"How did you survive?"
"Didn't. Got killed..."

I wasn’t sure whether or not I was grateful for the fact that the large freight wagons nestled inside of the warehouse at Winder Rider’s Wagons and Freight were made of what amounted to cardboard and particle wood. On the one hoof, it meant that there hadn’t been any serious risk of my hurting myself as I reduced every single one of them into piles of unrecognizable splinters in order to thoroughly vent my mounting frustration. However, because those faux transports hadn’t really been much of a challenge for me to obliterate, it hadn’t exactly provided me with any sense of satisfaction when I’d finished the last of them off and was left standing amid the sawdust, panting out the last vestiges of my fury.

Empty. The warehouse had been empty.

There were signs that Foxglove and the others had made it here, at least; so I knew that they were alright. However, it looked like the three of them had not opted to wait around for Arginine and I to catch up with them. Under most other circumstances, that probably wouldn’t really have bothered me all that much. Intellectually, I could completely understand their decision.

They had been told to gather at the hospital. From there, they would have been able to clearly see the explosion, and perhaps even the collapse of the Ministry of Arcane Science Hub, as well as that of the office building that had been nearby. They would have tried to contact me on my pipbuck to see if I was okay. Of course, my pipbuck had died in the face of the intense radiation exposure, so none of Ramparts’ transmissions would have gotten through. He’d have tried to see if he could even track my location, and would have discovered that my tag no longer existed either.

Even I knew that pipbuck’s were physically tough. While mine might not currently work, it was still very much structurally intact, and Arginine was pretty sure that all that it needed was a simple reset with the aid of another pipbuck. However, there was no way for any of our other companions to know that it was just on the fritz. All that they knew was that the last that they had seen of me, I’d been the vicinity of a massive explosion and two building collapses, after which my pipbuck tag had vanished from their map and nopony could raise me on the radio.

Perhaps, in spite of all of that, they might have been tempted to try and recover my body, except that at about the same time, one of those malfunctioning ultrasentinels must have rambled on through beneath the area, causing the radiation spike that had shut down my pipbuck. Ramparts had had a working rad-detector, and so the three of them would have left the city as quickly as they could once it started going off.

What exactly should I have expected them to do after all of that? If I’d been part of the group that had made it out, and any other two of them had been in my place, would I have been one of the voices advocating to stay put for who knew how long; or would I have told everypony that we needed to cut our losses and continue on with the plan? Honestly, I think that I would have been the chief advocate for moving forward. I couldn’t know how they were going to find that MoA hub without the data on my pipbuck, but I’d seen that Foxglove and Starlight were both very smart ponies. Maybe the pink unicorn mare from the past knew about another source of potential information, or Foxglove had been able to coax a little bit more cooperation out of the computers in the basement here.

In either case, there hadn’t been anypony here when Arginine and I had finally come trudging in during the early dawn hours of the morning, after walking through the sprawl of Old Reino all night. I was tired from all of the damn walking, annoyed that my friends hadn’t made the boneheaded decision to linger here for no good reason...and terrified that I was going to die because my last best hope for getting the help that I needed wasn’t here. Those wagons had paid the price for my rage.

Arginine had simply stood silently in the doorway, watching as I punched, bucked, and bit, my way through my outburst until I’d finally exhausted myself. Even now that it was all ended, he didn’t seem to have much to say. This had been the entirety of his plan too, after all: reach the others to pass on my pipbuck so that they could use what was in it. With them gone, he was just as out of ideas as I was. Just as out of hope.

No. No, I refuse. What would Jackboot think of me if I just went out like some helpless little bitch? I wasn’t going to just lie down here and die!

Sure, Foxglove and the others had moved on without us, but so what? We’d just have to catch up with them. We could do it too, since they would have stopped somewhere to sleep all night, while we’d been moving that whole time. I certainly wasn’t feeling any strong desire to go to bed now, what with a rapidly approaching expiration date hanging over my head. We’d head on after them as fast as we could. Starlight was still getting used to be a Wasteland pony, which meant she kept taking frequent breaks. That would slow them down enough for Arginine and I to catch them by mid-afternoon. Worst case scenario? We run into them tonight when they bed down to get some sleep.

...Okay, so I had done exactly zero actual calculations in my head to back up that statement, but I was just going to go right on thinking that, because I refused to believe that I was going to die. It wasn’t happening. Not while I was alive!

…

I was briefly torn between admitting that I had just thought that, and blaming it on the radiation poisoning getting to my brain. I wasn’t a particular fan of that possibility.

I turned and started walking towards the doorway where Arginine was standing, “we’re heading after them. Foxglove will take the western route to Seaddle,” not that I could actually be sure that they’d gone straight for Seaddle. The chances were fairly even that they’d swing by New Reino to pick up additional supplies before going north. Of course, I only really got the one chance to catch up to the rest of our group. So, in the interest of not becoming completely overwhelmed by the despair of realizing that my odds of reaching our friends were, at best, one in some depressingly high number, I chose to believe that they’d gone to Seaddle, and that we’d meet along the way. Probably somewhere around Shady Saddles.

That was just how things were going to be.

The gray stallion remained silent, merely allowing himself a slight nod of his head as he followed. His genetically superior brain no doubt knew how slim our chances were better than I did. Heck, he was probably also keenly aware of how genuinely useless catching up to them would be where our own lives were concerned. There wasn’t going to be anything that they could do for us.

Not that I was willing to admit that to myself quite yet. I was grabbing onto every thread of denial that I could see and holding on for all I was worth.

A discomfort in my chest that had been steadily growing over the past hour or so would finally no longer be ignored and I was forced into a fit of coughing. It was a fairly productive cough too, leaving something behind in my mouth that tasted very familiar. I spit out what was revealed to be a pink froth, wiping away an errant tendril of spittle with my hoof. I glanced only briefly at the faint scarlet smear that came away with it.

Almost certainly just the remnants of something I’d eaten.

I cleared my throat and swallowed back the rest of what was in my mouth so that I didn’t have to see it, and renewing my determination to suppress another faint tickle that was already starting to build up in my chest again, “try not to lag behind,” I growled in the direction of the large stallion behind me.

By mid morning, it was fairly obvious that Arginine wasn’t the one lagging behind. He never actually passed me, but I knew that my pace had slacked off considerably since last night. It frustrated me to no end, but there wasn’t anything that I could do about it. I felt exhausted, but I suspected that it wasn’t a fatigue that had anything to do with not having bothered to sleep at all last night. The symptoms of my condition were getting progressively harder for me to ignore.

The coughing came more frequently, and the spittle that came flying out of my mouth was turning a deeper shade of red every time. Even Arginine was starting to exhibit some of those signs, albeit more subdued. He was still able to pass them off rather convincingly as the manifestations of a dry throat, for the moment. I only wish that the coughing was the worst of it. Unfortunately, my stomach, in a show of solidarity, decided that it too was going to start evacuating bloody fluids as well. There wasn’t anything significant for me to throw up, of course. I’d been feeling too nauseous to eat since nightfall. Apparently, my stomach was going to let a little detail like being empty stand in the way of finding something to send back up my throat.

Every hour or so, I was taking out a bottle of water and taking a small drink. Not to actually swallow, mind you―I’d quickly learned that my gut wouldn’t countenance any sort of intrusion―just something to slosh around in my mouth and spit back out in order to wash away the bitter concoction of phlegm, bile, and blood, that kept congregating.

It was getting harder and harder to convince myself that this was going to work too. The more pronounced the signs of radiation poisoning got, the clearer it became that this was just as serious as Arginine had made it out to be. If I was being honest with myself―and Celestia knew I was doing my damndest not to be―I’d already lost hope of finding the others. The two of us were only going to be moving ever slower from this point onward. Which meant that we weren’t going to gain any ground on the others no matter how often and for how long they might have rested.

I just...there wasn’t anything else I could do!

Well, short of lying down and dying out here in the middle of the Wasteland, at least. I let out a raspy little snort that quickly evolved into a fit of bloody coughing as I took stock of my stubbornness. That was the only thing that was keeping me on my hooves anymore, after all: stubbornness. The notion that I had lived through and survived too much to just die now.

Wasn’t that a stupid idea?

How many hardened raiders, easily twice my age or more, had I killed in my life? I idly wondered if, in their final moments, they’d been of a mind that they too had endured far too much adversity just to end up being put down by some feathered little upstart filly. If that had indeed been the case, then those thoughts had obviously not done anything to change their own terminal fates. There was no reason to expect that it would be any different for me.

This episode of coughing seemed to be particularly severe, and when it did not soon abate, I found myself stumbling down to my knees. It was very difficult to ignore the bright red flecks of blood misting on the hard scrabble in front of me. When it did finally pass, I remained there, kneeling on the ground, panting for breath as I stared at my blood on the rocks. Arginine stepped up beside me.

“Tomorrow morning might have been...optimistic,” I rasped as I swallowed back another mouthful of bitter sputum, which only served to embolden my stomach to start protesting as well. Fortunately I managed to keep myself from another bout of dry heaving...barely.

“The muscle weakness, nausea, and respiratory ailments are all moderate symptoms,” the stallion said softly, “there will be more severe conditions later. In fact, you have actually progressed more slowly than I had initially predicted,” his slightly elevated tone seemed to suggest that I should be somewhat proud of that fact, “you are on track to expire thirty hours from now.”

I tried to laugh, but it just came out in more bloody coughs, “hours, huh? Well, considering I thought I’d be dead in a matter of minutes back in those Old Reino tunnels, that’s quite the improvement,” I only wished that I felt as confident as my words made me seem, “at this rate, I’ll be fucking immortal by morning,” I spent a few more seconds dry heaving as I finally lost the battle to keep my gut under control, then, “now help me back up. With as many breaks as Starlight needs, we’ll probably spot them over the next ridge.”

Arginine went silent again, but he bent down and gently eased himself against me so that I had something sturdy to lean against as I got back up onto alarmingly unsteady legs. I was going to need his continued physical support if I was going to make any additional progress, I realized. I hurriedly pushed aside the thought of how much longer it would be before even that wasn’t going to be enough to keep me going.

I needed something to distract me, “so, RG, you said you were born from a machine?”

The question seemed to catch the stallion off guard as he walked slowly at my side in a careful effort to keep me upright, “an incubation capsule, yes.”

“No real parents then, but somepony must have looked after you. Taught you things. What were they like?” there wasn’t any real point to these questions, of course; and while I would admit to a passing curiosity of what it would take to produce somepony who was capable to doing the things that Arginine did, it wasn’t exactly the sort of nagging mystery that kept me up at night. However, right now those questions and their answers should suffice to keep my mind distracted from all the many ways in which my body was slowly dying.

“Our generation had mentors, yes, depending on the duties that we would be assigned,” either Arginine needed the distraction too, or he didn’t mind talking about himself, because the stallion seemed to take easily enough to talking about his origins, “I was one of thirty-seven foals placed under the mentorship of Proctor Telomerase. We endured a decade and a half of rigorous education pertaining to our craft. I placed second from among our strain on all examinations, and in the top five percentile of our stable’s historical population.”

“So, you’re only the second best at what you do?” I scoffed weakly, “what exactly did the pony who beat you have to do in order to be better at cutting up innocent ponies?”

