"Did you ever try to put a broken piece of glass back together? Even if the pieces fit, you can’t make it whole again the way it was."

Somehow, I’d forgotten just how grim a sight the exterior of Stable 137 was. Somewhere in the vicinity of six or seven hundred putrefying corpses laid out in neat little rows to be ravaged by the elements and Wasteland denizens. I’d seen what the White Hooves and raiders left behind in the wakes of their own wanton devastation; the calculated and deliberate efficiency of what had happened here…I was hard-pressed to decide which group was the bigger monster.

Both the White Hooves and whomever had been behind this needed to be dealt with severely; there was no doubt in my mind about that. It was all just a matter of deciding who needed to be eradicated first. Even though the ponies behind what had happened here represented a much larger threat, overall, I felt that I would have to settle for exterminating the White Hooves initially. If for no other reason that because I at least now knew where the primary White Hoof settlement was.

After I wiped it out, there would undoubtedly be raiding parties and patrols that remained out in the valley, but without their leadership or a centrally located capital of sorts, they’d just revert to common bands of raiders. Their reputations would be in tatters and any significant threat to settlements would be gone. The valley would be a safer place.

All I really needed was firepower; both my own and perhaps even the aid of some hired mercenaries. For both of those things, I’d need money, and a lot of it.

My eyes focused on the stable Foxglove and I were heading towards. A pristine trove of pre-war technology and artifacts that were worth their weight in caps and Republic bits. With enough time and logistical support, I could realistically have scrounged up enough salvage from this place to outright buy the entirety of new Reino. It would be a project years in the making, and would require seeking out customers with the raw capital that simply didn’t exist in this one little valley.

I didn’t have that sort of time. Well, I guess if I was being completely honest with myself, I could very easily have devoted myself to this task. After the decade it would likely take me I could sweep through here with an army and snuff out every single White Hoof I could find. I could take my time and make sure that the job was done right, leaving no pony alive who so much as knew how to correctly apply their signature body paint.

The burning need for vengeance inside of me would not abide that long a wait though. I was not quite so far given to my rage that I felt compelled to go right back and rain as much destruction upon their settlement as I could—mostly. I could wait a little while. A few weeks at least. Time enough to strip this place of its most valuable salvage and use the proceeds to outfit myself with appropriate armaments and hire on a few stalwart mercenaries. That armored mare that had captured Jackboot the other night had seemed the capable sort. Maybe she’d be up for the task…

As we passed the last of the bodies and crossed the threshold into the stable, my mind was brought to the topic of the other villains on my list. I needed more information on them; specifically the location of their base of operations. I had a vague direction of where the group that had destroyed this stable had gone in, but that still left a large swath of Wasteland to cover. Even if I found them, it would take more than a few mercenaries to go up against the kind of firepower that they possessed.

Stables weren’t easy targets. Serviceable tech, fortified entrances, and population densities that few surface settlements could match made for several factors an attacker would find it difficult to overcome. Even a White Hoof force of a hundred ponies might have found it hard to bring this place down. Fighting a group that could do this would require a lot of ponies and material.

Doing it on my own was, well, unrealistic. The cost of the mercenaries required would be prohibitive; never mind finding that many experienced fighters that had nothing better to do than follow a young Pegasus mare on some grand crusade. That didn’t leave me with a lot of options.

I inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly as I followed Foxglove into the stable’s atrium. You can do it, Windy. Somehow, someway, you can do it.

My hooves froze in place as I finally got a clear look at the room. It looked quite different from how it had when I’d last seen it. The white skull was a new feature, for example. As were the bits of my barding laid out on the floor. I felt my wings subconsciously flexing along my sides as I fought back the bile gathering in my mouth.

None of the memories of that night from after I’d found Jackboot and Foxglove fooling around in the clinic had really manifested into much of a coherent narrative. There were flashes that felt like real memories and not just my mind’s attempt to piece together what might have happened. I’d gone to talk with Cestus. There’d been more kissing, and a little toughing…

I was filled with a sensation of revulsion. He’d been a White Hoof that whole time. I had let him touch me, put his mouth on me; I’d put my mouth on him…Even though I hadn’t known, and couldn’t have known, I still hated myself for it.

Somepony was saying something. I shook myself from head to hoof and looked around, soon finding the violet unicorn looking at me with a concerned expression, “huh?”

“I asked if you were okay,” the unicorn said softly.

“Yeah, I’m just…tired, I guess,” I answered, rubbing my eyes. It wasn’t physical fatigue that I was feeling so much as it was mental. I’d been giving a lot of thought to the distant future recently. Perhaps it was best to focus on more immediate concerns. Like a stomach that was reminding me that I hadn’t drunk or eaten anything at all since being taken hostage by Cestus, “there’s Sparkle Cola in the kitchen, and vegetables a couple levels down,” I informed the mare, “would you mind bringing me some?”

“Sure thing,” Foxglove nodded, letting herself smile for the first time in a while. I think she just liked knowing that there was something she could do to help me.

Not that I really needed any help, not anymore. I was out of the clutches of my White Hoof captors. Honestly, between the two of us, Foxglove was likely to need more general assistance than I was. After all, I’d grown up in the Wasteland, while the unicorn was from stable stock. She wasn’t the most capable of fighters either, so it would now fall to me alone to keep her safe.

While I waited for the violet mare to return with something to eat, I sat myself down and started to reassemble my barding. Cestus had apparently taken his time while stripping it off me by going out of his way to unbuckle every last strap. Fortunately most of the leather had molded itself into the size that it had been while I’d been wearing it, so only a minimum of guesswork was needed in order to put it all back together so that it fit me once more.

I slipped it on and made a few additional adjustments. A frown creased my features as I looked myself over. Foxglove had picked out this barding, and either there had been a very limited selection of armor for Pegasus oriented protection, or the unicorn had yet to develop an understanding of what constituted quality protection. The leather was malleable and thin across most of my body, hardly suitable for resisting weapons of even questionable quality. There were some reinforced sections across my chest and flanks, but even those weren’t made of particularly robust materials; basically it was just a second layer of boiled Brahmin hide.

My eyes wandered over to where Jackboot and Foxglove had stashed most of their own gear before coming to get me. I walked over and peered at the neatly folded sets of barding. Much like what I was currently wearing, Foxglove’s choice of protective armor left much to be desired when it came to comprehensive protection. I started to wonder if the unicorn really understood the reality of what it took to survive outside of a settlement in the Wasteland.

Jackboot’s barding was much more practical, in my opinion. Granted, those opinions had been heavily influenced by the earth pony stallion who had raised me. Still, there was no denying the practicality that existed in wearing protection which actually stood a chance of deflecting away both bullets and edged weapons during a fight. His barding was thinnest around the joints to permit unrestricted movement, but was quite rigid along straight surfaces like the upper legs and back. Ceramic plates had been sewn into the barding to protect the more vital parts of a pony’s anatomy.

I picked it up and frowned a little bit at its weight. I supposed that for a grounded pony like Jackboot, this wasn’t all that much or a concern. He’d probably been sturdy enough that it didn’t bother him much or noticeably slow him down. This sort of burden would reduce my airspeed considerably though. I wasn’t accustomed to hauling around a lot of weight.

I was going to need something substantial though, if I was going to go up against large groups; especially ones that were well equipped.

Not that I’d be able to wear Jackboot’s barding without significantly modifying it though. It’s greater size aside, there were no wing holes. There were even a few of those bullet-resistant plates mounted along where those wing holes would need to be, making modifying the barding a much more involved process than simply cutting away the excess material.

I’d ask Foxglove if she could make the necessary alterations. Whatever I may have to say where her combat prowess was concerned, she was a far more cerebral sort than I was, and clearly knew her way around a workshop. I needed only to look at what she’d done to my 10mm submachine guns in order to see that. I’d need to ask her to start manufacturing more of her specialty ammunition while I was at it. I was going to need a lot more of those explosive rounds.

It was too bad that Jackboot hadn’t had anything particularly powerful in the firearms department. I’d been toting around the ‘big guns’ where our little trio was concerned; and even I had to admit that what I brought to bear wasn’t all that powerful in the grand scheme of things. His pistol was a far weaker weapon than anything I carried. That cannon of a revolver might have been able to cause considerably more destruction than most other weapons of its size that I’d seen, but it wasn’t very practical for somepony like me. The kick was just as likely to jerk me off my flight path, and I tended to prefer quantity of devastation over quality.

The grenades would be a welcome addition to my arsenal, so I pocketed them. Huh, it looked like he’d been holding out on me: there was an energy pistol in his saddlebags too. I wonder when he’d picked this up? I’d certainly never seen him using it before. That was probably because he didn’t seem to have anything in the way of spark packs to go with it, and the one that was inserted into the weapon was all but dry. It was a very nicely crafted pistol; even if I wasn’t an expert in the design of such things. It was certainly better maintained than most examples I’d seen. A winged thunderbolt engraved on the grip suggested that this was a weapon that had been affiliated with the premiere fliers of the Old World, the Wonderbolts.

It looked like I was going to keep this thing around too. I’d have Foxglove take a look at it at some point and make sure that it was in proper working order. Then maybe I’d see if she could find some way of incorporating it into my battle saddle. I did so enjoy have options when it came to firepower.

There were a few other baubles in Jackboot’s saddlebags, of which some were easier to explain than others. I recognized the one statuette of the yellow Pegasus with a pink mane. Her picture was all over billboards around the Wasteland, and her cutie mark was plastered across every box of medical supplies. I’d been there with Jackboot—albeit unconscious—when he'd found it in the Seaddle orphanage all those years ago. I couldn’t believe he’d kept it all this time, or that it was still in pristine condition. Had he been cleaning it up?

