“Get out of my face, you son of a bitch!”

I have never run so far, for so long, in my entire life. Except for maybe once; and ironically enough it had been for a similar reason. Finders hadn't been involved that time, or even an actual bounty, but the net effect had been the same. I was possessed of a brief urge to proclaim my success at having evaded all immediate threats yet again, but swiftly beat that impulse to a bloody pulp and bucked it in the stomach. I'd learned my lesson.

Instead, I turned my thoughts back to where they had been earlier that morning before I'd been so rudely interrupted by a spray of gunfire. I couldn't stay in Hoofington. I couldn't go to Fillydelphia. Manehattan was out...

My mind kept coming back to one more name, and each time I would shake my head and fervently rack my brain for other options. That place wasn't ideal either. Too close to old threats.

On the other hoof, they were old threats. Everywhere else had more recent ones. Besides, she couldn't possibly still be looking for me after all this time. She had to think I was dead by now. I certainly wasn't a threat to her any longer. As long as I kept myself from becoming too well-known and avoided areas I knew the White Hooves actively patrolled, she'd be none the wiser. Given my vocation, remaining a member of the faceless plebeian masses was the goal anyway...

...and had worked so well for me in Flank. Obviously.

With a defeated sigh, I bowed my head and started trudging northwest. Seaddle or bust, I guess...

It wasn't going to be a short trip. I'd known that from the onset. Hell, it'd taken me the better part of a month to get to Hoofington from there. There had been a lot of backtracking and many days spent hiding in tunnels and caves as I waited for the coast to clear. I doubted that this time I would need to be quite so cautious—I didn't know anypony in the Hoof who'd even known Seaddle was a place—but a direct trip was still going to take a few weeks. Which presented something of a problem, seeing as how I'd only brought a couple days worth of food with me to Flank.

In fairness, I had very much intended to stock up before leaving Flank. I'd simply figured that I wouldn't need to depart quite so urgently. Didn't help that I was more than a little dehydrated; and that hangover hadn't gone away yet. I suspected the two conditions were connected. I had some Sparkle Colas in my bags; but they weren't going to do anything to help with the headache or the dehydration. They did at least wet my lips, and trick my body into thinking it was getting refreshed. For a while, anyway...

This was not going to be good. I knew from experience that there was a good stretch of desert between here and Seaddle. I'd need to find water before I set out much further. Of course this was the one day in the whole month that Hoofington wasn't suffering from its usual torrential downpour.

I don't suppose that you'd just like to go ahead and take an outright shit on me, would you, Celestia? No? Pity. At least then I would know things had gotten their absolute worst...

I spied a large hill looming in the distance. It'd give me a view of my surroundings at least. Hopefully I'd spy something helpful with my binoculars. First and foremost to make certain that I couldn't spy any ponies looking to make a quick cap off of my hide.

The slopes weren't particularly steep, but my exhaustion made the trip up to the top take longer than it otherwise should have. The soggy ground helped matters not at all. A couple of slips and a near-tumble, and I was finally at the top; mud-covered and panting. I slipped the binoculars out of my bags and held them to my eyes, casting my gaze about.

I relaxed a little when I didn't spy any armored ponies bounding towards me with rifles strapped to their withers. No telling how long that would keep though. I'd performed a fair number of evasive movements during my harried flight from Flank. Doubled back when I could, serpentined my way through ruined alleys when I came to them. Hasty measures that wouldn't hold up much to the eye of a weathered tracker motivated by a bounty of caps on their quarry. But at least it should buy me a few hours. Time enough, hopefully, to make my way out of The Hoof, and into regions the locals would hesitate to tread through; even for a pile of caps.

There was nopony at all, that I could see. Not even visible evidence of past pony trespasses.

Horseapples.

I frowned at the mixed blessing that was my apparent solitude. While it meant that I was safe from bounty hunters looking to cash in on the Finders' offer, it also meant that there were no traders that I could...'negotiate' with for much needed supplies. And why should there be? Seaddle didn't have anything worth a trip like that for that I recalled. Every place worth doing business with lay in the complete opposite direction of my intended route.

What I did spot was the remnants of some sort of old mill. Ruins usually meant something useful. Whether that something would also be relevant remained to be seen. However, I had no better options if I hoped to scrounge up any worthwhile gear for the trip. So, a quick jaunt into the local deathtrap it was!

Hurray.

My approach was slow by design. I had never, in all my life, ever ventured into a desiccated Old World building that didn't house some sort of mortal threat. Whether that threat was in the form of deliberate traps, camping raiders, or nesting critters, or even the mundane danger posed by the imminent collapse of an ancient structure, there always seemed to be something ready to jump out and take a strip out of my hide. What the hell was up with that, anyway? You'd think that after two hundred years, places like this would be tapped out in the threat department.

Then again, what sane pony looks at a half-collapsed saw mill out in the middle of a wilderness rife with deadly mutated monsters and thinks to themselves: “now that seems like an intelligent place to go and look around!”

I drew my pistol and kept the sights up, my head swiveling as I scanned for threats. My ears pivoted in similar fashion, listening for any sounds that weren't crickets and spindly branches rustling in the breeze. Going into a place like this alone was so far up on the list of 'bad ideas' it was practically a sub-title. The pounding headache, irritated eyes, and parched lips helped not at all.

My expectations were immediately doused when I got close enough to see that the river that had once serviced this mill was dry. How, in Celestia's name, was a river that ran so close to a place that got as much rainfall as Hoofington dry?! A glance up towards the mountains, and the sight of what was obviously a distant balefire impact site, provided the answer. A bomb two hundred years ago had caused a landslide that diverted the river. To where, I had no idea. It could be as near as a hundred yards, or as far as a hundred miles.

Still, no reason to give up all hope. With all the logs and sawdust this place would have produced back during its operational heyday, I doubted the workers would have drunk straight from the river anyway. They'd probably had a well set up; or imported their water to the site in bottled form. As long as that well's aquifer had been sustained by that now redirected river, I still had a chance of finding fresh water. I may also discover some full bottles in an old fridge. It might be a little irradiated, but at least it'd be water.