“The dissection process was only a minor part of our overall role during the development of future generational strains. Most of our time was spent testing and evaluating the harvested tissue samples.”

He hadn’t even sounded the least bit phased by my question. I cocked my head, staring at the stallion, caught between whether I should feel appalled or impressed by his apparent utter lack of anything approaching compassion. He was talking about what he did to those ponies his stable captured the way I might talk about squashing a radroach. The way that I could only wish I felt about killing raiders and slavers.

“How did you do it?” I asked, “how did you do that to ponies and not feel...anything? They were ponies, for Celestia’s sake! Thinking, feeling, ponies, and you’re talking about them like they were just...things. Don’t you feel bad about what you did at all?”

“No,” he replied simply. There was more there though. It was like a...shadow or something deep in his eyes. Not guilt, or remorse, per say. Maybe...envy?

“I am incapable of feeling ‘bad’ about what I did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“My generation’s strain was engineered to possess a moderate degree of psychopathy,” Arginine said in an even tone, looking straight ahead, “we are not capable of feeling empathy for the specimens that we examine.”

“You don’t mean to tell me that ‘perfect ponies’ don’t feel empathy,” I blurted, “that’s stupid!”

“This attribute is not intended to be incorporated into the Omega Strain. It is a temporary measure meant to overcome what were seen as unacceptable obstacles towards achieving our goal. Previous strains found it...emotionally taxing, to perform evaluations on specimens. Most experienced burnout or severe stress disorders after only a few months.

“It was determined that changes needed to be made, temporarily, in order to prevent additional delays. My strain is a product of those changes.”

“They made it so that you didn’t care about what you were doing to ponies,” I actually felt...well, not ‘bad’ for Arginine. Sympathetic? If what he was telling me was the truth―and I’d yet to catch him in a lie―then it was going to be hard for me to actively despise him as much as I had been. That wasn’t to say that he was blameless. Maybe he wasn’t capable of feeling sickened by what he was doing on any deep level, but he was clearly smart enough to know it was morally wrong to do what he had been on an intellectual one! Though, I suppose that, growing up as he had, his morality might have been a bit more skewed than most.

I certainly wasn’t a pony who could claim the true moral high road when it came to taking life. I’d easily killed hundreds in my time. The key difference between me and Arginine was one of very shaky semantics: I tried to be particular about my parameters. Specifically: I killed who I labeled ‘bad ponies’. Jackboot and I had gotten into a few―occasionally heated―debates about what made a pony 'bad', but I’d built myself what I felt was a pretty compelling list of criteria. Ponies who killed, pillaged, raped, and slaved for personal gain. There might be some extenuating circumstances in there on a case-by-case basis, but that was the succinct version.

Arginine and the ponies of his stable had their own definitions for ‘acceptable targets’ too, which differed significantly from mine. Yet, I had to wonder if the stallion would still have gone on doing what he’d done if he could have felt bad about it? He was willing to help me now, in spite of his feelings―or lack thereof. Granted, his reasons were still suspect in my mind, since I found it hard to believe he was as truly unbiased as he claimed to be.

Although, if he really was incapable of feeling things like guilt, did that mean he wasn’t inclined towards any sense of loyalty borne out of sentimental feelings towards his stable? Could somepony like Arginine ever truly be loyal to anypony, considering he wouldn’t feel remorse if he broke his promises to help them?

What exactly would stop him from turning on me at the drop of a hoof later on down the line?

Heh, who was I kidding? Neither of us was going to live long enough to get betrayed by anypony anyway.

“So what’s that ‘Omega Strain’ you mentioned?”

“It is the goal of our stable’s efforts,” the stallion said, sounding a little proud now, “a genome sequence which will include all of the best possible traits collected from ponykind. Omegas will be tougher, stronger, smarter, and more magically inclined than any other pony that has ever lived,” he tilted his head down and looked at me with the barest ghost of a smile on his face, “and they will also be capable of greater compassion than any who has ever lived as well.”

“So what happens to you if your stable ever makes this Omega Strain?”

“Assuming that I am still alive,” he clearly doubted that he would be, but went on for the sake of the hypothetical, “I, and any other living members of previous strains, will be euthanized.”

Okay, that I hadn’t been expecting, “they’ll kill you?”

“My genetic material will be inferior to theirs. Moreover, I lack many of the attributes necessary for a successful and healthy population in the long term. We have just covered my emotional shortcomings, and yesterday I made mention of my deficiencies where procreation are concerned. The Omega Strain will correct both of those engineered defects, and much more.

“There will be no place for me in a world populated by Omegas; any more than there would be a place for you.”

“...assuming we don’t manage to rally the ponies of the valley to successfully fight off your stable. Right?”

Another faint smile, “correct.”

“You don’t think we really have a chance, do you?”

To his credit, he at least looked like he made an effort to give a thoughtful reply, “were the two of us not to die in the morning?” I rolled my eyes and he went on, “in such an instance...I am loath to give a definite answer, as I possess insufficient data. Against a formidable force of ponies with determination and martial ability that match what I have seen demonstrated by yourself, I would be inclined to admit a victory by those living on the surface would be likely,” why was it that the stallion whose goal it was to exterminate every living pony in the Wasteland was the only one who’s ever said such nice things about me? “However, I have yet to be able to survey a sufficient population in order to make a determination as to whether you are the exception, or the rule.”

“Flatterer,” my comment would probably have sounded more humorous if it hadn’t been immediately followed by a bout of bloody coughs. I could only have wished that had been the extent of it too. This time, however, my lungs were joined by yet another of my internal organs in their rebellion by something more proximal to my posterior.

“Ugh,” I groaned, after spitting out the last flecks of blood, “I think I shat myself,” I noted, feeling something wet and warm running down the inside of my thigh. I wasn’t looking forward to that stuff drying in a little while...

Arginine turned his head slightly, and then looked forward once more, “your symptoms are progressing.”

“So, what, I’m going to poop myself to death now?” I snorted weakly before glancing down between my legs. I felt a renewed sense of nausea at the sight I beheld. There might have been some feces that leaked out of my backside. It was actually really hard to tell through all of the blood that was coating my hindquarters.

I stifled a few more anemic coughs as I straightened back up and focused once more on moving forward, “...radiation poisoning sucks.”

“There may still be healing potions left among our supplies,” the stallion offered.

“Would they actually help anything?”

“Unlikely.”

I grunted and made no effort to retrieve one of the little purple fluid filled vials. Idly, I wondered who would eventually find our corpses, and if I shouldn’t make an effort to expend every munition and imbibe every medicine just in case if was raiders. The last thing I wanted was to give posthumous aid to ponies like that. On the other hoof, if a trader found our bodies, what we had on us could only help them defend themselves, couldn’t it?

If I was starting to think rather freely about that sort of thing, I suppose that I had moved beyond denying my impending death. Well...that sucked. I really didn’t want this to all be over. Mostly because―and I was painfully aware of the full scope of the nature of the cliche―I felt that I was too young to die.

I must have made some audible indication regarding my train of thought, because I drew Arginine’s attention, “you have found something amusing about all of this?”

Had I? I suppose I had, “kind of,” I said, my lips tugging in a smile as I leaned heavily into the side of the stallion while we plodded slowly along. For some reason we were still continuing. Only Celestia knew why, I’m sure. Spite, probably, “I’ve spent enough time in enough bars listening to old drunk ponies whine about all of the things that they wished they’d done with their lives. Loves they let slip away. Big scores they let pass them by. Friends they betrayed. Enemies they trusted.

“It always sounded to me like the same long list of woes that every single pony seemed to have. It was like nopony ever did all the things they wanted to do while they could,” I shrugged as best I could manage and paused for some more coughing. When it passed, I continued, “I sort of promised myself I wasn’t going to let that be me. I made myself a list of everything I absolutely wanted to do with my life. Made sure it was a short one too, so I wouldn’t be all regretful when I got older,” another pause for some coughing and a few dry heaves, “and here I am, with none of those things done.”

“What articles did your list consist of?”

I couldn’t decide if he was genuinely curious, or just pandering for the sake of the dying pony at his side. Neither struck me as likely, given his admitted psychopathy, but whatever; I’d take what I could get, “settle down with somepony. Raise a family. Keep them safe.

“Those were the three things I decided that I absolutely had to do with my life. I guess I basically wanted to prove to myself that it could be done, you know? My parents managed to do the first two, but...well, the third didn’t work out so well. That’s why I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing: to rid the Wasteland of enough of the dangers so that good ponies don’t have to be worried about keeping their families safe.

“I figured that ‘after a while’, I’d give it a go too. I never really put any hard date on how long from now that’d be, since, you know, I’m kind of young,” which was something I had a tendency to adamantly deny whenever the subject of my age where it related to my capability came up in the past. On the subject of domestic matters, however, I would concede the point on my youth.

“And now, well…” I let out a hollow little raspy laugh, “I wish I’d had the chance to do that stuff.”

Arginine was silent for a long while as we kept walking. Stumbling, really. It seemed that even the larger stallion wasn’t as steady on his hooves anymore as he had once been. Then he said, “I would like to have lived long enough to see an Omega Strain produced. I never believed that I truly would. Even our most optimistic projections placed ultimate completion at being approximately fifty years in the future.”

“That long, huh?”

“The Wasteland is a big place, with many ponies still living in it,” he said in a frank tone, only coughing a few times. I spied a few flecks of blood on his lips, “it will take many decades yet to sift through all of their genetic material.”

I didn’t even try to suppress my eyeroll, “well, I guess both of us get to die without fulfilling our dreams,” I sighed. After a few more steps, I finally said, “let’s just...stop.”

Arginine carefully came to a halt so as to not cause me to lose my balance and fall, looking at me, “you are certain?”

“...yeah,” I guess my stubbornness had a limit after all. With great care, I lowered myself to the ground and started removing my barding and gear. If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to do it sweating to death while wearing this crap. Besides, even if raiders showed up and attacked us, what was the worst that could happen? We die?

Arginine laid down too, using his magic to help relieve me of my armor before discarding his own. He actually seemed a little uncomfortable, and not just because he was starting to cough a lot more fitfully as well. I suppose that the concept of just relaxing wasn’t something that he was very familiar with. I thought for a moment and smiled to myself. I guess there was no time for him to learn like the present.

I fished around inside my bag and produced my last two bottles of Wild Pegasus whiskey. I passed the opened one to him, keeping the bottle that was completely full for myself. Maybe that didn’t seem fair, given our size disparity, but it was my whiskey, damn it. If I was going to die, I was going to die numb and happy!

The stallion took the offered bottle and stared at it as though it were a little radscorpion that could sting him at any moment. I’d taken two long pulls off my own bottle before I realized that the gray unicorn hadn’t so much as unscrewed the cap, “what’s the matter? Are you a Crystal Heart vodka kind of pony? Or do you prefer Jennysee?” I blinked upon seeing his deepening frown, “Oh, Sweet Celestia preserve me, have you actually ever had alcohol before?”