Its two companions were new to me. I couldn’t point to when he’d picked them up. The three posed mares were obviously part of a set; they were too similar in their design, each with little quips embossed upon their bases, to have been coincidence. While I couldn’t place the faces of the orange and white mares, I did recognize the cutie mark of the earth pony. I very much doubted it was a coincidence that old Ministry of Wartime Technology materials incorporated the trio of apples into their emblem that so exactly matched the mark on the orange pony’s rear end. Another one of the Ministry Mares then. That suggested that the white unicorn with the styled purple mane was one as well, though I couldn’t place which ministry she must have been in charge of.

All three statuettes were in extremely good condition considering their age. Either Jackboot had spent an inconceivable amount of time cleaning them up—which I couldn’t see the earth pony stallion ever doing—or there was something else going on with them. Perhaps some sort of spell? It seemed odd that somepony would have wasted that sort of magic on little decorative items like these, even if they were depictions of important ponies of the time.

I’d certainly never come across any such statues of the goddesses, and they should have been much more important than a few bureaucrats.

Jackboot, interestingly enough, looked to have also been in possession of some jewelry. I’d certainly never seen him wearing anything of the sort, but I was hard pressed to explain the leather collar with the polished jet stone mounted into it. He’d never worn it, and I couldn’t think of anypony that I’d even seen wearing anything like this either. It was certainly the sort of thing that I would have expected the practically-minded earth pony to sell rather than hold onto all this time. Assuming that it wasn’t something he’d come across while looking through this stable.

I slipped it into my own bag. While Jackboot might have had no use for such things, it did look kind of pretty. Maybe it was something I might wear in the future.

Perhaps even more puzzling than the three little statues and the jeweled collar was the plastic whistle I came across. My face scrunched up into near-incredulity when I dug it out of the bag. What could Jackboot have possibly been doing with something like this? It looked like it was just some little foal’s toy. Hardly the sort of equipment that a hardened survivor of the Wasteland would be carrying around with him in his bags beneath a bunch of grenades and bullets.

It certainly didn’t look or feel very valuable as I held it in my hoof. Frankly, it looked cheap enough that I doubted it was even capable of producing any meaningful sound when you blew through it. With a wry little smirk, I brought the flimsy plastic whistle up to my lips and blew through it in order to hear whatever anemic little chirp actually came out the other end.

“THE NIGHT SHALL GO ON…FOREVER!”

I’d thrown the whistle away from myself even before the second word of the proclamation had finished echoing forth from the unassuming trinket. That had not seemed to stop the device from continuing on with its thunderous decree even as it bounced across the floor of atrium. I stared after it with wide-eyed shock even as I clamped my hooves over my ears to dull the deafening words. When it was finally over, I simply stared at the now inert trinket, dumbfounded.

What the holy-hopping-hell-hounds was that?! Who made something like that?! Why?!

The sound of clattering hooves echoing through the atrium was followed a few seconds later by the painted violet unicorn bursting into the open area. She was looking about with wide eyes, her eldritch lance already lit and floating at her side ready to be applied to any threat that she might find. The mare looked a little more relieved when she quickly found me standing near the wall, but she was clearly still on edge.

“What’s wrong,” she asked fervently, resuming her visual search of the surrounding area, “why were you yelling?”

“It wasn’t me,” I protested vehemently, jabbing a hoof at the offending plastic whistle, “it was that thing!”

“What?”

“That,” I emphasized, once more pointing my hoof at the inanimate culprit, “I blew into it and it yelled at me!”

Still looking a little dubious, the unicorn approached the discarded whistle and levitated it into the air. She turned it around in the air, examining every portion of it with her practiced fabricator eye. Not that there was all that much of it to examine. Something caught her attention though and she brought it closer to her eye, peering into the mouthpiece. She cocked an eyebrow and then cautiously brought it to her mouth.

In anticipation of what was about to happen, I looked away and clamped my hooves over my ears. The sound was muffled a good deal by my mitigation efforts, but I could still hear another resounding phrase blast through the stable.

“THE PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT HAS RETURNED!”

Foxglove jerked back from the whistle, though she still maintained her magical grip on it. Much like myself, her lips had ceased to contact the device almost immediately, but the words persisted. I peered at the mare and watched her look over the plastic whistle once more, again affording the mouthpiece extra attention. Again she brought it to her lips and issued a brief puff of air. I cringed away.

“BOW TO THE RIGHTFUL RULER OF EQUESTRIA!”

This time, the unicorn immediately spun the whistle around and looked through it. Her puzzled expression melted into one of comprehension and she put on a wry smirk, “that’s pretty clever, actually” she murmured at the device. Upon seeing my wide-eyed look of puzzlement, she floated the whistle over to me and held it up to my eye so that I could look into the mouthpiece as well. I obediently did so, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to be seeing, and admitted as much to the unicorn.

“See how it glitters?” She slowly rotated the whistle around its axis as I looked through, allowing the light to reveal what were indeed shifting pinpricks of light, “it’s diamond dust. Each of those grains is infused with a spell that plays back a recorded bit of sound,” she returned the whistle and let it spin in front of her as she looked at it with renewed admiration, “it’s similar in principle to how memory orbs work really. Except, instead of needing magic, these activate when warm air passes over them, like a pony blowing into it,” the whistle started darting around her as the unicorn used her telekinetic field to send it flying about, “see? Just using wind doesn’t do it.

“When a pony blows into the mouthpiece, the dust selects a random bit of sound and then plays it back,” she brought the whistle to a stop and then floated it back to me.

I cautiously took the offered toy in my pinions, as though it might decide to yell at me spontaneously, despite Foxglove’s demonstration to the contrary. I wasn’t sure if this was something that could be easily sold to a merchant, as I suspected that there was a very niche market for this sort of thing, but you never knew. It went very gingerly into my bag. Looking at my wing and how much my feathers had bristled during that first unexpected outburst, I recognized that it was probably going to take me hours to preen everything back into order.

I’d probably want to take a shower first while we were here though.

When I looked back up, there was a bottle of soda and some apples and carrots floating nearby. I allowed myself to smile at the violet unicorn as I took the offered soft drink and waved for the rest to be put down on the floor in front of me. Foxglove had brought enough to make her own meal as well and walked over to sit across from me.

“So,” the other mare sighed, “how are you holding up?”

My lips quirked into a small frown. This wasn’t the first time that she’d asked me a question like that, “I’m alright,” I assured the mare once more as I popped the top of my drink and pocketed the cap. Foxglove hadn’t taken a drink from her own bottle yet, still regarding me with some concern and a dubious pair of emerald eyes, “really.

“It’s not the first time I’ve lost ponies close to me,” even if I had just lost the same pony for the second time, from my own point of view. Still, I’d mourned for my mother once already long ago. I could deal with it again. Jackboot’s death was no different from when I’d lost my real father, and I’d weathered that in time, “and it won’t be the last,” I added with a sardonic smirk at the unicorn.

That might have come out a bit more contrite than I’d intended, judging from the violet mare’s shocked expression. I hadn’t meant to imply that I thought Foxglove would be dying anytime soon. That didn’t mean that I didn’t think deep down that, between the two of us, she wasn’t more likely to wind up dead first; nor did I intend to imply that I wouldn’t do everything in my power to keep her alive when things got rough.

“Sorry,” I said, meekly.

“No,” the unicorn shook her head and trying her best to offer a warm smile, “I know what you meant: life out here is hard and ponies die. It’s just…I can’t honestly imagine what you must be going through,” she admitted, “I’ve lost ponies close to me in the sense that I know I’ll never see them again, but at least I know they’re still safe…” her eyes glanced about the empty stable and I saw her features grow uncertain.

I reached out a comforting wing and patted the unicorn on the shoulder, “we’ll find your stable and make sure they’re alright,” I assured her, “and we’ll make sure they know about what happened here.”

Foxglove looked noticeably relieved to hear my promise, and she relaxed considerably, “thanks, Windfall. I just hope we can find it.”

“You remember the number at least, right? We’ll figure it out; especially if you walked to New Reino from there. It can’t be too far from there,” the unicorn nodded her agreement with my assessment and took a long sip of her drink. I picked up a carrot and started munching on the narrow orange stick. Idly, I dug back into Jackboot’s bag and felt my hoof come over something much more familiar.

I drew out the pipbuck and held it in front of me.

The memory of when we’d found this thing on the corpse of an unfortunate stable dweller who apparently had ventured out of this very stable came flooding back to me. It had proved invaluable over the years since, providing the older earth pony with a situational awareness far in excess of what a normal pony could hope to have. He’d described what it was like when he utilized the SATS mechanic too, and I could only imagine the tactical and combat advantages that conveyed. It was a wondrous piece of ancient Equestrian technology, that was for certain.

Foxglove noticed me looking over the device, “I can help you put it on, if you’d like; and show you how to use it?”

I nodded, “yeah, please,” I passed the pipbuck to the unicorn who took hold of it with her magic and opened it up.

“Hold out your left leg,” I did so and watched as the contraption was pressed up against the underside of my fetlock and carefully closed around it. There were a couple of audible clicks as the unicorn secured the devise in place. Then I saw a screwdriver and a small ballpeen hammer float of their carriers from the unicorn’s folded up barding that lay nearby. I cocked my head as the tools were used to gently knock in several retaining pins. The unicorn flashed me a wry grin, “you need specialized tools to take these things off normally,” she explained, “I don’t have any with me, so I had to improvise when I took it off Jackboot.

“It shouldn’t be any worse for wear,” there sounded like there was a lot more supposition behind that statement than certainty, but I deferred to the unicorn’s experience in such matters. A few more taps were applied and then the unicorn put away the tools, “that should do it. If you feel it sliding around, let me know. Most of its sizing protocols should still be working just fine.”