The door was open. Well, more specifically, it had rotted off its hinges and fallen outward, leaving a dark gaping maw for me to stare into. The partially collapsed roof proved something of a blessing, as it allowed splashes of light to illuminate the interior. Or at least parts of it. The lit portions seemed to be very few, and very localized. I swallowed, keenly aware of how parched my throat was, and stepped inside.

The wooden floor loudly protested my trespassing, but it held. I wasn't certain what should be my bigger concern: whether the floor would support my weight, or if the noisy creaking would alert some predator to my presence. Neither occurrence would make for a particularly pleasant day.

I was in some sort of...cafeteria? Break room? Whatever it was, there were the remains of tables, and toppled chairs. A few large holes in the floor off to the side where something heavy had fallen through. Parts of counters and a stove were still visible, nestled against the wall in a corner. Things that would have made food hot, but nothing that would have held cold refreshing beverages. Which meant those holes were likely where such appliances had been. They had seen fit at some point during the last two hundred years to relocate themselves to the basement. Perfect. What I needed was now in a darker, more confined, death-trap.

I could feel Celestia copping a squat directly over my head. Probably a 'post taco night' sort of squat too...

I wasn't about to hop down through the holes though, not here. I couldn't even be sure this place had a basement. It could very well be a sinkhole. I needed to explore the mill more thoroughly and find a staircase that lead down. Then I could be certain that I'd have a way back up as well. So I gave the holes a wide berth and edged towards one of the doorways.

A hallway. Restrooms to the left—bone dry, naturally. Offices to the right—paperwork that meant nothing to me. Janitor's closet—never knew when a charged spark-battery would come in handy. Locker room—doubted Jasmine's phone was still in service for that 'good time' the scrawled graffiti promised. Hello...stairwell!

No light showing through holes in the roof here though; just a blackness that could swallow your soul. Possibly filled with monsters that could swallow a body. I holstered the pistol and rooted through my saddlebags for a flare. I struck the bottom of the red cylinder against the wall and flinched as the other end sputtered to life. I carefully slipped the flare into a pocket that was stitched into the shoulder of my barding, designed to hold just such an object. I redrew my 9mm and ventured into the dark.

The crimson flame periodically sputtered as it consumed the two century old fuel to perpetuate its light. The light didn't go very far, but it was enough to keep me from tripping over the various bits of debris strewn over the floor. I glanced up and immediately felt a lot less confident about the ground floor's ability to support my weight. Most of the floor joists had rotted away to nearly nothing. I didn't know what had kept me from falling through during my walk down the hallway.

Maybe Celestia felt that I'd suffered enough for the day?

I kept moving forward, drawing up every once in a while to avoid stepping on an old desiccated skeleton. Earth ponies, nearly all of them. Not surprising. We'd traditionally taken on jobs that had to do with the land I'd learned. No pegasi remains. Also not surprising. They'd fled to their paradise in the clouds; leaving the other ponies to wallow in the Wasteland. The numbers though...those were surprising.

Assuming that this basement had been used as a makeshift shelter for the workers when the bombs fell, the small size of the cafeteria had implied a workforce of...a dozen? Half again that many at the absolute most? I counted nearly twenty skulls near the landing alone. I took a deep breath. There were plenty of plausible explanations for an excessive number of bodies.

I knew nothing about how saw mills worked, and this place employed scores of workers.

These weren't all workers. A group of hikers had been in the area and took shelter here as well.

I wasn't the first pony to have come down here in the last two hundred years.

Yeah, that was the sound of Celestia bearing down for a deity-sized defecation on the turd pile that was already my life.

Fuck it. None of these bodies were fresh. Whatever did this was probably a hundred years dead itself. I pressed on in the direction of the area that lay directly beneath the cafeteria. Then I drew up short again. Another corpse. This time, rotting meat was visible on the bones, flies swarming about. This poor pony was fresher than the others. A month. Two, at the most. Nor had the flies been the ones to rend open this poor bastard's carcass.

Every fiber in my body demanded that I turn around this very instant and bolt back the way I'd come. Run. Run for an hour towards Seaddle and never look back. Don't take even one more step forward!

My dry tongue licked over my chapped lips as I tightened my grip on the pistol.

Bring it on, Celestia, you ancient dead bitch! Do your worst.

I stepped forward, my eyes locked on the faint pale glow where the day's light managed to just barely creep through the holes in both the mill's roof and the above floor. It illuminated my target like some sort of divine beacon. It was an old refrigerator all right, fallen on its side, its door hanging open. As if taunting me, I could see a half dozen bottles of clear liquid twinkling in the light of my flare. Water.

All sense of reason and caution left me. I closed the distance in three excited bounds and began to shovel the bottles into my saddlebags. I'd just gotten the last one into my bag when I heard the sound I'd been expecting since I stepped into the mill: the wet, sputtering, diarrhea-infused, discharge of a spiteful alabaster deity.

Well, okay, it was actually the gut-chilling unnatural scream of at least three feral ghoul ponies coming from all around me; but the net effect was the same.

Ghouls. Figured. Given that the ones I could see wore the tattered remains of flannel shirts and denim coveralls; I surmised that they were the 'survivors' of this mill's workforce. Irradiated by the magical fallout from the balefire bombardment two hundred years ago to the point where their bodies ceased to age. Driven beyond the precipice of madness by a combination of immortality and the memories of everything that had been lost. The ponies who had once upon a time likely been nothing more than jovial lumberjacks and mill workers, now existed only as crazed zombie ponies with an insatiable hunger for flesh.

And I had just sprinted right into the middle of a pack of them.

One of the ghouls was blocking the most direct path to the stairs, but I was nowhere near familiar enough with the building's layout to risk a hasty search for another exit. So instead, I charged it. My tongue depressed the pistol's trigger as quickly as the recoiling slide would re-cock the hammer. I wasn't taking the time to line up head-shots, which was damn near the only way to kill these things with a caliber as small as the one I was throwing at them. The time spent aiming would just delay me. I didn't actually need to kill it—unkill it? Rekill it? Whatever. I just needed the ghoul blocking me thrown off balance enough to successfully bowl it over and scramble past.

Two slugs caught its shoulder and a third removed the mandible, pitching its head back. The other three rounds I got off missed entirely. However, it was enough to disorient the undead pony and let me trample him in my hasty flight without winding up with a rotting maw snapping at my haunches for my trouble.

