"No," I replied, pushing the pile of scrap back across the counter.

"’No?’ What, you need more scrap or somethin’?" The buck in front of me scowled, clearly wavering between irritation and confusion.

I kept my tone and face even, containing my own disgust. "I mean that I refuse to smelt you any pairs of hoofcuffs."

It's not as though I asked a customer’s occupation, or to see their cutie mark, or really anything else except whether they’re here to buy or sell. But when this particular green-coated pony with a grey mane approached my store in the early morning light and asked me to smelt him a few pairs of pony-sized hoofcuffs and collars, I could think of few logical explanations.

His previous confusion was evaporated by a rapidly boiling temper. He stomped one hoof in the dirt, causing the other salesponies to take notice as he shouted, "Why the fuck not?!"

I sighed and kept staring at him, forcing my composure as his companion started looking around nervously. "I don't sell to slavers."

He sneered at me at me, spitting his contempt onto the ground in a wad of tar-black chewing tobacco. “Where do you get off talkin’ to me like that?!”

The angry buck's companion, a nervous brown unicorn who kept shifting in place and looking around, ears twitching, finally intervened. “C’mon, Chain, let’s just get movin’. We don’t need that shit anyway.”

“Nah, no way, I ain’t gonna let this bitch tell me off!”

“Chain, calm down, take it easy.” The twitchy unicorn glanced around again, noticing the other traders that were now watching the proceedings carefully.

It was at this point I decided I’d had enough of these two stallions. I snorted and stabbed a hoof out past them. “Leave my store. You’re not welcome here.” My voice was distorted by my own rising annoyance.

“Oh I’ll show you welcome alright, you little-”

“CHAINLINK!”

Chainlink had already drawn his gun. The firearm was suspended in midair, and pointed at my face. His head snapped around to look at the other pony. My own magic held a knife next to Chainlink’s neck. But what had caused his comrade to be so insistent was the half dozen other shopkeepers nearby that had drawn guns on the pair of slavers.

For a moment, it looked as though Chainlink would shoot me despite the inevitable retaliation, grinding his teeth as he glared at me. Finally, he holstered his gun with a snarl.

“You’re just lucky you’ve got numbers, blue. Won’t always have other ponies t’ hide behind. C’mon, Bean, let’s get outta here.”

As the pair walked away from my storefront, I gasped out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, feeling a jittery energy shoot through me as adrenaline wore off. I ducked back into my home and sat down hard to take a few shuddering breaths, hidden in privacy. I’d have to pretend to be more friendly the next time I had to turn somepony away. Levitating a piece of polished metal in front of my face, I peeled my lips back to give my reflection the best disarming smile I could manage. Then I dropped the bowed plate with a sharp recoil and jumped back. I hoped it was just the distortion from the curve of the metal that made my reflection so creepy.

Either way, there wasn’t time for me to to sit and take a break, as I had an important errand to run that would take the rest of the day. Discarding my shaken nerves with a snort, I walked back outside to see a plump, orange earth pony approaching my store. Gumbo, the de facto mayor of Four Shoes, by virtue of being one of the founding merchants. He wiped a hoof across his sweaty brow as he watched the two slavers leaving Four Shoes, then turned to me with a nervous grin. “Well now, that certainly was somethin’, wan’nt it? You alraight?” His voice was deep and jovial, and I swear he always sounded (and looked, frankly) like he had just finished gorging on cupcakes.

I nodded curtly. “Just fine.” I didn’t understand what Gumbo was here for. I’d paid the rent for my store this month. We stared at each other awkwardly for a few long moments. Or rather, I stared at him, and he met my eyes, glanced around at the various items I had for sale, and occasionally glanced back at me again. My patience worn thin, I broke the silence. “Something you need?”

“Oh! Uh… No, no, nothin’ in pa’ticulah. Jus’ makin’ sure them ponies didn’t rile you up none.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“O’course, o’course. Ah suppose ah jus’ want t’ point out that y’shouldn’t be argumentative with ponies like them. Don’t want no gang trouble this fahr north o’ th’ harbor.”

Aha. A lecture. That made sense now. “I’d prefer not to be shot just as much as you. Now I have something I need to take care of. Anything else?”

