a radio at some point.”

‘A RADIO you say?’

My smile beamed as she continued. “It broke last week, and I’ve been trying to figure out why it stopped working.”

“Did you check if it’s plugged in?” I droned with a wry grin.

She caught my lame sense of humor and chuckled. “I’m no expert at electronics. All I do is clean the crew’s hardware,” she said, jutting a claw at the disassembled rifles lying about.

“Mind if I take a look?” I asked, trotting up to the table. She shrugged, and stepped away from the radio.

I gave it a look over, and opened it up with a screwdriver I picked out from my bags. I eyed the contents of the radio and saw that there was not a piece out of place.

I pulled the power cord taut and found a thin indentation over a section along its length. Probably got crushed or something.

“Heh, well, I’ve seen this before,” I said, standing on my hind legs, one foreleg on the table to hold me upright.

“Hm?”

“Looks like your radio’s going to make it,” I said, trying to sound like Dr. Stitches. “But the AC cord’s going to need a wire transplant ...” I looked at her, wrinkling my brow.

She ran a paw through her gray plume, flattened a rogue feather, and gave me a weird smile.

“That’s … great news, doctor …”

“Red Dawn,” I replied, fishing through my bags.

“My name’s Gail.” She clenched a paw into a fist and held it out to me. I looked at it for a second, hesitating. My eyes darted to hers, and I cracked a nervous smile.

I bumped her fist with a hoof.

“You’re a lot less scarier than the others, you know that?” I said with a chuckle, splitting the cord.

“Yeah, I get that a lot. I kinda stand out, ya know, with me hanging around a bunch of hardass mercs all the time,” Gail confessed, rubbing her neck. Yup. She stuck out to me like a sore hoof. Gail was different. Everyone else upstairs had that calloused look about them. She seemed sort of fresh.

“Oh … but they’re not so bad,” Gail chuckled, “They picked me up too when I was just a cub. Bone Charm raised me like I was his own.”

I cocked a brow at that. I couldn’t believe it - that bastard of a pony raised a sweet griffon like her?

“No way.”

“Yes way!" she laughed, folding her forelegs across her chest. "Though he’s kind of a dick sometimes …”

I snorted. ‘Sometimes?’

“But deep down, he's a real softy! He's always been there for me." Gail looked down at her paws. "My parents were never around as much as he was. But then again they’re not around anymore … so …”

My eyes softened. “What happened to them?” I asked gently.

“My parents were Talon mercs. Wasn’t really the best line of work to raise a kid, I guess. They died on a contract and orphaned me.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Night Sky was right about how everyone’s lost someone. If I ever lost my mom … I’m not sure what I’d do. “And now you’re a merc too?” I asked.

Gail nodded. “Yeah, yeah, ‘why follow in your parents’ footsteps when merc'ing got them killed’.” The young griffon sighed. “There’s not much to do here but merc work. Unless you want to join one of the gangs up in Poneva or become a slaver, you’re just a victim.” She shook her head, “And I’m not going to be a victim.”

Gail eyed the floor scathingly.

“I had a few run ins with slavers before the Rough Riders picked me up,” she murmured. “They chained my wings to my back and had me towing wagons around for them like some kind of pack animal.”

I fell silent and stared at my hooves. She was right. I wasn’t a merc, a gangster, or a slaver. I was a stable pony. But out there, it meant nothing to those people, especially Bone Charm. I was just a victim. I looked back down at my work and returned to it in silence.

I realized then that there were two kinds of wastelanders: survivors and victims.

And I was a victim.

I bit my lower lip so hard I almost drew blood. A few sluggish seconds passed us by in awkward quietude.

“Hmm…” Gail murmured, trying to break the ice. “I like your scarf.”

“Thanks. It’s … ah … a friend gave it to me,” I said. “She isn’t around anymore.”

Gail leaned against the table next to me. “We’ve all lost someone," she said, softly.

My eyes fluttered closed.

“I know.”

A few long minutes passed in silence as she watched me make my repairs. I noticed her eyeing the PipBuck on my foreleg.

“What’s that thing?”

“It’s a PipBuck,” I began, my tongue poking out of my lips as I focused on my work. “It’s like a terminal, but on your leg.”

“You look like you know a thing or two about arcane contraptions,” Gail said.

I chuckled, “Eh, I know my way around a wrench and a screw driver. I was an electrical engineer back at my stable.” I thought for a moment, frowning. “Still am.”

I wrinkled my nose at the stench of singed metal as I soldered in a spare wire I found at the bottom of my bags.

I finished with the cord and reassembled the radio.

“There she is, good as new,” I said, and switched it on. I cringed slightly as the radio flooded the room with deafening static.

Gail’s face lit up as she fiddled with the contraption.

“Thanks! Now we can have some music playing around here.”

The radio burped and hacked up random snippets of chatter in between its bouts of noise vomiting, and eventually picked up a channel that garnered our attention.

