Once when I was sneaking through a raider camp looking for chems and small weapons to ‘acquire’ and sell, I came across a young filly. She was chained to a fence post; beaten, bruised, and bloody. She had been left to rot like the wood she was bound to. When I moved next to her, she lifted her head slowly and asked me if I were going to “Play” with her as well.

Sometimes, when you walk the wastes, you will come across things so horrible that all thought is pushed from your mind and you simply act. You will know it when you see it for yourself, and when your emotions grip you like a vice. It happens to the best of us. But it is seldom to our advantage, I’m afraid.

I always had a soft spot for children, and the little filly’s pathetic situation had sparked a fire within me. I was soon unable to control the inferno that was my rage. I slaughtered the entire camp. Most of them had no idea that an assassin walked among them, slipping between shadows and dragging bodies to dark corners. When the last two begged for mercy I broke their legs and dragged them to the filly. I told them to ask her for forgiveness.

It turned out that they were her parents.

On that day I learned a very valuable lesson. If you let your emotions dictate your actions, you will often end up doing something that you will regret.

Three weeks later, I learned another lesson when I came upon the trio on the road; the parents beating the little one senseless.

When it comes to raiders… just kill them all and spare someone the heartache.

I was in the Stable. I was… running? Why was I running? Why were the walls so tall? Was that… Mother?

It was! Mother was here! Why did everything seem so big? Wait, why was Mother here? I was scampering behind her, dodging the hurried legs of the ponies all around us as the world continued to confuse me.

I looked to my hooves, taking note of just how tiny they were. I was a filly. Oh… Oh! Of course! Mother had just taken me outside to learn about herbs and potions! How could I have forgotten?

Mother’s cloak flowed behind her, oscillating with her gait as she strolled through the bright halls. She was absolutely beautiful; dark green eyes intensely flashing with the same brilliance as the most alluring of emeralds. Her stride was elegant and practiced. She moved with the same graceful steps that only a dancer, or an expert in martial arts, is able to employ. She radiated confidence, her body practically singing out in exultation of the sheer strength bottled within her form. Scars warped and distorted the stripes running along her exposed neck; testament to countless battles fought, and countless opponents bested.

But it was her voice, dusky and exotic and mesmerizing, that I ached to hear. Nohta had inherited everything but her eyes, her mark, and her voice. That voice dredged up imagery of far away wilds, where unknowable beasts lurked in oily shadows. Imagery of smoking cook-fires and bubbling cauldrons sitting prominently in the interiors of wooden huts. Imagery of sharpened blades in the darkness, glistening with poison just before they struck.

Mother was an assassin, an alchemist, and a warrior. Mother was clever, and agile, and resourceful. Mother was strength, and beauty, and mystery.

She was warm, and kind, and gentle. She was cold, and deadly, and ruthless. She was two extremes melded into one glorious whole. Mother was a zebra. And for that, she was feared.

Mother walked before me, a veritable goddess in my young mind, and the ponies quaked at her passing. I followed in her wake, struggling to keep pace as her mere presence parted the crowds. She was wearing a satisfied smirk, and kept glancing over her shoulder to check on my progress. Every time her verdant eyes met mine, her grin would grow a little wider.

That voice that I yearned for called out to me, resonating through my ears like bittersweet chocolate. “That was a good lesson today, Candy. You’ve learned much already! Next time I’ll show you how to make a few simple poisons.”

My filly-self questioned her wisdom, “But, why would I want to make poison? I want to be a doctor, not a fighter!”

She nodded, speaking as she walked. “Even healers must be capable of defending themselves, little one. You need look no further than your father for proof of that.”

“Father is trying to teach me how to use his laser pistol.” I sighed, “I don’t think I’m very good at it.”

Mother stopped walking, turned, and lowered her head to look me in the eye. “No. You’re not.”

I stopped in my tracks, jaw falling in shock. Mother was able to hold her face for just a moment longer, then her lips scrunched up from her efforts to hold back her amusement. She snorted, and covered her face with a hoof, “Candy, you’re too easy!”

“Mom!” I playfully beat upon her covered shoulder with my tiny hooves as her dark voice chuckled in the middle of the hallway. Ponies skirted around us, eyeing us warily.

Mother’s tittering fit died off, and she grinned at me again, “There is no shame in acknowledging that you are not good at something, dear. I have never had an aptitude for repairing equipment, or for medicine. I have to rely upon others for those services.” She held a hoof under my chin, and my face curled into a smile at the touch. She continued, “But if you know that you are not good at something, then you must work to improve your skill. Or else, find another solution to your problem.”

Her hoof returned to the floor as her eyes held mine in their emerald grip. “You are your father’s daughter, love, but you are my daughter as well. One day you will find a weapon that will sing for you. It will obey your every whim. And you will understand every nuance of every note of its melody. But until that day, we will continue searching for its sweet music. And I will keep instructing you in what I know.”

She sat on her haunches, heedless of the ponies trying to avoid us, “I have been all across Equestria. I have fought opponents who wielded every kind of armament imaginable. None of them are invincible, daughter. Even the enemies whom you believe can not be felled will fall prey to the right weapon, or the right tactic. Sometimes, guns and bullets and knives and grenades and lasers are all just a burden. They can keep you from seeing just how easily your opponent may be dealt with; blind you to opportunities under your very nose. Do not fool yourself into believing that there is only one way to overcome adversity, Candy.”

She pulled a small vial of viscous, pink liquid out of one of her many pockets, holding it between us as she smiled. “Even the greatest of foes will be brought low if their bodies betray them. None alive can stand against you if they cannot breathe, little one.”

Nohta woke first, unable to extricate herself from the bedroll without waking me as well. I didn’t mind. At that point I felt that any action, no matter how simple, was preferable to letting my mind wander. Lying still only left me time to brood over unpleasant memories and worry about things to come. After a quick breakfast of centuries-old canned vegetables, we packed up our belongings and set out for Stable 76.

By midday the desert wind had become ferocious, blowing great clouds of dust into our path. Nohta had lowered her head, and was attempting to shield her eyes with the fabric of her hood. Unfortunately I was afforded no such luxury, and had to make do with wrapping the remains of my old lab-coat around my face in an attempt to block out the stinging winds. We must have looked like quite the sight; two weary travelers braving the perils of a desert sandstorm, occasionally kicking the odd tumbleweed out of our path as we made our way deeper into the desert.

We only found relief from the winds as we finally descended into the Stable’s canyon. The sky had long since darkened, leaving the two of us to navigate the trail towards our home by the light of my Pipbuck. It had taken us the entirety of the day to reach the familiar landmark, and I was looking forward to resting my hooves for a spell when we finally re-entered our home. Nohta was mostly concerned with other things.

“Candy,” Nohta scoffed, “why do you even have that thing on? You’re just telling everypony within eyesight that we’re out here. Remember what happened outside Mareon?”

“Oh, Nohta, please… We don’t have to worry about that here! Stable 76 has been kept hidden for decades! I doubt that more than a hoofful of outsiders have ever even bothered to come to this part of the desert.”

“And besides,” I continued, rolling my eyes as we plodded down the winding trail that snaked between the rocky cliffs rising up all around us, “I don’t know how you can see anything at all with it being as dark as it is.”

I was stuffing my old lab-coat back into my packs as we entered the Stable’s cave, when Nohta suddenly grasped my shoulder. Confused, I looked forward. The sight of what lay before me caused my jaw to drop.

The cave floor was coated in blood.

“Sis…” Nohta looked back to me, her eyes wide.

“What… Goddess, what happened here?” Confusion, terror, and curiosity mingled in my mind; each one fighting the others for dominance of my thoughts. What was going on? What should we do? What could have possibly happened here? We needed to know. I needed to know! But… I needed to do something else as well.

I glanced to my sister, her eyes darting through the darkness before us as she searched for clues. I needed to know. I had an obligation to the Stable! But… I also needed to keep my sister safe. That’s what Father would have wanted. Laying my hoof upon her shoulder and meeting her startled expression with my own worried but firm look, I continued forward. Proceeding carefully, I undid the latch of my pistol’s holster and descended into the cave, Nohta following just behind me.

We crept forward, over the rocky floor made slick with blood, and paused before the busted door. The gigantic, mangled steel cog that was Stable 76’s door lay heavy upon the cave floor, resembling a doormat before the open portal that led to our home. When we stepped over the door, into the Stable, all of my worries about what everypony would think of our return vanished.

Moonglow was there to greet us as we returned from our voyage. A cold, dead smile had been carved into his face, inviting us into a hellish scene of brutal insanity. He had been left hanging from the ceiling by a hook, his exposed vertebrae and internal organs dangling limply out of his shredded torso. His hind legs had been ripped from his body, carelessly discarded upon the floor like so much common refuse. Blood pooled underneath of him, and had been smeared across the windows of the nearby observation room. The dark blue robes that he was never seen without had been left in tatters, clinging to his blood-soaked body even as the crescent moon upon them was stained a deep, dark crimson. That same crimson liquid was coating the stairs and their rails, dripping down from the ceiling, and pooling by the door.

My lip quivered as my hoof rose to my muzzle in shock, “Luna...” I had never seen such a grotesque display of violence! The fetid reek of decaying organs and bodily fluids hung heavily in the stagnant air of the Stable’s entrance, nearly suffocating in its intensity. I felt sick, violated even, at the repugnance of the sight before me. Moonglow had been one of the kindest, sweetest, gentlest ponies I had ever known! He didn’t deserve to die like this! What monster could even fathom such a fate?

Nohta stayed silent, her tense posture betraying her anxiety. She crept inward, past the macabre scene and towards the first interior door. After she motioned me forward I moved alongside her, holding my hoof to my nose in an attempt to avoid the stench of death. My E.F.S. was showing no hostiles, so I latched my weapon back into place and moved deeper into Stable 76’s corridors alongside my sister as the two of us passed underneath the watchful gaze of one of the Stable’s wall-mounted cameras.

The door let out a soft hum as it opened for us, revealing that the rest of the Stable had been treated no better than the entrance. Severed limbs, trailing the bloody remnants of tendons connected to chunks of meat, lay scattered in every direction. Great patches of skin, with fur matted by blood, could be found pinned to the walls. Piles of organs lay rotting and reeking in nearly every corner. Some poor pony’s kidneys had been tied up with string, left dangling from one of the protruding light fixtures in the hallway. Decapitated heads, charred corpses, torsos impaled with sharpened bones… Goddess, it was too much.

A pleading breath escaped my quivering lips, “Luna… no… please…” I slumped against the doorframe and slid to my knees as I found my legs incapable of supporting my weight. The Stable… my home. How could this have happened? We had been careful! Excruciatingly careful! Nopony knew about the Stable!

Several of the light fixtures had been shot out, and the few that were left were flickering on and off, leaving the interior of the Stable in a state of nearly perpetual darkness save for the few fires still burning in isolated corners and the occasional spark arcing away from exposed electrical wires. Bullet holes and burn marks speckled the walls. Pipes had burst, spilling their contents into the hallways. Not all of it was water, and the reek of chemicals mixed with bodily fluids and death overpowered our nostrils. I was very nearly gagging from the grisly sights alone. But the intensely fetid stench that permeated the air seeped down our throats, despite our best efforts to avoid it, and threatened to push my already queasy stomach completely over the edge. The fetor invaded our bodies like a conquering warband, raping and pillaging our very souls in its relentless and malefic rampage.

Nohta lifted me to my hooves, ushering me further inside past the buzzing and crackling electrical wires dangling precariously from the gaping holes left by absent ceiling panels. We saw designs and words smeared onto the walls with blood. “FUCK YOU” was written, very plainly, above the door to the cafeteria, illuminated by the malicious, snarling flames dancing upon a pile of wooden debris. A giant, smiling face with X’s for eyes and a nasty, sharp-toothed grin awaited us inside the mare’s bathroom; I had the misfortune of looking directly at it as one of the ceiling panels liberated itself from its fixtures and fell directly behind us with an ear-splitting crash. As we continued in our search, moving from room to room, the distant reports of booming thuds and clangs could be felt or heard from deeper inside the Stable. So far, we had seen nopony. Nopony alive, that is.

I recognized so many of the faces I came across. I almost couldn’t bring myself to look. Cooks had been eviscerated by their own cutlery. Mutilated teachers were left to rot atop their desks, holding silent lectures for the small hills of tiny bodies in the corners of their classrooms. Maintenance ponies had been restrained by their own rolls of duct tape and bludgeoned by their own tools. Scribes from the library were identifiable by their violet stained muzzles, having been force-fed their own ink. There was no escaping the overwhelming presence of death. It followed us down every hallway, peered back at us through every door, and was reflected in the surface of every window. Nowhere were we able to find relief from the atrocity that had befallen our stable.

On weak and trembling legs, we made our way to the clinic, picking our way through the ravaged remains of our home. The normally neat and tidy clinic, my clinic, had been defiled beyond recognition. The cabinets had been torn from the walls, leaving their miscellaneous medical supplies scattered upon the floor. A ceiling panel was swinging to and fro above the operating table, threatening to come crashing down at any moment. A dark-green stallion lay upon the same table, his legs tied down and his chest cut open. His face had been mutilated, his eyelids ripped off and his tongue laying over his forehead. His intestines hung limply at his sides. Somepony had defecated in his open torso.

‘Repulsion’ doesn’t begin to describe the feeling that raced through my being. I braced myself against the doorframe as I vomited, no longer able to control my body’s reaction to my home’s violation. Purging myself of the scant contents of my stomach provided only a temporary relief, as the intense and suffocating stink poured back into my body soon after I had finished. My tears flowed freely, as my body relinquished its attempts to keep any measure of decorum. I couldn’t hold it any longer. I was nearing my breaking point…

I fell into a sobbing heap between the doorframe and my sister’s hooves.

Nohta didn’t shy away from my sickness, staying only inches away from me. Her eyes darted between darkened corners and dead bodies as she whispered anxiously into my ear, “Come on, Sis. We need to keep moving.” Nohta pulled my weeping form away from the clinic, wrapping a hoof around my shoulders to lift me back to my hooves. I turned into her embrace, letting her lead me down the dark passages as we proceeded past the clinic, classrooms, and library.

Descending down a flight of stairs, we made our way towards the armory and storage room, but found nothing besides empty shelves, spent bullet casings, pools of blood, and mutilated bodies. Whoever had done this had taken everything of value. The entire Stable’s worth of food, weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies had been plundered. They had even taken the spare clothing.

Nohta was whispering to me, worry cutting deeply into the usually blunt and forceful tones of her voice, “Sis, I don’t think anypony made it.”

I steadied myself against a rack of steel shelving and began to think aloud. It was a desperate and epic struggle to choke back the tears and simply speak. “We should… We should check the Overmare’s office and The T-Temple. They’re the deepest in-inside, and L-Luna may have preserved her most faithful.” The entire Stable wiped out? No… Goddess, please, not like this!

We staggered into Luna’s Temple, and my heart broke. The attackers had defiled The Temple as well. Luna’s stone statue, once a majestic and fearsome replica of the most powerful being to ever live, had been desecrated beyond repair. There were obscenities smeared onto her likeness with blood. Her horn and right wing had been broken off, and her entire body was pockmarked with bullet holes. The tapestries and wooden pews had been gathered into a flaming heap in the corner, the flames still flickering and dancing against the ruined interior walls. This was unbearable! How could anypony commit such sacrilege against The Dark Mother!

I moved closer to the broken effigy, wiping away tears and swallowing the lump in my throat. “No! Luna… G-Goddess, how could they?”

Attached to the base of the statue rested the plaque commemorating the deeds of The Goddess. I levitated away some of the charred debris and, in a voice still shaking with consternation and thick with emotion, read aloud, “In m-memory of Princess… L-Luna, the greatest amongst all p-ponies and the only… only known alicorn to have ever lived.” My vision had become blurry, making it hard to see the words in the gloom, but my faltering voice began to even out as the words left my lips. Clearing the tears away with a hoof, I continued reading. “She who f-fought back the tyranny of the sun, and gave us the night. S-she who brought order to chaos, and founded the nation of… nation of Equestria. She who banished the… the Nightmare, and brought peace t-to our dreams. May her moon lead us through this everlasting night. May her moon rise over us all.”