The buck shook his head, jostling his jowls along with his salt-and-pepper mane as he turned to walk away. “Nothin’ terrible important. Y’all have a good one.”

As soon as Gumbo had left, I started packing away my store’s inventory, locking up everything in my safe except for one of my suits of reinforced leather barding and a hoofful of caps for carrying around. I donned the armor, one of the few with no adornments on the added metal plates protecting the shoulders and sides, and picked up my weathered pair of saddlebags along with the checklist for this trip. Opening up my footlocker to start loading the bags, I tossed a dejected glance at the section set aside for my coal, though I knew it would be just as close to empty as it had been the past few days. Every time I brought back a load from Shipper I tried to conserve it as best I could, but I could only stretch it out for a couple weeks before I had to trek through the Bayou again to the small zebra village.

My education in history could generously be described as “sketchy,” but I had gleaned enough about the particulars of coal (and Equestria’s lack thereof) in my studies of pre-war metalworking and industry. I wasn’t sure how the zebras living in Shipper had managed to get a stockpile, but as long as they were willing to trade it to me I didn’t much care. When I’d first arrived in New Oreins, I would gather plant life to dry out and burn for fuel. You could actually find real, living plants in the Bayou. But odds were that something living in or near the plants - or the plants themselves - were trying to kill you. The journey through this murderous corner of paradise was the only way to get to Shipper, but it was at least better than aimlessly wandering into it once every few days to find wood.

With the zebras’ order sheet floating next to me, I picked up each item on the list one at a time, checking it off and packing it away. In the couple of years I’d been making this trip, I’d never gotten an order wrong and I wasn’t about to start. It was mostly tools and cookware, with the occasional request for a hunting knife or a new door hinge. Once I was sure I had everything, I closed up my saddlebags and strapped them on my back with my magic (really, how did earth ponies manage this shit?) and grabbed my full canteen. Though I always hoped for a safe journey, “safe” was an entirely subjective concept in the Bayou, so I strapped my sheathed sword to one side. For good measure, I also took the beaten-up 10 mm pistol I had bought from Grit the previous day and attached the holster to my barding as well.

Walking to the edge of Four Shoes, I found a particular rusted skeleton of a carriage with a scratched “X” on the hood, indicating the start of my route. As the occasional patch of muck sucked at my hooves, I set out toward Shipper, following the path in my memory.

The landscape was a chaotic jumble of bombed-out suburban ruins and swampy waterways, as if one had been accidentally upended into the other. Which, I suppose, wasn’t entirely inaccurate. A straight path from one point to another was impossible, even without the ruins to pick through. The air around me was thick and humid, mist still lingering in ravines and craters along the broken roads. More oppressively, it was quiet. The silence unnerved me more than anything else about this journey, being used to the scuffle of hooves and mutter of voices around me almost all the time. Every slight jangling and rustling of my saddlebags felt like I was drawing the attention of hundreds of hidden eyes as I passed.

Up ahead of me, I saw the first landmark on the path: a sky wagon that had crashed into somepony’s house. I crouched my whole body low, my ears nervously laid back flat against my head. On my last trip just over two weeks ago, I swore I’d heard growling coming from inside the ruined house. I wasn’t eager to see if anypony was home this time. I was so fixated on the wreckage, giving it a wide berth, that I didn’t see the metal bar lying on the ground in front of me until I accidentally kicked it with my front hoof.

My entire body tensed as the bar went bouncing down a hill, hitting a small section of wall with a loud clang! I quickly pressed myself as low to the ground as I could, squashing into the mud, painfully aware of how loud my heart was beating, my eyes darting left and right as my ears swivelled and flicked at the air, trying to tease out any changes in my surroundings even as I kept my head frozen in place.

I don’t know how long I laid in the muck before finally working up the nerve to keep moving, picking myself out of the mud and scooping up the pole in my magic. Scrap metal was scrap metal. As a bonus, it would ensure I didn’t repeat this particular mistake.

I continued on my weaving path from landmark to landmark, my steps shakier than before, and my head on a swivel.

* * * * * * *

One of the last landmarks on the route was also the least subtle. A deep ravine had cut through the landscape sometime over the nearly two hundred years since the bombs and caused half of a Ministry of Morale building to collapse into it, the remainder left standing in place with a battered cross-section exposed to the elements. To cross this particular waterway required me to walk into the building to the second story and use the roof of the collapsed section as a bridge. The giant, faded poster of a pink pony with a candy-cane striped mane staring at me from the entry hallway did nothing for my nerves as I crossed the doorway.