The red light from my flare leaped around the walls as I bounded for the stairs. I stumbled a bit when I hit the slew of older skeletons, but I didn't fall. I didn't look back either. I could feel the other two ghouls—at least—right behind me; running on legs that I don't think ever tired. These ponies had gone on moving for two centuries after they'd supposedly died; nothing about them suggested that they ran out of breath or suffered from muscle cramps.

That was where my plan sort of fell apart. Ghouls didn't tire. I would. I was hardly in top form right now as it was; and a sprint wasn't going to do me any favors. I'd be lucky to make it a quarter mile before they caught me.

Despair began to grip my insides. Ripped apart by ghouls. Suddenly, getting shot up by a bounty hunter after a big payday wasn't sounding like such a bad way to go...Heading out of the Hoof was turning into a bit of a frying pan versus fire situation.

A spark-battery sputtered to life in my brain as I scrambled back up into the hallway. I was heading towards the cafeteria again. A place where food had been prepared. Where food had been cooked. With gas. My eyes darted briefly to the flare sputtering at my side.

This was going to be loud.

I galloped into the dining area and whipped my head in the direction of the stove; specifically the gas line connected to it. I tongued the trigger three more times, and was rewarded with hearing the high-pitched 'PING!' of a lead slug striking metal, and seeing a tear open up in the pipe. Dimly, over the roar of the ghoul ponies loping after me, I heard the telltale hiss of gas rushing out. I spat the pistol out through the doorway leading outside with as much force as I could muster and ripped the flare from its carrier. I was just in time to see not merely two, but a whole herd of ghouls barreling down the hallway towards me.

My head flicked up, tossing the little red tube in their direction, “catch!”

I threw myself out the door.

I was airborne a lot longer than I should have been under normal circumstances. The blast from the ignited gas line saw to that. Heat, splinted wood, and noise slammed into me like a brick wall, sending me rolling rather indelicately along the Wastes.

Well hello there, persistent high-pitched whine. We meet again.

I was pretty sure that I was letting out a whoop of elation as I rolled myself onto my back and flopped limply, feeling like I was breathing for the first time in a long while. How long had I been holding my breath? I thought it was a whoop. Hard to tell, since I couldn't actually hear it. I might have just been imitating a patient receiving a tongue depressor. At least there was nopony around to hear me if I was getting it wrong.

My legs felt stiff, and they protested as I turned back onto my belly and stood up. As nice as it felt, this was hardly the ideal place to rest. If there were any bounty hunters out this far searching for me; I imagined that seeing a fiery explosion would make them a little curious about what was going on here. Besides, I still needed to find my pistol.

I scanned the destruction that I had wrought and whistled—I think. That mill was basically gone in any way that mattered. It had survived a balefire apocalypse and two hundred years of rot; but ten minutes of yours truly had proved too much. Impressive.

“That was one hell of a courtesy flush...” I murmured—yelled? I trudged towards the smoldering wreckage, my eyes scanning the ground. I occasionally opened my mouth and made a sound of some sort, waiting for it to overpower the constant ringing in my ears. I needed to reduce the frequency of proximal explosions to my eardrums if I wanted to be able to hear anything ever again.

My eyes spotted a speck of bluing hidden under a scrap of cinder. I smiled and bent to pick up the pistol...

...and that was the moment Celestia bared down for round two.

I felt myself tackled violently from the side. My eyes went wide as I kicked out with my legs in an effort to fend off the attacker that had come at me from out of nowhere. It was a ghoul. Its body was practically a blackened and charred husk, but it was still very much moving and—judging from its gaping cavernous maw and the warm feted stench of rotted flesh assaulting my nostrils—screaming enthusiastically in my face. It's yellowed teeth snapped at me in an effort to rip my face off of, well, my face. It was a lot stronger than I was and its snapping jaws were slowly creeping closer to by head.

I bit down on the hilt of my knife, drawing it from my fetlock-mounted sheath and swung it as fiercely as I could at the gnashing muzzle that so desperately wanted to devour me. I managed to get in a clean hit that snapped its neck away from me, stunning it momentarily. I rolled the dazed ghoul onto its back and continued to stab at the barbequed pony again and again, ignoring the hooves kicking at my stomach.

The ringing in my ears morphed into the cacophonous cheers of a crowd. The secluded mill and charred wilderness became a ring of ponies smeared with streaks of white paint. The ghoul pinned beneath my body, was now a young orange colt.

He hadn't stood a chance. The blank-flanked foal I was beating with my hooves had probably never been in a single fight in his short life. He'd never live long enough to be involved in a second. None of this was his fault either. He hadn't asked for this. Slaves never volunteered for anything we made them do. He'd just been unfortunate enough to be the first colt my father had laid eyes on that morning. The morning that I had just reached six years of age; and was required to make my first kill.

The colt hadn't known what was going on when he was shoved into the ring. When I charged, he backed away fearfully, shielding himself with his hooves, in preparation for what he thought would be a simple beating. The bruises on his flesh implied that he'd received more than a few since being brought to the camp. However, this time, the blows would not stop when he lost consciousness.

I was required to kill this colt. My father had commanded it. The other warriors watching me expected it.

It never even crossed my mind to disappoint them.

My hooves fell onto the colt, wildly at first in an effort to drive him into submission. When he was a wailing ball of pain, I began to choose my strikes with more care, remembering the instruction my father had given me in hoof-to-hoof fighting. I concentrated my blow around his chest and neck in order to debilitate him; then delivered a double-hoof strike to his head. The colt went limp, unconscious.

From that moment on, I gleefully bashed his head into paste. The crowd screamed with approval.

Apparently I was screaming in the present too, quite loudly, as I could now hear myself finally over what was becoming a background whine in my ears. The red haze that had clouded my vision ebbed, and I finally began to process the damage I'd done to the face of my attacker. There...was hardly a head left at all. It was just sort of this dried up, blackened, shredded...mush. I was panting heavily.

The knife slipped from my mouth and fell to the ground. At some point during the beating, I'd switched to my hooves; but had kept the knife's hilt clutched in my teeth. I backed away from the ghoul's brutalized corpse, wheezing. The memories were already fading away, receding to the back of my mind as the present reasserted itself.