The stallion didn’t give a verbal response to my query, which was ironically enough all the answer I needed. The coughing fit was worth the raucous laughter that escaped from me as I realized that Arginine had, indeed, never had a hard beverage before, “you’re even more unfun than I thought you could be!” I crowed, which set me coughing again almost immediately. Still worth it, “what kind of ‘perfect ponies’ don’t drink?!”

“Intoxication is not conducive to―”

“Oh, shut up and chug it!” I snapped at the stallion through a broad grin, “everypony should get drunk once in their life,” I thought for a brief moment, “you’ll be better off than most, since you’ll probably be dead before the worst of the hangover hits. Pretty lucky, if you ask me.”

“Poisoning our bodies with alcohol will only compound the complications of our radiation poisoning.”

“Drink,” I reiterated, taking another long sip from my own bottle. I wasn’t even all that bothered by the nausea, since that was a feeling that I often associated with heavy drinking anyway.

For a dead pony walking, Arginine proved to be remarkably principled when it came to taking his first drink. Of course, I had nothing better to do than to continue to pressure him into it. The expression on his face once the whiskey touched his lips had been well worth the effort. It was, perhaps, the most genuine and overt display of emotion that I had ever seen from the unicorn stallion since we’d met.

“Why does anypony drink this?!” he blurted, physically wiping his tongue with his hoof in an effort to remove the taste even as his magic fished a Sparkle Cola out of his bags to use as a chaser. After a few solid gulps of the carroty drink he shivered in disgust once more and glared at me, “you actually enjoy that sensation?”

“Oh, Celestia, no,” I chuckled, even as I took another sip, “it’s like drinking spicy bile mixed with mud that burns your mouth,” I said easily, laughing a little harder upon seeing his perplexed expression. Half a sip in, and the alcohol had already cracked that tough exterior of his!

“I don’t drink for the taste. I drink because it makes me feel...numb? It just helps me forget how shitty my life is,” I shrugged and took another small sip before settling down more comfortably, “and it can’t get much shittier than it is right now,” I saw Arginine screwing the cap back onto his bottle and glared at him, “I didn’t say you could stop. Drink. I refuse to let you die without ever getting drunk.”

The stallion’s features settled into a deep frown, and for a while it looked like he was going to refuse. It wasn’t like there was anything I could do to physically compel him to listen to me at this point. In the end though, I suppose that he figured it wasn’t going to do him any real harm to listen to me, and so he took another―far more conservative―sip. He still shuddered as he swallowed it, and immediately followed it up with another gulp of soda.

“So much for being tougher than us surface ponies,” I chuckled, “how tough can you be if a little filly like me could drink you under the table?” I followed up my taunt with a long, generous, pull from my bottle.

Arginine simply favored me with a bored expression, “I will not be goaded into competing with you in a contest to imbibe alcohol.”

“Can’t you fake enough compassion to humor a dying mare?”

I held the stallions gaze for several seconds, barely suppressing some coughs, until he sighed and took a third sip. I smiled and nodded in satisfaction. I splayed out on my back, staring up into the sky and continued to drink from my bottle. My stomach didn’t like it very much, but I was determined to keep the whiskey down long enough to get drunk. Which didn’t seem like it was going to take very long, as it turned out.

Maybe it was the quicker absorption of the alcohol through my bleeding gums, or my completely empty stomach, or the fact that my liver had probably already failed completely because of the radiation; in any event, I got drunk a lot quicker than I normally did. By the time I was halfway through my bottle, my head was absolutely swimming. Arginine had been far more judicious with his sips, and it barely looked like he’d put a dent in his. It did look like his liver wasn’t all that ‘superior’ though, because he was already swaying a little bit himself and squinting at various objects around him as though they didn’t look the way he thought they were supposed to.

“You’rrrrrre...drunk!” I proclaimed loudly, startling the gray stallion, who then glared at me accusingly.

“It is the effects of the radiation,” he insisted.

“Drunk drunk drunk drunk druuuunnnnnk...drunk!” I chanted in what might even have been a proper tune of some sort. It was hard to tell right now. Not that I particularly cared anyway. I was feeling very warm inside, and very good. I wasn’t even coughing all that much anymore.

The stallion huffed, but said nothing, which only made me smile more broadly, “I got the stuck-up stallion drunk!” I announced proudly, as though having achieved victory in some sort of competition. Arginine merely groused a little more, but i saw him take yet another small sip, “I think my only regret right now is that I couldn’t get you laid. That’d loosen you up.”

“Doubtful,” he replied very carefully and deliberately, as though he didn’t quite trust his mouth to form the right words, “as I lack a libido,” then he thought for several long seconds before glaring at me, “I was under the impression that you had no experience in carnal relations either.”

“Huh?” maybe it was the whiskey, but I was finding the gray unicorn’s speech harder to parse at the moment.

He rolled his eyes―had he ever done that before? Was that another first?―and rephrased his statement, “intercorse. You’ve had none.”

“Yeah, but not for lack of trying...sort of,” I certainly hadn’t been going around lifting my tail for just any stallion. Though I was old enough to appreciate the attention that I received from stallions trying to get under it…

Arginine furrowed his brow and frowned, “I fail to see how one could not succeed at fornication. All that is required is for a stallion and a mare to be in proximity to one another,” he thought for a brief moment, “indeed, I have read reports that Wasteland ponies do not even require there to be differing genders to engage in such activity.”

“Oh, Celestia! You can’t just walk up to somepony and say, ‘hey, I like your mane; want to fuck?’,” I blurted, “there’s more to it than that!” though, admittedly, I wasn’t completely positive of that regarding that precise scenario, as I had been the recipient of exactly that bluntly stated proposal. I had not taken her up on the offer, but it had presumably worked for the unicorn mare at some point in her past.

“I assure you, as somepony who has studied pony physiology extensively: no, there isn’t. In fact, I am doubtful that even compliments regarding physical appearances are required. All that is necessary is for a sufficiently aroused stallion to mount a mare.”

“And that,” I said with a sharp jab in his direction, “is why you will die a virgin. Well, that and the whole ‘radiation poisoning’ thing. But mostly the first reason. The whole lack of...romance...thing.”

“Given your own lack of experience, I fail to see how it is that you are qualified to pass any judgement on my shortcomings on this topic.”

“I may not know sex, but I know what I like,” I said succinctly, with a small smile on my face as I took another small sip from my bottle, “or would have liked anyway,” I amended with a shrug, “my point is, that you’re not the kind of stallion a mare would want.”

“I am the most physiologically fit stallion in the Wasteland,” my, wasn’t somepony sounding defensive? I wish I’d gotten him drunk sooner, he’d have been a lot more fun to be around, “had I the biological desire, and was afforded an opportunity to interact with healthy mares of breeding age, I would have no issue procuring any number of willing reproductive partners.”

“It would take me the rest of my life to list all of the things that I would give just so that I could live long enough to get you to a bar in New Reino and turn you loose, so that I could watch and count the number of times you go down in flames,” I stated breathlessly, “I would die the happiest mare in the world if I could see that.”

Arginine seemed less than amused, “I would take great satisfaction in demonstrating the error in your appraisal of my abilities and biological desirability.”

“For somepony who doesn’t stroke his shaft, you’re doing an awful lot of dick-waving right now,” I beamed broadly at the stallion, relishing his expression of irritation and―sweet Celestia, preserve me―wounded pride!

“As I have stated: the radiation exposure I have suffered is affecting my capacity for rational thought and discourse.”

“You talk funny,” I said just before taking another long sip from my bottle and casting my gaze back up into the dimming sky. It would be dark in just a couple more hours, I reckoned. My last night in the Wasteland.

“S’what I said,” Arginine quickly cleared his throat and shook his head. He spoke again much more slowly and deliberately “That. Was. What. I. Said.”

A smile had spread across my lips, though it was becoming slightly more melancholy the longer I stared at the sky and allowed my alcohol-addled thoughts to wander. The gray stallion nearby was still alternating stubbornly between small sips of whiskey and generous gulps of Sparkle Cola. I suspected that he was actually enjoying being a little buzzed, and for much the same reasons that I did: it kept you from focusing on how shit things were going.

To an extent, at any rate.

I wasn’t as anxious about dying as I had been this morning. That wasn’t to say that I was looking forward to it, or that I was particularly happy about dying of radiation exposure; and I was still on the fence about what to do with our gear. However, I was in the throes of a certain...clarity of thought. Perhaps even in spite of the alcohol. Maybe it was even because of it. I’d certainly spent a significant portion of my life drunk, after all. It had always helped me to put certain parts of my life into perspective.

There was, perhaps, a modicum of mirth to be had at the realization that I did have regrets; even beyond those I had related to Arginine. I regretted never being more forward about my intentions towards Jackboot. That kiss back in the McMaren barracks had clearly been too much too soon. I was the filly he’d raised, and he wouldn’t have seen me as anything different than that for a good while.

I regretted never putting aside the time to talk to Foxglove about how I’d felt about her and Jackboot. She was a good pony at heart, I knew that. The two of us could have become really good friends if I’d been willing to forgive her and make an effort to understand what she did.

My gaze wandered surreptitiously to the nearby unicorn who was rooting around in his bags for another bottle of cola. Dragging him along with us...that had been wrong. I felt the little mote of shame, deep down inside me, as I acknowledged that I had effectively been treating him like a slave. Yes, he was a monster, and he’d down horrific things to ponies―innocent ponies―but that didn’t excuse forcing him to serve me under threat of death. I’d thought that I was a better pony than that, and I realized now that I really wasn’t. When the mood struck me, I could be just as much of a monster as the raiders I’d vowed to exterminate.

I should have done the ‘right’ thing and turned him over to the Republic from the beginning.

That being said, I fully recognized that I almost certainly would have died while confronting those Steel Rangers if Arginine hadn’t been there to save me a time or two...or five. That didn’t make what I’d done to him any more right, of course. I was supposed to be the better pony. I was supposed to have been acting like a Wonderbolt.

At that thought, my mind turned now to Homily, and how she was going to report my demise. There wasn’t any way for her to know what had happened in Old Reino, of course; and who knew how long it would take for anypony to find our bodies. Even when somepony finally did, there was slim chance to none that whoever it was would recognize either of us, or even care. The Wonderbolt would just sort of...never show up anywhere again. The logical assumption would likely be that I was dead, sure, but there’d be no indication as to how it had happened. Would Homily take an educated guess and announce that I’d probably died fighting raiders off somewhere in the Wasteland? Or would she just not say anything about me anymore at all?

I desperately wished that my pipbuck worked right now.

Unexpectedly, I felt myself shiver. Odd, considering that, even in the early evening hours, the temperature of the Neighvada Valley Wasteland usually remained quite warm year round. Arginine must have noticed the spasm the wracked my body, because he delivered his usual cold and calculated explanation, “your body is going into shock,” he said, “you’re severely dehydrated from all of the vomiting, rectal bleeding, and the alcohol. You should be drinking as much water as you can.”

“You’re not,” I pointed out to the stallion, who offered up a small shrug but said nothing else. It’s not like dying of thirst was really our biggest problem. I didn’t much care for the trembling though. I wiggled along the ground, grimacing at how incredibly weak I felt doing it, and plastered myself up against the larger stallion’s body in order to get myself a little warmer. If he resented the contact, he didn’t show it by trying to move away.