Even as the mare spoke, I could feel the pipbuck shifting around subtly on my leg as it grew snug. It wasn’t anywhere near uncomfortable, but a few experimental shakes of my leg left little doubt that the device wasn’t going to budge from its new perch. A second later, I heard the device start to make whirring and clicking noises as it came to life. I jerked in surprise as numbers and symbols started appearing in front of my eyes. Nearly all of it was too quick for me to make sense of.

A few things stuck out as a list propagated in the upper left corner of my eye. Each item lingered and was soon followed by the word, ‘enabled’. Things like the Eyes Forward Sparkle, Sparkle Inventory Management System, Crystal Map Cartography, and Stable-Tec Integrated Radio all passed their checks with flying colors. There was a slight pause when the device got to the Sparkle Assisted Targeting System though. It flashed orange and was followed by the word, ‘limited functionality’ before the entire list vanished from view.

There were still quite a few additions to my field of view though. A compass lined the bottom, with a bright yellow blip where Foxglove was sitting. A couple of other meters lingered too, but before I could ask, Foxglove was already launching into a briefing about their function.

“In the bottom left, you’ll see a bar that represents your overall health,” she explained, “the pipbuck’s screen will show a more specific breakdown,” I brought my leg up and looked at the cartoonish representation of the happy little Pegasus mare smiling back at me, “on the left is your SATS energy,” Foxglove continued, “the pipbuck can assist you in combat, but it’s pretty limited and takes a lot of energy for bigger weapons; but it can really help in a pinch, or so I’m told. I’ve never used it myself,” she admitted, “between those is the navigation compass, which also shows you threats. Watch out for red blips, they mean that whatever you’re looking at wants to hurt you.

“Alerts and messages will appear in the upper left, and radiation is displayed in the upper right,” she finished her rundown of what I was seeing and then directed my attention to the pipbuck itself, “you can use these buttons to swap between your condition, inventory, and other functions. The dial over here lets you move through the screens,” she demonstrated by tabbing through several of the available screens.

I took the time to browse through them as well. It seemed that pipbucks were actually pretty intuitive. I didn’t feel like I needed to ask for a lot of clarification on much. Although, “how do I activate SATS?” asked, “is there a button or…?”

“Just think about it,” the unicorn answered simply, “look at me and think about using the pipbuck to attack me,” I glanced at the mare in surprise. She couldn’t be serious?! The violet mare smiled and waved aside my apprehension, “you can chose not to do anything,” she assured me.

Still feeling a little anxious about the whole thing, I made certain that I didn’t have any weapons readily available and squared off against the mare. I frowned and did as Foxglove had instructed and thought about using the pipbuck to hit her. Suddenly, I saw my vision alter as it was overlaid with more numbers and several highlighted areas. As I looked about, I saw that various parts of Foxglove became illuminated by yellow shading. Each new portion of her body that lit up was accompanied by a percentile.

I certainly didn’t have any desire to actually strike the mare though…

The moment that thought crossed my mind, the new overlay reverted and the percentiles vanished. I shook my head and looked at the mare, “wow. That’s…pretty awesome, actually.”

“Yeah, pipbucks are pretty useful,” the unicorn nodded, “anything else you’d like to know?”

“I think I’m pretty good,” I said as I clicked through a few more screens, “if I think of anything though…” my voice trailed off as I came across a list of files of some type under one of the device’s directories. I think I had just found the audio logs of the original owner of the pipbuck, given what the titles of most of the files was. However, there was a single entry that possessed a much simpler heading that was quite different in the way it was formatted. Where all the other files had entry numbers and dates and times, the file at the top of the list was a singular string of letters: ‘forwindfall’.

Hesitantly, I selected the file and instructed the device to play the recording. There was an audible ‘click’ and then the sound of static. A few seconds of silence ensued until a voice could finally be heard, “Windfall,” my ears twitched at the sound of the stallion that had raised me from a filly, and I felt a tight ball forming in my chest. A heavy sigh could be heard and then, “I’m sorry…I…”

My hoof tabbed out of the screen and the recording ended abruptly. I’d gone only a few seconds into what the pipbuck suggested was a message that was nearly two minutes long. Frankly, I didn’t much care for what the recording had to say. Jackboot was dead, and there was nothing that was going to change that. Listening to this wasn’t going to do me any good, ever. If I thought Foxglove would have been willing to, I’d have had the unicorn show me how to delete the file entirely.

As it was, the mare was looking at me with concern again. I rolled my eyes, “he doesn’t have anything to apologize for,” I informed the violet unicorn, “it’s the White Hooves that should be sorry; I know that.”

Foxglove didn’t look to be entirely convinced, but that was her own problem, honestly. I was perfectly fine, and I didn’t need any of her misplaced empathy. Jackboot was hardly the first pony in my life that had died for my sake. What I was going through right now was nothing new or unexpected.

I directed my thoughts away from depressing subjects like that towards finishing my meal. It was a few seconds before Foxglove also resumed eating, though I got the impression that she was of a mind to continue prying. By avoiding eye contact as I ate, I was able to keep from inviting additional commentary. For fuck’s sake, the two of them had been sleeping together, apparently. If anypony needed consoling, it should be her! Maybe that was even why she wanted to keep talking about it, as a way of getting her own feelings off her chest.

Well, she’d need to find somepony else to play therapist. As much respect as I might have for the mare for what she could do and how she’d helped Jackboot and I up to this point, her grief was something she’d have to deal with on her own. She’d been the one that kept trying to keep me from getting close to him while she apparently moved in. I’d thought that the unicorn was just being generally wary of stallions after having some bad experiences. Now I knew that she’d just been trying to get with Jackboot.

Congratulations, Foxglove, you’re the one that ended up with him. Now he’s dead, and you’re just going to have to get over it yourself. I was hardly the mare who was going to feel sympathetic over ‘your’ loss.

Maybe something constructive would take her mind off of things. I reached over and pulled out Jackboot’s barding and passed it to the unicorn, who glanced up at me in mild surprise, “do you think you can modify this to fit me?” I asked her, “I’m going to need some better barding than what I’ve got. See if you can make it a little lighter though,” I added, “maybe by taking off some of the spinal plates. I doubt I’m going to be getting attacked from above very often,” I smiled and flexed my own wings for emphasis.

Foxglove glanced between the barding and myself and then nodded slowly, “yeah, I think I can,” she frowned, “it’s going to take some time though,” she admitted, “I’ll need to trim some of these plates, maybe even remold them to get around your wing joints,” she brought the barding closer and examined it while occasionally glancing at my withers.

I shrugged, “take all the time you need. I can make do with what I’ve got for now,” I chugged down the last of my Sparkle Cola and tossed the bottle away, “I’m going to take a shower and preen myself a bit,” I informed the mare, “you know about stable’s right? Why don’t you pick out the more valuable stuff that we’ll be able to sell in New Reino,” we’d be able to get better prices on some of the technology here back in Seaddle, but that was a lot further away. I was pretty sure that Foxglove was still a pony-non-gratis in the territories of the New Lunar Republic for her aid in Jackboot’s escape from their custody.

“Just keep in mind we’ll be taking as much of the armory with us as we can,” guns and ammunition fetched a reliably high price wherever you went, “so try to only pick out things that are small and light,” I stretched out and headed for the lower levels where the showers were.

“Yeah…sure.”

As I watched the pleasantly warm water dribble through the primary pinions of my left wing, I idly wondered if it wasn’t possible to just live in this stable forever. I mean, realistically speaking, this was the Wasteland and as such a pony was allowed to live pretty much anywhere they wanted; provided that they could keep anypony else from taking it from them. So, in that respect, yes, I could very easily just hang around here forever.

Of course, what did I know about keeping up the maintenance on a stable? I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that this place was just going to keep on going about its merry way indefinitely. Perhaps it had been going along without a hitch for the last couple weeks, but I’d seen enough abandoned stables to know where this place was inevitably headed without anypony to look after it. Foxglove was a stable pony herself, and quite technically inclined. I was sure she’d have an idea of what needed to be done.

Asking her to keep up a place like this on her own while I just lounged around though…that didn’t exactly sit well with me. Something told me that, as competent as the unicorn was, a task like this would be beyond even her abilities.

No, ultimately we’d have to leave this place behind. It was definitely a shame. In the meantime though, I was going to take full advantage of all of its amenities. Warm showers, scented soaps and shampoos, fluffy towels, and was that styling gel?

It wasn’t just myself that I tended to either. I discovered that the stable’s armory was just as well stocked as the larder. Gun oil, leather polish, wire brushes, the whole works! I sat myself down in the corner and broke down all of my weapons, ready to give them a thorough cleaning too. The submachine guns weren’t in all that bad a shape really. It hadn’t been all that long since Foxglove had modified them, and she’d taken the time to polish everything up nicely before putting them back together. The interiors were full of carbon and dirt, as was expected from the heavy use they saw, but the grime withered in the face of the chemicals that stable provided me.

My compact .45 was another matter. This pistol was a true product of the Wasteland, and showed its age quite painfully. I fought valiantly against the centuries of abuse and neglect, but in the end I achieved only a pyrrhic victory. The exterior was still dull and there were flecks of rust that refused to give up their positions, but my efforts weren’t entirely for naught. A few tugs on the slide and some dry firings demonstrated that whatever the outside may suggest about the weapon’s condition, the action was the smoothest that I’d ever heard it.

I didn’t put hardly any effort into cleaning up my barding, honestly. I fully intended to be upgrading to something more substantial in the near future, and this thing was hardly even worth hauling to a merchant for the pittance I could expect to be paid for it. In hindsight, I probably should have gone shopping with Foxglove instead of tagging along with jackboot that last time we were in new Reino. In the meantime, it was better than flying around naked—barely—and so I at least brushed away the worst of the dried blood and filth.