Nohta moved beside me, and brushed the ashes of the tapestries away from the four tablets that lay at Luna’s hooves before reading the first one aloud. Her voice wavered only slightly, betrayed by her own worry. “Truth number one: Fear not the darkness. For by peering into the unknown, you shall learn Honest things.”

The two of us shared a glance before reading the second tablet together, “Truth number two: Be faithful to friends and family. For Loyalty is among the greatest of virtues.”

I found some small measure of strength returning to my voice as the two of us continued, “Truth number three: Take pleasure in simple things. For Laughter is forever important.”

“Embrace the Night. For We shall guide our children through the darkness.” We finished reading the fourth tablet, our voices a strengthening chorus in the tenebrous temple.

The tablets of Luna’s truths had caught me, stopping my nightmarish descent. Her wisdom lifted my aching soul out of the pit of twisted despair brought on by the emotional turmoil of recent events. I was far from bursting into song, still left on the brink of madness as the hounds of misery nipped at my heels, but Luna’s tablets had left me grasping at the edge of the sinkhole. I found strength in those words, perhaps even enough to heave myself back onto the firm ground of hope. But whether or not I fell back into the void would be up to me.

My voice still trembled, but I no longer had to choke back tears. “Nohta,” I began, “something awful has taken place here. But we need to find out exactly what.” I gazed into the Luna’s eyes, hoping, praying that I might be afforded an opportunity to rectify this atrocity. “And if there are any survivors, they will need our help.” Nohta nodded grimly but kept silent, and the two of us exited The Temple.

Moving past The Temple, we found ourselves at the entrance to the Overmare’s office. The decor of death and obscenities smeared upon the walls gave way to a single, undamaged door illuminated by the flickering and humming bulb above it. We had checked nearly every room that anypony might have used to escape from the attackers. None of the safe-rooms had held survivors, and none of the major gathering places had been occupied. When we had swept through the residential halls, our calls into the darkness were only answered by the fading echoes of our own voices. I was beginning to lose hope of finding any survivors at all, but if anypony was left, they would be in here.

Nohta hit the button to open the Overmare’s office, but the door wouldn’t budge. Instead, it mocked us with a small and annoying noise. It reminded me of an alarm-clock.

My sister jabbed at the button again and again, but it just kept making the noise over and over, while the door stayed shut.

“Nohta, I believe that the door is locked.”

She wasn’t deterred in the slightest, “Duh. Hold on a sec, I’m using a trick Dust told me about.”

My brow arched with my confusion, but I bit my tongue and allowed her to continue. After a few more moments of mashing at the button, Nohta finally stopped and took a step back from the door. Turning around, and throwing her weight into it, she placed a thunderous buck right into the button. The clang of the impact reverberated and echoed off of the Stable’s interior walls.

I gasped, “Nohta! Be careful! You’re going to break it!”

Her reply wasn’t what I had expected, “Yup.” Just as I was about to ask why she wanted to break the poor button, she dug her screwdriver out of her pockets and jammed it into the newly-formed crevice between the button and the faceplate.

She manipulated the screwdriver with her front hooves as she spoke to me, “Stable doors are a little different from normal ones. See, some of them don’t have locks for you to pick. So you have to fiddle with the electronics underneath the button.” She adjusted the screwdriver slightly and continued moving it back and forth, “But if you overload the device’s circuits and cause damage to the internal systems in just the right way… “ She buried the screwdriver up to its hilt, applying leverage to the underside of the handle. There was a loud sizzling sound, followed by an electronic *pop,* as the door slid open. “ ...Then you can activate the emergency override, and open the door.”

Despite our surroundings, the barest hint of a smile crept across my lips at my sister’s accomplishment. “Nohta! That’s brilliant! Excellent work, dear!”

She chucked her screwdriver back into one of her myriad pockets and rubbed the back of her neck, “Eh, hehe. Thanks, Sis.”

What? That’s not like her… “Nohta? What’s wrong?”

She averted her gaze, taking great strides to avoid eye contact, “Well… I think this is the first time you ever said anything good about my picking locks.”

Perhaps I had been too hard on her? Well, I knew of only one way to fix that. “Yes well, there is a time and place for everything, dear sister. Even the typically clandestine pursuit of lock picking can be used in an altruistic vein. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that your talents aren’t useful.”

She turned to the side, probably trying to conceal her grin, and got a good look at the the inside of the Overmare’s office.

“Sis, look.” Nohta was pointing to the Overmare’s desk.

“What, dear?”

“It’s clean!” She pointed out the obvious that I had somehow missed, “This room isn’t bloody and dark like the rest of the Stable. Maybe the terminal still works? Maybe the Overmare left a message for The Caravan?”

The two of us hurried into the office before Nohta pulled the latch on the inside of the door, allowing it to close behind us. Again, a barrier had been placed between myself and the horrors of the wasteland, and I was immediately grateful for it. It was so much easier to think when I wasn’t being bombarded with a constant reminder of horror and death. I worked quickly, checking the Overmare’s terminal for... something… anything! To tell the truth, I was more grasping at straws than anything else. But I wasn’t going to let something like this go without exhausting every single option available to me. In my frantic state, it took a full ten seconds before I realized that I didn’t have the Overmare’s password.

“I... can’t get in. I don’t know the password.” I admitted to Nohta, shame on my face. It had been such a good idea too! Ugh! What were we going to do? This could be our only shot at discerning what had happened to our home! Think, Candy, think! You have to figure this out! You must!

Nohta broke my concentration with her own suggestion. “What do you mean, you ‘Can’t get in?’ Just fire it up like a normal terminal!” She stomped a hoof, insisting that I simply ‘make it work.’

Frazzled nerves allowed frustration to seep into my voice, “Nohta, the only Stable-Tec terminal I’ve ever used is the one in the clinic, and I had to log in with my password every time I wanted to use it. That’s how terminals work! They use passwords!”

Staring at me with a blank expression, she offered her most logical and simple piece of advice. “So… hack it.” I should have expected as much from her.

“Nohta, I can’t…” Well, actually… I wasn’t exactly an expert on this sort of thing, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Wasn’t it at least worth an attempt? “Hold on a minute.”

I opened up my saddlebags and levitated out the “Big Book of Arcane Sciences.” I started reading.

After nearly twenty minutes, my studies paid off. I had acquired a semblance of understanding for the basics of hacking a terminal. The system was actually fairly simple, if one knew what to look for.

But that didn’t stop it from feeling wrong, like an invasion of privacy. I had to talk myself through it, “Okay, first time for everything, Candy. You can do this! It’s not like you’re trying to hack into the Overmare’s terminal to give yourself extra Sparkle-Cola tickets or anything selfish. We’re doing this for good…” I looked to Nohta, “Right, little sister?”

She had been busying herself with the pistol gifted to her by Margarita, loading one of the magazines with the massive 12.77mm bullets. She stared up at me from her weapon, looking rather like a foal who had been called on to answer a question in class whilst daydreaming, “Uh… Sure, Sis.”

My hooves clicked and clacked against the keys, aided occasionally by a small tendril of crimson that would snake its way from my horn to the device. “Right. Okay, I just need to open up the…. there we are. Now to… yes, yes that looks like the illustration in the book. And now I just have to bypass the SSL system so we can get to the GB driver through the open-source TCP program and-”

Nohta groaned, “Ugh, Candy… you’re killing me, here! Can you just hack the damn thing and spare me the technical mumbo-jumbo?”

I continued in my ministrations, absentmindedly working out a simple puzzle involving letters and numbers, “Well, some of us are not as accustomed to the ‘rough and tumble’ approach as you are, dear sister. As it turns out, hacking terminals requires a fair amount of patience and finesse. Things which you have unfortunately- “ The monitor beeped, simultaneously disrupting my lecture and indicating that I had successfully worked out the puzzle. “Oh. I’m in.”

The correct password (Eclipse) was easy enough to find amidst its erroneous companions. After entering it, the entirety of the Overmare’s files lay at my hooftips. It was surprising to see just how little that amounted to.

Nearly everything of interest had already been deleted. Of the few files left, the first was a sort of “to-do” list detailing little notes about personnel and current resources as well as daily plans, both personal and professional.

The second was a dossier of all the members of the current expedition for resources. She had detailed biographies for each one of us. They included physical attributes (Ugh, stripes are far from garish), personality profiles (I was not stuck-up!), useful skills (Well, of course I was an excellent doctor! I had a superb teacher.), and every other pertinent bit of information you could possibly imagine (Self-centered tendencies? How preposterous!). Oh, and it had a bit of information about Nohta as well.

The third file was encrypted, leaving me with no way to open it. I downloaded it anyway, desperate for anything that might help us discern what had happened to our home and finding no pressing need to keep the vast amounts of memory on my Pipbuck free. With a bit of luck, and quite a bit more time spent reading the science book, I believed that I could possibly find a workaround for accessing the file.

Now, I know that this is beginning to look pretty bad, as if I cared about some log in a terminal more than the pony that had written it. And, granted, I was rather engrossed in my snooping into the Overmare’s terminal. But I was doing this to try and find a way to help!

You’re not buying it are you? Okay, I’ll admit it… My curiosity had gotten the better of me. Oh, don’t judge me for that! How many times are you really afforded the opportunity to learn what others feel about you?

Oh? Really? Well I suppose it would be rather difficult for them to hide anything at all from you while they are in that state. Though I can only imagine how many wildly inaccurate details were recorded due to your employing that means of gathering information. Moving on…

The very last entry was also the most recent. It was an audio file. I downloaded it to my Pipbuck, setting the file to play for Nohta and myself.

“It’s been just over a week since The Caravan left. The excitement has died down quite a bit and most folks are finally starting to get used to the absence of some of their friends. I still miss my son. I’m proud of his volunteering for The Caravan, but mothers will always worry. His little sister misses him so much.”

Nohta stopped tinkering with her gun and looked up at me, “That’s the Overmare’s personal log! Maybe it will tell us what happened?”

I hushed her, “Shh.”

“-was going over the numbers yesterday, and noticed a discrepancy in some of the items we were supposed to have stored away. I’m not sure if it was just shoddy bookkeeping or if somepony… or that little half-breed… is stealing from our reserves. I’ll have to go over the video records to figure out who it was. Whatever the case may be, I don’t plan on this being a pleasant endeavor.”

“Wow. I knew that most of them didn’t like me, but I didn’t think that they believed I would actually steal from them.”

“Nohta, shh! I can’t seem to pause this.”

“-opefully all of this will be resolved by the time The Caravan returns. That way we can… wait… somepony is back already. No… Wait. Oh no. No, no, no, no…” The sounds of papers and quills being shoved off of the desk accompanied the slam of a hoof. Looking about the room, I noticed the scattered stationary had been flung to the side, and that the Overmare’s desk had a small indentation of a hoof over the button for the intercom system. She’d slammed the device so hard that she had broken it. “ATTENTION EVERYPONY! THIS IS THE OVERMARE! PLEASE DROP WHAT YOU ARE DOING IMMEDIATELY AND REPORT TO THE ARMORY! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!”

The sounds of gunfire and screams, muffled through the thick metal walls, poured out of my Pipbuck’s speaker. The sounds were too dampened by the layers of steel and concrete that lay between the Overmare’s microphone and their sources, but my imagination led me to awful places. It was surely only my mind playing tricks on me, right? I didn’t want to hear that Caramel’s last moments had been spent in a screaming resistance. I didn’t want to know that Pearl had been bludgeoned and then dragged away. I didn’t want to hear Pipe Sleeves screaming in agony as her assailant shot her down. I didn’t… wait. Now that I thought of it, why hadn’t I seen them? There were so many of my friends and neighbors that I hadn’t seen since returning to the Stable! Could they have escaped? Where had they gone?

I could hear the sound of the Overmare shuffling things around in her desk. Then the soft click of a revolver as she answered my question. My stable-mates had not escaped. But neither had they been slaughtered.

“Slavers? Here? How? Surely The Caravan wouldn’t sell us out. Dust and Dream Chaser would have told everypony not to reveal our location… think Wintergreen, think!” There was an audible gasp as the Overmare came upon the beginnings of a plan. “The Caravan! Of course! Yes, that should work! But, how do I tell them where they’re taking us? Ahh stupid! I need a Mintal!”

Slavers? Of course! That would account for the lack of… wait. No, that didn’t make any sense at all! Ugh! This entire travesty was mindboggling! Nothing about any of this made sense! By the Moon, what had happened here?

I heard the sound of a small, metal box being opened and shut, then the hurried sounds of chewing. The Overmare resumed her monologue shortly after.

“Ok, so here’s what....Ya. Ya, they won’t think of that. Perfect. Okay, to whomever is listening to this right now, I have a task for you.” The sound of a metal drawer being yanked open and the faint tinkle of a levitation spell joined the sound of the Overmare’s voice coming from my Pipbuck. “In my desk you will find an empty bottle. Peel the label off of the bottle.” Hurried scratching and the familiar clink of a quill colliding with an inkpot drifted through my speaker. “On the backside of the label, you will find the tracking codes for every Department Head in the Stable. Enter those codes into your Pipbuck’s map and tracking feature and you should be able to find us, even if the slavers take us halfway across Equestria. The only way this could fail is if the slavers chop off our Pipbuck legs, and they won’t want to damage their property before they can sell us.”

I pulled open the drawers, and found a green bottle. Our Overmare had apparently acquired a taste for scotch. The label peeled back with almost no resistance; it had been removed before. I found that several lengthy codes had been hastily scrawled on the underside of the label. On my Pipbuck, the screaming and gunfire were getting louder as the attackers got closer to the Overmare’s office.

“They’re almost here. Luna help us. Make sure you get the codes! They’ll lead you to us. Luna be with us all... ”

Loud banging blared through the Overmare’s door from my Pipbuck before the recording ended. I looked up at the door, and saw the impact points of bullets just to the left of the frame. The Overmare had not gone down without a fight. But judging by the lack of blood in this room, she had probably depleted her supply of ammunition and been corralled by the slavers soon after.

Still, something was off, “I don’t understand.”

Nohta pulled her hood back, looking me in the eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Why would slavers violate our home like this? They didn’t need to profane the Temple or mutilate ponies. There’s no profit in it.” I could understand some of the dead bodies, sure. A slave raid was bound to end with a few dead. But why would slavers go through the trouble of hanging ponies by their intestines, or smearing obscenities on the wall, or that gruesome display in the clinic?

Realization struck with an awful intensity. Slavers wouldn’t. But I could think of another group that would.

The terminal beeped, startling me. I hoofed a few buttons, and saw that the camera feed was detecting motion at the entrance.

“Nohta, we have company. And they brought a flamethrower.”

I had been able to discern so far that this was the gang of raiders led by “The Pyro.” He (or she, I couldn't really tell with the bulky, flame-retardant metal armor and gas mask that covered all of the pony’s features) was the one carrying the massive tank of presumably flammable liquid on their back connected to twin nozzles running along the pony’s sides. The rest of the raiders were wearing crude barding comprised of hide or scrap metal as well as an assortment of improvised helmets made from what appeared to be pre-war cooking utensils, leather scraps, animal bones, street signs, and anything else they could find. None of them looked to be rather friendly, brandishing their simple cudgels and firearms with eager and malevolent grins.

We had waited too long to start moving. In my frightened state, I had somehow convinced myself that it would be a good idea to try and gather intel on the raiders by staying in the Overmare’s office and watching them through the cameras. If we had started moving sooner, we wouldn’t be trapped in the tiny room, watching their numbers slowly advance on our position.

Nohta was going through our supplies, taking inventory of our ammunition. With a confused and desperate expression, she looked up to me, “Candy, we don’t have enough. I mean, maybe if I can make every shot with this gun count, but… “ She trailed off, not wanting to speak of how dire our chances actually were. “Sis, I’ve never even shot a gun before, and this thing… “ She held the mouth-cannon in her hooves, as the two of us pondered the recoil inherent in such a large caliber of ammunition. I knew how hard it was for my sister to admit to what she would perceive as weakness. The acknowledgement on her part spoke volumes about the severity of our situation.

She continued, her brow furrowed in worry, “We’re gonna have to hope that I can either take some of them out with my hooves and knife, or we’re gonna have to pick up ammo and weapons as we go.”

Part of me wanted to argue that we might have been able to talk our way out of this, but after having spent the better part of three days healing wounds caused by raiders just like this gang, and hearing stories about their brutality, I knew better than to hope for a peaceful resolution. There were also the lovely little snippets of information that we had gathered through the Overmare’s surveillance devices. Such as the fact that the raiders were apparently planning on eating us. After raping us. And skinning us alive.