I took a bottle of lukewarm water from my bag and popped the cap. The liquid splashing into my mouth, though warm, was the most refreshing sensation I'd felt in as long as I could remember. Only when the bottle was empty did I take stock of my surroundings. If I was going to die, I wasn't going to die thirsty, damn it.

I could hear the crickets again, and the crackling a burning wood from the few small flames that persisted. What I couldn't hear was the screeching of more ghouls lusting after my flesh. Nor the cheers of bloodsport spectators. It was a very sweet lack of sound.

“All of that,” I panted, “for a drink of water,” I allowed myself to slump backwards onto my spine, staring up into the perpetually overcast sky above. I wiped away a fleck of ghoul flesh that was sticking to my muzzle, “hurray.”

I swear, the mountains hadn't been that steep when I'd made this trip in the other direction ten years ago. I winced and flexed my sore ankles. I'd known that the going wasn't going to be pleasant. I'd sort of counted on it, actually. The mountains to the west of Hoofington were tall and broad; their massive girth responsible for most of the rain that the city got. A formidable natural barrier to all but the most foolhardy of travelers.

Even back before the war, few passes existed where roads and rail lines could traverse the peaks. Long, winding, affairs that wrapped around summits until you found yourself nearly doubling back the way you'd just come. The distance across the range was probably about fifty miles as the griffon flies. A two day trip if you were feeling optimistic, and didn't mind a little sweating. If you followed the road, it was closer to eighty miles. A decent four day trip. I was trying to split the difference and do it in three. The supplies I had were limited, and once I was past the mountains; I'd have a decent stretch of desert to deal with. I wasn't keen to run out of water half-way through it.

So I followed the roads where I had to, and crossed country where I could see it would shave a few miles. Bloat-sprites proved to be the biggest danger, fortunately. Not to say that the vicious little things weren't a significant threat; but I'd take them over killer robots and diamond dogs any day.

I'd also take them over whatever had hit the caravan I passed.

To say I was surprised by the sight was an understatement. Not that a blasted wagon and dead bodies was anything new on a road in the Wasteland. Granted, in most cases, the wagon and ponies around it had died of radiation poisoning a couple centuries ago. These bodies were a lot fresher. That was a curiosity.

Traders, obviously. The twisted wreckage of their wares cart had spilled its contents over the road. I looked between it and a nearby crater in the pavement. A mine? Possible, but that answer didn't sit well with me. It seemed...off. Mines were common in most of the wilderness in the Wasteland; especially in areas like Hoofington where the majority of the land battles had taken place. Both sides had used minefields to funnel the other's ground forces into more favorable engagement areas.

Still, roads had rarely been given the same treatment during that time. Open supply lines had been vital to both side's war efforts, and the battle lines changed so frequently that neither wanted to risk ammunition wagons running over a mine that they had planted just the previous month when the area had been controlled by the enemy. Which meant that for a mine to have been set along one of the few roads that ever existed which crossed these mountains, it had most likely been placed after the war had ended.

Bandits were my first thought. Setting up an ambush to catch an unsuspecting trader and take their stuff; but that was also the exact reason why they probably hadn't been behind the explosion. Can't recover valuable merchandise if you blow it all to Tartarus. Add to that the fact that all of the caravan's goods seemed to still be present. I easily spotted a few rifles and shotguns that seemed to be mostly intact. An ammunition box that had cracked open, spilling rounds onto the road. Things that any bandit worth their salt would have grabbed up in a heartbeat.

Raiders then? Ponies who were little more than crazed psychopaths out for the thrill of the kill? Another answer that didn't completely satisfy. They might not be out to plunder wagons for things like scrap electronics and spark-batteries; but they'd still have gathered up the weapons and ammunition from their kills. Besides, they tended to like up close and personal killing. Explosive booby-traps didn't fit their usual style. Maybe they'd use those in their lairs, but out here in the middle of nowhere? Hoofington raiders were especially unlikely. They were cannibal ponies who ate anypony they came across; and none of these corpses looked to have been chewed on.

This was so many flavors of unsettling.

The hairs stuck up on the back of my neck, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched. I couldn't see anypony though, no matter how carefully I scanned the surrounding peaks with my binoculars.

I decided that lingering was a bad idea.

The scene was still a bit of a blessing. As odd as the lack of plundering was, it meant that I was able to restock the supplies I was falling short on. Pistol rounds, a couple grenades, and enough food to see me all the way to Seaddle. The food caught my attention. It wasn't the usual fair of Cram, Sugar Apple Bombs, and Fancybuck Cakes that I'd grown so used to in the Manehattan and Hoofington areas.

Apple chips. Dried out and preserved slices of actual, real, apples. Back east, this load would have brought in enough caps to let me practically move in to Stable 69. Food like this was a true luxury back there. I could see now what these traders had been trying to accomplish. Buy up food for cheap in Seaddle, and sell it for massive profits in someplace like Tenpony Tower.

I popped a few of the chips into my mouth and sighed deeply. It had been far too long...

My saddlebags were practically stuffed with the things by the time I was ready to move on. I'd still not come up with an explanation for the caravan's destruction that satisfied me. Fluke, I guess. Random mine out on the road; maybe even a complete accident. One of the traders' own explosives that had detonated unexpectedly.

That theory was the best I had that didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.

As I trotted past one of the dead merchants, that idea died a quiet little death in my mind. The rotting corpse of the mare I now stood over hadn't died in an explosion like her two companions. She'd been shot. A lot. Dozens of holes perforated her side. I could see gouges in the road where those rounds had chewed away at the asphalt after passing through her body. It had been a weapon that dealt out bullets en mass. I used the chipped pavement and the position of the body to approximate the direction that the fire had come from and looked out across the valley.

A peak on the other side of a small gully. I narrowed my eyes as they caught a glimmer of movement. At least, I thought I'd caught a glimmer. A little flash of light. I spent a few more seconds staring, but nothing else stirred. Had I just been seeing things?

My pace was now a lot more brisk as I cantered along the road.

Senseless death and destruction and confounding mysteries. Nice to know that the Wasteland was consistent, no matter where you were in it.

“Well, that's absolutely beautiful,” I mumbled, peering through the binoculars.