That being said, after all the effort that I had just put into getting myself refreshed, I wasn’t looking forward to putting this barding back on against my bared fur and feathers. I also happened to be in a stable, which should have plenty of freshly laundered garments. I finished raiding the armory for cleaning supplies, and then filled my saddlebags to the point of bursting with ammunition and the most serviceable firearms they had, and then set off on my quest for quality clothing.

A half dozen rooms later, and I had rather firmly decided that stable ponies were quite lacking when it came to wardrobe options. Don’t get me wrong, I was very much a fan of the blue and gold motif; it felt a little bit like a Wonderbolt’s jumpsuit with that color scheme. I would just have liked to see a little more variety. Never mind that it looked like pegasi hadn’t been among the stable’s residents. A couple strategically placed cuts with some scissors created the necessary alterations to one of the jumpsuits and I slipped it on.

Studying myself in a mirror, I decided that while I wasn’t a fan of jumpsuits that were clearly intended to serve more function than fashion, I very much looked good in blue. Maybe if I had Foxglove take in some of the material around my hips and chest…I canted myself and struck a confident pose with my wings flared out. Yeah, a couple changes here and there and I would definitely get Jackboot’s attention!

I winced mentally, my wings wilting. Okay, so maybe not his attention, not anymore…but somepony’s, I guess.

A second jumpsuit was wedged into my tightly packed saddlebags before I finally donned my barding. It very neatly covered the broad yellow number stenciled across the back of the stable coveralls. A few judicious clips of the scissors took care of the dual 137’s embroidered into the collar. While it was tempting to want to play off of ponies expectations when they thought they were dealing with some oblivious stable pony in certain expectations, for the most part I didn’t need that kind of hassle just yet. Merchants were hard enough to haggle with on the best of days; I didn’t want to have to prove to each and every one of them that I knew the Wasteland economy wasn’t powered by seemingly indestructible coffee mugs.

My housekeeping errands done with, I returned to meet up with Foxglove in the stable’s atrium. At some point, it looked like the unicorn had made use of the showers as well, as her coat was devoid of any trace of the white paint indicative of the White Hooves. She was currently organizing her saddlebags to accommodate a wide selection of the less perishable foodstuffs and some fresh water. The violet mare glanced up at my approach and waved.

“So, I have about four or five days’ worth of food for the two of us,” she began, waving at the food, “and I also found a bunch of spark-batteries and sparkle-packs on the lower levels. I also stripped a couple dozen talismans out of the stable’s systems: water purification, weapon targeting, climate control, that sort of thing,” the unicorn hesitated and then pointed at another pile of items nearby that hadn’t been packed away quite yet, “I wasn’t sure if we’d be going to Seaddle any time soon, so I don’t know if we want to take this stuff?”

I followed the mare’s questioning gaze to a collection of what looked to be very sophisticated electronic equipment from some terminals. While surely valuable to somepony in New Reino, Foxglove was correct that we’d get the best offer for such things in the capital city of the New Lunar Republic. As much as I would have liked to take a trip back there, I couldn’t be sure that it would be any time soon. There was quite a bit that I wanted to deal with in this area first.

“Leave it,” I shook my head. Foxglove nodded and resumed packing up the rest of the food and salvage that she had acquired, “is this everything?” I glanced around the atrium to see if there was anything lying about that I hadn’t noticed.

“It’s everything that was small and valuable,” the unicorn confirmed, “just like you asked for.”

“Good. We should get going then. We’ve wasted enough daylight,” I started heading for the exit.

Foxglove fell into step quickly and then increased her pace until she was abreast of me, “is there any reason you’re in such a hurry? We could stay here and rest a while.”

The violet mare wasn’t wrong. Most of our prior urgency had rested upon Jackboot’s relationship with the Republic and the efforts that they seemed to be inclined to go to in order to retrieve him. It was a consideration that had promptly expired along with the older stallion. Neither of us was under any sort of timetable that I was aware of; not really.

That didn’t mean that there weren’t a few things I wanted to address that did me little good to put off for very long. Chief among those was questioning a certain griffon that I had recently met. After all, it was at his insistence that Cestus should come along with us as ‘insurance’ that we did the job that we’d agreed to as quickly and efficiently as could be expected. With that taken into consideration, I was finding few plausible explanations coming to my mind that suggested how the young earth pony’s affiliation with the White Hooves couldn’t have been known to the feathered feline.

I needed to know if we’d been set up. If my suspicions proved valid, then I was going to need to make some rather hasty and violent arrangements where that griffon was concerned.

Idly, I wondered what it would do to my reputation in New Reino to be the mare that was involved with the deaths of two of the more powerful figures in that city in as many months. Considerations for both my own health and that of Foxglove suggested that I shouldn’t endeavor to make that a habitual purpose for my visits, but if that was just the way that things happened to work out…oh, well.

In answer to the unicorn’s question, I replied, “I want to have a word with that griffon,” there was no reason to keep her in the dark. Especially if it turned out that I was going to need her support, “I need to know if he knew what Cestus was,” I didn’t bother to hide the bitterness that implied I’d already come to a conclusion in that regard.

Foxglove was understandably worried upon hearing my intentions, “Windy, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” she licked her lips, “I don’t know anything about him, but if he was connected enough to take over Tommyknocker’s operation like he did, he doesn’t strike me as the type you want to piss off.”

“If he knew, I don’t intend to piss him off,” I quipped back, “I intend to kill him.”

“How? If he did set us up, then he’s going to know something went wrong the moment we show up,” the unicorn pointed out, “he might just order his guards to kill us on the spot!”

She wasn’t wrong, I admitted to myself. There was a very real possibility that a confrontation with the griffon could get very violent very quickly. He certainly wasn’t going to allow himself to be alone with me if he really did know about Cestus’ connections. It’s not like I was the sort of pony that could easily blend in either. He’d be on the lookout for a white pegasus with a teal and aqua-streaked mane and tail.

My mind started the turn with possibilities. Of course, if I looked like somepony else…

“We still have that holo-whatsit, right?”

“The personal projector? Yeah, why—oh,” realization dawned on the mare almost instantly. Foxglove frowned slightly as she started to mull the possibilities and necessary logistics over in her mind, “we’d need to get our hooves on somepony that he’d let get close to him,” she pointed out, “and we’ll need a camera. We have a pipbuck, so I can interface with it easily enough…

“We can make it work,” she sounded like she was slightly reluctant to admit that, “but it would just get one of us into a meeting with him,” she pointed out, not bothering to hide her concern, “you’d be outnumbered.”

“I’m always outnumbered,” I said with a smirk, “and if we make it big like last time, I’ll be able to hide my guns.”

“It’s really not designed for that,” the unicorn grimaced, “the matrix is supposed to be flush with the wearer’s body, otherwise the projector runs into clipping issues.”

“Do you want me to nod my head and pretend I know what any of that means?”

Foxglove sighed, “it means that the hologram will have trouble moving when you do,” she explained, “leg stuttering, lip syncing, that sort of thing. If it slips too much, ponies are going to know something's up.”

“It didn’t seem to matter when I was pretending to be Princess Luna,” I pointed out.

“That’s because it wasn’t synced to you at all,” Foxglove said, “you didn’t move your legs or talk or anything, and even your wing flapping was covered up by most of the projection. But when you’re walking around and talking with ponies, that stuff’s going to matter a lot; especially if it looks off.”

I frowned. That could prove to be a problem. However, without a lot of alternatives at hoof, it was going to have to be one that I was probably just going to have to deal with, “we’ll test it out first; see how bad it gets,” I wasn’t going to allow myself to be deterred. If that griffon knew…if he was responsible for Jackboot’s death…

…My mother’s death…

My teeth were grinding against each other, and I had to force my jaw to relax. Not something that was incredibly easy as the two of us stepped into the afternoon light and within sight of the former inhabitants of the stable. The griffon, the White Hooves, the two-horned ponies…my list was growing rather quickly. I was very much inclined to start shortening it one body at a time, and the griffon was far more easily dealt with on my own.

Foxglove didn’t really seem to be reacting to the sight any better than I was. But for the grace of Celestia, this could have been her own stable, after all. There was a lot more anxiety and worry in her features though, compared to the rage in mine.

“I’m thinking of adding a third color to my mane.”

The abrupt announcement snapped the unicorn out of whatever thoughts had been consuming her thoughts and she regarded me with stark bafflement. I smiled and shrugged, running a few pinions through the short-cropped aqua and teal on my head; though it had been getting longer of late. Time for a clipping, “not sure if I want to go lighter or darker, what do you think?”

There was a moment of hesitation as the mare processed what I was talking about, and then a smile broke over her features and she turned an appraising eye to my mane, “how dark are we talking?”

“Indigo?” I ventured, “a little darker than my eyes. Or should I follow the green route?”

“You could always make it something striking,” the unicorn suggested, “a couple black or red stripes so that they really stand out?”

I stuck out my tongue in not quite so feigned disgust, “black and red stripes? Ick! I’d look like a badly put together checkerboard…”

The styling banter didn’t lead to any breakthroughs with regards to my future fashion trends, but that hadn’t been the purpose. It kept our minds on more pleasant topics than death and loss. At least for the remainder of the day until we finally turned in for the night.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that I could use to distract myself while I took my alternating watches with Foxglove. Never did I miss having a third member in our troupe than at this moment. While it was nothing new, as this was how things had been when it had just been Jackboot and I, the inclusion of Foxglove to the rotation had apparently softened me a good bit.