My horn lit with green magic and I telekinetically drew my sword and pistol, though I’d rather use the former than the latter--I only had the one magazine and I wasn’t a terrific shot in the first place, to say nothing of the booming noise. All I’ve got to do is walk up one flight of stairs and then cross the river. Simple enough.

But as I approached the stairwell, a buzzing caught my ear and I thought recognized the sound of insect wings. I stopped, cocking my head to one side as I strained to hear.

It’s getting closer.

My pulse leapt into overdrive as I jumped away from the staircase and galloped towards the main lobby. It was a wide-open enough area that nothing would get the jump on me before I caught sight of it, and it gave me a place to drop my heavily-laden saddlebags. I wheeled around, aiming my vision and pistol quickly between the door and the hallway where I’d come from. Just as I turned back towards the hallway, half a dozen bloated, grotesque bugs rounded the corner, charging me quickly. Needle-like mouths half as long as my leg oozed below pairs of thirsty, green eyes.

Bloodsprites.

I panicked, and fired off a trio of shots in quick succession. All of them missed, the bullets embedding harmlessly in the wall as the building echoed the noise of the gun. Cursing, I ran away from their path towards the reception desk. My sword swung a wide arc in my magic as I took cover. A squelch-plop rewarded my wild swing, followed shortly by the clang of sword on ground. In a panic, I’d lost my magical grip on my blade after it left my sight. I crouched behind the desk, sucking down a few hurried breaths and holstering the pistol before leaping out and bolting for the stairwell, hooves clopping noisily on concrete. As I ran, I caught sight of my sword and swept it up in a fresh glow of magic, daring a glance over my shoulder. They were chasing me. I ran up two flights, stumbling and leaping over a filing cabinet, and turned to wait. A few breaths of buzzing air, and one of them rounded the corner. My sword swept out too low and missed, but my reflexes were better than my aim. I turned the blade and brought it back around towards me. This time, I cut through the wings of one of them. It dropped to the floor and tumbled down the stairs as I fled from the four still hungrily buzzing after me.

I galloped down a hallway and around a corner, into parts of the building I’d never been to. I needed another narrow gap so the little fuckers would have less room to maneuver. A doorway, a hole in a wall, something that could bottleneck them. I ran through an open door with light pouring through from the other side. The room had only a few rows of desks and no exit. A dead end. Turning and drawing the pistol again, I took aim at the doorway. The iron sights trembled in time with my thundering heart. The bloodsprites caught up and slowly rounded the sharp turn through the doorway. I pulled the trigger twice, and managed to hit one of the ugly things dead on, splattering it back against the wall behind it. The survivors dove straight for me, needle-mouths first. I galloped back towards the door, and wove to my right, vaulting over a desk. The tip of my sword met one of the sprites as it dove at me, skewering it. Before I reached the door, one of the remaining two dazed itself as its needle-mouth deflected off the metal plate armoring my shoulder. Back in the hallway again, I shook my sword vigorously to get the corpse off, and then turned in time to smash one of the bugs against the doorframe with the flat of my blade. With one bug remaining, I backed down the hallway away from the door until it came into view, flying slower now. The adrenaline pounding through me gave me the chance to line up one last sword swing, burying the blade halfway through the parasite.

For several tense seconds, I just stood still in the hallway, panting heavily and sweating in the midday humidity of the Bayou, listening for anything else to come my way. When I heard no more buzzing, I finally relaxed and dropped hard to my haunches to catch my breath. I levitated my canteen to my face and took a greedy gulp. The water was a bit irradiated, and it was only a little colder than I was, but it was delicious. Admittedly, bloodsprites weren’t exactly the most threatening predator in the Bayou, and one or two bites usually wouldn’t kill a pony, but they’d leave you weak and woozy after getting their fill, assuming they didn’t impale something important. And I had overheard stories of ponies being sucked dry by a swarm of them. I holstered the pistol, but looked around for something I could use to clean the ichor off of my sword. My eyes fell on a skeleton, a hole punched clean through the skull, huddled in the corner and wearing what was left of a purple business suit. I unceremoniously yanked away part of the tattered cloth and cleaned my sword before sheathing it again and walking back towards the stairwell so I could continue on to Shipper.