“- brrrfftt - now, my little ponies, it’s time for the news! Now you ponies remember when I told you ‘bout those two ponies who crawled themselves out of Stable 2 – brrrrffffffffttttttt ...”

And the signal died.

“Who was that?” I asked. My brow furrowed as I realized that Bone Charm was right about other stables opening too.

Gail groaned, twisting the tuner back and forth, trying to find the signal. “Sounded like DJ Pon-3. It’s really hard to get his signal around here.”

DJ Pon-3 … that name was familiar. The last I heard of that name, it was from a mare, and it was from a memory orb recorded 200 years ago.

“- brrrrffttttttt - gettin’ reports that one of those little ponies took out the raider nest in the heart of Ponyville ..."

My eyes widened.

‘A raider ... NEST?’ It took two merc groups to kill the furies that murdered my friends, and it took one pony to kill a nest of them?

That ... stable pony was … something.

The stallion on the radio continued, "... saved several pony captives - including the beloved – brrffttttttt - Ditzy Doo! Hey kid, tha – brrrfffffffftttttt” – and the signal broke out into static once more.

“Damn. Must be the clouds.”

“Hah - what?” I snickered. “There’s always clouds out though.”

“Yeah, but around these parts, the clouds and weather blow in from the Frozen Wastes and mix with the pegasi’s cloud cover. Makes it worse.”

I cocked an eyebrow at that. “The hell’s a cloud cover?”

“Well ever since the pegasi flew up and left everyone down on the surface for dead, they poofed up a layer of clouds to protect themselves. From us. The half dead survivors. Those feather-brained bastards ...” She shook her head. “They always say that they’re going to swoop down to the surface and save everyone. It’s been 200 years since the bombs fell and the cloud cover’s never opened up once.”

She leaned her back against the table and folded her forelegs across her chest. “Never trust a pegasus if you see one.”

“Wait, isn’t Night Sky a pegasus?”

Gail's beak dropped wide open.

“H-how’d you … never mind. Well, she’s a ‘Dashite’. She’s the kind of pegasus that got kicked out by her own kind.” She tapped her beak with a claw. “Kinda like a fallen angel, I guess.”

I pursed my lips as I remembered the stubs that used to be her wings. Dear Celestia, that was cruel. I heard from my mother that a pegasus without wings was like a unicorn without a horn. Or anyone without legs.

“Why … why’d they do that to her?”

The griffon shook her head, shrugging.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it. Never once did she tell us what happened. I don’t think I want to know – it takes a lot to get kicked out like that, I heard. Usually they just kill you … but taking off your wings …” She winced, unfurling one of hers. “Makes me mad how someone could've done that to her. If I lost mine ... I’d rather be dead … like the pegasi who were lucky enough to not get thrown down here.”

I lowered my eyes to my hooves. Wherever they were, if I was a pegasus, I wouldn’t want to come down here either.

Gail played with the radio’s tuner again, trying to pick up a signal. She sighed and gave up.

“So you said you’re tagging along with us for a bit?”

I found a holster lying on the floor and gestured to her if I could use it. Gail nodded, and I strapped it across my chest, stowing my pistol.

“Not for too long, I hope. I have a few things to do on my to-do list and I’m running out of time,” I added, with a hint of urgency. I was beginning to wonder when they were going to start their next contract.

“And what’s that?”

I sighed, hoping that I wouldn’t have to explain that to everyone I met. I watched her for a moment: she looked like someone I could trust.

“My stable’s Water Talisman broke, so I was planning on hitching a ride up to Poneva with you guys to find a replacement when your crew’s done with their contracts.” I stared at my hooves. “Six of us went out of those doors … and I’m the only one who’s still alive. I’m all they have left.”

Gail's eyes turned soft again. She lifted a paw - and hesitated. I looked up at her and said nothing as we stared at each other in silence. A tiny smile grazed her beak.

I felt her paw rest gently upon my shoulder.

She thought for a moment. “Well you’re in luck, because we’ve only got two contracts left unfinished. They’re pretty easy, I guess, so it won’t be too much of a hassle for you.”

“What kind of contracts? I mean, what are we going to do?”

The griffon made her way to another table and began reassembling a rifle she oiled up earlier.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to meet a caravan over by the old railroad station about ten miles out from here and escort them back to Dusktown. Then we’re going to lay down some good ol’wasteland justice on some pony-murdering zebra scum.”

My ears perked at that last part. I remembered the graves I saw earlier that day. The first time I ever heard about zebras was in a history book detailing their war that tore across Equestria. Images of a grisly looking pony with stripes, red eyes, and a menacing mouthful of serrated teeth came to mind when I heard that word.

I gulped. ‘They couldn’t possibly … actually look like that, right?‘

We went upstairs to the bar for some water, and found that everyone else was asleep. I pointed a hoof out the still darkened window.

“Well ... when’s tomorrow, because it seems like it's always night time to me.”