I bet you didn’t think about that when you went and got yourself killed, did you, Jackboot? Not even a tiny little thought to how inconvenienced I was going to be now that I have to keep trading off with Foxglove all night. I’m going to have to start interviewing for your replacement when we get to New Reino if I expect to get a decent night’s sleep again, I thought sourly.

We do need a new earth pony to round out the group; and it might as well be a stallion while we’re at it. It’d be a plus if he was cute, too. Actually, there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t make that a requirement. I wasn’t saying that I was looking to getting a useless pretty-boy who didn’t know which end of a gun the bullets came out of, but if I was going to be forced to look down at somepony’s ass from above all day, it might as well be an ass worth looking at.

Come to think of it, we might need two. I glanced at Foxglove with a frown. For all I could have sworn the unicorn told me she was a mare’s mare, she’d been pretty possessive of Jackboot. I wasn’t looking to go through a repeat of that again. It’s not like I was really going to hold it against her-Jackboot was his own pony too-but I wasn’t going to let the violet mare make a habit of poaching stallions from under my nose.

Not that I’d really know what to do with a stallion if I got my hooves on one, I groused. You could at least have taught me a few things about that before you kicked it, Jackboot! I could flirt and look pretty, but other than what I’d done with Cestus, I knew basically nothing; and I’d just as soon put all of that out of my mind for good, thank you very much! The last thing I wanted was for any stallion I was seriously flirting with to know that I had no idea what I was doing when it got serious. That would just be mortifying.

Almost as mortifying as plying the only pony I reasonably could for information on the subject, which would have been Foxglove. As much as she seemed to regard me as a filly that needed to be protected sometimes, I doubted that she was going to be very forthcoming with those sorts of tips.

Just one tumble, Jackboot, that’s all I needed from you…

I glanced down at the pipbuck’s clock and yawned. Well, my two hours were up. I rolled over and started poking at the unicorn, “you’re up,” the mare stirred and grumbled and acknowledged her duties. I then closed my eyes and allowed myself to drift off to sleep for the couple hours I’d be permitted until my next rotation on watch.

We did seriously need a third pony.

The next morning put us within spitting distance of Old Reino. I was able to pick out the freight station that wasn't really a freight station too. Several painful memories were instantly pushed to the furthest reaches of my mind as I focused my attention on our surroundings. There were dangers here that I knew quite well from our previous visit. In fact, I was able to very easily pick out my flight path by matching up the terrain with what I recalled from that day.

I hadn't directed much thought to what I was getting myself into at the time. My thoughts had been far more acutely occupied with my rather critical mission of getting back to the warehouse with the medicine that Jackboot had so desperately needed. However, I did recall a few of the least fuzzy details about that harrowing flight.

It hadn't been some wandering band that I'd stumbled into that day. I would have noticed a group of ponies out in the open, no matter how occupied my thoughts were. All that I had noticed at the time were a few rooftops that had seemed just as unassuming as a hundred other empty ruins in the Wasteland. Obviously, at least one of those structures had indeed housed some tenants. They were hardly the nicest of neighbors too, as they had opened fire on me without any warning or signs of threatening action on my part.

Those assholes had nearly taken me down—and threatened Jackboot's life by extension; I couldn't deny that. I still couldn't remember all of the specifics about the last leg of my return flight once I'd reached the warehouse. Obviously I had made it inside and Jackboot had received the medicine. I certainly didn't recall ever actually reaching the warehouse, let alone landing inside of it. It had probably not been the most graceful of returns...

What I did know, was that those ponies represented a very clear and present danger to the good ponies of the Wasteland, if they were willing to just open fire on some lone mare flying harmlessly through the air. I found myself adding a fourth group to my list of intended victims, and that irked me considerably. Was that all that I was going to do, grow my list of targets?

I hadn’t even gotten back to New Reino yet, and the list of problems that needed to be dealt with just kept on growing. My teeth started grinding as I tried hard to contain my frustration. It wasn’t easy though. With so many targets, I couldn’t just fly in, guns blazing away, and call it all good—as much as the idea might appeal to me.

Oh, how that appealed to me right now…

Foxglove and I whipped our heads around to the north as the distant crackle of gunfire echoed faintly across the Wasteland. My experienced ears concluded that whoever it was that was shooting was a good few miles off, and wasn’t likely to be a threat to us. The unicorn mare was looking a little nervous all the same. It was likely that she believed those sounds could have presented a danger to us. I was about to offer her assurances that we’d be alright, that it was probably just a caravan fighting off some raiders or critters.

Then something finally clicked in my mind. My eyes scanned our surroundings briefly, comparing it to the visual map of the Neighvada Valley that I had been slowly building in my head over my long years of soaring over its surface. Recognition began to dawn on me.

Since my abduction, I’d been traveling through unfamiliar territory. I’d never been given a chance to see anything while Cestus had hauled my unconscious body back to the White Hoof encampment. Now, though, Foxglove and I had finally made our way back to terrain that I did recognize, and I was finally able to visualize in my mind’s eye exactly where I was in the valley.

My mental coordinates lined up rather closely with where I had been just a few days earlier, the last time something rather traumatizing had happened to me. I couldn’t say for certain whether or not some group of innocent traders or prospectors was involved in that exchange of protracted gunfire that the two of us could still hear; but I was very confident about a certain group that was embroiled in it: the ponies that had ambushed me during my flight to deliver the anti-venom to Jackboot.

I felt a cold fury start to ripple along my spine.

Maybe I wouldn’t have to wait to get back to New Reino after all.

“Load explosive rounds,” even to my own ears, my words sounded flat and distant. The unicorn looked at me with a shocked expression as the servos that she had adapted to my submachine guns cycled and rotated their bolts to accept the specified ammunition.

“Windfall, what are you…”

It wasn’t until much later that I realized the violet mare had said anything to me. I honestly wasn’t even aware that she was standing nearby at that moment. Only a very few things were registering at that moment. One: that a group of very bad ponies who had hurt me was only a short distance away. Two: that I had at my hoof-tips a chance to trim down that list I was making. And three: that I hadn’t put my special talent to use in a very. Long. While.

A couple of powerful sweeps of my ivory wings had me aloft and arcing higher into the overcast sky. I kept an eye cast to those unending clouds as I leveled out and guided myself towards my target. Jackboot’s many warnings about the defenses that the Enclave had set up to protect their aerial nation rattled around in my head. The exact altitude at which those defenses would activate was still something of which I was unsure, but a few candid questions to other ponies over the years, which included one old Dashite mare, had confirmed my earth pony guardian’s cautionary statements.

I had yet to ever encounter any Enclave pegasi myself. From what I had heard, I suppose that was something of a blessing though. The rumors suggested that they didn’t hold Wasteland residents in high regard in general, and—according to that Dashite—even reserved a special brand of disgust for pegasi who weren’t fortunate enough to live in their clouded paradise. Even if I wasn’t one of their condemned Dashites, exiled to the ground, I would presumably be shot on sight as a ‘mud pony presumptive enough to fly’.

That was fine with me though. The Enclave wasn’t who I had scheduled myself an appointment with today.

It wasn’t long before my eyes fell upon the ponies that were my target though. Their barding did indeed suggest that they were some flavor of bandits or raider gang. The scene laid out before me consisted of a half dozen stallions and mares cackling and hollering at one another as they tripped a pair of fresh corpses of their possessions. It seemed that the group had claimed a couple of fresh victims with their most recent bout of violence. My lips curled in vicious sneer as I angled myself down at a steep angle, diving at them.

“Ten round burst,” I growled at the voice-activated weapons strapped to my sides, “both sides,” I waited another beat, and then, “fire.”

Green motes of light spat forth from my submachine guns, arcing downward. At the same instant, I set my pinions and arced in a tight barrel roll that spread the rounds out around the milling ponies. When those magically imbued shards of emerald that Foxglove had fashioned impacted, all of Tartarus broke loose.

As tended to be the case with most automatic weapons fire, the first rounds were the ones that struck their target perfectly. Pegasus ponies were so rare and few in the Wasteland that it hardly occurred to even the most experienced combat veteran to keep an eye skyward for threats. I had exploited this trend for many years, and today was no exception. The azure unicorn stallion examining the contents of the saddlebags of one of their recent victims wasn’t even aware that he was being fired at when four crystalline pellets struck his backside, and detonated.

Foxglove had done a phenomenal job when she had augmented my guns. The ability to give them voice commands in lieu of the pull-string or bit trigger like most ponies who used a battle saddle needed was a huge bonus when it came to getting the drop on ponies who didn’t realize that they were in immediate danger from the mare who didn’t even have her teeth on a trigger. That, coupled with the option to call for either or both barrel to fire a specified number of rounds gave me unheard of control over the amount of ammunition that I expended, and the ability to very precisely track how many rounds I had left in my magazines…though it occurred to me now that my recently inherited pipbuck was able to fulfill that function now. Still, it had been a very helpful feature in the past!

Perhaps even more helpful than all of those little tweaks, however, had been the ammunition that she had fashioned for me. While the much smaller gemstones that tipped the converted 10mm rounds couldn’t compare to what a full-sized grenade could generate in terms of raw explosive potential, they more than made up for that with their ability to more precisely focus that energy. A grenade couldn’t know exactly what you were hoping to hit when you threw one, and so their lethal charge did all that it could to destroy everything around it.

With bullets, it was a very different prospect. Foxglove had used her skills to fashion them into precisely directed explosions, shaping the charge so that it was thrown forward into whatever was struck by the round. The results of this feat of engineering were…pronounced. To say the least.

Leather barding, even that made from strips that were hardened through various processes, offered little protection from all but grazing bullet strikes. That, coupled with the fact that my explosive rounds didn’t detonate immediately upon contact, meant that while the first pony I struck might not have ever had the opportunity to realize that he’d been killed, those around him received a very messy announcement regarding my arrival.