* * * * * * *

A little less than an hour later, the Bayou opened up to the familiar remains of a warehouse, the roof completely missing, with faded green lettering on the side declaring it to be the property of “Shipper’s Cargo Handling & Romance Novels.” An oversized sign had fallen onto its back and not been treated well by the ages, the edges showing a faded yellow pony ear, and what could have been a mane. I guessed it was a sign to go along with the name of the warehouse, but now it was just a ramp to get into the village of Shipper. Most of the homes looked like they were made from cargo containers, some of them stacked three high. Activity among the striped residents slowed until they recognized me, dissipating their brief suspicion.

One in particular with half an ear missing and a close-cropped mane excused himself from the conversation he was engaged in and greeted me with a nod of acknowledgement as he approached. “Blacksmith,” he said in a smooth, low voice. “It is good to see you again.” His accent, along with most of the zebras in Shipper, was strange and exotic, wholly different from the Oreins drawl I had grown accustomed to hearing.

“Nikale.” I answered, meeting his gaze. “I’ve got your order here.” I turned my head, unhooking my laden saddlebags from my back and bringing them forward. Following our established script, I opened up the saddlebags and hoofed him the list from my last visit. He opened them up and took inventory while I walked around the village, grateful for the chance to rest in a relatively safer environment than the husk of a Ministry building. It wasn’t unusual for me to wander off while Nikale took care of unloading my saddlebags and loading them back with coal, and the zebras were familiar enough with me that none of them bothered me.

Feeling a rumble in my stomach that I’d ignored for the past hour since leaving the MoM building, I pulled my lunch out of one of the pockets of my barding, a skewer of salted radhog wrapped in paper. The meat was delicious, and I briefly wondered how anypony had managed to get by as a vegetarian before the war. I pulled my canteen out again and cursed to myself when I realized there was only a tiny bit left. Looking around, I spotted a zebra cooking up a meal for the rest of the villagers, and had just finished buying water to refill my canteen when Nikale walked up to me with another zebra next to him. He had a look of concern on his face as he approached, giving me a nervous shudder. I let out a slow breath and met his eyes with confidence. “Something the matter, Nikale?”

There was a pause, a gap as he seemed to consider how to reply. “Yes,” he answered finally. The pause itself set me more at edge than the words he spoke. “I’m afraid we have a bit of an unusual request.” He motioned towards the younger zebra, who walked forward and presented me with a hunting rifle and a battle saddle.

I didn’t know this zebra, but that wasn’t a surprise. I looked at him for an explanation, and he glanced at Nikale before looking back to me. “It’s...I broke my gun. I need it to hunt for food. Can you fix it for me?”

I cocked one eye at him. “I don’t have any tools or spare parts with me. They’re all back at-” My ears flattened back against my head as I realized what the problem was. “...back at Four Shoes. You want me to make a second trip back, don’t you?”

Nikale nodded, drawing my attention to him again. “I know this is a difficult request, but we need every gun we have here. We will pay extra for this job.”

I leaned my head down to look at the gun, hovering it up into the air to study it, then the battle saddle. The gun itself was in decent condition, though the bolt could use a bit of greasing. The battle saddle, however, was more of a problem, and couldn’t pull a trigger without extensive repairs. I idly scratched a hoof at the ground as I estimated the cost. Truth be told, coal would be more valuable to me than caps, but estimating how much coal I could get for a repair job was harder than the cost in caps. I took another bite of meat from my radhog skewer and chewed it thoughtfully. Caps. Caps would be better at the moment. I was getting a bit low on my store’s funds to buy scrap metal from scavengers, not worryingly so, but I wanted to make sure I had a buffer. “225 caps.”

Nikale balked. “That is quite a price. Are you sure it would-”

I cut him off with a raised hoof. “I need to use my own spare parts for the gun, not to mention the fact that I need to rework the battle saddle entirely. Plus,” I looked up to him with a sting in my voice, “travel expenses.” After my fight with the bloodsprites earlier, I was particularly displeased with the prospect of making this trip again tomorrow or the next day.

“Very well,” he replied with a sigh. “How soon can you have it back?”