I'd been a little surprised to spot the ranch out here in what had likely been a wasteland unto itself long before the Great War. I'd even spied shapes that could only be brahmin out in the 'pastures'. There were no fields of green grasses; nothing like that would grow in such vast open spaces under a perpetually overcast sky. Scrub and brush managed to eek out some sort of existence though. Brahmin, having survived in the Wasteland longer than most ponies, had long ago learned to live off of what little managed to grow in the wild.

My hope, upon first seeing the ranch, had been to find ponies I could trade with. Actually trade with if it came to it. Depending on how many there were. Then I had gotten close enough to get a good look with my binoculars, and my expectations fell considerably.

The brahmin were all dead. Butchered, and not in the, 'need the meat' sort of way. They'd clearly been slaughtered out of either malice, or for the thrill of it; their carcasses left to rot in the heat. The house was visibly ransacked, and belongings were strewn all around the outside. As remote as this place was, which the residents had probably counted on as a measure of safety; they'd been hit. Hard. Either by raiders or bandits, I couldn't tell. Whichever it had been, anything of value was probably gone. Looted by whomever had done this, or destroyed out of spite.

Bah, maybe the former occupants had had a well at least.

I made my way towards the homestead at a brisk pace. This sort of terrain provided any onlooker, whether myself or a lucky bounty hunter, with a long field of view. The sooner I was at the house, and out of sight, the better. Not that I was intent on being careless. My pistol was out and at the ready in case somepony, or something, had already decided to capitalize on the vacancy.

When I reached the front door, I came to a halt. The doorway had been barricaded from the inside; and it obviously had not done much to dissuade the attackers. The door itself was a splintered wreck. The walls to either side had been viciously chewed at by gunfire; a smattering of various calibers, judging by the variations in the sizes of the holes. The fighting here had been intense; though I doubted that it had lasted very long. The tracks outside suggested that the attackers had been numerous; and I doubted a place like this had been home to more than six ponies.

I climbed over the shredded couch that had been used to try and brace the door, and clambered inside. My blood instantly ran cold, and I felt a sudden desire to bolt from the house and leave it far, far, behind me. I could now identify who'd done this with chilling certainty. It shouldn't have surprised me, in retrospect. I knew they'd be in this area. I just hadn't remembered them coming this far east before.

Whiplash had been busy while I'd been away.

After a few seconds of staring, memories flashing through the back of my mind; I averted my eyes from the large glaring white mark that had been slathered onto one of the house's interior walls. Four horseshoes framing the screaming skull of a pony.

The White Hooves.

Symbols like this were left at any settlements that the tribe hit; informing any who passed by there at a later time that this area had been usurped by the White Hooves; and any who trespassed in their territory were fair game for enslavement. Not that even the White Hooves had the numbers to effectively patrol all of the regions that they had 'claimed' with such marks. It was more for the fear and intimidation aspect. It was effective too. There had been times when we'd hit one town, and left such a mark; and the neighboring towns would evacuate within the month.

I holstered the pistol and began to comb through the wreckage. They'd have taken any weapons, ammunition, and food; I knew that much. So I wasn't counting on finding much of value. Still, ponies living this far out in the Wastes would have known that bandits were a hazard that they'd have to contend with. This far away from Seaddle proper, they couldn't count on the Commonwealth for protection. They were worse at policing their territory than the White Hooves. However, the White Hooves aside, the more intelligent bandit outfits in this region, and even back east, knew that there was wisdom in not slaughtering farmers once, when you could instead rob them again and again. In a place like this, a reliable source of free food was quite desirable.

So, there was a chance that the ponies who'd used to live here had set up a hidy-hole of some sort to keep their most valuable possessions safe while they were being extorted. It's what I'd have done anyway. The White Hooves wouldn't have even bothered looking. They'd have been after the ponies themselves. Slaughtering the brahmin...that had been for sport. Judging from the torn and tattered remnants of a sundress on the floor in the den, they'd partaken in some other 'fun' too.

I poked my head into the kitchen and looked around. I shut my eyes and slipped back out. The husband, or older brother, or whomever, must have pissed them off before they breached. What they had done to that stallion hadn't been quick, and it hadn't been painless.

Whiplash was definitely her father's daughter. She hadn't altered a single one of his traditions.

Part of me didn't want to go upstairs. The family that had lived here would have fled up when the door was broken down. Some bullet holes in the railings confirmed my theory. It had ultimately proved futile, obviously. All going up had done was leave them with nowhere to run once the White Hoof warriors were inside. Not that they could have outrun their attackers anyway. Not for very long.

I set my hoof on the first step and paused. What the hell was I doing? I knew what I'd find up there; worst case and best case scenarios. Neither was anything I needed to see again. These herders certainly wouldn't have put their wellhead upstairs; and that was the only thing I was supposed to be interested in. The ponies here were all dead; and anything that would prove useful to me had been looted. All I needed to concern myself with was finding enough water to see me to Seaddle.

Turning away from the stairs, and the horrors that they would have lead to, I went back into the kitchen. Keeping my eyes focused on everything else but the table containing the remains of the brutally dismembered buck, I searched for any sign of where the residents had gotten their water from. Five minutes and a couple of averted gags later, I had concluded that the well wasn't anywhere inside the house.

Which meant it was probably outside somewhere.

This hadn't been a large ranch. I saw only a dozen brahmin corpses. So, the ponies hadn't been raising them for slaughter. Bet the brahmin were happy about that. Milk then. Making cheese and butter for trade with passing caravans; or perhaps trips into Seaddle. I could only imagine the quality of milk these animals had been producing with only the dry thistle that barely grew out of the hardscrabble soil. Not that quality food was something much of the Wasteland had access to outside of Tenpony Tower or the Society. The Enclave was rumored to have fresh food. I could believe that, never having seen any power-armored pegasi scrounging the ruins looking for Fancybuck Cakes.

The Commonwealth was rumored to have farms though. I'd never seen them for myself. Places like that were close enough to Seaddle that running into soldiers was too likely to risk for a slave raid. The caravans that we hit always had some choice pickings in the vittles department though; so I'd supposed the rumors had at least some credibility to them. Certainly explained where that caravan had gotten the apple chips from.