I found myself agreeing more and more with Mother’s warning.

I sighed, “Alright, let’s come up with a plan. We’re two against... how many?” The odds were horribly in their favor.

“About thirty, maybe more outside.” She slid a fresh clip into her pistol and pulled back on something. I saw a massive bullet slide into place. If we were lucky, that bullet would kill somepony. Goddess, what a terrible thought…

This was going to be a bad night. We were either going to wind up dead, or responsible for the deaths of a lot of ponies. I didn’t want either, but I knew which one I preferred.

“Nohta,” I began, “If we’re really careful, and a little bit lucky, we can get through this. Be careful, okay? I love you.”

She froze. Her response was rigid, and cold. “No.”

“Nohta, we need to exercise caution! We can’t just barge in there and start shooting! We’ll get killed in seconds!”

“I’m not talking about that!” She looked directly at me, tears welling in her eyes as she let her emotion carry her voice. “You don’t get to say that, okay? That was the last thing Mom said to me… It was the last thing Dad told us… You don’t get to say that! I’m not letting you die here. Everything else is fucked and everyone else I ever cared about is dead! I’m not losing you too!”

“Nohta... ”

“Check your pistol. Make sure it’s on the right setting.” She was rummaging through our supplies, searching for anything we could use in the coming fight.

I drew my laser pistol, checked the energy cell, and re-holstered it. “Okay, anything else?”

She sighed as she looked me over, “We should have gotten you some armor.”

We packed everything we didn’t need for fighting into our various bags, while our potions and ammunition lay in our pockets for easy access. Nohta pulled her hood back over her eyes and crouched low, then hit the light switch in the room as well as the latch on the door and crept out into the corridor. I followed as quietly as I could, fearing every small noise that I made.

My E.F.S. was filled with hostiles. The closest three were meandering through The Temple. The two of us edged up to the doorway, and Nohta snuck inside when all three raiders were busy examining the ravaged statue of Luna. I stayed in the hall by the door, peeking around the frame as I hugged the wall. Not wanting to risk somepony seeing the glow from my horn, I undid the latch on my pistol’s holster with a hoof, and surveyed the scene which lay before me. None of the raiders had guns. Nohta kept to the shadows cast by the pillars and broken pews, moving only when the three raiders were otherwise occupied.

And they were doing a wonderful job of distracting themselves.

A shrill voice squeaked out of a deep-red unicorn mare, “Hey Grump, get a load of this shit! Is this the statue we’re supposed to fuck up?”

A light green earth stallion answered his distaff counterpart with a shrug, “I don’t know.” Turning to the third raider, he whined, “Hey Lump, when’s the boss gonna let us eat? I’m hungry.”

The brown stallion closest to the door stopped examining the shadow in which Nohta was hidden, and turned to his companions, “Probably when the two of you finally do as you’re told and smash that damn statue! We ain’t gettin’ nothing until we find the fucking brats that Lasher saw scurry in here, so hurry the fuck up!”

Grump whined louder, “But why do we have to break the statue? It’s pretty.”

Nohta inched closer.

Lump swore, and pointed at Luna’s likeness, “I swear to that fucking bitch right there… if you weren’t my brother and sister I’d fucking kill both of you dumbasses. Look, the boss thinks there’s treasure inside, so just smash the shit and let’s go!”

The red mare squeaked, “Treasure? Like gold? The fuck we gonna do with gold you jackass?”

“It doesn’t matter what we would do with gold, Thump, we ain’t gettin it. But the boss wants it, and I ain’t getting turned into fucking fat-flank fricassee on account of your not following orders!” He moved next to his siblings, and reared back on his hind-legs, preparing to strike the statue, “Here! Since you’re so slow, I’ll show you how it’s done!”

I saw a glint of metal near Nohta’s muzzle, before her cloak whirled out behind her as she rose to her full, two-legged height behind the rearing stallion. She grasped Lump’s hooves in her own, tying his body up in her strength, and jerked her own head to the side in a violent, stabbing motion. Judging by the stream of sanguine cascading to the floor, as well as the startled expressions of the other two raiders, she had slit his throat with her knife.

His limp body fell to the side as Nohta leapt at the red unicorn, catching her before she could react. Nohta planted a hoof squarely in her face, followed by another, and another. The mare withered under Nohta’s brutal assault, grunting and screaming as her features were beaten to a pulpy mess of exposed flesh and broken bone.

Grump was finally startled into action. He roared and charged at Nohta, knocking her off of Thump’s body and sending the two of them rolling across the floor. Nohta’s knife went sailing through the air as she gasped from the impact, the metal of the blade ringing against the floor in the middle of the room. The wind had been knocked out of her, leaving my sister wheezing for breath as she only just barely dodged a heavy blow that would have surely crushed her head. She ducked out from underneath of him and managed to get back to her hooves just before Grump slammed into her again, pinning her against the base of Luna’s statue. His thundering stomps were fueled by his rage; every attack eliciting a terse grunt or an awful, shrieking cry from Nohta as blood spurted out of her nose and away from her split lips. Her hooves were completely occupied with trying to deflect his blows, redirecting most of his kicks to land harmlessly behind her where his attacks left spiderweb-cracks along the base of the stone replica of The Goddess.

I sprinted into The Temple eager to help my sister, but found myself unsure of what to do. I’d just get into Nohta’s way if I tried to enter into their melee, and my pistol, while much quieter than a conventional firearm, would just alert more of the raiders to our presence. There had to be something I could do! I looked left and right, scanning my available options for the best course of action. As I looked down, the twinkle of reflected firelight before my hooves gave me a third option.

Nohta was squirming underneath of her assailant, deflecting his stomps and jabbing at his ribs, but unable to get out of his reach. One of his blows connected with her muzzle, bloodying her nose and causing her to cry out in pain. She moved her head to the side, dodging his followup attack by a fraction of an inch, before his hoof connected with one of Luna’s hooves. The brute’s attack shattered the stone, causing the statue to teeter in place before collapsing forward. Nohta and Grump flung themselves away, but Nohta had gotten her cloak caught underneath Luna’s outstretched wing, pinning her in place.

Grump righted himself and dashed over to her, preparing to slam his hooves into whatever part of her he could reach, when my magic lit the room in a deep-red glow. The light was emanating from my horn, and the knife I had just buried in his shoulder.

Grump cried out and fell backwards. I retrieved the knife and stabbed at him again, this time nicking his carotid artery. Tears flowed freely down my panic-stricken face to moisten the fur of my cheeks as I gasped, hyperventilating from a mixture of terror, rage, and grief.

“No! Fuck! Stop!” He screamed, flailing his hooves in front of himself in an attempt to ward off the blade. The knife darted between his limbs, sinking into his exposed hide over and over again. Blood spurted onto the floor of The Temple and across my wide-eyed face, but I was too distraught to care. I brought the knife down again. He yelped in pain, but I just… I just…

I’m sorry. I… Killing the unicorn, Powder, was a bad experience, mostly because she was my first. And the blue pegasus had been correct; it does get easier after the first. Alarmingly easier, given the right circumstances. I’ve killed… goodness, I’m not even sure how many ponies by now.

But this… It is so much different when there isn’t a simple trigger to pull or a spell from your Pipbuck to guide your actions. You can’t calculate or think. You can’t activate a command and slip into a soft and easy trance. You can’t submit yourself to any sort of assistance. You can’t give yourself any sort of barrier. You can’t make it easier. If my memory serves me correctly then you know, as well as I do, that you can’t be cold about killing when the only thing you’re using is a sharpened edge. It’s too focused, too close, too real. All that you know is reduced to yourself, the blade, and your opponent. Everything is reduced to simple action, driven by instinct and emotion.

And after having nearly everything that I held dear torn away from me, I had a lot of pent-up emotion that I needed to let out.

“Sis…”

Blood arced in the air as I brought the blade upwards, splashing crimson droplets frenetically in all directions.

“Sis.”

A wet, squelching noise, as the knife fell again to bury itself in flesh that was already losing its warmth.

“Candy!”

The knife clanged to the floor as my magic dissipated, splashing into the shallow and growing pool of crimson to heave tiny droplets of blood upon my already-stained legs. The light of the fire in the corner flickered and danced, illuminating The Temple and allowing me to see the body of what had once been a pony underneath my hooves. Now it was… unrecognizable. Hot stinging tears fell from my face to disappear into the deepening pool of blood at my hooves. My breath came out ragged, and in short gusts, as I stepped off of the body and looked to the bleary image of my sister.

She was eyeing me with a stunned, wary expression, having freed herself of her imprisonment. She was cautiously inching closer to me as a crimson river gushed down her face. Her anxious words came out garbled and croaky, “Hey, Sis?” She paused, and had to spit a gob of congealed red out of her mouth to speak properly, the blob hitting the floor with a wet smack. “Calm down, okay? It’s gonna be alright.”

My magic reached out to her, and the newfound pain in my muzzle grew to an unbearable level. “Nohta, your face! Stay still, sister, I’m here!”

She moved closer to me, waving her hooves as if to dismiss me. Why was she doing that? She knew better than to move while I was trying to work! “Candy, I’m fine. See? Just a little blood. No big deal.” She stepped right up to me, resting a hoof on my shoulder. “You’ve got more blood on you than I’ve got on me.”

Her reassurance came as I had finished casting one of several spells to staunch her bleeding and mend the bruised tissue of her face. I felt my heart calm itself by a fraction as I finished my medical ministrations. I was left panting for breath as relief washed over me. “There. You’re okay, sister. Thank The Goddess… you’re okay.”

“Sis… That was just a buck to the face. I’ve had a lot worse before.” She was acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

How could I make her see? This was so much different! So much worse! How could I make her understand? “Yes, dear, but this raider,” I glanced at the carved and mutilated remains of the green buck as my voice wavered uncomfortably, “wasn’t just going to beat you up. He was trying to kill you!” I shuddered at the thought.

She began to lose her patience, her voice steadily rising until she began to yell, “Candy, I know that! They’re all trying to kill us! The only way we’re gonna get out of here alive is if we end up killing them first! I can see that this shit is getting to you, but you need to pull yourself together! We won’t last long if you’re falling apart every time you-”

I cut her off, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry…” I couldn’t hold it in any longer, the entire weight of our situation came down on me all at once. Father. The Caravan. Spicy Salsa. Dust. Seven Card. Cream Puff. Powder. Dad. The patients in Mareon. The entire Stable. Caramel. Pearl Grey. Pipe Sleeves. Daddy… I didn’t want to cry in front of her. I had to be the elder sister. The strong one. I had to… Had to…

I had to let it out. I couldn’t hold it anymore. I was done. I couldn’t do this! Not anymore! Luna… Please… Tell me this was just a dream… just a wayward nightmare… Please?

I fell into Nohta’s chest, my weeping eyes slamming shut as my hooves held onto the only thing I had left in this world. Nohta held my shaking, sobbing form in her hooves, and sighed into my ear, “Fuck, Sis…”

I’m not entirely sure how long we remained in that position, with me sobbing into Nohta’s mane and the hood of her cloak as we sat beside the fallen remains of the statue. We were alone, just the two of us, surrounded by death. How could things have gone so wrong? We weren’t ready for this! How could we be? No one could ever be ready for this! This wasn’t ever supposed to happen!

It took a long time. That’s as much definition as I can bestow upon that embrace. But eventually, I had managed to ride the storm out by clinging to my little Nohta-sized life raft. I had only just managed to keep my head above the water, and even if I was spluttering and choking, I hadn’t drowned yet.

I was still struggling to keep my voice constant when I spoke, “This cloak m-makes you look like M-Mother.”

Nohta snorted, and I could tell by her tone that she was grinning, “Thanks.”

“The last time I c-cried into this cloak, she had j-just told me that she was leaving for The Caravan trip.”

I could feel her breath in my mane as she whispered, “That must have been…”

I nodded, “Her last one. She c-came back sick afterwards.” I wiped my eyes and pulled away from her, “I’m sorry, Nohta. I’m not doing a very good job of being a big sister, am I?”

Her brow furrowed, “What? What are you talking about?”

I stamped my hoof, “This is my fault! I’m supposed to be looking out for the both of us! When I first saw that the Stable had been attacked, I should have grabbed you and ran straight back to Mareon!”

She shook her head, showing off a perplexingly smug grin, “Your fault? You’re the one looking out for the both of us? Heh, I guess I’ve been doing it wrong all along… “ After noting my confusion, she continued, “Candy, you’re only three years older than me. I may be younger than you, but I’m not your baby sister anymore.”

She kept going, this time without being so flippant, “You weren’t listening, were you? To the raiders? They saw us come in here. They were probably waiting on top of the canyon, and just watched us walk into the cave.”

“I…” They knew all along? Then my Pipbuck lamp…

“We’ve been stuck in here since then, Sis. We just didn’t know it, yet. Ponies that would do this,” she pointed to the defiled walls and decorations of The Temple, “for fun are not the kind of ponies that would just let us walk away.”

I started again, seeking catharsis in confession, “Nohta… I’m sorry! This is still my fault! I didn’t pay attention to your warning about the light and-”

She cut me off, holding a hoof to my muzzle, “Hey! Don’t blame yourself, Sis, neither of us had any way to know. The raiders are the ones at fault here.” Her tone darkened even as her eyes smouldered with a cold fury. “Blame them for being psychotic, murdering fucks. Hell, help me take some of ‘em out.” A slow, vicious grin crept across her lips, “Maybe a little revenge will make you feel better.”

“Revenge? Seriously? Nohta I- ” How could I?

She stood up, interrupting me, “Okay, listen… Why did you attack that guy?”

Well that was an easy question. “He was trying to hurt you.”

“Right, you wanted to protect me. I get that. You know why I killed those other two?” She waved a hoof at the bodies of Lump and Thump.

I stared back at her. She loved to fight. Did she really have a reason beyond ‘Kill the bad guys?’

“I was trying to protect you, Sis. I might be able to sneak past these creeps, but you… Not so much. If they saw or heard you, they’d… “ She glanced away for just a moment, averting her gaze as if she were afraid to speak clearly. Nohta had always been so blunt though, why was she acting this way now? After the briefest moment of pause, she returned her gaze to my own and continued with a touch more steel in her voice. “Sis, they’d kill you. They’d do awful things first, and then they would kill you. I’m not going to let that happen.” She shook her head, placing emphasis on her last sentence as the light of the flaming debris danced in her amethyst eyes.

“So…” I trailed off.

“So here’s the deal. You protect me, while I protect you. Think of it as trying to keep me from getting hurt, because that’s exactly what I’m trying to do for you. If you can watch my back, while I take out as many of ‘em as I can, then I think we might be able to pull this off so long as we only have to fight a few of them at a time. And as an added bonus, we’ll get some payback for what they did to Luna’s Temple. Sound good?”

Something about her logic was off but, at the same time, it made a certain amount of sense. Did I have any better ideas? What else could we do? We were mice; backed into the corner by the cat. We had no other options. I stood up, nodding slowly. “I… Okay, sister. I’ll follow your lead.”

She threw up a hoof and pumped her leg in a sign of celebration, “Aww fuck yes! Time to do some real damage!”

“Nohta!” She looked back to me as I hissed and nodded towards the remains of the statue, “Darling, you’ve been swearing in The Temple.”

Her eyes went wide in alarm as she regarded Luna’s broken statue, “Oh shi- um, darn? Sorry, Luna, I didn’t mean it!”

Luna’s response was surprising, to say the least. The cracks and fissures in the stone widened, and with the grating, crunching noise of rock sliding against itself, the entire statue was reduced to a broken heap of rubble.

Nohta was shocked. After collecting her jaw from the floor, she voiced her confusion with a skeptical and vehement outcry, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me! You’re kidding me, right? Did I seriously just break her?”

As the two of us stared, dumbfounded, at the crumbled remains of the statue, a single object came tinkling down the miniature crags of broken stone and rolled to our hooves. We stared at it for an indeterminate amount of time, unsure of what to do, before Nohta gently picked it up between her hooves.

She held the tiny glass ball with all the care and consideration one might give to a newborn foal, “They said something about treasure in the statue, right? Do you think this is what they were after?”