“Probably the day after tomorrow,” I answered honestly. When I got back to Four Shoes, it would be close to dusk, and I’d want to open up my store for a few hours, not to mention I had an overpowering desire to be at my forge again before going to sleep. “Will that be soon enough?” At the hesitation in their faces, I explained, “I’ll need time to repair it, and I won’t have enough to do the job right tonight. But because of the delay, I can knock the price down to 200.”

Nikale gave me a businesslike smile. “Then the day after tomorrow is fine. Thank you. I appreciate you doing this for us.”

I nodded back at him as I put on the battle saddle and picked up the gun in my magic. Collecting my saddlebags again, now laden full with coal and the order list for my next scheduled visit, I set off on the road again, back towards Four Shoes.

* * * * * * *

The trip home was blissfully uneventful, and my return to Four Shoes in the dying light of the day went similarly unnoticed. Admittedly, I had hesitated at the bank of the ravine bridged by the Ministry office, wary to re-enter the building, but couldn’t find another way across. My first few treks out through the Bayou had drawn a few curious questions, but I deflected them as best I could. Most of them were about as interested in me as I was in them, which started and ended with whether I was needing to buy something from their stores. They seemed more interested in what I was obtaining out in the Wasteland that I couldn’t get from Four Shoes itself, or the caravans passing through. And were our positions reversed, I can’t deny I’d be a little curious myself. Between the hoofful of ponies hunting and serving food, a couple general knick-knack stores and our local weapons dealers, the town should have been able to provide whatever anypony needed. There was even a pony who had managed to accumulate an inventory of pre-war smut magazines that was quite frankly impressive, given how rarely I’d seen any intact magazines at all.

After unloading my saddlebags in my house and bringing some of my store’s inventory out for display, I let myself relax, munching on the last of my Sugar Apple Bombs. Sure, I wasn’t looking forward to making the same trip back across the Bayou the day after tomorrow, but I was going to make a decent bit of money out of it, and truth be told I felt renewed confidence thanks to the six dead bloodsprites. My thoughts strayed to the battle saddle as I stood behind my counter in the dusk, my counter illuminated by a single lantern sitting on it. Luckily, battle saddles weren’t too rare, and I’d gotten my hooves on a few of them over the years, so determining what parts would need to be replaced was easy.

I closed up my shop about an hour later, though I’d had no customers except a mare who came by to sell me a pile of scrap metal. The rest of Four Shoes’ merchants were already packing up for the night, and I wanted to have time to do some metalworking before going to sleep.

In the privacy of my home, I took up the barding that I’d used that day and tilted my head, staring thoughtfully at the unadorned metal plating guarding the shoulders. It was scorched black, barring a few scratches and scrapes that exposed the metal underneath. Though I used this particular barding every time I made the journey to Shipper, I’d never thought of it as mine. But I could just wear it around Four Shoes, on colder days. Or really, I could wear it all the time. It wasn’t uncomfortable, and the voice of the businessmare in my head chimed in that modelling my own merchandise might attract sales. But that voice was drowned out by the more pleasing idea that I could make it mine. The way my sword was mine.

Yes. Yes, this armor would become my own, an indulgence perhaps, but one that I was more than willing to take. Ideas for decorations started flowing through my head at breakneck speeds, and I opened up my footlocker to yank out an old magazine, a propaganda piece from the war. The words and colors were faded, but all I really cared about was the iconography. Obviously, one shoulder I would have to adorn with something personal to me, maybe my cutie mark since the armor did cover my flank, but the other shoulder… I flipped page after page with my magic, sweeping my eyes over every emblem I saw and rejecting them after a moments’ visualization. I was almost to the end when my eyes fell upon an apple.

It was a picture promoting the Ministry of Wartime Technology, with an orange-coated mare standing over a design table with a proud stance and determination in her eyes, pointing to something while a ring of attentive younger ponies studied whatever mystery lay before them. The entire gathering was staged beneath a giant emblem that looked like three gears inside an apple, bisected by a sword. “Equestria Needs Bright Minds!” the blocky text declared. “Will YOU Build the Weapon to Wipe the Stripes? Apply to the Ministry of Wartime Technology TODAY!”