Blood, gore, and even a limb or two, radiated outward from where the stallion had been sitting while he’d pawed through the contents of the saddlebag. The gray earth pony mare rifling through the possessions of the second pony that the gang had slain received the worst of it as pony viscera was violently splashed across her entire left side. Unlike her less fortunate comrade, she did live long enough to realize that her life was in danger. Unfortunately, she was not able to direction from which the threat was coming in time. Even as she started to move and seek out her nearby shotgun in order to defend herself from her unknown attacker, I had already begun sweeping my fire along a preset path intend to catch up as many of these ponies as possible in my initial overhead pass.

As happened with automatic fire, not every round could be counted on to be a direct hit, or even a graze, in most cases. After the four that had ripped the first stallion into a ludicrous number of crimson giblets, the three that followed buried themselves harmlessly into the hard scrabble just before sending a small geyser of dirt and gravel about a foot into the air, as I ‘walked’ my stream of deadly fire to my next target. Bullet number eight would have struck the mare in her head if she hadn’t been so quick to move for her weapon. Nine and Ten were far more fortunate as they found the mare’s left elbow and shoulder respectably. Twin flashes of viridian light bloomed simultaneously and the mare screamed as her leg violently wrenched itself from the rest of her body.

Eleven through fifteen were also wasted on the ground or as ricochets as my dive leveled out and bestowed a more horizontal trajectory on my rounds, but sixteen caught a green unicorn mare in her right cheek as her head whipped around to see what all the commotion was about. Her entire mandible, and most of the lower half of her head, was reduced to a fine red mist and the surprised corpse fell to the ground in a heap just as bullets number seventeen and eighteen created and pair of redundant divots in the dead pony’s chest and flank. Nineteen and twenty went sailing harmlessly off into the distance as I started arcing back up in preparation for a second pass.

Of the six who had been standing when I arrived, only three remained capable of fighting. Those survivors remained stunned for several more seconds as they took in what had so suddenly and unexpectedly happened to their companions, but eventually they mustered together enough of their senses to recognize that there was a threat and take action to defend against it. One particularly resilient unicorn mare with a red mane and silver eyes was rather quick off the mark and had some sort of light machinegun hovering at her side and spitting rounds in my direction just as I was starting to gain altitude.

Orange tracers burned around me as the enraged mare sought to avenge her fallen comrades. Most of the shots went very wide; the unicorn either not concerned with accuracy, or never having bothered to become a particularly skilled marksmare with the weapon. Even so, she was still clearly the more immediate threat, and I wasn’t looking forward to braving that hail of bullets on my next pass. I decided that I might want to do something about it before then.

I flicked my wings and snapped around onto my backside as those brilliant streaks of light started to get a lot closer. A second maneuver sent my hindquarters pitching up and over my head as I flipped myself upright. My wings continued to beat furiously, maintaining my speed and direction of flight as I faced the unicorn firing at me. My lip curled in a slight frown as I gauged the distance. I would be unlikely to reliably hit anything at this range like this.

My eyes flickered briefly to the matte gray pipbuck on my left wrist. If ever there was a moment to give it a real test…

I focused my attention on the mare wielding the machinegun, and the world around me slowed to a crawl. Foxglove had suggested that everything was supposed to completely freeze when the magic of the Sparkle Assisted Targeting System was activated, but the exaggerated muzzle flashes and tracer rounds flying around me confirmed that was not the case. Still, it afforded me much more time to focus than without the pipbuck’s assistance. I studied the numbers hovering around the mare, tied to various portions of her body. The percentage values were slowly diminishing as my distance from her increased even during these slowly advancing moments in time.

The values I was being presented with were actually lower than what I had figured they’d be. I cringed at the thought of continuing to use my limited quantity of explosive rounds when I knew that so many were going to impact uselessly on the ground, “load spark rounds,” my words, surprisingly enough, sounded to my own ears like they were being spoken at a normal speed. My submachineguns cycled almost instantly too. Not too bad, “five rounds, both barrels, fire!” both my weapons and the pipbuck seemed to acknowledge the commands simultaneously.

Blue orbs of crackling light flew away from me while I was still trapped within the same bubble of slowly advancing time. My teeth clamped together as I watched incoming slugs cross through the air towards me and miss by much narrower margins than I was comfortable with. It was funny how being able to pick out the unicorn’s bullets with my naked eyes gave me a better appreciation of how much more accurate she had actually been this whole time when all that I’d been able to track before had been every fifth round…

The two lines of sapphire rounds being fired from my guns drifted into vague clusters as each pair of shots was influenced by the slow beating of my wings as I fired. The cloud of crackling energy rounds sprinkled themselves around the mare. It looked like only one of them managed to score a solid hit, which was admittedly far fewer than I would have guessed. I also inwardly cringed at how many of those rounds that had missed had done so by going long on her right side.

Up and to the left…again.

Still, the one single hit had really been all that I needed.

My specified attack completed, the pipbuck dropped me out of SATS and time once again began to proceed as normal. I saw the unicorn mare wince in pain as the shard of magical crystal struck her squarely in the chest and vanish in a flash of indigo lightning. The silver glow that surrounded both the unicorn’s horn and the weapon hovering at her side vanished and the machinegun fell to the ground. My lips spread into a grin and I immediately reversed direction.

The mare shook her head in stark surprise as her eyes fell to her inert weapon. She glared at the defiant firearm and her horn stated to flicker impotently with dim glimpses of silvery light, but nothing that endured. After several failed attempts, the gray unicorn turned her crimson eyes back to me, and I could see the fear in them where rage had once been only a few seconds ago.

While designed to disrupt and destroy the sensitive electro-magical components of sophisticated electronic components of machines like automated turrets and roboponies, the energy discharges of the blue-banded grenades were also known to do very irritating things to a unicorn’s magic for a short period of time. It was very rarely longer than even a minute at the outside, and the amount of magically disruptive energy in one of Foxglove’s specially fashioned rounds would probably only knock out a pony’s magic for just under ten seconds.

Unfortunately for this mare, ten seconds was all that I was going to need to kill her.

“Load armor piercing, five rounds, right barrel, fire!”

I corrected my trajectory ever so slightly as I felt myself being pulled to the right by the submachinegun spitting rounds at my side. The mare in front of me didn’t stand a chance as the first bullet struck her at the base of her throat while those that followed after it crawled upwards. Her larynx, left side of her jaw and left temple were the next to be struck by the Teflon-coated steel core rounds. Only the fifth shot went wide, sailing over the dead unicorn’s head.

Fresh screams and sounds of small arms fire from my right sent me reflexively to my left as I veered to avoid the new threat. I was rather uncomfortably close to the ground at the moment, and that severely limited my maneuvering options which sat at the core of my advantages in a fight. I needed altitude, and I needed it now!

I flared my wings as I simultaneously arched my back, which sent me into a forward flip this time. I brought my hind legs together and coiled them up close to my chest. The moment I judged the time to be right, I shot out with both of my rear hooves and felt them impact solidly on the ground. I shot straight up into the air on a straight vertical trajectory, gaining an immense amount of height very quickly even as the pony shooting at me tried in vain to track my abrupt shift in course.

It seemed that mundane firearms were not all that the remaining pair of raiders had at disposal either. Beams of violet energy danced in the air around me, which was actually rather concerning. I peeled off sharply to my right just as a fresh lance of thrumming magic sliced through the air where I would have been had I not diverted.

Okay, that actually had me pretty concerned…

I flared a wing every second or two, sending me whirling and diving through the air in an almost random direction with each movement as more purple columns of light struck out towards me. All the while, more ‘pops’ of what sounded like pistol fire crackled up from below. Those didn’t have me worried very much. A pony would have to be either very lucky, or very good, to hit me with a small caliber pistol at this sort of range. Meanwhile, all whoever it was that was shooting those purple beams had to do was-

My world vanished in a magenta haze, and I felt my whole body go numb. When the blinding light that had enveloped me went away, I found the Wasteland spinning around me as I went tumbling to the ground. Terror welled up inside my chest as the ground came screaming up to meet me. Desperately I flared out my wings, or rather I tried to. It was really hard to tell though, since I could no longer feel the air rushing around them to know that they were oriented correctly. I couldn’t feel anything.

Fighting down the panic that was threatening to seize control of my mind, I physically looked to each of my wings and watched them until they were properly oriented. I could see myself starting to level out, but I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. With a deep set cringe, I closed my eyes and braced myself. This was going to hurt…

At least, I suppose it would have if I’d still had the ability to feel anything. I guess the total body numbness that had overcome me so unexpectedly wasn’t such a bad thing after all. That wasn’t to say that I wasn’t aware of hitting the ground. I could still hear things, and the sound that a pony made when she went tumbling head over flank along the ground was a rather distinctive one. Snapping bones were a rather unique sound too, come to think of it, and I heard a few iterations of those as I ‘landed’. I’d probably broken something—or more likely a lot of somethings—but I wasn’t going to find out about that any time soon.

When I opened my eyes to get my bearings, I discovered that I had managed to end up on my neck, peering out from between my hind legs. Awkward. I grunted and arched my back, watching as the lower half of my body clumsily fell out of view, followed by the sound of a pony hitting the ground. That had probably been me, as the only other ponies that were moving around in the area were currently advancing directly towards me.

This wasn’t ideal.

“hen hounth, hoeth herralth, hire!”

Unsurprisingly, neither weapon responded to my command. It was hard for me to blame them, as even I hadn’t been able to understand what I’d said, and I was the one saying it! I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes in an attempt to confirm that it was still there and hadn’t managed to get bitten off during impact. It was indeed still present, which was a relief, but it was also just as numb as the rest of my body.