I hugged the bottle of whiskey in tight against my chest as I squirmed a little in an effort to slide comfortably along the stallion’s side. Then I took a deep, cleansing, breath and let it out slowly. It was absurdly early in the evening to have normally considered going to sleep, but I was exhausted from having stayed up the entirety of the previous night. The alcohol was taking a firm hold, I’d done more wool-gathering tonight than the rest of my life combined, Arginine felt quite comfortably firm and warm against my body, and...I felt...okay.

For the first time, in a long while, I felt okay, after a fashion.

“If I fall asleep right now,” I started to ask softly, “would I wake up again?”

Arginine was silent as he considered the question. Then, “unlikely.”

“Oh...Arginine?”

“Yes, Miss Windfall?”

“...Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Miss Windfall.”

If there was one thing that I had come to rely on where Arginine was concerned, it was that the large gray stallion never lied.

So, imagine my surprise when I did, in fact, wake up.

In deference to the stallion’s conclusion where my resumption of conscious was concerned, he had probably not been accounting for the possibility that I would be startled awake only a few hours later by a series of loud explosions. At least, that was what I had taken them for, at first; and I suppose that my assumption had been technically correct. There was certainly a pyrotechnic element to fireworks.

Between the radiation, the dehydration, the alcohol, and the fatigue, it had taken my poor brain far too long to even start processing the implications of a fireworks display that was close enough for the sound of the airbursting charges to be loud enough to rouse me from slumber in the state that I’d been in. Some of that, perhaps, owed to a lifetime spent wandering the Wasteland, where being a light sleeper was often essential to surviving the intrusion of unexpected guests in the form of ne'er-do-well ponies and monsters.

Eventually though, my overtaxed neurons managed to draw up a few key cognitive connections: those fireworks were too well timed, well aimed, and coordinated to had to have been some sort of fluke. Ergo, they were being launched by ponies. The ponies launching those fireworks would be all that far away from the launching point of the fireworks themselves, and so they could be more than a couple miles away, judging from the delay between when I saw the brilliant burst and heard the associated rumblings. That meant that there were ponies only a few miles away from where Arginine and I were laying.

Help was a few miles away.

Deep down, I suppose that I knew―as Arginine had repeatedly affirmed―that they two of us were beyond the aid of what could be done by the average pony; but never let it be said that I was much of a cogent, logical, thinker at the moment I woke up after doing some heavy drinking before going to sleep. Heck, it had been so recent since I lay down that I wasn’t even hungover yet; I was still quite pleasantly drunk!

So I did what most drunk ponies did when they wanted attention: I yelled. A lot. Loudly.

Eventually I realized that all I was accomplishing was a lot of coughing, and even some genuine vomiting as the nausea returned in force. RG was a much deeper sleeper than I was. He didn’t even stir when I covered his backside in blood-tinged amber fluid. I idly wondered if I’d be able to convince the stallion that he’d somehow managed to throw up on himself somehow as I recovered and quickly set my thoughts to a more effective way of getting the attention of the distant ponies.

I couldn’t even actually see them from where I was. They had to be below the horizon, in a dale of some sort. That meant that they couldn’t see me either, so just waving my hooves around wasn’t going to get their attention, especially in the dim Wasteland twilight.

After some brief struggling I confirmed that I wasn’t going to be crossing the short distant on hoof either. Arginine might have still been strong enough to manage it, but no amount of yelling, coughing, retching, or anemic ‘pounding’ on his body with my weakened limbs seemed capable of rousing him. Judging from the completely empty bottles of Wild Pegasus near us―and knowing that I hadn’t finished mine―it seemed that the stallion had done quite a bit of drinking after I nodded off. While a part of me approved on his making a proper go of his premiere drinking experience, I now wished that he’d practiced some moderation.

Yelling was out, moving was out, Arginine was dead to the world―metaphorically, I confirmed after a brief listen with my ear to his chest―and my brain was fast running out of options. It was too bad that we didn’t have fireworks of our own.

Then my eyes fell to the plastic rectangular device strapped to the stallion’s nearby barding. Tracer fire from my rifle would be bright enough, but pretty brief. Indeed, if those fireworks were between us and the ponies launching them, the glowing orange rounds could be mistaken for merely flecks of the bursting charges that were already filling the sky. There would be no mistaking the brilliant blue lances of energy from the beam rifle though!

I quickly set my weak and clumsy hooves to the task of extracting the energy weapon from its carrier, cursing my drunken fumbling. While the plight of our situation had done quite a bit to alleviate my cognitive drunkenness for the moment, my body was still pretty firmly grasped by my inebriation, among my other pressing ailments. Somehow I eventually managed to extract the weapon and hold it in some facsimile of how a proper firearm was positioned when not integrated into a battle saddle. That was about as far as I got before hitting my next snag though.

It was at about this moment that I realized there was no proper trigger on the weapon. My brain balked at that information, and my hooves began to desperately paw at every available surface on the weapon in an effort to discover what made it fire. All the while, I resumed screaming for Arginine to awaken so that he could utilize the rifle and attract help to our location.

Eventually, I must have hit the right button, or knob, or whatever it was, because suddenly the end of the rifle spat out a bright blue beam of light that very nearly blinded me. Not having a perfectly clear idea of what I’d done that first time, I made an effort to better orient the rifle and tried my best to retrace the path my hooves had taken in order to fire off another shot. It took a while, and I had to trace over what felt like every part of the weapon twice, but eventually my hoof hit the broad switch along what I suspected with the ‘bottom’ of the weapon which fired off a second shot. It was actually pretty hard to tell with this thing.

My third shot lasted for much longer, so that it would be as obvious as possible to anypony who was looking even vaguely in our direction. I didn’t think that the beam rifle was designed to take sustained shots though, because it started making an audible whining noise by the fifth shot, and I could smell the faint odor of something burning. Arginine had said that his alterations already made this thing run a little hotter than it had really been designed to.

I felt pretty torn between a near-panicked need for the signal to be seen and recognized by those ponies launching the fireworks, and the knowledge that our best chance at being found was if I could keep up the shooting long enough for anypony looking to zero in on our location. We didn’t have a fire going, and neither of us had any flares, and my pipbuck’s light didn’t work, and it was getting darker by the minute. We weren’t going to be easy to spot unless somepony got really close to us, and that would be hard to do in the wide open Wasteland if all anypony had to go on was some vague general direction with no way of gauging how far away we were.

Anypony that might be sent out to search for the source of the ‘weird blue beams’ wasn’t likely to wander blindly into the Wasteland very far from their camp or whatever unless they could be sure they knew about where they were going.

So, it was with more self restraint than I honestly thought I’d be able to muster, that I managed to force myself to count to twenty before firing off very short bursts.

The weapon died after the fifteenth shot. I found the release that ejected the crystal pack, but when it popped out I was pretty confident that it wouldn’t be a simple matter of replacing it with a fresh one in order to get the weapon functional again. It had left behind a decent amount of melted plastic in its receptacle when it fell out, and the stench was almost overpowering. Arginine, or maybe even Foxglove, was going to have to put in a little work to get this thing operational again.

It looked like the stallion’s tweaking might have pushed the weapon a little too far.

I briefly tried some mental arithmetic to see if I could estimate how long it might be for anypony who might have been sent out to locate us, but it was soon fairly obvious that that was beyond the capabilities of my brain right this moment. With an aggravated sigh, I bent my head down and leaned heavily against the beam rifle, cursing both it’s frailty and my impatience in equal measure. If I’d waited thirty seconds between blasts, maybe…

Minutes drifted by before I finally tossed the useless energy rifle aside and slumped back against Arginine. I kept my head pointed in the direction where I’d seen the fireworks, desperately hoping that I might catch a glimpse of somepony coming our way. The fireworks had stopped by now. Maybe they’d seen the signal. Maybe they’d just run out. Maybe all of it had just been some weird figment of my imagination brought on by the radiation and drinking.

The adrenaline was starting to wear off already, and I could feel my thoughts becoming harder to keep focused. I’d done what I could. Honestly, it had probably all been quite futile anyway, even if there actual had been anypony there to signal.

It was dark. I was dying, and cold. Arginine’s body still felt warm. I curled back up against him and closed my eyes. I was just so. Damn. Tired…

Only Celestia knew how much time had passed before sound and light were part of my world again. It took my brain nearly a minute of semi-conscious thought to become fully aware of my new surroundings, and a few more seconds after that to figure out why these weren’t familiar surroundings. That I was lying in what was clearly a bed with clean white sheets went a long way towards dispelling any anxiety that I’d awoken someplace dangerous. Considering the times that I had woken up in rather less-than-ideal situations, this was no small consideration. It cut down the time I was in a state of mental panic to less than a minute. Which was nice.

Then I remembered that I hadn’t been alone and bolted upright, “RG!”

That was a mistake. I winced sharply and slowly lowered myself back down into the pillow, placing a hoof against my temple and gently massaging away the headache.

“I recommend taking it easy for a while,” an unknown stallion’s voice said from nearby. Before I could look around for the source, a face popped into view above me. A small flashlight was hovering beside him, darting its beam between my eyes for a couple of seconds before turning off and floating away, “you’re very dehydrated,” a glass of water floated over next, pausing at my lips.

It took me a much longer time than was perhaps proper to realize that I was staring at him. I couldn’t help it, I was very surprised by what I was seeing. I couldn’t decide if this stallion was a zebra with a unicorn horn, or a unicorn with a striped coat. I was leaning towards the latter theory, since his black stripes were over a tan, rather than a white, backdrop. I’d certainly never seen that sort of pattern before.

The striped maybe-not-a-zebra cleared his throat rather pointedly and jostled the floating glass of water. Jerked from my initial shock, I took several long sips, hoping that he couldn’t see my embarrassed blush, “sorry,” I mumbled once the glass was empty, “and thanks.”

The empty glass drifted out of sight, “you have the dubious distinction of being the patient who was the closest to death that I have ever received,” I couldn’t help but frown up at the striped stallion’s properly patterned speech. Between this guy and Arginine, I was starting to wonder if I was the pony with the weird way of talking, “were that I was back home, your case would most assuredly have earned me a place on the front page of several prominent medical journals.”

That was right: the radiation, “am I...am I going to be alright?”

The unicorn was thoughtful as he leaned over and inspected a bag full of murky orange fluid, “you should live,” his tone suggested that his prognosis wasn’t necessarily the good news that it had sounded like, “I can’t make any guarantees as to the extent of your eventual recovery though,” he turned his lavender eyes back towards me, “though, judging from the punishment that your body has obviously endured up to this point, I suspect that you may prove hardier than most pegasi I have examined.

“As to your companion, however,” he continued, turning and walking towards another nearby bed. I looked over and saw Arginine’s massive form beneath a sheet that appeared almost comically small for the stallion, “...I honestly don’t know where to begin. I’ve never encountered a mutant before. I have no idea how abnormal his vitals are,” he frowned, considering the stallion.

“He’s not really a mutant,” I offered, chuckling to myself, “his whole stable looks like that. They did it on purpose.”