The earth pony leading the gathering drew my attention, and the similarity between her cutie mark of three apples and the proud emblem in the backdrop was not lost on me. This mare must have been the leader, or founder, of the Ministry of Wartime Technology. I looked into her green eyes, studying them. She looked as though she had an idea in her head, something she wanted to make, and she was rummaging through design documents and specifications, shaping them to her mental image. I wanted to acknowledge that drive somehow, even if it was two centuries late. The simplistically-stylized apple was visually appealing, and it would be easy to replicate.

I took a solid chunk of soot from my forge, taking several attempts to draw a sketch of the design I wanted on each shoulder. I lost count of how many times I angrily scrubbed off the ash, unsatisfied with my outline, before I finally had it. Setting the armor down on the ground, I laid down on my belly in front of it, the armor plate close to my face as I hovered up my makeshift engraving tool and began surgically tracing the designs. The sound of metal scratching and digging into metal whispered into the stillness of my home for hours, my eyes feeling heavy by the end of the task. I scrubbed away the leftover paint and admired my work in the flickering lantern light, setting the armor gingerly onto my table. On the right-shoulder armor, I’d etched an anvil, styled after the anvil in my own cutie mark, and on the left side, the outline of one of the orange mare’s apples from her cutie mark. I curled up in my bedroll, realizing I’d probably sleep in later than usual, but I decided it was worth the cost as I drifted into unconsciousness.

* * * * * * *

A few hours past dawn on the day I had promised Nikale his delivery, I started my trot through the Bayou again, carrying the repaired battle saddle and hunting rifle. I admit, wearing my newly-decorated barding gave me a little more bounce to my gait. I’d worn it all day at my store yesterday, and somepony had bought one of my other sets of armor, which the businessmare in me chalked up to advertising. With the money from the sale, I had considered bringing my saddlebags and negotiating with Nikale for coal instead of caps, but something felt dishonest about changing the agreed-upon deal after the fact. And hell, this was a decent chunk of hard cash I was going to collect. Between this job and the armor sale, I’d even have a decent savings tucked away. I could treat myself to a big meal tonight. Maybe use a portion of it to buy a stockpile of scrap off the next caravan to come into town, or see if they had any books on smithing. The ideas and possibilities of what to do with the money kept my spirits high, even as I re-entered the Ministry building.

My reverie was shattered by a cry of pain.

I was already on the second story of the Ministry building, approaching the gap where I could cross to the collapsed roof, when I heard it. And when I stopped to listen, other voices floated to my ears as well, coming from the opposite side of the ravine in angry shouts and cursing. Abandoning my passage across the ravine, I bolted up another flight of stairs to the third story and found a window facing the “bridge” to peer out of, trying to get some idea of what was going on. Hopefully while whoever was out there was still unaware of my presence. The water level was higher than it was the last time I passed through here. There was a twitchy unicorn next to a wide, flat boat with a giant fan on one side, tied to a piece of rebar jutting out of the collapsed section of the building.

Just as I wondered what he was waiting for (and why he looked familiar), two ponies came into view through the scraggly brush, though still some distance away, one of them yanking roughly on a chain and the other aiming a battle saddle-mounted rifle in the direction they’d come from. At the end of the chain were four zebras, heavy collars around their necks and hooked to the chain, hoofcuffs hobbling them to a slow shamble. One of the zebras I recognized as the owner of the hunting rifle I was supposed to be delivering.

Even from this distance I could see wounds on them, still dripping blood and staining the black-and-white coats. They’d fought back, that much was obvious; the slaver with the battle saddle was walking with a limp. He turned and bellowed something angrily at a zebra mare, stopping the whole procession as she cowered. Her face was half-covered in a spray of dried gore, as though a bucket of it had been tossed in her face some time ago. Or, I realized with a chill, somepony had been executed in front of her.

My head swam with anger and disgust. Frozen in place, I lay flat against the floor, my face inches from the half-broken window. My attention was swallowed by the sight of the freshly-captured slaves being marched to their fate.

Behind me, unnoticed, the sound of hooves on concrete approached.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Footnote: N/A

Alloy Shaper’s Smithy
Sales Journal

Author's Notes:

Nice try, Alloy, but killing a few bugs doesn't give you a level up.

As an aside, did you know that BBcode doesn't have a way to create a table? I didn't.