“Horthappelth…”

It was at this moment that I was grateful that Foxglove had not removed the pull line that Jackboot and I had rigged up for the weapons for when we desired a means of firing them that was a little easier to conceal beneath a cloak than a true trigger-bit. I craned my head around and awkwardly fumbled around for the little metal tab tucked in at my side. Without feeling to go on, I had to rely on the sound of my teeth finally clasping onto something metal. I gave the object an experimental tug and felt it come loose.

A quick glance confirmed that it was the pull line that I had been seeking, and a renewed sense of relief flooded through me. I once more turned my attention to the approaching raider pair. The black unicorn mare with purple eyes wore a rather irate expression. Meanwhile, the earth pony stallion walking beside her was chuckling rather gleefully to himself as he loaded a fresh magazine into the butt of his weapon. His yellow eyes were dancing over my body in a way that suggested he was intensely debating whether he wanted to have fun with it before, or after, he killed me.

You aren’t going to get that chance though, asshole.

I gave the cord a sharp yank and held my head in that position. Both of my submachineguns roared to life as their trigger mechanisms were engaged. I wriggled around as best I could in an effort to spread out the fire I was sending at those ponies. This was hardly an ideal firing stance, and I couldn’t be completely sure of how I was oriented. It would have been a lot easier to guide my shots if I’d been using one of my more visible ammunition types, but that wasn’t an option unfortunately.

My efforts produced at least some results though! At least one of my rounds struck the stallion, and he went down screaming. The mare was a lot more nimble on her hooves and had danced out of the way, beyond where I was capable of squirming to it seemed, despite my best attempts to correct that. My right barrel went dead, followed a second later by the left one, and then the Wasteland was quiet again.

Just the one pony remained standing, and it didn’t look like my latest efforts had done all that much to improve her mood. She surged forward over the remaining distance, very nearly frothing at the mouth, “you fucking, bitch! I’m going to cut you to pieces!”

It was very probable that she was literally going to do just that too, I thought to myself as I saw the rusted length of steel that had been battered and honed into a crude machete float out of a scabbard strapped to her backside. My eyes went wide as I saw the jagged, nicked, blade rise up into the air and then swing downward towards my head. Desperately, I willed my left leg upwards in an effort to defend myself. Sparks flew as the edge glanced off the seemingly impervious casing of the Old World device. If wasn’t a completely successful deflection though, and I screamed as the machete cleaved off a small portion of my leg’s flesh.

That fucking hurt!

Hey, wait…that actually hurt!

Indeed, though the pain of my wound seemed to course freely through the entire limb, I noticed that my movements were still a little awkward as I tried to roll out of the way of the mare’s next strike and found myself to be only partially successful. A fresh gash was opened up on my cheek as the machete caught me in my attempt to evade. My follow-up hop was significantly more successful and I managed to completely avoid being struck that time.

I could feel pain, and move around a little bit, but it was clear to me that I wasn’t completely recovered from whatever this mare’s beam had done to me. In an attempt to find out just how recovered I was, I once more attempt to issue out a voice command to the weapons at my side, “woad weguwah wouns!”

No telltale noises of the bolt revolving to strip from the specified magazine.

Fuck!

It looked like I was going to have to do this the hard way.

I snarled at the advancing unicorn and ducked under another one of her swings. This time I didn’t give up any additional ground though. I couldn’t afford to remain on the defensive, especially when I didn’t possess the option of flight. On the ground, this unicorn had all of the advantages when compared to myself, even without her magic. So I charged on ahead in an effort to wrap my hooves around the mare and wrestle her to the ground.

Unfortunately, it seemed that I wasn’t nearly as recovered as I had hoped quite yet, and the mare easily withstood the anemic ‘tackle’ and then casually flung me aside with her leg. I hit the ground with a pained groan, which was followed up very quickly by a stunned grunt as the unicorn planted her hoof in the center of my chest and pinned me to the ground. Alright, so maybe that didn’t quite work out the way that I had hoped…

Uh oh…

My left leg shot out reflexively and swatted aside the machete that had been coming down to decapitate me with the pipbuck’s casing once more. I followed through this time and slammed the blade down against the ground in an effort to pin it there and remove it from the fight. No telling how long that was going to last though, as weak as I still was.

I wasn’t quite done yet though, and this mare had fucked up by the numbers by coming back within reach of me. Her hoof was still putting a lot of weight on my rib cage, but I was flexible enough to work around that. I heaved upwards with my hips and managed to snake my legs around the unicorn’s neck. At that same moment, my free right forehoof gripped around the leg she was using to hold me in place. Her violet eyes went wide as she realized her mistake, but it was too late. A decent amount of force was all that I needed to apply in order to put her off balance and send the mare to the ground.

With every last bit of strength that I could muster, I clamped my hind legs down tight around the unicorn’s throat. I was also keeping in mind the need to keep as much of my weight as possible on the grounded machete, as I saw that the mare’s horn was still glowing brightly. Judging by her struggles and discomfort, the unicorn was at least starting to get a little short of breath, and she started to pound at me with her forelegs. At least a little numbness yet remained to help mitigate those strikes at least. At this rate, I was sure to come out on top…

Windfall, one of these days, you will learn to keep your big. Mouth. Shut!

The unicorn’s horn flared briefly, and I was once again enveloped in that same purple light which had caught me before. I felt the pain of my injuries vanish almost instantly, and my strength starting to ebb away. I couldn’t even be sure that I was still constricting my legs around the mare’s throat. If she escaped, that was it.

The light dissipated, and my vision quickly returned. The unicorn was still in my clutches…for now, at least. She had stopped pounding at me, and was instead making an effort to pry herself free, which was no doubt going to work very soon now. I couldn’t let that happen though. I just couldn’t. If I died here, then who was going to avenge Jackboot? Who was going to get rid of all of those ponies on my list that needed to be dealt with in order to make the Wasteland a better place?

I couldn’t die here.

No, I wouldn’t die here! This bitch was not going to get free! Celestia as my witness, I was going to end her life; because that was what I was good at, damn it! I wasn’t going to lose, not to her, not ever!

I had her in my clutches. All I needed was just a little…more…strength…

Come on, Windfall, stay strong, I thought fiercely at myself even as I saw the other mare starting to make some progress in her efforts to get one of her hoofs around my hind leg and pry it loose from her neck, if ever there was a time you were going give it your all, this was it! Stay strong, Windfall!

Be Strong!

That last thought felt like it had echoed in my head a little more than the others. It had seemed to be enough though, and I felt a surge of power run down through my body. Choking her was going to take too long. I needed this fight ended now!

With a sharp twist of my hips as I flexed my hind legs, I wrenched the unicorn’s head sharply to the side much farther than biology had ever intended for it to go. I heard the sound of crackling bones as the base of the mare’s skull was dislocated from the rest of her cervical spine. Instantaneously, the unicorn’s body went limp and the light surrounding her horn faded away.

I finally allowed myself to relax and loosen my grip on the dead mare. Feeling was returning to my body already, making me suspect that the mare’s more recent, desperate, blast had not been charged as potently as the first one that had struck me. It was certainly enough to make me a little unsteady on my hooves at first when I finally managed to stand up. That was fine, since for the next little bit, all that I was concerned about was taking the opportunity to catch my breath.

Six on one may have been pushing the limit a little bit when it came to the sorts of odds that I could overcome, I conceded. Next time, I’d make sure that I had some backup. Or maybe bigger guns. Bigger guns might help out a little bit too.

The sound of somepony groaning nearby drew my attention. I glanced over and saw the yellow-eyed stallion who’d been shooting at me with a pistol before. He was still alive, despite the oozing hole in his chest. The enterprising stallion was even trying to crawl away, it looked like. Ambitious of him. I wasn’t going to let it happen though, I thought, as my eyes flickered over to the pair of corpses that I had found this group gathered around.

Careful to mind my still tingling legs, I stepped towards the pitiful earth pony. He must have heard me coming, because the pony glanced over his shoulder at me, and I saw his amber eyes widen with terror. He whirled back around and started to frantically claw away from me but, in his panic, his hooves found it difficult to find solid purchase, and he started to actually make less progress.

“Nononono,” he uttered in fearful gasps of breath, “please, don’t! No,” he wasn’t even looking at me as he continued to try and futilely escape. I frowned and continued walking closer to him, “I don’t want to die! Please, no!”

Nopony wants to die, I thought caustically at the stallion. Out loud, I began to issue the necessary orders to my weapons, “hwo hegu-weh ahmen,” I scowled as I cleared my throat and stretched my jaw for a second attempt, “woad weguleh-aaargh!” this was so incredibly frustrating! On to ‘Plan B’ then.

I glanced to my side and kept an eye on my right wing as I tried to manipulate the submachinegun’s fire selector switch with my pinions. This was proving to be rather difficult as well. After about five seconds of what would have, in any other situation, been comically funny failings to move the switch with my wingtip, my pinion slipped and accidentally ejected the magazine containing the weapon’s regular 10mm ammunition.

With another exasperated sigh, I lifted up my wing instead, “fug ih,” I ducked my head beneath the wing, withdrew my compact .45, and placed a round into the back of the crawling stallion’s head. I glanced around at my surrounding’s, my eyes keenly tracking the bottom of my pipbuck’s Eyes Forward Sparkle. No blips of any kind, red or yellow, appeared in any direction. So far as the pipbuck indicated, I was completely alone out here. I was likely to remain that way for a good while yet. Foxglove was a couple miles away, and it would take here perhaps ten minutes to get here even at a decent gallop. I certainly wasn’t going to risk flying in the near future considering how poorly my wings were responding to my commands to move.