There are not many times when my mouth outpaces my brain. This was one of those times. But even as the words left my lips, I knew them to be true, “Whatever it is, I don’t want them to have it. These fiends have taken enough from us already. Come, little sister, we need to get that orb, and ourselves, to safety.” She gently laid the tiny bauble into my packs, and the two of us made for the doorway.

After wiping the blood off of her knife and onto Lump’s filthy coat, Nohta joined me in the hallway. The two of us crept down the darkened corridor, making our way towards the cafeteria as I silently wondered how the walls had already managed to rust. Were they that deteriorated before, and I just hadn’t noticed?

Voices echoing off of the walls alerted us to the presence of another group of raiders in one of the Stable’s classrooms. Nohta and I edged along the walls, trying to be as silent as possible, and peeked into the room as we held our pistols in our mouths. Five raiders, much better armed than the previous trio, were heckling each other while lounging in the student’s desks.

One of the group, a dirty-yellow unicorn, lay reclined in the teacher’s chair with her rear hooves on the desk and a bottle of amber liquid floating by her side. Every drink from her bottle caused her necklace, a sickly, barbaric thing made out of unicorn horns, to clink and clack against itself.

She was boasting of her magical prowess to the others in her cadre. “I’m tellin’ ya, they make me stronger! Every horn I get; I add that asshole’s strength to my own.”

Another unicorn, this one male, didn’t believe her. “That’s a load of brahmin-shit, Flash! I haven’t seen you do anything as awesome as what you’re talking about. If you could pull that shit off, you’d be leading this gang, not cowering in fear of The Pyro.”

Flash took another swig of her booze before sneering at the other unicorn. “I just need a couple more horns... I could start with yours.” Her horn flared brighter, smashing the end of the bottle down against the edge of the desk. The glass shattered into a multitude of glinting slivers and shards. Holding the most jagged edges of the bunch aloft in a golden aura, she leapt onto the desk and leered at her rival.

The other three raiders started to giggle and whinny, as Flash advanced on the dissenting buck. Nohta and I attempted to scramble out of sight, but we were too slow! He backed into the hallway, and saw us.

He opened his mouth to scream, “I FOUND-”

Nohta’s muzzle flashed brightly underneath her hood as The Worm blared, sending one of the ridiculously high caliber rounds of ammunition on an imminent collision course with the unfortunate buck. The bullet tore through the raider’s makeshift armor and slammed through his ribcage before exiting his filthy body as it splattered the walls with gore. He was silenced from the sudden impact, staggering backward to brace himself against the doorframe.

Margarita hadn’t been lying, The Worm really did hit hard! That bullet had nearly torn the raider in two! And it was loud! So loud! Nearly deafening when fired within the confines of the Stable’s corridors, where its ear-splitting roar was free to reverberate off of the steel walls. That mouth-cannon had surely alerted other raiders to our presence! The buck’s blip on my E.F.S. vanished before he had even managed to topple over onto a seeping pile of disembodied organs.

Unfortunately, The Worm’s recoil had been too much for Nohta. She cursed as the gun flew out of her mouth and landed at my hooves, “Fuck! I think I chipped a tooth!”

With immaculate timing, one of the four remaining raiders in the classroom screeched in delight. I heard the sounds of metal scraping against metal, and galloping hooves. A wide-eyed, orange mare lunged over the dead unicorn in the door frame, giggling around the lead pipe held in her mouth, and charged in our direction. Nohta acted quickly, placing herself between myself and the mare as she ducked under the orange raider’s attack.

Nohta sprung upwards, kicking the raider in the chin hard enough to lift her front hooves off of the floor. The raider’s grasp of her simple club faltered, sending the pipe clanging to the floor as the two of them grappled with each other. Within a few moments Nohta had caught one of the mare’s legs between her front hooves and, with a sickening crunch, bent the mare’s knee entirely too far in the wrong direction.

The raider screamed as her companions whooped and laughed at her misfortune from inside the classroom, “Haha! Dumb bitch can’t even use a pipe the right way! Let me show you how to fight!”

Nohta, able to see the danger in the classroom, gasped and ducked behind the orange mare just before the glass shards of the liquor bottle sliced through the doorway, embedding themselves in the raider’s hide or shattering against the the walls. Both the orange mare and my sister called out in pain, as the raiders in the classroom continued to treat our combat like a game.

“Pfft! What was that, Flash? You got more glass in Blunt Force than the other one!”

“Hey asshole! If you think you can do better, be my fucking guest!”

I heard the easy sliding of a mechanical device, “Aww shucks, babe, I thought you’d never ask me for that dance! And here I thought I’d never get to use my saddle!”

We were in for it now! I dashed to my sister and threw the both of us past the doorway as a hail of bullets ripped through the orange mare and dented the wall where Nohta had just been. The two of us landed on our sides as the orange raider screamed one last time and fell over in a bloody heap.

The raiders inside the classroom continued to taunt us, as the one with the gun continued to plink bullets off of the walls with wild abandon, “YA! Come on and get some, BITCHES! HA HA!” The gunfire was deafening! I couldn’t hear myself think!

I suddenly realized how likely it was that we were about to get shot. I didn’t want to get shot! I toggled through my Pipbuck’s inventory as quickly as I was able, “Clean Water, Dirty Water, Endoscope, ugh… why do I even still have that? Ahh! There it is! Nohta, stay back, I’m about to do something… crazy!”

She looked back at me. “Huh? What are you-”

I levitated one of the grenades out of my pack and pulled out the stem. Nohta’s eyes went wide as she buried her face in my neck. Using my magic so that I could stay behind cover, I floated the grenade into the classroom, and threw the extra slack of Nohta’s cloak over my face.

“Ha Ha, what’s this shit? An apple? Oh fuck! Flash, grab tha-” *BOOM!* The explosion was LOUD! It shook the wall that I was lying against! The glass window in front of the classroom burst outwards, blowing tiny shards against the opposite wall further down the hallway. My ears involuntarily folded against the sides of my head as I felt, rather than heard, the scream tear itself out of my throat. The overwhelming pinch of pressure on my eardrums left me wondering if I had just deafened my sister and myself. Tiny slivers of glass fell over our bodies, sending the smallest of vibrations through Nohta’s cloak and the steel plates of the floor as they impacted with everything in the immediate vicinity. Throwing Nohta’s cloak off of myself, I checked E.F.S. as a high-pitched ring replaced the silence of the world. The raiders were dead.

I didn’t even bother to ask my sister if she were hurt, I wouldn’t have been able to hear her reply anyway. I simply cast my spell, located the shards of glass embedded in her legs just above her hooves, and removed them before peering through the blown out window that had once allowed doting parents to look in on their foals. The dim bursts of light emanating from the crackling bulb in the hallway poked meekly at the gloom through the observation window. The scene that it revealed was… intense.

The entire room was a disaster. Blood and guts were strewn everywhere. The student’s desks were crumpled and twisted, having all been blown away from a central point. Shrapnel was embedded into the chalkboard. The usually clean, grey floor was now a blackened wreck. Not a single light source, not even a badly flickering one, had survived the explosion.

I moved into the room, activating my Pipbuck lamp to further inspect the carnage I had unleashed. Nohta followed me, stepping carefully around the jagged edges of bent steel and broken bodies.

She let out a low whistle, “Damn, Sis. I didn’t think you would actually… Wow.”

I found myself stammering, trying to defend my decision. “I... well... we had to do something! They were trying to kill us!” I had killed another pony. Three ponies. So, why didn’t I feel remorse? Was killing already getting easier? No. No, it wasn’t that. Was it? No… Maybe?

No, it was something else… something else entirely. Why did I feel so…

Nohta disturbed my inner ponderings with a well-timed warning, “Well, if the other raiders didn’t hear the gunfire, they sure as shit know we’re here now. Even if they didn’t hear it, they had to feel it. Let’s grab that buck’s ammo and get the hell out of here!” She scurried over to the fallen buck, scooping up his packs and hurrying out of the room to collect her pistol.

In the spirit of survival I emulated my sister, and tried checking his rifles, but they had both been reduced to mangled heaps of metal. There was no way we could use them for anything other than clubs. The other raiders had been carrying nothing of value except for a single, miraculously unbroken bottle of healing potion and a few various chems. Nohta placed the chems into my packs. If nothing else, we’d be able to sell them later. I pocketed the potion as I deactivated my Pipbuck light and trotted after my little sister, hoping that our luck would hold out.

Shards of glass crunched underneath our hooves, as we hurried down the hallway. We had nearly broken into a gallop when we rounded a corner, coming face to face with three raiders lying in wait underneath of a badly flickering ceiling light. The closest raider grinned and drew a switchblade.

Nohta wasted no time. Without breaking her stride she flung herself at the raider with the knife and bowled him over. The two of them rolled directly into the second raider, who let out a startled yelp and dropped her shotgun. Their melee quickly devolved into something fierce and primitive, with hooves flying in nearly every direction as my sister pummeled them ruthlessly. Getting into fights in the hallways was something she was quite familiar with.

The final raider down the hall drew a revolver and fired at all of us, friend and foe alike, as quickly as he could manage with his manic grin. His second shot was so close that I felt the wake from the bullet wash over my face as the projectile passed through my mane and slammed into the wall behind me, sending tiny pink strands of my mane floating listlessly to the floor. Gritting my teeth around my laser pistol, I slipped into S.A.T.S. and queued a salvo at Mr. Revolver before letting loose. He got off another shot in my direction just as the spell activated, and I tongued the trigger. His shot grazed my leg, tearing out a channel of flesh just above my Pipbuck.

Oh Goddess, that hurt! I could feel the pain in my leg with excruciating clarity as S.A.T.S. held me in its iron-grip, and the pistol’s beams sliced into the buck’s neck, burning deep holes through his coat and into his blistering, charred flesh. Most of my attacks missed horribly, causing points of the walls to bubble and warp from the concentrated heat. One of my shots grazed his face, slicing open a cauterized wound underneath his eye before causing his mane to combust in a flash of flame. He was opening his mouth to scream when my final beam collided with his muzzle, causing his body to glow bright-pink before being reduced to a cloud of sparkling ash and dust as his gun thudded to the floor.

I came out of S.A.T.S. wincing in pain as the burning, stinging sensation in my leg grew in intensity. Simple reflex commanded me to check the wound, but after seeing nothing life-threatening I diverted my attention back to my sister’s brawl.

Nohta had made swift work of one of her victims, his mangled body laying between us, but the mare who had dropped her shotgun was proving to be more of a challenge. The two of them were rolling over top of each other, fighting for the dominant position where one might be afforded the opportunity to pound the other into lifelessness. As the raider wedged Nohta against the wall and lifted herself up to strike, her shotgun levitated next to her face.

She turned to stare down the barrel. “The fu-” *BLAM!*

Nohta shoved the mare’s limp form off of herself, coughing and spluttering, “Bleh! Ewww! SIs! Couldn’t you have, I don’t know… Shot her in the back or something? I just got her brains all over me!”

“I’ll take your suggestion, and your desire for cleanliness, under consideration at some point in time when I haven’t just been shot, thank you very much!” I held my injured hoof in the air, brandishing it at my sister like a club.

“Oh, uh. Alright then.” She scrambled from body to body, looking for anything of value. “Come on, Candy, we need to hurry! They’ve probably all heard the racket by now. We need to get somewhere where we can get into cover and fight them off! Let’s go!”

We threw the revolver, the shotgun, and all of the ammunition we could scrounge off the bodies into my packs. My leg was stinging and burning but Nohta was right, we couldn’t stop. We could hear yells and laughter echoing off the halls, and I feared that the entire gang was about to converge on our location. I followed my sister as quickly as I could, barging through a familiar doorway that had been propped open with a metal panel that had fallen from the ceiling.

Darkness. Complete and utter darkness, crushing in its totality. I knew from experience that this was the library. But I was given no clues to help affirm that belief. The fetor of death overpowered the smells of books and ink. Blood ran thick under our hooves, keeping me from feeling the familiar bumps and grooves of my favorite haunt’s polished steel floors. Distant jeers and insults were the only sound to reach my ears; not the familiar and hurried scratching of quills or the relaxed turning of pages that I had come to expect of this chamber.

With no ability to see the room before me, my mind drifted to memories of a less violent time. I could see the shelves stretching out before me, full of tomes and scrolls eager to be read . Caramel was there, perusing one of her favorite recipe-books, waving a hoof and smiling warmly as she noticed me enter. Diligent and studious foals were engrossed in a history textbook, quietly fussing about who’s turn it was to read about Luna’s exploits in the time before the bombs lit the surface in a brilliant and soul-shattering flash of baleful light. The Caravan leader and the Overmare were quietly conversing in a corner. Moonglow stood by the back of the room, directing the scribes as The Caravan unloaded their haul of literary knowledge gleaned from the surface.

With my mind’s eye I could see the scribes carrying the latest load of literature culled from the wasteland to the cleaning room, scuttling about in a frenzy of motion. I could see the constantly swaying double-doors of that room. The familiar trio of cerulean lozenge diamonds emblazoned upon those doors. The large sign before the doors that read, “Scribes Only - Keep Out.”

Every time The Caravan returned, I knew that I would be presented with another golden opportunity to learn something new about the world. I just had to be patient. It was certainly a trying time, knowing that the books brought in from the wastes couldn’t find themselves directly in my hooves without first being given to the keepers of the library. If I were lucky, The Caravan would return early in my shift at the clinic, allowing the scribes time enough to give at least some of the books proper maintenance and cleaning by the time I was off work.

I didn’t like waiting, but I would rather that the books be capable of withstanding more than just the one read through. With so little time to myself most nights, I treasured the moments that I got to spend reading. I wouldn’t want to deprive another soul in the Stable the same joy by damaging a book before the scribes had been able to take care of it.

Nohta broke me from my waking dream of a happier time, tugging at my labcoat and leading me into the gloom as my leg ached and stung bitterly in protest. I was sure that we were going to trip over something, or knock into one of the shelves, but she proved quite capable of navigating the shadows.

“Sister, where are we goi-”

A firm, but gentle, hoof found its way to my lips as my sister silenced me. “Candy, shh! We have to stay quiet!” She was almost yelling through her clenched teeth, whispering as loudly as she dared in the gloom. “Don’t move! And keep your light off!” I stopped reaching for my Pipbuck, and instead stood quietly in the darkness.

Hooves scuffed against the floor outside the library, and a dull female voice shouted, “I think they went in here!”

Another mare answered, this one sounding much more lively, “Are you sure?”

The first mare’s voice faltered, “Uh… I think so. It’s stupid-fucking dark in here though.”

The second mare repeated her question, but with more intensity. “Are you sure?”

“Maybe?”

There was a loud thud, followed by several seconds of manic laughter, and the first mare shouted again, “Hey! That hurts!”

The second voice rang with the tones of authority, “You five get in there and see if you can find ‘em! The rest of you fan out and keep looking! Get going already you dumb-shits! I ain’t gonna be the one to tell the boss that we lost dinner, so move your fucking flanks!”

Nohta led me through the shadows, the two of us being as silent as possible. I heard a quiet thud and the creak of a swinging door on a rusty hinge. Had we just entered the scribe’s chamber? We must have. The pleasant, musty odor of books had been replaced by something much more… sterile. Clean and industrial. As if we had just stepped into a factory floor.

Behind us, I could hear the disorderly noises of five raiders entering the library and stumbling through the darkness as Nohta’s muzzle brushed against my ear. With her breath only the faintest hint of a whisper, she spoke two words, “Stay still.” And with that, she left my side.

The oily blackness had stripped me of my ability to see, leaving me a lone island of frightened thoughts adrift in the grip of the rampaging storm that was my imagination. My eyes darted uselessly towards every crazed snicker, every manic giggle. I could see, with my mind’s eye, the raider’s malevolent grins, their scarred and dirty bodies heaving with the anticipation of finding us in the gloom. They drew nearer, and I wanted nothing more than to run. It was terrifying! Where was Nohta? What was she doing in the dark?

One of the raiders was whining, “Oh sure… Send five earth ponies into the dark after two brats… that makes a lot of sense. How the fuck are we supposed to find ‘em if we can’t see ‘em? Dumbass should have given us at least one horned bastard. I mean, shit… We ain’t even got a fucking flashlight!” Judging by the sound of her voice, she was about to find us by stumbling directly into me.

A rush of wind passed over my mane, forcing a small gasp past my lips. I heard a faint thud, as if something very hard had just impacted with something very soft.