My eyes fell on the nearby barn that had once sheltered the ranch's brahmin. I sure couldn't see a well head outside anywhere; so the barn was the last possibility. These ponies and brahmin had been drinking something damn it! I walked cautiously through the open barn door, wincing at the sight of the rest of the ranch's slain cattle.

Whiplash hadn't grown into the 'wine and cheese' type, I guess. More of the 'whiskey and more whiskey' type, likely. Dad had been that way.

What a waste.

A smile touched my lips for what was probably the first time that day...or week. It's always in the last place you look.

I stepped towards the old rust-coated hoofpumped water spout, reaching back into my saddlebags to take out the empty water bottles that I'd been saving. I went right up to the well, stepping through the soggy straw on the barn's floor and began to fill the bottles.

Then I stopped.

Soggy straw?

I glanced down. Sure enough, I was standing in a puddle of cool water, which had not been created by my own filling of the bottles. It had been here when I arrived. But, the state of rot that the brahmin were in suggested that this place had been hit days ago. Equestria might not get any sun, but the air in this part of the Wasteland was dry enough on its own that any puddle should have evaporated within hours.

Somepony else had been using this well; and recently. I hadn't seen anypony while surveying the ranch from the hilltop, or during my search of the house. I may not have ventured upstairs, but...

My ear twitched.

The barn was open, but there wasn't any breeze. Which meant that it hadn't been the wind that had rustled the hay—er, thistlebale behind me. I was slightly less alone in here than I had first assumed. Survivor? Radscorpion? Ghoul? I wasn't thrilled with the possibilities, so I carefully drew my pistol again and pointed it where I'd heard the sound coming from.

“Alright,” I said awkwardly around the grip in my mouth, “here's what's going to happen: I don't know who or what you are, so if you can understand me, step out where I can see you. Otherwise, I'm going to start shooting. You have to the count of three.”

My eyes scanned the far side of the barn, trying to pin down the location of the barn's other occupant so that I'd have a better idea of where to start shooting. Meanwhile, I began slowly backing towards the doorway, in case whatever it was considered 9mm bullets more of a nuisance than an actual threat, “One...”

No movement. I took another step backwards, my heart starting to pound more rapidly. Please don't be a radscorpion. The larger varieties were definitely one of those critters that were more annoyed than hurt by pistol rounds. I really needed to consider packing larger ordinance, “Two...” Maybe the grenades I still had would be effective?

The bale rustled now, and I aimed the barrel of my pistol directly at the motion. Well, it probably wasn't one of those giant radscorpions, given how small the movement had been. Didn't mean that it wasn't something obscenely dangerous though. Another step back. I swallowed, “Thre—“

“Don't shoot!”

Never had a more ironic outburst been uttered, I was certain. The vehement plea, coupled with the white and aqua blur suddenly bursting out of the dry mound of brush had at least been enough to startle me into missing...if only narrowly. The crack of the pistol was followed by a terrified—or was it pained?—scream from the new shape, and a embarrassingly surprised outburst from myself. A puff of dirt erupted into the air.

Then there was silence.

Everything was motionless. I didn't move. It didn't move. Only the wispy tendril of bluish gray smoke rising from the pistol's barrel suggested that time was in fact still progressing at its normal pace. My heartbeat downshifted from 'hummingbird' to a rate more akin to 'field mouse', and I felt my senses slowly begin to start processing my surroundings again.

Definitely not a radscorpion, I thought as my eyes scanned the cowering ball of white feathers and aqua hair. Well, not entirely aqua. I spied thin streaks of a deeper veridian woven in. A pair a tiny wings were swept up towards its head, protectively. Its face was buried beneath its fore-hooves.

A filly. Pegasus no less. Young. My eyes confirmed that her flanks were devoid of any markings. Scrawny little thing; probably hadn't eaten in a good while. Not since the attack, I'd wager. The water from the well was probably the only reason that she was even still alive.

Rare sight, a pegasus in the Wasteland. The Enclave kept to their clouds; sending out the occasional sortie when they detected something they wanted. They never stayed beyond the duration of their mission. Sure, you'd get the odd Dashite every now and then, but those sorts of ponies rarely lasted long on the surface before either starving to death or stumbling into raiders. Cloud life left most pegasi soft and ignorant about how brutal life could be on the surface.

Then you had cases like the filly huddled in front of me. Those one-in-a-thousand foals born with wings, to parents who had none. “Genetic throwbacks” I'd once heard a doctor—he called himself a doctor anyway—say. If you had any pegasus blood in your ancestry, even as far back as four generations, there was a chance of siring one yourself. After two hundred years though, that left few bloodlines capable of such a thing; unless their grandmare had had an encounter with a Dashite or less-then-honorable Enclave soldier who'd detoured during a mission.

I holstered my pistol. How she'd come to be here hardly mattered. Even that she was here wasn't much of a concern. The little filly obviously wasn't a threat; and that she was even still alive suggested that there were no other significant threats nearby either.

“Scare the shit out of me, why don't'cha?” I sighed and returned to the well to finish filling up my water bottles, “ought to charge you for the bullet...”

I heard a deep sniffling sound, followed by a whimper, “please...please don't hurt me...”

I cringed, “I ain't gonna hurt'cha,” and I wasn't. She was right to be worried though; especially after what I was sure she'd seen recently. Most lone bucks wandering the Wasteland that happened upon a lone filly probably would have inflicted all sorts of unkind actions upon her. Fortunately for the little foal; this buck preferred full-bodied, well-practiced, and very eager-to-please mares. If I wanted something that was just going to lie there without contributing, I'd sooner rut the rotting brahmin carcasses outside. At least they wouldn't cry the whole time...

I ignored the filly and finished filling the bottles. Once they were packed away in my bags, I stood up and walked toward the door to leave.

The filly sniffled again, “you're...leaving?”

I paused and glanced back over my shoulder at the tiny pegasus, cocking my brow, “I'm sure not going to move in. I'm not much of a rancher,” my gaze wandered over the destruction, “not much of a ranch anymore, either...” again I looked back at the filly, “good luck,” I tilted my head in a slight nod and resumed my previously interrupted departure.

“Take me with you!” the filly exclaimed suddenly, and then slammed her hooves over her mouth.