“Really?” I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or disgusted by the revelation. Perhaps equal measures of both. Then his wan smile returned, “fascinating. Less than a month on the surface, and I’ve managed to encounter two cases whose files could have cemented a reputation that would have allowed me my choice of assignments,” he shook his head slowly and sighed, “figures.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what it was that the stallion was talking about. He was rather strange in a number of ways, aside from his stripes and his manner of speech. His clothing stood out too. A dark suede vest was worn snugly over an impressively tidy white collared shirt. None of that clothing looked like it was over two centuries old either. He was, without exception, the sharpest dressed pony that I’d ever seen―assuming he was even a pony, that is. On his flank there wasn’t one of those strange abstract glyphs that zebras had for cutie marks, but there was an image of an odd looking winged...snake...thing; so that wasn’t entirely conclusive in my mind.

His build was remarkably slight. He wasn’t malnourished or anything, just...honestly, if I had to use a word to describe him, it would have been ‘delicate’. That might have been an unfair assessment, and perhaps one that was influenced by his clothing more than anything else. He had all of the trappings and attitude of a pony who came from a lot of money, but wasn’t accustomed to doing a lot of hard work to earn it.

Then something that he said finally managed to penetrate my addled brain, “wait, you said that you’ve treated a lot of pegasi?” I certainly knew that I wasn’t the only flier in the valley but, by extension, I also knew that pegasi weren’t something you saw every single day either. Maybe there were two dozen of us, out of the few thousand who inhabited the entire valley. So, the idea that this pony could have examined enough of them to form some sort of general appreciation for how ‘hardy’ my kind were seemed...unlikely.

The striped stallion turned his lavender gaze back to me, his eyes twinkling with wan amusement, “oh, indeed. In fact, I am far more versed in pegasi physiology than that of other pony breeds; as they were expected to constitute the overwhelming majority of my patients.”

It probably took a lot longer than it should have for me to make the logical leaps to the rather obvious conclusion he was presenting me with, but I was still feeling pretty sick, "wait...you’re Enclave?” I exclaimed in disbelief, “but you’re not even a pegasus! Heck, I’m not sure what you are, to be honest…”

There was a deep chuckle from within the stallion’s throat and something very nearly approaching genuine mirth in his eyes, “no, I’m not a pegasus. I suppose that most down here wouldn’t know that there is a small population of wingless equines in the Enclave. As for me and my sister; we are ponies, mostly. Our father was a zebra. Mother was a bit of a...‘free spirit’ in her youth,” his smile soured a bit as he offered that last revelation.

A female voice spoke up from the other side of the room, “I like the stripes.”

My head whipped around, not having suspected that there was another pony in the room with us. Indeed, it turned out that there was a total of five, including Arginine and I. A young mare who would have certainly been able to pass for a bona fide zebra was sitting in the corner next to a small unicorn filly. The pair of them were drawing on some faded scraps of old newspaper, “oh! Hello,” I offered.

“Hello,” the mare didn’t look up. The filly did, briefly, without saying a word before she went back to her coloring. Then, rather unexpectedly, the zebra said, “it’s nice to meet you all.”

I cocked my head to the side. I guess she was talking about Arginine and I? It seemed odd that she would greet somepony who was clearly still unconscious, but her brother didn’t seem to react to the statement. I was inclined to dismiss it as one of many eccentricities that some ponies developed in the Wasteland when the mare uttered still more, “where are the other two?”

This got the attention of both myself and her brother, though his reaction was more of a concerned frown, while I was quite startled, “how…? There were three more of us, actually,” I correctly, “and I don’t know where―”

The zebra mare turned around and shot me an annoyed look, “I wasn’t talking to you,” she said tersely, “it’s rude to interrupt.”

“I―huh-wah?” I blinked at the odd mare, and then looked to her brother. Surely she hadn’t been speaking to him, had she?

A little nervously, the light brown striped stallion cleared his throat, “sorry about that,” he apologized, stepping over to his sibling and gently stroking her mane until she turned her attention back to drawing with the filly, “Meadowbrook...she gets confused sometimes,” from his tone, I suspected that there was a lot that the stallion wasn’t mentioning about his sister, but that was their business. Frankly, I had my own problems to deal with.

“That’s alright,” I assured the stallion, “hey, um...where am I, exactly?”

His features darkened considerably now, “I don’t actually know,” his words came out in something very akin to a growl, his eyes darting towards the only door in the room, “my sister and I aren’t what you might call: ‘residents’,” I quirked an eyebrow, “we were abducted from Shady Saddles the other day,” the stallion explained.

Now I was suddenly feeling a lot more anxious, “these ponies are slavers?” I was now very acutely aware of my lack of barding and weapons. While I didn’t actually expect to find any of my equipment, I looked frantically around the room in the vain hope that I might still find something that could be used as a suitable weapon. I was generally confident in my hoof-to-hoof combat abilities as a rule; but I didn’t exactly feel full of vim and vinegar at the moment. At around the same time that I spied what appeared to be my folded barding and associated weapons sitting on a chair nearby―to my unmitigated surprise―the unicorn supplied his answer.

“No, not in so many words,” he said reluctantly, his expression still sour, “the ponies here were simply in need of a medical professional, and learned of my background as a physician in the Enclave. Rather than ask for my assistance, they concluded that abducting the two of us was a completely reasonable course of action.”

“That’s horrible,” I furrowed my brow. Not at the situation of these two, though that was an objectively troubling situation; but rather I found myself concerned about my tone of voice just then. I’d sounded so...patronizing. It was like I’d just heard somepony tell me about how they’d been forced to drink red wine because they’d been out of white at some posh restaurant in Seaddle. That wasn’t how I was supposed to feel about a pair of ponies who’d been foalnapped, was it?

It seemed that my dismissive tone had been picked up by the stallion, who briefly flashed me a cold look of his own, “indeed. But, yes, I have no knowledge of what this village is called. It can’t be more than two day’s travel from Shady Saddles though.”

I hadn’t realize that Arginine and I had managed to drift that far north in our state. I’d grown too reliant on my pipbuck of late, it seemed. If and when we met back up with the others, I hoped that Foxglove would be able to work her technical wizardry on it and return it to operation though.

“Well, that’s something, at least. I guess I made better progress than I thought if we’re that close,” I glanced between the two striped ponies, “so, what were you two doing in Shady Saddles? If you don’t mind talking about it.”

“Our shipmates were obtaining supplies,” the stallion replied, his demeanor somewhat soothed by the idle banter we were engaging in now, “I thought that it would be a good opportunity to try and socialize Meadowbrook. Seaddle was...overwhelming for her.”

“Very loud there,” the mare announced without looking up from her drawing, “and the pony in charge is a liar.”

“Meadow…” her brother cautioned before turning towards me, “sorry. My sister forms opinions about ponies very quickly, and when she does it’s hard to change her mind.”

“It’s not my mind that needs changing.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“Shipmates?” I held the gaze of the stallion, mulling the unusual choice of word that he had used to describe his companions, “you’re a bit far from any water I know of to have a working boat…”

“It’s an airship,” he explained, not seeming to be aware of how fantastically rare such a thing was down here. True, you could catch the odd glimpse of something large and ominous moving through the clouds on occasion, but the Enclave never had cause to bring their rumored flying behemoths down to the surface, “and I rather suspect that they are long gone from this valley by now,” he added bitterly.”

Someday my brain was going to start firing on all cylinders again...I hoped, “wait, Seaddle? How long ago were you there?” it couldn’t genuinely be a coincidence that this pony from the Enclave had dropped by Seaddle, and Sapi just happened to end up with an Enclave helmet to sell me. In fact, as I slowly began to recall the extent of my conversation with the armor vendor, I came up with a few additional comments as well, “you’re the pony that sold Sapi the fake Enclave barding,” I cocked my head at the stallion, noting that he was starting to look a little more uncomfortable again.

“What was a real Enclaver doing with fake barding?” not that it really mattered all that much to me, but it did seem rather odd.

He appeared rather reluctant to supply an answer at first, but then seemed to decide that it wasn’t likely to do him any great harm, “my sister and I didn’t exactly leave the Enclave on what you might call, ‘the best of terms’,” he frowned, “disguises were involved.”

My lip turned up in an amused smile, “I didn’t realize that non-pegasi could go Dashite…” the stallion grimaced but offered a slight nod of confirmation. I thought for another brief moment and then winced, “by the way, my name is Windfall; and I don’t think I thanked you yet for saving my life. So...thanks,” wow, did that feel awkward.

The brown striped stallion frowned at me before letting out a sigh and managing to dig up a wan smile of his own, “Minos,” he nodded, “and you already know Meadowbrook,” he gestured back at the striped mare coloring with the still-silent filly, “and no thanks are necessary. Saving lives is...what I do.”

“Well, I’m really very grateful,” I repeated, “and I’m sorry about what’s happened to you and your sister,” I winced, and not just at the hollow tone of my voice either. I idly rubbed my head, feeling a dull ache in my temple.

The stallion frowned in concern and came closer, “headache?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm. Likely a residual system from the radiation exposure,” he commented. His horn glowed, adjusting something on the nearby plastic bag, and the tube that ran from it into my arm.

“It’s probably just the hangover kicking in,” I murmured. When I caught the stallion’s shocked expression, I couldn’t help but grin, “hey, give me a break; I thought I was going to be dead in a few hours, so I decided to throw back a few,” I lifted a leg and pointed at the still unmoving massive lump in the other bed, “so did he.”

“Skies preserve us,” he said, shaking his head, “and the scope of the miracle that I was able to save your lives only expands with every detail that I learn. The surface boggles the mind,” he sighed.

I shrugged and leaned back into the pillow beneath my head, grateful for the comfort. Minos went about fiddling with something related to Arginine’s treatment, and the other two ponies were still coloring, so I took some time to more thoroughly inspect my surroundings.

The room wasn’t huge, and contained only the pair of beds. It was pretty obvious that it wasn’t actually designed to have served as a clinic and―like many places in the Wasteland―had simply been repurposed. In fact...as I took in more and more of the layout of the room, I began to notice certain features that it had in common with other, similar, buildings that I’d been it. There was a single door next to a window with a thick, dirty, curtain pulled across it. Beneath that window was a defunct air conditioner. On the opposite side of the room was a little closet and a second door that was sitting ajar, revealing the remnants of a commode that clearly no longer worked.

This was a motel. I closed my eyes and dredged up my memories of the various valley routes that I’d traveled. We were on the western edge...Minos had said this place was a couple days from Shady Saddles…

I did remember an old motel that didn’t lie too far off the main route! Jackboot and I had given it a quick once over during our first major foray south. We’d been pretty sure that a place as obvious as a motel so close to a busy trade route would have already been picked clean, and it had. There was evidence that, over the decades, the decrepit building had seen some use by various parties. Caravans that had sought shelter during their trips. Signs that at least one band of raiders had made into a base of sorts to attack said caravans from. Of course, being so close to a main road meant that it wasn’t hard for the New Lunar Republic―or perhaps even Commonwealth―soldiers to find them and wipe them out.
In any case, I was unaware of any group that had recently moved in. granted, I hadn’t been by this way in...a couple months? When was the last time Jackboot and I had gone to New Reino? It felt like years, to be honest.