Silence. Then a voice in the dark. A stallion. “Hey guys? This place is full of books right? Why don’t we set the books on fire so we can see?”

Another voice, this one female. “You got a match?”

Another male voice, just a body’s length away from me. “You idiots are surrounded by paper! You really want to set all that shit on fire?” As soon as his voice died down, I felt another gust of air rush past my face. A soft grunt was followed by a wheezing sigh and the sound of fabric brushing softly on the floor.

Another male raider cackled in the darkness to my right, “HA HA! Cooked by the books! Griddled by the riddles! Braised by a phrase! Flambéed by an essay!”

A shrill, feminine voice squeaked in the dark. “Will you shut the fuck up? We’re supposed to be looking for the half-breeds, not… not whatever the fuck it is you’re doing! What in the fuck are you doing? I can’t see shit.”

The excited male kept giggling, “I’m reading! I found a thesaurus! IT WAS UNDER ‘T!’ And those two are just right over there, I can see them cowering! HA HA!”

We couldn’t hide any longer! I still couldn’t see the raiders, but their blips on my E.F.S. began moving frantically in every direction. Several bumps and thuds could be heard emanating from the dark, accompanied by the grunts of pain and swears that each impact elicited from the raiders. Finally, one of them shouted, “How the fuck do you see anything? Where are they?”

“One of them’s right by that big conveyor belt, you blind fucknugget!”

“That is so not a word!”

“It totally is! It means ‘idiot!”

“What, did you find a dictionary too?”

Intense light flashed for the briefest of moments, burning the quickly fading afterimage of my surroundings into my vision. We were in the scribe’s chamber. There was a book-sized conveyor belt to my left, with the tri-diamond insignia painted onto the steel face of the machine sitting above it. Piles and piles of literature lay scattered in mounds and heaps all around us. Several bodies, more than the few that my little sister had just dispatched, lay broken and bloody on the floor.

Nohta had snuck past our pursuers, and was holding The Worm to the devastated remains of a raider’s head. Once again I was blown away by just how loud the weapon was. The roar of the pistol echoed off of the walls as I recoiled from the sudden noise, instinctively ducking my head and flattening my ears as my hooves rose to protect my face. The flash of its muzzle had illuminated the darkness, showing that the other two raiders were both to my right and advancing on my position. I panicked, and with only two adversaries left, decided to take matters into my own hooves.

I unlatched my pistol, bathing the chamber in a blood-red glow as the weapon floated to my side. The raiders noticed my presence immediately, galloping in my direction even as they lost themselves to manic laughter. I was going to regret my actions, but at the time it seemed like the most logical thing in the world.

Seven beams of crimson lanced from my pistol, nearly imperceptible in the scarlet light of my magic. Two of them connected with one of the raiders, slicing through her shoddy barding and carving smoking craters into her flesh. She fell, screaming, and writhed on the floor as her partner continued in my direction.

My aim was far from perfect. One of the beams had connected with the other raider, despite my aiming for his companion. He grunted in pain, but kept charging as the other four beams flew past his face and found their way into piles of books and scrolls.

The four fires quickly converged, each feeding off of the heat produced by its sisters to consume the exceedingly dry literature in a gluttonous inferno. Paper roasted and charred, as tiny motes of flame danced and soared along the curling pages of books and the weathered edges of ancient scrolls. It was only a matter of time before the blaze found its way to the bookshelves, and then none of us would survive the intense heat loosed from the scorching oven that the library would become.

The building conflagration was a terrifying backdrop for my assailant’s approach. Rushing towards me, he whinnied in glee and batted my pistol out of the air with a hoof before plowing straight into my side. I was thrown backwards, crashing into the conveyor belt and gasping for breath as he tackled me. I had been pinned! And he was so much stronger than I! I squirmed and beat upon his chest, but I couldn’t break free! I cast out with my magic, trying to regain my pistol from the floor, but the raider’s hoof slammed into my chest, breaking my concentration and preventing me from properly grabbing hold of my weapon.

Goddess! This monster was attempting to beat me to death with his bare hooves! I turned to the side, narrowly dodging a stomp, and kicked out at his chest. He spared my pitiful attack no attention, slamming me back into the machine and causing the crimson flare of my horn to die a second time as pain roared its way to the forefront of my mind. I grit my teeth, telling myself only one thing: Not today. Red light washed over us both one last time.

He raised his hooves in the air and slammed them down with all of his might. In my desperation I had leaned into him, burying my face in his reeking fur in an attempt to evade his blows even as I shut my eyes and prayed to Luna that Nohta might be able to help me. As it turned out, I didn’t need Nohta’s help after all.

As the brute was attempting to smash me into a fine red mist, his body lurched forward with the force of his attack. His hooves flew past my head and connected with the steel plate that bore the diamond markings with a resounding clang that echoed through the chamber, but his neck found something else entirely.

I felt a pressure near my forehead, followed by a warm wetness spiraling down the fluting of my horn. The raider tensed, ceasing in his attacks even as his body twitched to match the wet gurgle escaping his lips. I opened my eyes as his blood began to trickle down my snout, and looked upwards to see what had happened. His mouth and neck were exuding an eerie scarlet glow, even as the room had been cast back into semi-darkness. He had impaled himself upon my horn!

The muscles in his throat pushed and prodded against the tip of my horn as he fought to speak or swallow. His hooves found the back of my neck with a tentative hold, cautiously searching for a way to disengage himself from our violent embrace. Realizing that I now had the upper-hoof, I decided to push my advantage. Literally.

“Ahh! Get off of me!” I shoved into his chest with my hooves as I craned my neck backwards, tearing a wet channel out of the underside of his jaw. and splashing his blood all over my face. The room was re-lit in the scarlet glow of my magic as his massive shadow raced along the walls. After stumbling and choking on his blood for a moment, he fell forward, slumping past my shoulder to smash into the machine atop the conveyor belt. The entire thing crashed to the floor with the loud clatter of metal upon metal as the plating fell away, exposing the device’s innards.

I let my magic die down, activating my Pipbuck’s clean-white light, and scanned the room as my eyes adjusted to the relatively plentiful illumination. E.F.S. was empty, save for my sister’s white bar. We were alone again. I reached up to my horn and face, trying to wipe the blood away from my eyes.

Nohta was beside me, staring at my face. “Damn, Sis… That was pretty awesome! You just gored that guy! Bet he didn’t see that coming!”

I frowned at his body, “Nohta, we’re still in danger. Now is not the time.”

“Alright, alright. You gonna grab any of the books before they all burn up?”

I looked back to the growing inferno that I had unleashed. It only needed several more minutes. Then it would reach the main chamber of the library. And after that… All of my home’s records would be lost. All of that history reduced to ash. The fire was quickly growing out of control. There was nothing I could do. An entire stable’s worth of knowledge, gathered across the breadth of multiple generations… The hard work of thousands of ponies, stretching all the way back to the day that Luna herself had sheltered us from the harsh light of The War… All undone by the scant few blasts of magical energy I had loosed in a terrified panic. What a waste…

I shook my head, scattering drops of red to the floor. Why wasn’t the blood bothering me? “No, sister. We need to move.”

Nohta trotted past me to the fallen buck. Unceremoniously shoving his body off of the machine and peering into its casing.

“Nohta, what are you doing? We need to go.”

“Did you hear this thing fall? It’s hollow. I’ve been in here plenty of times when I was looking for hiding spots, but I never messed with this thing.” She reached into the case, and pulled out a small gem: A garnet. “Check it out. This is what the scribes used to clean the books, right? We should keep it. Maybe we can sell it or something.”

I gasped, “Nohta!” Need she pocket everything she came across?

She was already stuffing the tiny gem into her pockets, speaking to the air with closed eyes and a shameless smirk, “Yep. Maybe we can sell it off and get you some armor. Or maybe we should use the caps to buy food… better weapons… or maybe we’ll be able to use it later.” She opened one eye and stared at me with a smug grin, “You know… like those grenades you wanted me to put back?”

“Ugh! Fine! But don’t whine to me when Luna sends a nightmare or two your way for stealing from the library!” I turned to exit, when I heard something that sent a shiver down my back.

Wild laughter and lewd insults echoed off of the walls. We weren’t out of this yet. After retrieving my pistol I cleared a passage through the burning pile of books with my magic, causing the tomes to light the gloom beyond my Pipbuck’s light in a flickering, malevolent illumination. The two of us fled the library just as the flames overtook the bookshelves, blasting us with heat and causing my mane and Nohta’s hood to whip about our faces wildly as we galloped through the doorframe and into the hallway.

We ran down the halls searching for a safe exit, but only succeeded in finding blockades of furniture and dead ponies at every other junction. We were being corralled. Another doorway further down the hall was open, propped up with another ceiling panel. Was our home really falling apart so quickly? We ducked inside as quietly as we could.

The cafeteria was empty, save for a lone raider sitting at one of the tables and stuffing his face with something red and bloody. He was so preoccupied with his meal that he didn’t notice either of us until Nohta had slit his throat. He fell onto the table, wide-eyed, as blood poured out of his wound. We were getting better at this at an alarming rate. Or maybe we were just lucky. Or maybe… Maybe Luna really was looking out for us.

The laughing and yelling were getting louder, and closer, as they echoed off the walls. Nohta pushed a few of the metal tables against the doorway as I levitated the panel holding the door open out of place. The cafeteria’s door slammed down, just before something massive crashed into it from the other side. Nohta and I shared a worried look before we both skidded into place behind the serving counter.

I needed something bigger than my little pistol for whatever was coming for us! I fished one of the weapons that we had scavenged from the raiders out of my packs, taking aim with a shotgun at the doorway. Nohta braced herself against the counter, holding her own pistol in her teeth as she stood on her hind legs to aim over the glass sneeze guards.

Not two seconds after I had ducked behind cover, a thunderous crash resounded from the entryway as something immense collided with the door. A feral, rage-driven roar could be heard on the opposite side of the barrier. Nohta and I shared a look of terror as a white sheen of magic enveloped the door and levitated it upwards. I knew from experience that these doors were impossibly heavy! The hydraulics systems alone had multiple tons worth of pressure keeping the doors in place! How could a unicorn lift something like that?

A hulking raider wearing a welding helmet lumbered through the open door, crashed through our barricade, and stumbled into the relatively open expanse that was the Stable’s cafeteria, panting heavily underneath his helmet. He wore a bandolier of very long, pointed bullets draped over a set of metal armor that looked as if it were fashioned from a filing cabinet. His destructive passing had left the tables a crumpled, twisted wreck of sharp metal. White light shone from the inside of his helmet, far brighter than anything else in the room, as he stomped his hoof and grunted in exertion. One of the ruined tables flew into place in the doorway, wedging the door open once again. He had just opened the door for his comrades!

Nohta took aim with her pistol, as I did the same with the shotgun, and the both of us unloaded our weapons in his direction. The brute shrugged off the barrage of projectiles that impacted his thick armor and kept coming, brandishing an automatic rifle with a curved magazine and a wooden stock. Roaring in rage, he levitated it above the counter and sprayed bullets all around us. The sneeze guards cracked and shattered, sending shards of glass flying in all directions. I scrambled back to the kitchens and took cover behind the ovens, abandoning the empty shotgun as I tried to avoid the barrage of lead which zipped past my body to clang and ping off of the metal pots, pans, and appliances. Nohta had other ideas.

My eyes met hers as she dug something out of her packs and held it to her mouth. After a brief and terrifying moment that left me utterly confused as to what she was doing, she leapt over the counter, kicking the rifle out of the unicorn’s levitation field and closing the distance with him before he could reclaim it. Rearing up on two legs, she kicked straight out at his helmeted head. I could hear the impact of Mother’s horseshoes against our assailant’s helmet echo throughout the cafeteria. The metal helmet dented, and the unicorn’s horn shattered. His screams of rage turned to wails of agony as he tried to kick her away with his front legs, but Nohta caught one of his extended legs with one of her own and brought her other front leg straight down on the knee joint with a sickening crack. She whirled around the broken appendage, her cloak flowing out behind her as she landed back on all fours, and bucked the raider in the ribs, knocking him off of his hooves.

More raiders poured through the doorway as Nohta stomped her hoof down on the huge unicorn’s neck and crushed his windpipe. His screams turned to a bubbling, wet gurgle as his shuddering body curled in on itself, waiting to die. She dove behind an overturned table as bullets tore through the air. My magic unlatched the holster on my leg, floating the pistol to my teeth as I peeked around my little oven. I depleted the charge of my pistol’s battery firing into the mass of raiders who were closest to the door, vaporising two of their number and wounding another’s leg. Bullets ricocheted off the metal ovens and walls of the kitchens near my position in retaliation as I slid back into cover, their reports and impacts nearly deafening in the enclosed space. The sound of gunfire was hammering my eardrums into submission; I lifted my hooves to my head to try and block out some of the noise, but it was just so loud!

Sparks flew off of the metal appliances as projectiles whinged into them and flew in haphazard directions. Pots and pans fell all around me, knocked from their racks by the storm of speeding lead. The glass door of an oven shattered, raining shards of glass over my hooves, slicing into my flesh. All I could do was curl into a ball and scream as I fought to concentrate well enough to levitate the slivers out of my skin.

The entire group had focused its attention on me. Nohta, sensing an opportunity, took advantage of their momentary distraction to slip within their perimeter. My sister dove for the raider nearest to her, knocking his gun, as well as some of his teeth, out of his mouth with a brutal kick that left him reeling. He stumbled into the path of another raider’s fire as her SMG burped, and several rounds bit into his chest and neck, simultaneously killing the first raider and shielding Nohta from harm.

These ponies had no love for their own kind, and were all firing their weapons wildly at the whirling, cloaked figure within their midst, completely heedless of each other’s safety. Luckily, they were all terrible shots. Almost as bad as I was. Nearly every shot went wild, many of them hitting another raider.

Nohta ducked low, sweeping a mare’s legs out from under her, miraculously avoiding a buck’s shotgun blast. Spinning around, she batted the shotgun to the side with a foreleg just before it fired again, sending the blast into a third raider. Number three shouted in alarm and agony, his assault rifle burst going wide and tall as a massive, bloody hole was torn through his chest. Nohta braced herself against the floor with her hooves as she brought her pistol out of its holster and fired a round point-blank into the shotgun buck’s chest. His blood splattered over the twisted wreckage of the table left behind by the massive unicorn’s entry as his body collapsed to the floor.

The mare that Nohta had knocked down kicked out at my sister’s legs, causing Nohta to stumble and topple over as her pistol fell from her mouth. The two of them lay squirming on the ground as the final raider took aim with his SMG, and emptied his weapon in their direction.

Nohta, realizing the danger too late, kicked out at one of the many bodies that lay all around her, and used it to push herself to the side, but couldn’t avoid all of the buck’s fire. The stream of lead perforated the body of the downed mare and rose to bite into Nohta’s legs, causing my sister to scream in pain.

“NOHTA!” I leaped out from behind cover, scanning the room for something, anything, that I could use to prevent the buck from causing further harm to my sister. My pistol was useless until I could reload it. I needed something now! I quickly scooped up the first thing that my eyes came across in a blanket of levitation magic.

“Hey! Over here!” I shouted at the raider, gaining his attention. “Don’t forget about me!”

His eyes widened as a crimson cloud descended on his head, and a dozen shards of glass whirled over his body. Concentrating on so many points at once proved rather difficult, and despite my best efforts at slicing him to ribbons, I only managed to startle him into dropping his weapon and flailing his front hooves around his face. The shards gouged and slashed at his legs, but provided only minor wounds before he knocked them out of the air. That distraction, however, was all that my sister needed.

Climbing back to her now bleeding hooves, Nohta bolted towards the raider and slammed her hoof into the buck’s throat. He doubled over, gagging, as Nohta brought her right leg up and slammed her Pipbuck into the back of his skull. He fell forward, dead before he hit the floor.

I ran to my sister’s side, picking my way past bodies, shards of glass, and scattered weapons. She pulled her hood back, smearing her own blood over her forehead and mane as she sat on her haunches, panting and grinning at me like an idiot.

As I revved up my magic to pinpoint the locations of her wounds, an excited squeal escaped her lips, “That was so AWESOME!”

She was fidgeting and shaking with glee as my magic bathed the both of us in crimson light. “Nohta, please be still darling, you’re hurt.”