My legs froze in their tracks and I turned once again to regard the little winged pony, “what?”

“I mean,” the filly began again, “it's just...you didn't try to...” she stuttered and then fell silent. Her fetlock brushed a tear from her eye as she cast her gaze at the ground, “my parents are...and I know I can't stay here. I just...I don't know where to go from here,” she admitted sullenly. Her eyes lifted to meet mine again, “you know where you're going, right?” she waited for an acknowledgment. Did she really even care if I had a specific destination in mind?

Little filly, all alone, hungry, recently orphaned. Probably desperate to go anywhere with anypony. Even one who would take...advantage of her.

She was quiet, her large blue eyes looking up at me expectantly. I opened my mouth, ready to list, in no particular order, the dozen or so reasons why I was not about to go traipsing about the Wasteland with a little filly in tow. But just before the first word was out of my mouth, I hesitated. My eyes took another look at the foal, her wings specifically.

Pegasi were rare. Pegasi fillies even more so. She was flightless, or she would have already left this place in search of food or other ponies.

In Flank, there had been a pegasus mare working in Stable 69. Her rates had been three times what Saffron's were; and Saffron hadn't exactly been cheap. The fact was that both bucks and mares alike often had certain kinks when it came to partners. Mine was unicorns; and all the wonderful intimate options their telekinesis opened up. But for some, it was delicate downy chests and soft pinions that would caress them.

Unicorns were a dime a dozen on the surface; so it was hard for them to justify charging a lot of caps unless they had the experience and skills to back it up. Pegasi could hike up their prices by virtue of being pegasi. Supply versus demand, and all that.

Not every pony in every brothel was there willingly though. And not every earth-bound buck with a penchant for feathers was interested in merely 'renting'.

Had she been an earth pony or unicorn; I would have flat out refused to bring her along and told her exactly why. The price I'd get for a blank-flanked filly of either of those two types at a slave market wouldn't have been worth the trouble. But a pegaus foal...one who would be easy to contain, and young enough to train right...I bet I could find a buyer willing to pay a heavy bag of caps; and I'd need some seed money once I got to Seaddle...

The filly squirmed uneasily under my appraising gaze. Before she started to suspect my less-than-altruistic intent, I changed my intended denial to an acceptance, “alright,” I left it at that. Can't appear too eager. It would put her off. Apathy was the best approach for now. I didn't need to sell her on coming along, since she'd been the one to make the initial proposal. All I had to do was keep her feeling at ease...until I'd managed to get a buyer's bomb-collar around her neck, at any rate.

The filly blinked at me in clear surprise, “R...really?”

I shrugged and offered a slight smirk, “sure. S'long as you bring your own water,” I nodded at the wellhead, “be nice to have somepony to talk to anyway.”

The ivory-coated pegasus filly nodded vigorously and dove back into the thistle bale she'd been hiding in before, emerging soon afterward with a set of tiny brahmin-skin saddlebags. She emptied out a few Fancybuck wrappers that looked to have been licked clean, and replaced them with filled water bottles. In less than two minutes, she was packed up and ready to leave.

Our departure was silent. The foal's elation at finding somepony to help lead her to safety was short-lived, as the sight of her ravaged home greeted her. I guided us around the house, rather then through it. If she hadn't already seen first-hoof what the White Hooves had done to her home and family, then she certainly didn't need to witness the aftermath. She'd seen enough horrors already; and would surely be subjected to more later. No reason to add to them needlessly.

“You got a name?” I asked conversationally, in order to distract her. Besides, if we were going to be traveling together, I'd need something to call her other than, 'pegasus' or, 'filly' or, 'hey, you.'

“...Windfall.”

“Well, Windfall; I'm Jackboot. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” she sniffed again, wiping at her eyes. They were drying up, I noticed. Tough little filly. For now, anyway. I'd known foals who'd lost their families before. They'd held up for a while, putting on a brave face. Most eventually broke down after a couple weeks. Granted, I wasn't sure if the breaking was because the loss had finally gotten to them, or if it had been because of the enslavement...

“Sorry about your folks,” I meant that. The White Hooves weren't something I'd have wished on anypony; least of all a family of ranchers. Well...I'd probably wish them on the bounty hunters fool enough to track me to Seaddle if they ever popped up.

The filly sniffed once more, but her eyes remained dry, “yeah.”

Silence again.

“Thank you,” the filly surprised me by saying, “for helping me, I mean. I'll...find a way to pay you or something.”

I suppressed a wince, “don't worry about it,” I'd be getting my caps worth out of her when we reached Seaddle anyway.

“No, I mean it,” the filly insisted, her eyes hardening, though they remained directed ahead of her, “Pa always said, 'pay yer debts' and I will. I don't know how, yet, but I will!” Another sniff.

I decided that it was time to turn the subject off of caps, “so you've never left the ranch before, I take it?”

The filly nodded, “Pa always took my brother, Holstein into town with him. Pa had a bad knee, and Holstein was the only one strong enough to pull the cart. I wanted to go last time. Ma said I had to stay...”

There was another bout of quiet, then a whispered question, “will I ever see them again?”

To lie, or not to lie; that was the question. She deserved to know the truth, I figured. It had been her family, after all, “the White Hooves are big on slaves,” I told her, matter-of-factually, “but they're not big on selling them. They get you, you'll die in their camp. Worked to death, or whipped to death.

“Only way you'll ever see any of them again is if they get you too,” minus whomever it was they'd butchered in the house's kitchen, I didn't add.

“Oh...” the filly didn't sound too surprised by my answer. I'm sure she knew pretty well how unlikely it was that she'd ever see them again. Then she glanced up at me with slightly narrowed eyes, “how...how do you know so much about the...White Hooves?”

“Everypony in Seaddle knows about them,” I answered easily; which was a true enough statement. Granted, I probably knew more about that particular subject than was attributable to 'common knowledge'. Of course, a home-bound foal like Windfall was unlikely to know what was, and was not, 'common' to know about those brutal ponies.

“You're from Seaddle? What are you doing way out here?”

No need for lies...yet, “heading back. Did some business in Hoofington, and now I'm coming back home.”

“Alone?”