Resigned to waiting, I found a patch of ground that wasn’t splattered with blood or pony guts, and brought up the pipbuck. I could at least enjoy some music while I waited. Bringing up the radio function on the pipbuck, I tuned in to frequency of the Manehattan DJ and allowed myself to relax as the gentle baritone of King Claws-Beak, a popular griffon singer of the Old World, began wafting out of the speakers. To my knowledge, he hadn’t been an actual ‘king’, but I didn’t really know for sure. His crooning sounded nice regardless.

As the soft music surrounded me, I found myself once more surveying the carnage around me. Eight dead ponies, six of them brought down by my own hooves. Not bad for one young little mare, I suppose. I really was good at killing, the sour though wound through my head for far from the first time. That sick feeling that I always got after something like this started in my stomach and I instinctively tried to reach into my saddlebag for some Wild Pegasus, but the latch’s mysteries eluded my desensitized pinions. Not that it really mattered, I realized with an irritated grunt. I didn’t have any more whiskey anyway. I hadn’t gotten the chance to replenish my stash after we’d been paid for delivering Homily and her crew safely to McMaren. Our departure had been pretty sudden.

That meant that I didn’t have anything to take the edge off this time. I pounded the ground in frustration, glancing at the corpses surrounding me. A thought then occurred to me: it wasn’t many a raider gang that traveled without some sort of alcohol themselves! With a renewed sense of excitement, I shot up and cantered from body to body, rifling through their belongings. I was reduced to tearing open most of their bags with my teeth and upending them in order to get at what was inside.

Some of the more worthwhile looking food and ammunition I set aside, along with any medical supplies and loose caps. I’d get to those sorts of things later. Right now, I needed whiskey!

As I emptied the final saddlebag, I was forced to acknowledge that my thirst for some Wild Pegasus was going to have to go unquenched. Unfortunately, the only alcohol that I was able to find on any of those ponies was a single bottle of Crystal Heart vodka. I had never been any sort of fan of the clear spirits. In my personal opinion, it tasted like a doctor’s shanty smelled—at least the respectable doctors that bothered cleaning their equipment anyway. It looked like this time the vodka was all the option I had left to me. There certainly wasn’t any way that I was going to sit here thinking about my work and not drink though.

So I popped the cork and took several long, painful, swallows from the aptly named heart-shaped bottle. Oh, yeah, this stuff was still just as putrid as I remembered it being…

When I finished taking my needed drink, I shuddered in an effort to keep it down. It may not have been whiskey, but it was still alcohol all the same, and I could feel it already start to go to work on numbing me in a very different sort of way. I was very grateful for that, if not the acrid taste it left in my mouth. More prepared for what my taste buds were going to be subjected to, I took two more long pulls from the decanter.

Once upon a time, just a shot or two was all that I needed to numb my brain to the point where seeing a bunch of dead and mangled pony bodies that I'd created no longer bothered me as much. As the years dragged on, and my body count climbed, that necessary volume had steadily gone up. These days, I needed damn near a whole bottle. There were a few times when even that wasn't quite enough though. Drinking myself into unconsciousness did the trick on such days; but that meant that I was also effectively useless for the rest of the night. It was much too early now to go to that sort of extreme this time.

Which was unfortunate, because I could already feel that what was left in this bottle wasn't quite going to cut it. I'd just killed a lot of ponies right now, and a few had been very messy deaths. Celestia it really sucked being good at something that made me feel this sick...

I felt the back of my head start to tingle as the third large swallow I'd taken began to work it's dull magic. It wasn’t a moment too soon, as it turned out. I heard the last of Claws-Beak’s song fall off into silence, and get replaced by the recognizable words of the eastern Wasteland disc-jockey, “Hello, children!” DJ Pon3 offered by way of his usual greeting. However, right off the bat, I could tell from the faint waver in his tone that this wasn’t going to be one of the radio personality’s more uplifting broadcasts, “I hope everypony’s having a better day out there in the Wasteland than I am. Your old friend, DJ Pon3…well, he’s having a rough week…”

“Twade yah,” I mumbled to myself, cringing again at the slightly slurred words.

“Children, believe it or not, there are days when this old stallion wonders if he didn’t make the biggest mistake of his life when he made that promise to give all of you out there the honest truth of what’s happening in the Wasteland,” I could hear the resignation fully in his words now. These were the words of a stallion who was bearing a heavy burden and was thinking very hard about whether or not he wanted to keep on bearing it, “you don’t know how many times a piece of news comes across my desk and I think to myself, I think, ‘Pon3? If you tell your children about this, it’s going to break their little hearts,’ and I don’t want to break your hearts, children. You all have enough to worry about out there. The Wasteland’s a hard place. You know that, and I know that.

“But…” the stallion continued with a heavy sigh, “as much as I know that it’ll hurt your hearts to hear the sorts of things I have to tell you from time to time, I know that it’ll break your spirits if word gets around that even good ol’ DJ Pon3 is just one more liar and con pony out to play with your emotions. So…here it goes:

“It turns out, children, that the Lone Ranger…well, he really was doing all those things that ponies were saying,” I felt my own throat catch now as I heard the distant stallion’s news. I hadn’t wanted to believe those earlier rumors. The Lone Ranger was…well, he’d been my hero! A pony that had seen the injustices of the Wasteland, and knew that he had the power to do something about it, and actually did do something about it? He was exactly the sort of pony that I’d aspired to be since my parents had died.

I winced. Well, since my pa had died, I guess…Of course, everypony important to me was dead now, weren't they?

I took another drink.

When I’d heard that broadcast last week about how the Lone Ranger might have been attacking innocent caravans…I’d known it had to be a lie. The lone Ranger was like me: a pony who wanted to help because they knew they could. I knew that I’d never kill innocent ponies, so then how could he do it?

Now, hearing DJ Pon3 confirm those initial rumors…I didn’t know what to think. Except, perhaps: why?

“For those of you wondering ‘why’, well…like I said, children: we all know that the Wasteland is a hard place. If it can’t crush you, it’ll crush your heart and your dreams until you don’t feel like you have anything left.

“I genuinely believe that the Lone Ranger wanted to help ponies. I really do believe that, children. At first, he was. He killed raiders, and monsters, and slaver ponies. He was doing good out there, children!” there was a long pause, “but then, I guess, he started to get tired. He saw that, no matter how many raiders he killed, there were always more waiting around the corner. For every radscorpion he’d crush, two more would pop up. Every time he freed a slave, another pony would be captured.

“Eventually, he just stopped feeling like he was making a difference. He was treating the symptoms of the Wasteland, but he couldn’t cure the world of its real sickness,” another long pause, “and, I think, in the end, he caught some of that sickness. He thought that, as bad as ponies like Red-Eye’s slavers were, ponies—good, honest, ponies—were still trading with him, selling him food and guns.

“Now, children, I know we all have families, and we need to survive. I’m not going to pass judgement on anypony that has to choose between letting their foals starve or trading with Red-Eye. Not everypony has an option to do the truly right thing, and has to settle for just doing the best that they can. I guess, though…the Lone Ranger, he didn’t see it that way. He saw ponies like that as being just as bad as the slavers that they traded with.

“I’ve-we’ve-managed, Homage and I, to confirm that all of the caravans that were hit by the Lone Ranger had, at some time, done business with either a slaver or raider band.”

I hung my head in despair. I had hoped…maybe it could have been a mistake. To hear that those rumors had been right, that my hero could become just as murderous as the very ponies that he was fighting for so long.

Not that a part of me didn’t understand why he’d done it. It wasn’t like there weren’t times when I didn’t see some merchant in New Reino dealing with a pony I knew to be a slave peddler, and want to throttle the both of them. I had to remind myself that the merchant wasn’t actually dealing in slaves himself—and that slavery was still legal in New Reino—and that he probably could afford to turn away customers on moral principle. Principles didn’t put food on the table, after all.

“But,” he went on, interrupting my thoughts with his melancholy tone, “I guess I have some somewhat ‘sweet’ news to go with this bitter pill: the Lone Ranger is dead,” it felt like somepony had punched me in the gut. I slowly lowered myself all the way to the ground and lied down as I continued listening, “the local trade guilds paid for a Talon mercenary contract, and Gawd herself delivered his head to Friendship City early this morning. At least…at least nopony needs to worry that they might be next,” it was clear that DJ Pon3 hadn’t enjoyed this outcome any more than I had.

There was several seconds of dead air before the stallion resumed his broadcast, “I want everypony out there to do dear old DJ Pon3 this one favor; can you do that, children? I want you to remember the way you felt when you knew that there was somepony out there helping you. I want you to remember those days when seeing the Lone Ranger cresting a hill made you feel safe, and sent raiders running for their lives.

“I want you to remember what it’s like when there’s a good pony out there in the Wasteland, fighting the good fight. Remember that, children. Maybe, some day…we won’t have to just ‘remember’ what that feels like. Someday…it’ll just be the way that the world is.

Another long pause, and then I heard the sound of a mare clearing her throat in the background before the stallion continued, “but, for now, here’s some Ink Plots for you with, ‘Until the Real Thing Comes Along’,” the disc jockey chuckled softly, “until that time, children. Until that time.”

The Manehattan stallion’s voice was replaced by the strumming of a lone acoustic guitar and a quarter of singing ponies, but I hardly even noticed. ‘Until then’, he’d said. Exactly how common did he think heroes were in the Wasteland? I could only count two ponies like that in my whole life so far, and both of them had failed miserably in the end. We just had to face it and accept the facts: you couldn’t beat the Wasteland; it was going to win in the end. No single pony was going to end a two century long streak, after all, were they?

I brought the heart-shaped bottle to my lips and upended it.

Footnote:...

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