“Did you see that? Did you see what I did! Holy fuck, Candy! THAT was fighting! That’s what Mom used to do! WOW!” She ignored my ministrations to trot between bodies and gather up all the weapons and other useful materials she could find before stuffing everything into her packs, heedless of the trail of blood she was leaving behind.

I had to get her to calm down, “NOHTA!”

“Huh? Oh ya, right. Go ahead, then.” She sat on her haunches and allowed me to look her over with my magic.

I could finally tell the extent of the damage when my spell took effect, “Nohta, you’ve been shot! Five times! By The Goddess, you’re insane! Don’t ever do that again!” I clutched at my own chest reflexively, gritting my teeth against the sudden pain blooming across my body.

Most of her wounds had been clean flesh wounds, with the bullets passing through her body with relatively little complication. One had lodged itself into one of her ribs, cracking the bone and threatening to pierce her lung. I could feel it digging its way deeper as she breathed, the flattened bullet slicing and jabbing into the flesh. I couldn’t fathom how she wasn’t screaming in agony; I was ready to double over and whimper until the pain stopped.

Another bullet was still in one of her front legs, scraping at her knee joint. I honestly had no idea how the drop in blood pressure from her various wounds hadn’t caused her to pass out or, for that matter, how she was still even capable of standing and moving about. But I wasn’t about to question good fortune when it came my way.

I felt something else with my magic as well. Something that I couldn’t quite place, like the echo of a fading song that was playing too slowly. I had trouble figuring out what was wrong, until it struck me: Nohta was acting reckless, even for her. I looked over to the serving counters, noticed the little inhaler lying where we first hid, and asked, “Nohta, that’s a chem. Have you been self-medicating?”

She smiled, closed her eyes and nodded, as if she had something to be proud of, “Yup! Things were getting kinda crazy so I took a hit of Dash and OH WOW THIS IS GREAT!” She was bobbing and weaving her head, as if she were listening to one of the Stable’s musical broadcasts. “I mean, everything still hurts like a motherfucker, but Goddess damn! I feel INCREDIBLE! ”

I ignored her ridiculous attitude toward self-destructive behavior and extracted the bullets as quickly as I could. “Ugh! Nohta! Just… try to be still, sister.” We still had, at best estimate, a few more than ten raiders down here with us, and I really didn’t want them to catch us like this. I mended her wounds, and instructed Nohta to drink one of our potions for good measure. I then healed the scratch on my own leg with a simple spell while Nohta scavenged for useful supplies.

It only took me a moment to reload my little laser pistol. Hitting the release, I slid the drained pack out of the slot and replaced it with a fresh one. Not for the first time that day, my thoughts drifted back to Father, and his sessions of ‘target practice’ in the Stable’s canyon. I had never thought that I’d need to know how to use such a weapon, and had only agreed to continue the sessions to humor him. Now though, I found myself extremely grateful for the lessons that he had tried to teach, and regretful that I hadn’t paid more attention when I had the chance.

I couldn’t help but regret the many wasted opportunities with Father… and I had no chance to ever rectify them. I’d never have the chance to get into another debate with him, or to tease him about his abysmal cooking, or to have him correct my mispronunciation of a word in Fancy. I’d never again have the opportunity to discuss surgical techniques with him over tea, or to chide him for being late to a meeting with a patient, or to pray with him in The Temple. I’d never be able to ask his opinion of a book, or to listen to his tales of adventure, or roll my eyes at his suggestion that I get a colt-friend. I’d never have another opportunity to get into a fight with him over Nohta. I’d never have the chance to cry into his shoulder as we remembered Mother. I’d never be able to hold him in my hooves as all the restless tension of a long day washed away, to be replaced by the gentle warmth of a quiet embrace shared between a father and his daughter.

And I’d never again have the opportunity to simply tell him that I loved him. That hurt the most of all. We never seem to take enough opportunities to tell our loved ones those three simple words. And we never think to do so until it is far too late.

We exited the cafeteria and made our way towards the residential halls, only to find a hastily erected blockade comprised of furniture and dead bodies. We were forced to take a detour through a lower level to get around. Almost all of the lights in the basement level had been shot out, and the only way I could see was by activating my Pipbuck lamp.

We crept through the darkened passageways, skirting by the dangling, sparking electrical wires and loosely hanging ceiling panels. More than once a panel came crashing down in the darkness, causing the two of us to jump and draw our weapons only to find ourselves aiming at nothing but gore splattered walls and our own shadows. I had known that our stable required constant repair, but I had never thought that the facility was in danger of literally falling apart.

We were skulking through Laundry when the door through which we had just passed slammed shut with a grating screech. The portal on the opposite side of the room opened, bathing the washing machines and racks of chemicals with the familiar sterile light of the ceiling fixtures in the next hallway as raiders started pouring in through the entranceway. We ducked for cover behind a row of washing machines as bullets ripped into the metal appliances, sending lead ricocheting away in a multitude of directions.

I deactivated my lamp to help conceal my position. Nohta and I drew our weapons, scurrying to opposite ends of the row as we alternated taking shots at our foes with S.A.T.S. Nohta scored a direct hit with her pistol on her third shot, causing a sneering mare’s head to explode in a fountain of gore. As I popped out from cover, my seventh shot caused a stallion to glow red and illuminate two of his comrades’ startled faces. Their expressions were even more surprised when Nohta used their distraction to leap over the row of appliances and beat them into a sanguine pulp.

I was counting the remaining raiders, keeping track of their faltering numbers in my head as I allowed myself to hope that we might actually survive the night. ‘Nine,’ Nohta pounced on an unsuspecting mare, pounding her hooves into her face several times before slinking back to the shadows. ‘Eight,’ my pistol burned a hole through a raider’s traffic-sign armor and cut deeply into his chest. ‘Seven,’ I used my magic to overturn a rack of chemical supplies, burying a raider underneath heavy buckets of cleaning chemicals before Nohta’s pistol silenced her screams. The caustic odor of ammonia blended horribly with the scents of singed fur, charred flesh, and gunpowder as one of the buckets splashed open, releasing its contents across the floor and towards the open doorway.

We were doing this… We were actually going to escape! Despite all odds, we were actually going to live through this night! Those were the thoughts racing through my mind when I heard a hiss, and a clicking noise, followed by a small ‘wumpf.’ The Pyro stepped into the doorway, blocking our escape as easily as it crushed my hopes. The flamethrower that was mounted on its back was almost as big as the pony that carried it! The twin pilot lights of the nozzles at The Pyro’s sides lit its armored features with their dancing motes of flame, exposing a gargantuan earth pony clad neck-to-hoof in thick steel armor. Only its head was left unarmored, instead being covered by an ancient gas mask made of shiny black leather.

The Pyro, true to its name, immediately walked over the puddle of spilled chemicals and turned to one of the raiders before dousing her in twin gouts of impressive orange fire. It then turned and bucked her hard into the middle of the room. The newly-immolated raider flew through the dark, crashing into the row of washing machines in front of me with enough force to dent the appliance with a loud *CLANG* and cause my cover to rock dangerously on its side for a moment before slamming back down to the floor. She screamed and writhed in place for a moment, then lay silent, her still-burning corpse illuminating the majority of the room with flickering orange flames. I ducked back behind cover, only just barely peeking around the side of my own precious laundry cleaning device.

An awful, screeching voice emanated from The Pyro’s throat, finally shedding light on her gender. “Hahaha HAha! Burn, bitch! Burn for me!”

She continued to laugh for a moment, as the rest of the raiders nervously joined her, before stomping her hoof and screaming, “Lasher!”

A dirty brown unicorn, small enough that I almost mistook him for a foal, scampered to The Pyro’s side with a sycophantic grin on his face. He was dwarfed by her enormity, the tip of his horn barely rising up to her withers. With starry eyes, he stared up at her and wheezed, “Yes, mistress?”

“Get the spices ready you miserable fuck! We’ve found the striped bitches and I’m hungry!” She stomped the floor, sending a reverberating thud throughout the room.

He twitched and bowed his head, “Ah, yes! Of course, your blazingness!” Her what?

The Pyro turned, and with a single hind leg, kicked Lasher hard in his barrel, sending him sprawling to the floor. “I told you not to call me that! Shut the fuck up with your damned titles and just bring me the seasonings! I’m not about to try zony without at least a little salt and pepper!”

Lasher limped towards the door, whimpering, as The Pyro turned in my direction and reared onto her hind legs. Two rivers of fire surged out of the nozzles at her sides, coating the ceiling in a sticky, roiling inferno of liquid orange. She slammed back down to the floor, causing the entire room to shudder and quake as the impact of her hooves echoed off the walls. Tiny droplets of flame occasionally rained down upon her form to bounce, roll, or stick to her thick armor as she giggled and guffawed. “AH HA ha! Ha ha! I... am The Pyro! How would you like your meat?”

Nohta sidled up to my side, “The fuck is her deal? Is she completely nuts?”

I had to find a way out of this. That weapon could kill both of us in seconds, and I doubted that even my sister’s aptitude for melee combat would prove effective against that brute’s strength and thick armor. “Try to get her talking, Nohta,” I whispered, “I need some time to think.”

The Pyro stomped her hoof again, shaking the floors and rattling the glass windows of the washing machines in their fixtures. As her taunts continued, her voice rose in volume until she was left screaming through her mask. “The chef demands your order! Char-broiled? Singed? Well-done? Cooked-to-a-fucking-crisp?” The raiders whooped and cackled, taunting us from their positions behind their leader.

Nohta yelled out from behind our cover, “Uh… Hey there… You big, obviously-not-insane murderer! Fancy seeing you here! Why, with a big ol’ flamethrower like that, I reckon you’re a pretty good chef, huh? What’s your favorite dish?”

I facehoofed, “Really, Nohta? Favorite dish?”

She shrugged, “I’ve got the munchies! And you put me on the spot! Give me a break!”

I detected a smirk in The Pyro’s voice, hidden underneath her mask, “My stew is exceptionally exquisite. Hehe… It’s a pity that you’ll never get to try it for yourselves.”

Nohta spoke up again, yelling over the row of appliances, “Oh, ya? Why can’t we try it?”

The Pyro chuckled, as if the answer were supposed to be obvious to those of us in the room who weren't insane. “Ha ha! Because you’re the main ingredient! AH HA HA!” Two plumes of brilliant orange gushed over our cover, forcing the two of us to huddle against each other as our world was dominated by the heat. Raucous applause and wild laughter erupted from the raiders. We were running out of time.

Nohta was grasping at straws, “Oh! That’s a good one! But, seriously, you wouldn’t want to eat us! We’re full of worms! I’ve got parasites as big as my head!”

One of the stallions in the group shouted out, “Extra flavor!”

I’m still not sure what made her say it, but that was when Nohta stumbled onto a line of questioning that completely changed the conversation. In a split-second it went from a desperate delay for time to a bid for deadly-important information, “So uh… do you always travel so far out of the way for your ingredients?”

The Pyro was growing impatient, sending tiny spurts of flame to roll over our position as she tested our cover’s ability to protect us. “Only when Psyker commands us.”

Nohta and I scrambled a few feet in another direction, narrowly avoiding the burning liquid. Nohta continued as we reached our new position. “Oh, I see... So you don’t have any real say in what you do, you just do whatever this ‘Psyker’ tells you, huh?” Nohta winked at me, confident that she had just touched a nerve. I rolled my eyes at her behavior, believing that agitating the giant pony that had us trapped with a flamethrower was a rather poor choice.

The Pyro stomped a hoof, grunting in frustration. She unlatched the collar holding her mask in place, and ripped the stiff leather off of her face, revealing a surprisingly well-groomed, blazing-red mane that flowed down a pretty, bright pink face set in a wicked scowl. “Fuck this shit! I don’t want anything obscuring my view of your torched body as you writhe in agony! I’m going to watch the ashes fall from your bones, you little cunt!”

The Pyro took a single step toward us, sneering as she aimed her weapon, and spoke, “Dinner is usually not so talkative. Unless you count begging for mercy.” Her eyes grew wide, and intensely eager. “I like it when my dinner begs. Do you want to beg, bitch? You still can. I might even go easy on you… make it a quick death. Flash-fried instead of slow-smoked?” She was panting in anticipation, teetering precariously on her little razor-edge of coherent thought as she fought back her drool. “The meat’s not as tender, but sometimes I like my meals a little chewy… “

Nohta spoke in that tone. The tone that I was sure she had practiced to employ maximum annoyance. By Luna’s grace, I wanted to smack her! “Na, I’m good. I’m not really into the whole ‘grovelling at somepony’s hooves’ thing. So, you take orders from Psyker, huh? What’s the deal with that, you not smart enough to figure shit out on your own?”

The Pyro’s face hardened. She ground her teeth together in agitation and began to slowly advance on our new position, sending small spurts of fire in our general direction as she taunted us, “Psyker is so much more than someone like you can comprehend! She leads, and we follow. She sees, and we learn. She sings, and we listen. She deals with the others, and we reap the rewards.”

Even as the two of us scooted further down our current row of appliances and behind a perpendicular row, my sister continued to heckle the gargantuan pony with her incredulous voice, “She sings? Really? Who are the others?”

The Pyro snorted in disdain. Apparently even an insane murderer can have contempt for ignorance. “Her songs are beautiful. They tell of things that have not yet come to be. She dealt with the slavers, and she gained a new base.” She gazed all around her, taking note of the slowly dying flames on the ceiling and walls before settling her eyes on our position and lowering her head as she pawed at the floor. The sound of her steel-shod hooves scraping against the metal floor scratched at my ears as she continued. ”Your stable is going to make a fine little home for us, bitch… Do you like the decorations so far?”

The slavers and the raiders were working together? This was news to me, and bad news at that! If the two groups joined forces, this entire area would be overrun! Mareon would be demolished, and its inhabitants sold off. The only chance we’d have would be to run. Of course, that was all assuming we made it out of the Stable alive.

With a wild bark of laughter, The Pyro charged at the row of washers in front of us! Goddess, how did somepony that large move so quickly? Nohta and I fled back to the last row of appliances in the room, having been effectively cornered by the advancing, psychotic mare as our previous cover crunched and bent, the metal shrieking in protest as The Pyro’s massive frame mangled and twisted the steel box in her path. Bucking the remains of the machine to the side, she chuckled to herself and began to slowly walk in our direction again. The washer’s clipped water-line hissed, spraying a fine, pressurized mist against her armored flank. This was hopeless… What were we going to do?

Remembering the path the conversation had been taking, I urged Nohta to continue in her endeavours, “Keep her talking, dear! We need to hear this. And we need more time!”

Nohta nodded, and continued, “So the slavers took the ponies here, and then you came in and... what? Took over a broken-down hole in the ground? Can’t you see that this place is falling apart? The fucking fire extinguishers aren’t even going off! This place is a pit!”

The Pyro was resolute, “Psyker sees far. Pskyer knows what we must do.”

“Ohhhh, I get it.” Nohta drew her words out in an over-the-top display of insolence, “She just doesn’t share everything with the lowly peons like you, right?”

The Pyro glowered at us, standing still in the cleared space in the middle of the room. “Every insult you offer will only make your coming screams all the sweeter, little half-breed bitch.”

Nohta’s great talent at annoying ponies to no end was working in our favor, “Oh, did I touch a nerve there? Does it upset you to know that you’re not trusted with the great plans of your crazy leader?”

“Psyker is not crazy!” The Pyro emphasized her opinion by stomping her hoof on the floor again, causing the washing machine that we were ducked behind to shudder in protest.

My sister was on a roll, “Oh? And what did she tell you to convince you so easily?”

The Pyro explained, “She spoke of a stable, with exotic prey inside. My gang has never tasted zony before. We wonder; will you be tough, like a zebra? Or tender, like a pony? Greasy, perhaps? Will your bones make good stew? Will your fat be good to fry in? Will your tongue’s flavor match its sharp insults?” A dying glob of flame fell from the ceiling-fire to burn and sizzle its way into her neck. The Pyro didn’t even flinch. Instead, her eyes took on a dreamy, rapturous look as she inhaled deeply of the air and licked her lips, “By the fucking goddess… I LOVE that smell! Burnt fur and flesh,” Looking back to us with an evil smirk, she added, “with just a hint of fear.”

Nohta gagged, “Okay seriously, you’d eat my tongue? You’re a twisted fuck!”