My attention was drawn to the door as it opened unexpectedly and allowed in a puce green earth pony mare with a tightly braided sunflower mane. She was wearing a very nearly threadbare shawl around her shoulders and an odd faded yellow hat of some sort with a trio of barely visible pink butterflies stitched on one side, reminiscent of the medical cases that one would find throughout the Wasteland. There were a trio of trays balanced effortlessly along her backside as she carefully stepped through the door. Her orange eyes seemed to widen with surprise upon seeing me lying there awake in bed, and a pleased smile spread over her lips. Minos, I noticed, was favoring the mare with a rather pointedly unfriendly leer as she entered.

“You’re awake! Praise Luna, it’s a miracle!” the mare proclaimed as she trotted up to the side of my bed, “how are you feeling?”

I was a little taken aback by the sudden display of such a warm and un-Wasteland-like greeting from a stranger. As a result, my initial answer was a little awkward sounded perhaps a little forced, not that she seemed to notice, “um...a little tired, I guess?” then my stomach interjected itself with an embarrassingly loud rumble, evoking a full on grin from the green mare and a glare from myself before it shifted into a blush, “and hungry, apparently…”

“So I gathered,” she replied with a small chuckle. Her gaze then turned apologetic, “I’m afraid that this food was meant for the good doctor, his sister, and little Petina there,” she nodded to the pair who were still coloring, oblivious to the rest of the world around them, “but I’ll be sure to hurry right back with something hot and fresh for you. The mayor will probably want to swing by to see you too, once I tell him you’re awake,” she looked past me now to the other bed containing Arginine, and then glanced at Minos with her unasked question.

“The stallion is still unconscious,” he confirmed in a tone that was unmistakably cold, and then he added, “and she can have my meal. I’m not feeling very hungry right now.”

The mare’s expression became troubled for a brief moment before turning dejected, “very well, doctor. I do hope that you’ll come to enjoy your life with us. We a genuinely very grateful to have you here, and we promise that you’ll want for nothing. We don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“But you don’t want me to leave, either,” he noted, his words carrying a distinct edge that seemed to physically cut the mare.

She set her burdens down, two by the coloring pair and the third on the end table near my bed. Then she turned back to me, a much more subdued smile on her lips, “my name is Ivy. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Right. Um, Windfall, by the way. Thanks,” I said, unable to keep myself from continually glancing at the striped brown stallion’s hard stare that Ivy was obviously trying very hard to ignore. When the mare left, an uneasy silence hung in the air that I eventually had to break with a muffled cough, “she seems...nice.”

“For a jailer, perhaps,” the stallion grunted, his gaze still locked on the closed door that Ivy had left from. After several seconds, he seemed to give up on his anger and sighed before finally walking over to the side of my bed and placing a hoof lightly up against the side of my neck. I held as still as I could manage until Minos withdrew his hoof and adjusted the drip rate for the bag of fluid running into my arm, “take only small bites please,” he cautioned, gesturing to the tray of food, “you’re going to be pretty weak for a couple more days while your body recovers. I’ve managed to flush most of the affected tissue from your body so there’s little danger of kidney or liver failure in your immediate future. However, even with this intravenous healing solution, it will take time for your body to replenish all of those damaged cells.”

“Lay back and take it easy. I can do that,” I smiled, looking over at the food that had been brought in. At first glance, it looked like some sort of stew. Upon closer inspection, I deduced that it was a concoction made up of diced bits of radroach, crushed alfalfa crisps, and Cram. Honestly, I doubt I would have been quite so adventurous if I wasn’t as hungry as I was; but two days without eating anything seemed to do wonders for the taste of the food that Ivy had brought. Meadowbrook and Petina were also taking a meal break it looked like.

I stared at the younger filly for a short while as she ate in silence before glancing at Minos, “so what’s her story?”
The stallion’s eyes darted briefly to the filly and then he shrugged, “they brought her in shortly after I arrived. She had some bruising around her face and sides, but nothing serious. She hasn’t said a word. Ivy claims that she’s never spoken to any of the others either. There’s no medical cause that I can find for her muteness. I assume it’s psychosomatic.”

“She’s a psycho?” I scrunched up my face in disbelief. That was a rather harsh thing to say about a little filly!

Minos frowned, “it means that she’s too stressed to speak. A number of the ponies here seem...on edge. They also appear rather heavily scarred and malnourished. I haven’t spent very long on the surface, but the ponies here seem much worse off than those I met in either Seaddle or Shady Saddles.”

Now that he mentioned it, Ivy had seemed a little...off, I guess was the word I wanted to use? There had been a tension there that I’d seen in some mares over the years. Notably Foxglove, in the initial weeks after Jackboot and I had rescued her. That, and the recounting of the injuries that Petina had suffered offered up several suggestions to why this group of ponies might have been keen to get their hooves on a physician, and none of them were either pleasant or, to be perfectly fair, unique in the Wasteland.

I craned my head to see if I could get a better look at what the little filly had been drawing. It was hard to make out every detail from here at the angle I was at, but I thought there were a lot of vague pony shapes. There were a lot of random red blotches around everything too, which I hoped was simply a product of a lack of a diverse selection of crayons. Though I suspected that was not the case.

Raider attack, or something similar, I suspected. Again, nothing unique for this place.

“So, Doc,” I rolled into a more comfortable position in the bed, “if you don’t mind my asking: what was it like, up there in the clouds, I mean.”

Minos was thoughtful for a long while, his eyes glazing over as he thought back over memories that were clearly bittersweet, at best. When he finally answered, it was in slightly pained tones, “it was...nice. Perhaps my own view of things is rather skewed when compared to what you might hear from some. My family was rather well off, you see. My grandfather served as the director of one of the premiere hospitals in Neighvarro. He made a lot of powerful connections during that time.

“Powerful enough that he was even able to save my mother from being banished after her little ‘tryst’ on the surface. The ‘official’ story is that she became separated from her wingmates while on a routine patrol of the surface and was captured and assaulted by a zebra commando,” he gave a little derisive snort, “she ‘escaped’ a week later and made it back to the Enclave.”

“I take it you don’t believe that was what happened?”

“Let’s just say that my mother often spoke surprisingly fondly about the zebra stallion who was supposed to have ‘ravaged her mercilessly’ while she was his ‘prisoner’,” he said, rolling his eyes as he smirked, “in any event, my sister and I were the eventual result of her ‘ordeal’. I performed rather well in school, and was accepted into the medical program at a remarkably young age; which seemed to delight my grandfather. He was in the process of securing me a position on the surgical staff at the hospital he had been the director of.

“I was on the fast track for a promising career and a comfortable lifestyle,” he said wistfully.

“So...what happened?”

The stallion’s gaze drifted to his sister, and his red eyes softened like I had never seen them since waking up, “my sister is...quite special. She has demonstrated capabilities that are beyond many ponies. Capabilities that attracted the attention of the leaders of the Enclave. They sought to use her for their own purposes,” now his tone hardened once more, “I stumbled onto their experiments and used every resource at my disposal to get her away from them. It cost me everything I had...but it was worth it.

“Even this,” he waved his hoof at the small motel room, “is a small price to pay to keep Meadownbrook away from the Enclave. Though I will admit that I had preferred my prior arrangements aboard the airship.”

“But your friends will come looking for you, right?”

The striped stallion snorted derisively, “the word ‘friends’ is perhaps a bit too strong to describe my relationship with them. We needed their protection, and they wanted a doctor. It was a business agreement, at best,” there was another glare directed at the door, accompanied by a grudging sneer, “though, I suppose that if these ponies can guarantee Meadowbrook’s safety, I may be able to...tolerate the conditions here.”

“If it’s not so different from how things were for you before,” I ventured, a little confused by the stallion’s reactions now, “why are you so pissed off about it?”

His crimson eyes glared at me now, “because it’s not my choice to be here!” he snapped at me, “I gave up everything I had back in the Enclave, except for mine and my sister’s liberty,” his hoof gestured at his sibling who, I noticed, wasn’t coloring with the filly anymore. She was still sitting where she always had been since I woke up, but she was staring at the floor now, her ears drooping lower in response to her brother’s harsh words, “and now we don’t even have that anymore…”

There was a brief knock at the door that caught all of our attention. It opened almost immediately, the visitor clearly only tapping on it as a courtesy, and not to ask for any actual permission to enter. I suspect that, given the striped doctor’s nominal status as a ‘prisoner’, he wasn’t exactly in a position to deny access to the room to anypony even if he was inclined to. A stallion poked his face into the room now, though I was able to spot the familiar green face of Ivy behind him.

“Oh, please, Doctor Minos, our little community isn’t so bad. I’m sure you’ll come to enjoy your stay here, in time,” the unicorn physician’s expression didn’t hide his skepticism. However, it seemed that the newcomer was a little more interested in me as he stepped all the way through the door and walked over to my bed, “Good morning! Well, actually, it’s already nightfall. You were out of it for a long time. When young Ivy here told me that you had awoken, I figured it was only polite to make my own introductions. My name is, Litany, and I’m the mayor of our little community of Notel.”

The first thing that I noticed about the stallion who was speaking to me now was the absolutely horrific number of scars that crisscrossed his hide. His beige coat was a veritable road map of poorly healed gashes and cuts that looked to be anywhere in age from a few months to a decade or more. The right side of his mouth was curled up in a perpetual grimace due to a particularly grievous wound that crossed his cheek, and the top half of his left ear was completely gone. His white mane consisted of just a few thin, wispy, hairs; but I didn’t get the feeling that it was entirely because of his advanced age, which I put at somewhere north of sixty.

Despite his abused exterior though, there was still a...vibrancy about him, especially in his hazel eyes. They almost seemed to twinkle as he spoke, to the doctor and to me. His body had clearly been through the wringer a time or twenty, but whatever may have broken his bones throughout his life hadn’t seemed to touch his spirit. It was actually a little off-putting to be near somepony who exuded this sort of positive energy.

Then my brain finally finished studying the new arrival long enough to process what he’d said, “wait, you named this place, ‘Notel’?”

“Yup!” the older stallion replied proudly.

“...and this is a...motel...” I asked tentatively, glancing around the room as though to make sure I hadn’t missed anything obvious that would have influenced my earlier conclusion.

“You’re very observant,” he commended me, nodding his head.

“So this is the Notel Motel?” I glanced between Litany, Ivy, and even Minos in search of any sign that I was being joked with. The first two nodded their affirmations, continuing on with their too-pleasant smiling. Minos, at least, has the decency to roll his eyes and grimace. Apparently, I was not being screwed with, “...right.

“So, how many ponies live here and where did you all come from? I don’t remember a town along this road…”

Litany seemed very willing, and indeed almost eager, to answer my questions. He clearly welcomed an audience that was a lot more receptive to him company than I suspected Minos and his sister had been, “there are about three dozen of us here right now, but we’re hoping to grow our numbers once word gets around that we’re here. As for where we came from,” for the first time since coming in here, I caught the first hint of grief in the stallion’s features, “we’re former captive of the White Hooves.”

Now that caught my attention, and I indicated for the mayor to elaborate.

“A while ago, there was some sort of...power struggle, or something. Most of us didn’t have the chance to see exactly what happened, but we know the broad strokes,” he explained, “Whiplash had been getting crazier than usual for a while. Then, suddenly, this other stallion appears in her camp and this fight gets organized. That wasn’t all that unusual, except that this time Whiplash herself was fighting. The next thing we know, there’s this huge explosion.