She wasn't a complete moron, I'd give her that, “yep. This is—or used to be,” I amended with a nod back in the direction of the ranch that was shrinking into the distance, “a pretty safe trip. Too few travelers for bandits to make scouring this territory worth their time. When I left, the White Hooves didn't operate this far east,” what was Whiplash's angle on that, anyway? Had she already poached out the canyons? Even so, the Commonwealth was usually better at keeping them in check...

What else had changed since I'd been away?

“The Commonwealth's still around, right?” I inquired curiously.

“The who?”

Well, that wasn't encouraging, “The Seaddle Commonwealth? They controlled most of the area south of the Rodeo Grand when I left,” I frowned, “in fact, your family should technically have been citizens of it...”

“Oh, you mean the NLR; yeah, they're still around.”

“NLR?”

“Yeah, they changed their name a few years back when the Princess returned.”

That got my attention. I came to an abrupt halt and whipped around to look at the little green-maned filly; which in turn startled her a fair bit, “the who returned?!” I gaped.

“Princess Luna,” the filly replied, quirking an eyebrow at me, looking a little amused, “you didn't hear? She came back a few years before I was born and took over. Now everypony's part of the New Lunar Republic; NLR for short.

“So, yeah, we're citizens,” the foal winced, “were citizens...”

I managed to regain enough of my sensibilities to resume walking, though my mind was still racing. Princess Luna had returned?! How could I just be hearing about this now? How was something like that not news that had been broadcast across the entire Wasteland non-stop for weeks on end? Now, I'll admit that I didn't exactly tune into to every one of DJ PON3's news reports, but I still felt that something as world-changing as that would have been information that I would at least have picked up in passing!

My education about the Old World was perhaps not as comprehensive as what some more historically obsessed ponies might know about it. White Hoof foals were versed in Pre-Wasteland lore as our tribe's elders knew it. I was confident that there were some frightful gaps, seeing as how few genuine history texts existed in the camps. I did know about the Princesses though. They'd ruled over us during the war, and had died at its climax. Or, so I had been told, anyway.

I'll admit, I'd known the elders weren't completely right about everything they'd ever told us. I certainly hadn't seen any dragons living in the mountains when I'd crossed them, either time. Nor had I spied the ghost of Rainbow Dash, the former leader of the Shadowbolts, zipping around below the clouds. Still, I had figured that they might have been correct about something as significant as the death of the demi-goddess rulers of the Old World.

There was a deep part of me that felt giddy at the prospect of the return of one of the Princesses. Perhaps it implied that the other would not be far behind. Maybe Equestria would soon be restored to its former glory! No more perpetual cloud cover. No more roving bands of raiders.

Granted, it would mean that I'd have to find an alternative vocation. Banditry probably hadn't had much of a place in the Old World. Still, if it meant that I didn't have to worry about cannibal raiders, I could deal with finding a new job.

“I guess I've been away longer than I thought,” I murmured, “catch me up?”

Windfall didn't know everything about the last ten years since I'd left the Seaddle area of course. She was only six years old herself, and hadn't been beyond the ranch she'd been born on. All she knew was what she'd either overheard her parents talk about, heard on the radio, or been told by her older brother.

What it boiled down to was: two years after I left, Princess Luna had returned to Equestria, accepting control of the Commonwealth from then-President Ebony Song; who graciously demoted himself to Prime Sinister. That was the title that Windfall had used, anyway. Whether she'd misheard from her parents, or if they'd merely been that cynical, I couldn't tell. I presume that the actual title was “minister”; though the cynic in me approved of the alternate designation. Ebony had been a bit of a bastard back in the day; and I doubt he'd extracted any sticks from his ass since receiving a divine mandate to govern.

The Commonwealth had promptly renamed itself to honor their returned goddess and the nation was christened the New Lunar Republic. So-called because, unlike the ancient feudal government of Equestria, the NLR retained many elected positions that the Commonwealth had possessed. I presumed that the position of 'Princess' was not one of those positions to whom somepony could be voted into though.

Things had gone well for a time after that. The Princess made regular broadcasts throughout the area, appraising her subjects of the great things that the NLR was doing to tame the Wasteland and restore things to the way they'd once been. And, it had started to look like they would. The local bandits and raiders were beaten back; those that hadn't flocked to the Princess' banner when she'd returned anyway. Critter populations had been brought to heel, and caravan trade had picked up in the area.

Then, four years ago, the Steel Rangers had shown up, out of the blue. The NLR's citizens had assumed they'd come to pledge their allegiance to the rightful ruler of Equestria. Instead, they had declared war.

That revelation threw me about as hard as learning the Princess had returned. The Rangers had launched an all-out war against Luna? Were they mad?! Windfall didn't know the state of their mental faculties, of course. She just spoke of them with an enmity that was born of being raised to know that somepony was the enemy. Granted, I hadn't met many ponies in my life who'd thought kindly of the power-armored xenophobic technophiles. Hard to earn a lot of good will from your neighbors when you were willing to kill them for their spark-batteries.

Still, of all the various factions in the Wasteland, I would have thought those old Ministry of Wartime Technology relics would have been the first to bend their neck to the Princess. Hadn't she been the very alicorn that their ministry had been created to serve?

There was a mystery there that needed solving...

...and I'd make it a point to someday ask the pony who solved it.

According to Windfall, the Steel Rangers had done a number on the NLR forces before things were eventually brought to a stand-still. Now the two sides just skirmished along the NLR's borders, neither making any bold advances against the other. The Steel Rangers were low on numbers, and the NLR had lost a lot of resources. Add to that the little renaissance that the White Hooves had entered into once the bulk of the Republic's attention was lifted off of them...

Whiplash was never been one to let an opportunity slip by, I grimaced. It explained how she was able to operate freely so deep inside Common—NLR territory. The Steel Rangers weren't pushovers, what with their horded technology from the war. As well equipped as the old Commonwealth had been, they'd be hard pressed to keep their power armored attackers at bay.

Which pretty much brought us to the current situation: The NLR and Steel Rangers were stuck in a stalemate, the White Hooves were growing again now that they were largely unopposed, and I was strolling right into the middle of it.

Well...horseapples.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Bonus Hoof-to-Hoof Damage -- +2 Damage with hoof-to-hoof and melee weapon attacks.
Speech skill at 25

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