“This conversation bores me!” The Pyro let out a massive, theatrical yawn, before slamming a hoof into a defenseless appliance and sending it careening off to the side of the room with a thunderous slam, knocking aside one of the racks used to hang freshly laundered clothing. A thin jet of water arced towards the ceiling in its absence as she continued to taunt us. “Why don’t you come out from behind that machine, bitch? If you give up, I’ll let the two of you choose which one I eat first. Or better yet, why don’t you run around some more? Ha ha, that was fun!”

Nohta turned back to me and whispered, “Any ideas yet, Sis? I’m running out of topics of conversation here.”

I was frantically searching our options. None of our weapons had the punch required to bust through that armor, and rushing that weapon would only result in a fast, painful death. Neither of us was accurate enough to guarantee a quick headshot if we broke cover, and the Pyro’s weapon would incinerate us if we tried to shoot her anyway. I couldn’t risk using the second grenade in here, if The Pyro’s tanks of gas blew up we were all dead, and we were much too close anyway. We’d be caught in the blast as well!

There had to be another way! Think Candy! Think! My eyes roamed over the fire-lit walls, latching onto anything and everything within sight. Steel shelves, empty buckets of bleach, boxes of Abraxo cleaner, spare parts for quick repairs to the appliances… Nothing here was helpful!

I brought my hoof to my muzzle, absentmindedly brushing my hoof against my chin as I probed my mind for ideas. That was when it hit me. The smell of the ammonia on my hoof obliterated the other odors of the room even as Mother’s words found purchase in my frantic mind. Under my breath, I found myself whispering her wisdom, “None alive can stand against you if they cannot breathe.” Opportunities under my very nose, indeed…

“Nohta, I’ve got another crazy idea.” I brought out my old lab coat and held it between my hooves.

Nohta facehoofed and sighed, “Luna save us... ”

I brought out a bottle of water and soaked the fabric with it, then whispered my plan into my sister’s ear.

Her face pulled away from my own, confused and scared. “But… Sis! She’s got that-”

“She won’t be fast enough, and she doesn’t have magic!” I grinned, as I flared my crimson light.

“But… There’s no way that I can outrun her! And what if she goes after you instead?”

“You’re the one that insulted her Nohta, She’ll be after you.” I toggled through my Pipbuck’s inventory spell, and held up our last inhaler of Dash, offering it to her. Despite the absolutely horrid things that went into its manufacture, and the ever-increasing risk of addiction that my little sister was facing, we needed the drug right now. I stared into her purple eyes, “Run, dear sister. Run like the wind.”

She took it, giving me an agonized look. I bopped her nose lightly with a hoof, dispelling her frown as she looked up to me. I smiled back at her. “I can’t say what I want to say because you’ll get mad at me, but we’re gonna make it out of this. We’ll be okay. Just follow the plan and be as fast as I know you can be.”

She threw her hooves around me, knocking me into the washing machine with her weight, and whispered, “You better be right, Sis.”

My grin got bigger, as I tried my very best to give my sister some confidence in the plan, “Come on, Nohta… This is your big sister you’re talking about! When am I ever wrong?”

Don’t answer that.

The raiders didn’t seem to care about what I was doing, but The Pyro was impatient. She smacked her lips, fighting back her drool, “I think I might start off with a course comprised of your companion, girl. Ground unicorn horn makes a fine seasoning when added to a cream broth... “

I levitated the tattered, and now thoroughly soaked, rags of my old lab-coat in my magic, and nodded to my sister. She bit down on the inhaler of Dash and braced herself to run as my magic levitated my coat down the row of washing machines. With a final heave, I flung the old coat out past the row of appliances and into the middle of the room.

The Pyro reacted exactly as I predicted, rounding on the coat and letting out a great guffaw as she bit her weapon’s trigger, sending two brief spurts of flame towards the offending article of clothing before quickly realizing that she was about to waste her fuel on nothing more than cloth. Nohta used the distraction and sprung like a cat, her cloaked form darting out from cover in the opposite direction as she sprinted down the length of the room.

“HA! Tricky bitch! There you are!” The Pyro laughed maniacally as she pivoted, turning in Nohta’s direction as she reactivated her weapon and swept the flames across the entire row of appliances I was hiding behind. I threw myself to the ground, covering my head and face with my hooves, just before the flames washed over the machines and all over the wall behind me. The flames clung to the walls as the liquid stuck to the surfaces it fell upon.

I stood, knowing that this was my only chance. The intense heat poured over my face and body in waves, whipping my mane wildly through my field of vision. Levitating my laser pistol above the washing machine, I slipped into S.A.T.S. and took aim. My entire body went rigid as time slowed down, and I was able to witness my plan fall together perfectly. If I hadn’t been in the middle of a fight for our lives, I might have even smiled.

My S.A.T.S.-guided laser barrage caught the raider furthest from Nohta in a deluge of crimson bolts. A fair amount of them passed her by harmlessly, but nearly half of them impacted against her barding and coat. Her makeshift armor buckled from the heat of my blasts, glowing white-hot against her skin. She sucked in one last frightened breath before her entire body was vaporised, scattering her cremated remains near the open doorway. As S.A.T.S. released me from its hold, I grabbed the remains of my lab-coat, thanking Luna that the water had saved it from incineration, and flung it into the pool of ammonia at The Pyro’s hooves.

The Pyro’s weapon sprayed liquid incineration in a wide curve, trailing behind Nohta. As I had predicted, The Pyro was turning faster than my sister was running, but that didn’t matter as soon as Nohta slid behind the final row of appliances and ducked low as the gouts of flame swung over top of her cover. The Pyro was reckless, with no consideration for her gang. Her own weapon bathed three of her raiders in flame as she turned to catch my sister.

After taking notice of my reappearance and subsequent attack on one of her cronies, The Pyro turned my way, her face set in a shocked and confused scowl, and poured flame over my position as I dove back behind cover. With an unsettling tone, she cheered, “Hey! This barbeque calls for a song!”

I muttered under my breath as the heat washed over me, “Goddess, tell me she’s not… “

She was.

She drew in a deep breath and cackled, alternating lines of her performance with bursts of flame, “HA HA HA! All you have to do is heat it up! Full power! Blast it at the bitch!”

A brief respite from the heat was followed by another blazing deluge of orange. Her screeching followed soon afterwards. “Now just take a little time; aim where she cowers! Give her a gout, just a singe!”

I heard the sounds of the last raider, Lasher, crying for help as Nohta took advantage of The Pyro’s distraction to pummel him with her hooves. The Pyro laughed raucously as she surveyed the burning wreckage of my home, ignoring her underling’s pleas. “HA HA! Yes! BURN! Burn it all!”

To my horror, her cackling voice belted out another line, “Baking you stripes in your own home; with enough left, I can grill ya!”

She drew another breath, as I heard Nohta scrambling with the buckets of cleaning agents by the fallen rack, “Your tangy blood pours all over the floor. Don’t forget, I am your kill-a!”

She finished her musical number with an insane glee, advancing on my position, “Zonies! Two flavors in one! Zonies! It doubles the fun! Zonies… Zonies! Zonies! Zonies!” Flames rippled and surged as the burning accelerant washed over my cover, spreading liquid inferno all around me. A great splotch of flame splashed my tail as tiny flecks of fire collided with my hooves and neck, scorching through my fur and- By the Goddess! THE PAIN!

Ignoring the other burns for now, I took out every last bottle of water I had and poured them all onto my tail as I desperately stamped at the flames with my hooves. The fire sizzled and died, leaving me stomping on a ruined mess of pink. I’d have to deal with my injuries later. There wasn’t any time left!

I screamed at the top of my lungs, praying to Luna that I had bought my sister enough time, “NOHTA! DO IT NOW!”

The Pyro’s flames turned in my sisters direction, “Oh? What’s the other bitch up to?”

I rose from cover again, ignoring the searing pain in my tail, and found my old coat on the floor. Lifting it in my levitation, I wrapped it around The Pyro’s face as tightly as I could manage as she screeched in confusion and anger, “Mmph mmmph?”

Nohta had found the container she was looking for and hurled it into the air above The Pyro’s head. I caught the bucket of bleach in my levitation and, before The Pyro could turn her flames on either of us, drenched her wrapped head with its contents.

The Pyro screamed through the fabric of my coat, “AAAAhh, What the FUCK? This shit... burns? Heh. Hehe. Hehe ah HAHAHAHA!” Doubling over, she coughed and spluttering as the folds of cloth clung to her head, “Ack... shit. Fuck you bitch! I’m gonna boil your eyes out of their sockets!”

She clawed at her face, trying to rip the chemicals away from her muzzle. Crimson light poured from my horn, basking every nook and crevice in the room with the light of magical overglow. I held the fabric against her head with every ounce of arcane strength I could muster, grunting and straining in concentration, but it wasn’t enough. She was just too strong!

“Ugh… fucking unicorns!” The Pyro clamped down on her weapon’s bit through the coat and spun in my direction. I only had just enough time to duck back behind cover before the flames poured over the appliances. How was she still standing? She should have passed out by now!

“Candy! She’s ripping the coat off!” Nohta called out from the other end of the room, but I had to take cover from the flames, and with no clear line-of-sight my magic was faltering.

I heard a thud followed by grunts and shrieks of pain, as the flaming jets died down. I rose to witness my sister, clinging to the back of The Pyro’s head as she held the coat in place over The Pyro’s face. Even as the colossal mare struggled in an effort to free herself, bucking and kicking wildly in an effort to throw Nohta off, the dangerous fumes began to take effect on both of them.

I reached out with my magic, and found The Pyro’s forgotten mask lying on the floor. With a prayer to The Goddess, I jammed it over my sister’s head. She held onto The Pyro for dear life as the gang leader sunk to a knee, then two, then finally toppled over and lay still.

Nohta climbed off of her, taking care not to trip over the hoses and nozzles connected to the titanic flamethrower, and rushed to my side. The two of us held each other, shaking, as the revelation of what we had accomplished washed over us.

Nohta’s voice was ragged underneath the mask, coming out in an awful sounding cough, “Candy! We… we did it!”

The fumes were beginning to make it hard for me to breathe as well. “Come dear, we need to get out of here.”

Just as we were turning to leave, The Pyro stirred back to life. By The Goddess, she was tough! Ripping the coat off of her face with a hoof, she gazed in our direction. Confusion, fear, and anger riddled The Pyro’s voice as she yelled in a raspy voice, “What in the FUCK did you goddess-damned half-breeds do to me?”

My magic lifted one of her raider’s weapons from the floor, and I ground the barrel of the shotgun into her forehead. I couldn’t stop myself. This pony was responsible for utterly destroying my home, killing my friends, coworkers, and neighbors, and desecrating the temple of my goddess. I walked back to her as the shotgun kept her head from descending to her weapon’s trigger.

She glared at me, past the barrel of the weapon. Bloodshot eyes that only seemed to hold a feral rage. There was no remorse, no pity, no regret. Just a desire to kill. I stared into those eyes as the fumes began to take their toll on my own lungs.

I don’t even remember doing it. I only remember being on top of her, beating against her face with my hooves as I screamed and coughed incoherent gibberish. The flames in the room cast dancing shadows across her bloody face as she laughed weakly at me. Her arrogance only served to incense my anger, and before I knew it, the shotgun was pinning her head to the floor.

The meaning of her last words was lost amidst my fury. “Seasoned, but left raw… just the way…“

With a final grunt I lifted the shotgun’s barrel and brought it straight down above her eyes, using it to slam her head back into the steel floor. The last thing thing she ever saw was my glaring visage. And the last thing she ever heard was my taunting question, “Were we tough or tender, bitch?”

Sometimes… killing is very easy.

After an incredibly hasty session of looting bodies, the two of us exited Laundry to ascend through the catacombs of our old home as we made our way towards the entrance of Stable 76. I had stuffed The Pyro’s mask into my saddlebags, reasoning that we could at least collect the bounty from Mareon’s sheriff when we returned to the town. Despite what I kept trying to tell myself, everything that we had just done felt good. Maybe it didn’t feel right, but it felt good.

I had a better understanding of what had happened in the Stable, now. The slavers must have lead the charge on our home, claiming as many prisoners as they could. Afterwards, the raiders had probably moved in, looting and destroying with wild abandon. Somehow the two groups had brokered a deal and were now working together. The amount of enemies that Nohta and I had accumulated over the past week was troubling, but those enemies threatened the safety of others as well. Surely, if we informed the leaders of Mareon about the slaver and raider alliance, they would be able to help us. If nothing else, they needed to know of the danger they were in. And given our troubling lack of supplies, we had no choice but to return to the town anyway.

Before Nohta and I left, the two of us returned to our old quarters. With some measure of relief I realized that the door was still locked. Nohta had to bypass the emergency override to force the door open, but we entered to see the room almost exactly as we had left it.

Wisps of dark smoke were starting to drift throughout the halls, only barely visible by the light of my Pipbuck. Once we started to feel the heat underneath our hooves, we knew we didn’t have much time left before the entire stable turned into an oven. Even if the steel walls and floors themselves wouldn’t catch flame, there was more than enough combustible material that had been brought in from past caravans to bring the ambient temperature of our home to dangerous levels. We needed to leave.

I took the opportunity to hurriedly wash the blood off of my face and hooves, but Nohta’s immediate concern was for our practical problems. She dashed for the refrigerator, stuffing every bottle of water that we had left behind into her packs. We now had a grand total of five bottles of water between the two of us. They may not have been kept cold, but they were at least clean. After a futile attempt at ransacking our own cupboard for foodstuffs, and scouring the entirety of our quarters for anything that immediately came to mind as “useful,” we both found ourselves staring at the door to our old bedroom closet.

The last thing we did in the Stable was say goodbye to Mother. It was with no small amount of disappointment that we had found Mother’s amulet to be missing. We reasoned that Father must have taken it before coming to meet up with The Caravan. With our last few moments in our old home, we lit the rest of the incense, prayed for Luna’s forgiveness, and left Stable 76 behind.

We set up camp at the edge of the canyon. Nohta had long since come down from her experience with Dash, and we were both feeling worn and weary. My bruises and burns still ached with every movement but her cough had died down as soon as we had exited the Stable, and that was all the relief that I needed to keep going. The night air out in the desert might have been dry, but it was much better than breathing in the noxious fumes that the chemicals had unleashed in Laundry.

Once we had made sure that no more raiders were lurking outside the Stable, I got a campfire going with the fire talisman. Nohta was busy tending the flames and trying to warm up our late-night meal as I entered all the codes for the Department Heads into my Pipbuck. The only thing that I received for my trouble was a repeated “Error” message on the Pipbuck’s interface.

I didn’t understand. I had double-checked them! I had triple-checked to make sure that I had entered them correctly! This should work! Why wasn’t this working?

I looked up from my task to find Nohta trying to open a pre-war box of mashed potato flakes, some of the last bits of precious food we had left. “Nohta,” Desperation and frustration had seeped into my voice as I called out to my sister over the fire, shaking my head as my hoof tapped out the sequence of numbers and letters. “None of the codes are working!”

She stopped savaging the box with her teeth and stared into the fire for a moment, then looked back to me, confused. “None of them?”

“None. I can’t get any of these to work.” Had the Overmare been wrong? Would the codes not work if the ponies were out of the Stable?

She was silent for a moment, then spoke. “So, we don’t know where anypony from the Stable is?”

I shook my head, “Nopony.”

Nohta looked back to the fire, and put voice to the fear that I didn’t want to acknowledge, “So... We’re all alone, now?”

I didn’t know what to say. By The Goddess… what were we going to do? This was the only plan of action we had left to us! The only chance we had of finding our friends and neighbors! I… I couldn’t think of anything to do… I was completely at a loss for what to say. We hadn’t even had a chance to try. We had already failed…

After a moment’s pause, Nohta spoke again. Her voice was hard, and cold. “Good. I’m glad.”

What? “Nohta! How could you say that?”

Her expression was sullen, “What do you expect me to say, Candy? They treated me like shit every day! The only reason that I didn’t get kicked out was because of you and Dad! If it weren’t for the fact that they wanted to keep you two around they would’ve booted me out a long time ago!”