“Whiplash and the stallion were killed outright, and then they found her son dead in their tent. That was when everything went to pot! By nightfall a dozen different ponies had declared themselves the new Chief of the White Hooves and were recruiting followers. The fighting broke out but morning. Nopony knew what was going on.

“In all the confusion, a few dozen of us managed to get free and escape. We decided to settle here.”

I was stunned to silence. It hadn’t occurred to me to consider what would happen to the White Hooves with both their leader and her heir apparent dead. It sounded like the painted ponies themselves hadn’t had much of a plan in place in case that happened either if everything had become so chaotic that a significant portion of their slave population managed to get away from them like that.

“Why not go to one of the towns, like Seaddle or New Reino? Why settle someplace new?”

“We thought about it,” he admitted, nodding his head, “and we talked about it for most of the trip here, in fact. In the end, this seemed...easier. Very few of us still have any family left in the other settlements. Any family we had was either killed when we were captured, or died while we were slaves. But, as tragic as our lives have been, they brought us all together,” he gestured back towards Ivy and gave her a very careful and gentle hug. Even then, I saw her tense at the touch of a stallion, if only briefly, “and gave us a sense of community, after a fashion.

“Nopony can understand what we’ve been through, and we all need time to heal, emotionally, from what happened to us. In Notel, we can all be there to support each other,” Ivy nodded in agreement with the stallion, “perhaps, in time, some of us will leave to go seek out our old lives,” he sounded doubtful, “but, until then, this is our home,” now he was looking back at me, expectantly, “but don’t feel that we consider ourselves an exclusive community. Indeed, we hope that you’ll strongly consider staying once you’ve recovered,” he inclined his head towards my gear, which was still neatly piled nearby, “you seem to be a capable sort, and we’re always happy to welcome ponies like that.”

I became a little more wary at that remark, my eyes darting briefly to Minos. I’d already heard about how he had been ‘invited’ to their community. Were they going to keep me here as a prisoner too? That was my initial reaction, but it wasn’t a concern that lasted for very long once I put some thought into it. They’d left my weapons and equipment in the room with me, which didn’t strike me as a very smart move on their part if their intention was to try and keep me here against my will.

There was some lingering curiosity as to why Minos hadn’t taken my weapons and used them to facilitate his own escape before now. Though, having known a doctor or two in my life, I suppose that he was probably suffering from some sort of moral dilemma about being a physician and killing ponies. That wouldn’t be a problem for me if it came to it, but I highly doubted it would.

“It’s nice of you to offer, but I’ve got to find my friends and let them know that I’m alright. I’m sure they’re worried about me,” I watched Litany’s reaction carefully, wondering if I was going to have to charge for my guns and shoot my way out of here after all, and really hoping that wasn’t going to be the case. Mostly because I really didn’t feel up to killing ponies right now. Besides, Arginine still wasn’t conscious yet either.

“Of course,” the stallion smiled and nodded, “I understand. Though, I do hope you’ll remember us and stop by in the future. We’re hoping that Notel will be a nice place for ponies to settle down someday.”

Litany smiled again at the striped doctor, seeming to ignore the not so subtle glare from the unicorn, and turned to leave. He paused briefly by the other two ponies who were still enjoying their meals, kneeling down by the younger filly, “good evening, little Petina. Enjoying your dinner?” the filly made no reply, but that didn’t seem to particularly surprise the stallion, “still not talking, eh? That’s alright,” he sighed as he stood back up and resumed heading for the door, “you’ll come around in your own good time.”

“She misses her mother.”

The comment startled the pair of Notel natives, who turned to gape at the striped young mare who hadn’t looked up from her bowl of stew. Ivy was the first to speak up, “what was that, miss?”

“She misses her mother,” Meadowbrook said in that same quiet tone, “that’s why she doesn’t speak. Her mother died in the camp of the painted ponies.”

Minos began to fidget slightly, trotting over to stand in between his sister and the other two ponies, “sorry, she gets confused sometimes, I’m sure she―”

He was interrupted by the green mare, who brushed by him to kneel beside the striped mare, “no, she is exactly right! Petina’s mother died in the White Hoof camp not long before our escape,” she was looking at Meadowbrook excitedly, “she spoke to you, yes? She told you these things! She is getting better,” her gaze jumped between the older mare and the young filly, hope clear in her eyes.

Meadowbrook stared blankly at Ivy, as though perplexed by the other mare’s comments, “she doesn’t speak,” the striped pony insisted, “her voice disappeared when her mother left.”

The green mare’s brow furrowed in a clear demonstration of her lack of comprehension, “but...then how…?”

But Meadowbrook seemed to have already lost interest in the conversation. Her head cocked, as though she had heard something interesting, yet I could detect no sounds that should have prompted such a reaction. Without warning, the striped mare stood up and smiled. Her eyes closed and she slowly began to glide about the room as though she were...dancing?

Her brother’s nervousness was growing by the second as he saw the expression on the faces of the two Notel natives, “don’t mind her,” he insisted, placing himself protectively between them and his distracted sibling, “she just says random things sometimes,” he said far too quickly to be convincing, “she doesn’t even realize it most of the―”

Ivy, however, was not paying attention to the dark striped stallion, she only had eyes for his sister as she softly mumbled. The words were hard to make out, but I did catch one part, “...and she’ll do evil dances; and if you look deep in her eyes, she’ll put you in chances…” the green mare’s eyes grew wide as she proclaimed, much more loudly, “she’s an Evil Enchantress!”

“What?” Minos blurted, caught off guard by the outburst, “no, she’s just confused―”

But Ivy was looking at the town’s mayor, “how else could she have known those things about Petina’s mother? Look at her now, moving in such strange ways! She is a zebra enchantress, and she will surely place us all into a trance so that she can make us all into a stew!”

To his credit, even Litany was looking a little skeptical. He slowly moved past the concerned Ivy and approached the dancing striped mare carefully, so as not to impede her movements, “now I’m sure that’s not true, is it...Meadowbrook, was it?” he glanced back at her brother, who did not appear to like the way things were playing out at all. He at least managed a slight nod to the town’s mayor, who smiled warmly at the young mare as she finally seemed to lose track of whatever melody it was that she had been hearing and came to a stop, looking up at the older stallion, “you’re not an Evil Enchantress, are you, girl?”

Meadowbrook canted her head to the side, staring into the eyes of the mayor, “you knew her mother,” she said softly, startling him briefly.

“Um, yes, I did. I knew many of the other slaves in the camp―”

“You were in charge of giving out the food to the others,” the striped mare went on, not breaking her unblinking stare even as the stallion’s light coat started to pale even more, “you made some of the mares do things for their food. Her mother said no. She said she was going to tell the painted ponies what you were doing. You knew the painted ponies wouldn’t like it that you were doing things with their mares. You had to keep her from telling. You put your hooves around her neck and―”

Whatever else Meadowlark had been about to say was silenced abruptly by Litany as he struck her across the face so hard that she was sent immediately to the floor. He glared down at the fallen mare, though his expression was more one of fear than genuine rage, “Guards!” he screamed. I suspected that at least the town’s mayor wasn’t quite as certain of Minos’ docility as Ivy was, because a pair of armed ponies charged into the room too quickly to have come from anywhere but directly outside the door. Litany jabbed a hoof at the striped mare who was nursing her split lip, “this mare is an Evil Enchantress! We must deal with her before she can place us all into a trance. Listen to nothing she says, lest she place a curse upon you!”

“No!” Minos tried to rush to his sister’s side, but he was quickly stopped by one of the guards, while the other collected the listless Meadowbrook.

“What do we do with her?” the guard holding the striped mare, a unicorn stallion, said as he floated out a pistol and placed it against her head, “do we just kill her, or…?”

“No! Please, don’t!”

Litany didn’t pay the brother’s protesting any attention at all as he regarded the mare who had somehow known details about his sins that even I was having trouble explaining through any means but ‘freaky zebra magic’. Of course, Minos had insisted that, despite appearances, she was no more a full blooded zebra that he himself was. Did that mean that she couldn’t still perform any of their more infamous tricks though? The beige leader of the town certainly thought she could, “no. We must purify her evil―cleanse the curse she has brought with her.

“Construct a pyre.”

The physician’s eyes widened. His horn flared now, and I saw a matching aura surround my carbine as it floated up and oriented towards the unicorn holding his sister. However, a powerful buck from the earth pony holding him back broke his magical concentration and the weapon clattered uselessly to the ground. Litany rounded on the striped stallion, “I suggest you not do anything foolish, doctor. Our community still has use for your skills; but I’m afraid your sister is too dangerous,” he shook his head sharply at the unicorn guard, “get her to the town square immediately,” then to the pony holding Minos he said, “bring him too so that we can keep an eye on him.”

The mayor’s gaze fell to me briefly, and beneath their fierce glare I briefly wondered if I was about to become entangled in this little private affair of theirs as a consequence of my proximity. I guess that silence up to this point, and lack of any movement to intervene in any way must have spoken to my neutrality in what was very clearly an internal matter for this little community, because the older stallion didn’t say anything. He merely snorted and followed the rest of the ponies out the door, leaving only me and the still slumbering Arginine, who had somehow managed to not be roused by that whole exchange.

Either the engineered gray stallion had somehow been a lot sicker than I was, or had managed to get himself one doozy of a hangover.

Curiosity overpowered my lethargy and I carefully crept my way out of the bed. Nothing really seemed to hurt, except for a pretty potent headache, but I felt very weak as my hooves touched the ground and seemed reluctant to support the weight of my body. They managed though...barely. I did feel like a particularly stiff breeze would finish me off though as I slowly trudged across the room. I became briefly hung up by the tubing still attached to my arm, but managed to detach it before its interference sent me to the floor.

The door had been left open and I peered out cautiously. I learned that I was indeed inside an old motel, on the second floor. A lit neon sign off to the side caught my attention in the darkness, and I felt myself grimacing. One of the legs of the letter ‘M’ didn’t appear to be working, creating the word, ‘N OTEL’ in giant blue letters. Fair enough.

There was a great deal of activity going on down below now, as ponies were roused from their rooms and their duties, gathered together by Litany and the town’s guards. Several ponies were constructing a hasty collection of wooden debris around a lightpost out in the parking lot of the old motel. Meadowbrook’s limp frame was dragged towards it. I watched as two guards wrapped her forelegs around the steel column and bound her hooves together, rooting her in place as others piled on even more combustible material. Her brother continued to struggle and protest off to the side of the crowd that was gathering to watch the spectacle.

Litany stepped up in front of the town, standing beside the bound striped mare, and started to address the gathered ponies, “ponies! I know that many of you were preparing to bed down for the night, but I come to you with grave news! We have discovered, within our midst, an Evil Enchantress!” he jabbed a hoof at Meadowbrook, and his proclamation was greeted by a scattered chorus of gasps from the gathered townsfolk, “she tried to use her curses on our humble little community, but fear not! For I and your valiant town guards have captured her.

“However, we cannot be certain that she has not already used her vile powers to bewitch us. So, it is with a heavy heart, that I must sentence this creature to burn, so that she might be purified by Celestia’s cleansing fire, and her curses be undone!”