I was at a loss, “But, Nohta… to say that you’re actually glad that our stable has been enslaved…”

She conceded, “Ya, well… I’m not really glad about all of them getting taken. Some of them deserved it, sure, but some of them were nice. Moonglow was alright, he let me hide in The Temple a few times. And Pipe Sleeves was sorta fun to hang around with, even if she did cheat at checkers. And Caramel was… Caramel.”

Huh? My curiosity got the better of me, and I momentarily forgot to be upset about her poor choice of words regarding our stablemates. “What do you mean?”

Her brow furrowed, showing her discomfort, “Well… Caramel was nice. But she was, uh, really friendly. Especially with you.”

What problem could Nohta have with one of our best friends? “Well, of course she was friendly, Nohta. Caramel had lots of friends. She was one of the friendliest ponies in all of Stable 76.”

“Ya, but she was really friendly with you.” Nohta’s face was scrunched up, almost as if she feared I were going to hit her.

It wasn’t like Nohta to dance around the subject and mince words. This was completely unlike her. What was she trying to tell me? And why was she so worried about my reaction? “What are you saying, Nohta?”

She tapped her front hooves together timidly, a display that I never thought I’d see from my little sister. “Well, she was always coming by to say ‘Hi’ or dropping off something that she baked.” Her eyes pleaded with me, but I was still utterly lost. “She uh… and she was always kinda bumping into you… brushing up against you...“

“Nohta, I still don’t understand what you’re getting at. Yes, Caramel was certainly friendly, and not at all afraid to show her affection. I’d personally find it surprising if the Stable’s baker didn’t form a strong bond with someone who has an, ah... expert appreciation of confections.” I blushed, it was certainly no secret that I had an infamous sweet-tooth, but I still found it embarrassing to speak of. Father had even joked that I had earned my name from it.

Or at least, I thought he was joking when he told me that. At the time, I was too wrapped up in the blessedly saccharine and carroty caress of caffeine and cola that was emanating from the quickly draining soda bottle to pay much attention to anything else.

I continued, “But why would that bother you? She was one of our best friends. Or certainly one of mine.” I couldn’t keep the hurt out of my voice. Had Nohta no love for anypony in the Stable?

Nohta’s eyes could barely meet my own. With a seemingly intense effort, she finally broached the subject in clear detail. “I think that Caramel was kinda… you know… sweet on you?” Her gaze was averted to the desert as soon as she finished speaking.

What? How preposterous! I waved a hoof in the air as I dismissed her claim, “Nohta, don’t be silly! Mares don’t do that with each other!” Although… that would explain… Ugh! This was ridiculous! Caramel hadn’t been that way! She was as devoted to the teachings as I was! I continued, confident in my mind that I had thoroughly examined, and trounced, Nohta’s assertion, “And besides, sister,” My voice dropped as I remembered what had befallen the ponies we were talking about, “I think she was trying to set me up with Spicy Salsa.”

“Spicy? Really?” Her nose wrinkled in disgust, “The guy that you started calling ‘Chunky?’ The complete ass of a pony that you couldn’t stand when you were little? You sure she wasn’t just teasing you? You know… gauging your reaction? Maybe just joking? I think she wanted to, uh…you and she…”

“Yes, really! She hinted about his feelings even before he… told me himself.” Or rather, he had tried to. A griffin’s bullet had silenced him before he could get the words out...

I shook myself, and huffed. This conversation had quickly gotten completely ridiculous! “Nohta, you know as well as I do about the Lunar Mandate.” Closing my eyes, I dredged up a small portion of my lecturing prowess, “And lo, The Dark Mother breathed out, with all the strength at her command. From her moon’s light, four stars were born, and she bade her children, ‘Go forth to scatter your lights widely across Equestria, that all might come to see the glory of our passing.’ And her children obeyed, spreading the cool glow across the heavens. But always, always, her moon was chief among the night sky.”

I continued slowly, my patience with this tangent waning, “Mares do not do that with each other, Nohta. It would violate the creed. Selenism is meant to spread across the world. The only reason Mother’s people fought against Father’s is because the two didn’t know that we were all equal under Luna’s Moon! Both peoples believed that the other was inferior! How is Selenism supposed to spread love across the world if there are no foals to carry the teachings?”

“Wait, back up.” She stood, and held a hoof in front of her face as it contorted into an unbelieving scowl, “His feelings? What fucking feelings could he have possibly had for you? He used to bully you, for Luna’s sake! He was a piece of shit, Candy!”

I stammered, taken aback by her sudden outburst. “Nohta! He… He apologized for all of that!”

Her incredulous eyes stared at me over the fire, “And what, you believed him?”

Why shouldn’t I have? “Well, of course I did! His apology was sincere! And he never bothered me after the incident with the door!”

She was examining the fire again, wearing a bitter grimace that twisted the gruesome scar upon her face. “I think he just wanted to see if he could get under your saddle. That bastard was probably trying to see if he could hurt you again, get some revenge.”

“Revenge? For what?”

Her purple eyes rose back to mine. Stomping a hoof by the flames, she spoke in an exasperated tone, “Come on, Candy! He bullies you for years and then he gets his flank handed to him by karma. But you turn around and, without so much as a taunt, light up your horn and save his worthless fucking life! Nopony respected him after that! And it was just made worse because he never thanked you. Ponies couldn’t figure out what was worse, that the little half-breed filly had saved his life, or that he was too spineless to acknowledge it!”

I… I hadn’t thought of… “No. Nohta, you’re wrong! You weren’t even there! That… he wouldn’t… They wouldn’t…“

She crossed her forelegs before her as she laid down by the fire, huffing. “As gross as it might seem, if I had to pick between you being with Spicy and being with Caramel, I’d pick Caramel. She could at least make you smile.”

Was Nohta right? Was Spicy just… Ugh! It’s in the past! Move on! I whipped my tail in agitation, wincing as the pain of my recent injury brought a stark reminder of what our previous topic of conversation had been. I stared at my sister over the flames, “Nohta, I believe we were discussing your egregious wording regarding your own attitude towards our stable’s fate?”

She eyed me warily, reluctant to abandon a conversation when she had the upper hoof, but slipped back into her usual mannerisms and resumed our previous topic, “Well, whatever. I’m not glad about what happened to some of those ponies. Caramel and Moonglow and Pipe Sleeves and a couple more… “ Her head lowered for a moment as she stared at her hooves, before her face hardened and she stomped the ground, nearly yelling. “But the rest of them can all get fucked for all I care!” She jabbed her hoof in my direction, “You don’t know what it was like for me, Sis. You didn’t have to put up with that shit all your life! It was just a few years for you. You got lucky. You were like Dad. I was…” She eyed her hooves again, carefully pulling back a portion of her cloak to trace her eyes over her stripes. “I was too much like Mom for them.”

“Nohta, are you really going to sit there and tell me that you know exactly how I was bullied? Do you really think that I never got teased, or picked on, or called names, or-”

She interjected in a flat voice, gazing across the fire with her furrowed brow, “Beaten up?”

Sighing, I placed a hoof over my forehead. I could feel an immense headache coming on. “I’ll admit, your bullies tended to assault you physically more than I had to put up with. But-”

She stomped a hoof on the ground, yelling, “Did your teachers ever make you feel like you were worthless because you were part zebra? Did you ever have to try and hold your temper while the other fillies and colts were making fun of Mom, because they knew you’d be the only one to get in trouble for fighting? Did the Overmare have anything nasty to say about you in her files?”

I stared over the fire, mouth agape, before lowering my gaze and shaking my head, “No.”

She seemed to calm down, lowering her voice to a near-whisper, “I had to deal with that my whole life, Sis. It never got better. Not after you started working in the clinic. Not after Dad talked to the Overmare for the hundredth time. Never.”

Lowering her head to stare into the flames, she continued, “Not until I got out here.”

She looked back to the canyon that we had exited, “the Stable was a pit, Sis. I hated it in there. I was meant to be out here.”

She sighed deeply, and gazed over the flames at the desert, “I was meant to be outside. Like Mom. Like Dust.” Her eyes traveled back to her own flank, as if she were gazing through the cloak that covered it to look upon the swirling storm that was her tornado cutie mark. “Like the wind.”

Turning back to me, she continued, “Candy, we may be alone out here, but we’ll always have each other. I promise you that. We’re strong, too! We just took down an entire gang of raiders! That’s the kind of shit that Mom and Dad used to do! We can make it out here by ourselves! We don’t need the Stable! We don’t need anypony’s help! We just need to stick together.”

She gestured with a hoof at the darkened landscape beyond the fire’s light, “We’re out here, in a world of freedom and possibility, and we can do whatever we want!” She sighed before continuing, her voice reaching a near-grumble by the end of her sentence. “Look, we both know that you’re a lot smarter than me, so I’m gonna follow your judgement... Most of the time.” She perked up again, tapping her hoof on the ground for emphasis, “But right now, we need to keep ourselves alive and learn how to get by out here!”

She kept going, gaining steam, “We just took down one of the raider leaders! One of the big targets! She was worth a lot of caps. And I saw the look on your face when you killed those evil bastards.” She gave me a sly grin as she explained, “Sis, you liked it.”

I… did I? Is that what I felt? Surely it must have been something else…

Nohta left me no time to consider her assertion, “I think we should get you some armor, learn how to fight for real, and go track down the other raiders. It should at least get us enough caps that we won’t starve. And,” She added, almost as an afterthought, “we might learn something about where the slavers took everypony along the way. After that, we’ll... well, we’ll figure out what do when we get to that point. What do you think?”

I shook my head, but found myself only capable of putting up a token amount of resistance to her argument. “Nohta, I’m a doctor! I’m not supposed to be killing ponies! I’m supposed to be helping ponies!”

Her voice rose as she pointed out something I hadn’t considered, “Dad was a doctor too, Candy! And he didn’t have any problems with killing if he thought it would help!” She calmed down, but her eyes continued to pierce mine over the flames. “There’s lots of ways to help ponies, Sis. You can heal patients, sure, but what about the bad ponies out there? The ones that hurt others in the first place? Wouldn’t it be better to stop them before they hurt somepony, like what happened to our stable? Didn’t Dad always say ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?”

Nohta’s last words drew my mind back to my medical training, as my thoughts wandered to all the times that Father had instructed me in the removal of tumors, or when infections called for amputation. I searched my heart for the right thing to do, but felt nothing except the cold pit of loss and the sheer outrage of knowing this needn’t have happened. Could I spare someone else this misery? Wasn’t it worth trying, even if I couldn’t? With no clear direction for us to take, did I really have any better ideas?

A random gust of wind tugged part of the cloud cover away, revealing the glowing orb that held dominion over the night. For a moment, I allowed myself the opportunity to entertain the vain idea that The Goddess herself would deem my response worthy of gracing her ears. If only she could hear me, I mused.

I could feel my heart break one final time that night, as I realized that this world wouldn’t allow me the luxury of going through life without causing harm. I had no other choice than to fight, because the world had forced my hoof. This world had ravaged my life! It had taken nearly everything from me! I had never wanted this! How dare it! I had done nothing to deserve this! It wasn’t fair… This wasn’t fair at all!

I latched hold of that feeling. Indignation. It was a tiny ember, a small light surrounded by the darkness left by the absence of justice, but it burned ever the more brightly for it. I believe that you might be able to appreciate that.

There was no way that I could stand idly by and allow the wasteland to do to others what it had done to my sister and myself. I wouldn’t allow it. I would struggle against it. I would fight it! I would thrash and scream and stab and kick! I would kill if I had to, but I would not let it take me meekly! It would not see me roll onto my back as if I were submitting to its will!

I looked to my hooves, still bearing the faint stains of blood that I hadn’t been able to wash away in our hurry to escape the Stable. I could kill. I could end lives to protect others. It was a simple realization. A liberating admission to myself. I had killed before… And in so doing, I had saved lives! It was the right thing to do… It’s what Father would have done…

My eyes could barely hold back my tears, hot and swelling as they were. The dreary blackness behind my closed lids gave way to the faces of friends, coworkers, neighbors… Father. Of all the things this world had taken from me… Why did it have to take Father? Grief poured out of my body freely, moistening the stripes upon my face as it found its way to darken the loose soil at my hooves.

But something else was filling up the void left by its absence… My vast reserves of anguish had become a rapidly withering resource of resistance against the hatred taking root within my heart. Once the tears had dried up, there was nothing left to keep the fire at bay.

The ember burned more brightly. Rage overtook my other emotions, burning them out with its heat before casting their ashes to the desert wind. My chest heaved with its intensity. My breath caught in my throat. My lips curled into a grimace and my eyes finally found the strength to glare at the tears that had fallen from them. The ember had birthed a flame…

I was about to take my first step down a path I had never believed I would travel, and I was going completely against Mother’s advice by allowing my heart to control my actions. The logical part of my mind was racing, desperately trying to make itself heard over the torrential downpour of my emotions. Eventually, it only found my ear when it began to rationalize what I wanted to hear anyway.

The complete frustration at being stonewalled at every opportunity for happiness, the indignant anger at the injustices I had suffered since leaving the Stable, the indescribable anguish of personal loss; all of these burned with a white-hot fury within my chest, tempered only by the weakening voice of caution that bade me to keep my sister safe. But even that voice was faltering, drowned out by the surging tide within my soul. How could I argue against her?

Nohta was right. I needed her to be right. We had defeated a powerful opponent, hadn’t we? We were strong! I would have revenge on those that had wronged me!

But… Wait! Wait! This wasn’t me! Was it? It couldn’t be…

I wasn’t a killer, was I? The raiders didn’t count! They were trying to hurt us! That’s just self defense! My protecting Nohta didn’t make me a killer. Right?

I wasn’t vengeful! Mother was, yes. Nohta was too. But… If the griffins were standing before me, what would I do? Was there anything wrong with revenge, so long as it brings justice to the world? Why couldn’t I think of an answer? This was maddening!

But then… It wouldn’t be revenge. Not really. We’d just be doing the world a favor, right? Revenge would be, if anything, a fringe benefit! This would be for the betterment of all! Surely none would argue that removing a violent group with ill intent from the wasteland of Equestria would leave the rest of us wanting! So why hadn’t anypony else begun to do so? If they lacked the power to deal with the raiders, or the ability to fend off the slavers, shouldn’t I protect them? Shouldn’t I help them see? Even if they didn’t realize that they needed my assistance, or didn’t even want my help, shouldn’t I aid them, anyway? That was the logical thing to do… Help as many as I possibly could.

Ahh, yes. Now I’ve finally got your attention. Please believe me when I say that I’ll do my very best to keep it. Because I believe this is exactly what you need to hear. You need to know how my journey truly began. Not with my stepping outside of my home, but with a small and easy rationalization. Not with a hunger for adventure, but with a desire to help. My journey truly began when my little sister asked me a simple question, and I found that the answer to her query was not an easy thing to give.

I found myself caught up in my meandering, philosophical quandaries. But the only thing that I seemed to know for certain was that I wanted to help. And from what I could tell, this world needed plenty of help. Help with things like raiders, and slavers, and griffin mercenaries. This world, I realized, is a sick and twisted place.

But then… I am a doctor, aren’t I? I can deal with sick. I can deal with sick just fine.

I let out a long, tired sigh, clearing my thoughts. Nohta was waiting patiently for my answer. She was right about so many things… She really wasn’t my baby sister anymore, was she? No matter, though. I loved her. I’d still do everything in my power to keep her safe, whether she wanted my aid or not. That’s what family does for family.

My gaze drifted from Nohta to the moon, and I gave my answer to them both. “You’re right, sister.” I stared into that beautiful orb, even as my mind was wracked with worry for our future, “Sometimes the only way to cure a sickness is to cut it out.”

Footnote: The Party Levels Up!
Welcome to Level 4!
New Perk!

Egghead: You graduated from the Stable’s educational system at the top of your class, and it shows! At each Level Up, you gain +3 skill points. Your mind is your greatest weapon, Doctor!

Skills Note: Explosives 25

Nohta gains a Perk:

A Little Dash: Nohta has really learned how to move in that cloak! As long as she is wearing light armor or no armor at all, she runs 20% faster.

Author's Notes:

I simply cannot give enough thanks to my editor and prereader, Wr3nch, for helping me with this story. It would most assuredly be an awful eyesore without his hard work and wonderful advice.

Thanks for all the covering fire, buddy!

Another big thank you to KKat, for giving all of us this amazing sandbox for our imaginations. And of course, thanks to all the folks who have worked on MLP or Fallout.