This was met by what were scattered cheers at first as the ponies seemed to weigh the merits of immolating a helpless mare, but as they saw how little actual opposition there was to the idea, the volume of the cheering grew, evolving into various chants that very much supported the course of action. It was a little hard to believe what I was seeing. The whole town was rallying behind the will of that one old stallion, and condemning Meadowbrook to die.

I wasn’t an idiot. I’d heard what the striped mare had alleged. I’d seen Litany’s face when she made those claims too. It had been the face of a pony who knew he’d been found out. Now, I couldn’t begin to understand how Meadowbrook could possibly have known about any of that―for all I knew she did have freaky zebra powers. That didn’t make her an ‘Evil Enchantress’, of course. It also didn’t change the fact that Litany apparently had been abusing whatever meager amount of power he’d had back in the White Hoof camp to take advantage of his fellow slaves. He was a monster of a stallion, and if anypony should be tied up on that pyre, it probably should have been him.

None of the ponies down there knew that though. Ivy must have heard what Meadowbrook had been saying, but she’d already concluded that the striped mare was evil, and so she probably wasn’t going to be too inclined to leap to her defense―if she even believed any of it. Minos wasn’t going to be able to do anything either. Unless a miracle came along, that poor bound mare was a goner.

I mean, I suppose that I could have done something. I glanced back over my shoulder at the automatic carbine that lay on the floor a short distance away. Maybe I wasn’t strong enough to fly down there and whisk her to safety, but I was a good enough marksmare to take out the ponies building the pyre and the stallion restraining Minos. In the confusion, they might be able to get away while I covered their escape.

I could even put a few rounds through Litany’s head on basic principal.

Now, I’d admit that I might feel a little torn about the whole thing. These ponies were escaped White Hoof slaves, so I certainly empathized with all that they must have been through in their lives. That didn’t give them any right to enslave other ponies though, they way they nominally had Minos. It certainly didn’t give them the right to burn an innocent mare alive, who was only even in their town in the first place because they’d brought her here against her will. So, while I wouldn’t be pleased at the notion of fighting former slaves trying to build a new life for themselves after escaping their captors, I also wouldn’t have felt particularly guilty about killing the ones directly involved in trying to kill Meadowbrook.
In the end, saving her life would have been a relatively simple matter that could be accomplished in a little less than a minute. All I had to do was pick up that carbine and take aim.

That was all that I’d have to do. Just that little bit. Even as weak as I was, that wouldn’t be hard for me to do at all.

There was just one problem with that plan: I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Never before in my life had I felt so conflicted about intervening to save somepony. It had always come so easily. Like it was an instinctive reaction. I would see a pony in danger, and then I’d act and do everything in my power to stop whatever was threatening them. That was how it had been with Foxglove. I’d seen the violet unicorn running for her life before a pack of ponies who clearly intended to do her harm. The next thing I knew, I was gunning them down in their tracks. Then again with Summer Glade and her little filly when they’d been confronted by Lancers. It hadn’t even felt like I was making a conscious choice when I swooped in and disabled those three stallions.

That wasn’t the case right now though. I knew what the difference was though. I didn’t have my cutie mark this time. I wasn’t a killer. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the carbine and open fire on the ponies below.

A cold, foreboding, feeling gripped my heart. Was that what I had really traded away when I’d asked to have my mark removed? Was killing so intrinsically tied to saving ponies? I was so paralyzed by that thought that I almost didn’t notice when Minos somehow managed to get the upper hoof on the guard restraining him. I wouldn’t have ever pegged the slightly built physician as any sort of fighter, but I guess anypony was capable of rather surprising feats when they were well motivated. That brown striped stallion wasn’t what I would have called a ‘brawler’, but he still made a respectable accounting of himself as he fought his way to the front of that crowd, all the way up to his sister’s side.

“Stop, all of you!” he screamed at the crowd, who did not seem all that pleased at the interruption, “I won’t let you do this!”

Litany didn’t seem to be particularly concerned. He wore a smirk that just begged to be shot off his face as he glanced between the heavily panting striped doctor and the gathered crowd of ponies; to include a half down armored guards who looked like they were waiting for the order to run up and haul Minos back down off the pyre, “you can’t fight all of us, doctor,” the town mayor pointed out smugly, “just come down from there peacefully, and you won’t be harmed. You can’t save your sister.”

Minos glared at the older stallion. Then his eyes scanned the crowd, as though seeking any sign that some flicker of sanity might still yet break out and the ponies of the town would recover from their madness. It wasn’t going to happen though, and he had to know that. These ponies were already worked up into a frenzy, and they weren’t going to be satisfied until they saw somepony burn to death. They probably wouldn’t even bat an eye if it became two ponies.

He must have realized that too, because when he saw that he and his sister weren’t going to get any aid from the town, he flashed them all a final defiant glare and stepped protectively over his sister. He bent his head down and gently nuzzled her cheek, and I saw her return an apologetic smile before he laid down beside her and looked to Litany.

“Light it,” I heard the striped stallion say.

Just like that, one pony doomed to die became two, and I could see no sign that anypony down there was going to be dissuaded by the gesture. Neither was I going to be spurred into action, it seemed. To my overwhelming shame, I was simply going to remain perched and here and watch them both die. I knew I’d be giving up my talent for killing; but I hadn’t realized that the price was going to include relinquishing the very thing that had given my life purpose: saving ponies.

I looked on, unable to avert my eyes as Litany nodded to a guard bearing a lit torch and sent him on to light the pyre that would consume both ponies.

Then, suddenly, the parking lot of that old motel became a much brighter place as night became day. Everypony was taken by surprise, to include myself, as our collective gaze was drawn skyward. I felt my jaw go slack as I looked up and beheld a...something. I nearly assumed that it was a cloud, and it was certainly mostly a cloud, as there was quite a bit of the fluffy white material encircling most of the object. There was an awful lot of metal mixed in for it to be any ordinary cloud though.

An Enclave airship, I realized. Though I had never seen one of them before with my own eyes, there was little else that it could possibly be. I’d heard tales of the pegasus war machines, and the fearsome firepower that rivaled anything possessed by the pony communities on the ground―save for, perhaps, the Steel Rangers. However, having an unobstructed view of this airship, I found myself doubting some of those claims. In fact, I could spy any weapons at all on this thing. It’s boxy shape and squat contours didn’t lend itself very much to the air of a ‘machine of death’. I was thinking very much along the lines of, ‘freight wagon’.

Then my eyes were drawn to a ramp that opened up along the bottom of the cloud-craft. A trio of ponies were standing on that ramp, two pegasi and a unicorn. Both of the fliers darted out of the open maw of the airship and swooped down to land squarely in between the pyre and the gathered townsponies. One of them was a lightly built crimson mare with a chocolate mane and blue green eyes. The tails of a long brown coat billowed behind her as she flew, and seemed to flow around her like that brown coat was an intrinsic part of her. Once on the ground, her wings flared out to reveal a pair of rather intimidating pistols rigged to a battle harness.

The other pegasus, a taller, darker, stallion with an auburn coat, black mane, and cold blue eyes, landed slightly behind and to the right of the scarlet mare. He was wearing a blood red vest and eggshell trenchcoat. Beneath his wings were a pair of shotguns that he wasn’t shy about panning over the crowd.

“Well, Zero, look at this!” the crimson mare crowed loudly so that she could be heard over the entire crowd, “appears we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?” she cocked her head and glanced briefly at the stallion behind her.

“Big damn heroes, ma’am,” he replied in an almost bored sounding tone, not taking his eyes off the the gathered crowd.

The mare gave a satisfied nod, “ain’t we just.”

She cleared her throat and jabbed a wing back up towards the airship’s ramp, where the unicorn was still standing. She was a rather sturdy looking cream colored mare, and most of her features were difficult to make out past the veritable arsenal of firearms of every shape and configuration that was hovering around her. I felt that she simply couldn’t have possibly aimed all of those weapons accurately but, with as many barrels as she was directing at the ground, it would be hard to miss anything at this range.

“I’d like you all to direct your gaze skyward for a moment,” and indeed, more than a few, including Litany and his guards, did. The crowd visibly cowered beneath the array of firearms directed at them, “that there is Payne. Now she’s a might upset on account of she really didn’t want to come here,” I had to agree that the mare did look a bit...vexed, at the moment, “she’s looking to shoot somepony. I recommend that nopony here give her a reason,” the crimson pegasus then nodded back at the stallion flier, who moved to begin releasing the bound mare.

Litany seemed to gather enough courage to issue a verbal protest, but little else. Neither he nor his guards seemed all that inclined to make any gesture that might be seen as remotely threatening while under the many barrels of the irate looking unicorn above them, “hey! She’s an Evil Enchantress!”

The mare seemed a little amused by the statement, and briefly looked back at the pair of striped ponies. Meadowbrook was already freed from the light pole and was now climbing onto the back of the brown stallion. Minos stepped up near the winged mare, “that may be,” she offered with a shrug as she turned back to the mayor, “but she’s our ‘Evil Enchantress’.”

“Miasma...you came for us,” the physician said, sounding as though he still couldn’t quite believe what was happening even when presented with the evidence by his own eyes.

The mare rolled her eyes, “of course I did; you’re my crew. Why are we still talking about this? Get on and let’s get out of here,” Minos wasted no more time and clambered onto the back of the scarlet mare. Both fliers alit back up to the ramp of their waiting airship. The two striped ponies climbed down from their bearer and trotted into the belly of the large vessel. The pegasus, Zero, and unicorn, Payne, each followed them in, leaving only the scarlet mare in the brown coat on the ramp. She looked briefly down at the ponies of Notel, disdain clearly evident on her face for what they had been about to do to one of her friends.

Just before she turned away, she locked her green eyes onto me. Within them, I saw the question burning in her mind: had I been a part of this? If not, why had I not done anything to stop it? I had no answer for her. Certainly none that would have mattered. Reflexively, I looked away under the piercing stare of the other pegasus. A few seconds later, the floodlight all turned off, and the engines of the massive airship flared to life as the vessel sped away.

I could hear murmuring coming from the ponies in the parking lot. They weren’t happy at having their execution interrupted, but I got the impression that they content enough to have the striped ponies gone all the same. Litany was certainly quite relieved to be free of the mare who had somehow divined his darkest secret. I caught him looking up at me as the crowd dispersed. I had been present when that secret was revealed. Ivy would dismiss Meadowbrook’s words out of hoof, so she wasn’t going to be an issue for him. The question he had to ask himself was: was I going to cause trouble?

As little as a month ago, that was a question that wouldn’t have needed to be asked. Of course I would deal with the pony who had coerced enslaved mares into performing favors for their meals. The old Windfall wasn’t of a mind to allow ponies like that fleck of filth to keep polluting the Wasteland.

She was a much better pony than I was, it seemed. Because all I did was shrug and turn away to go back inside the room. I carefully climbed back into my bed and lay there awake for a long while.

Was this the mare that I wanted to be? The kind of pony that simply stood by and watched others get murdered by a crowd led by a rapist? Was I truly willing to pay that sort of price if this was what kept me from killing ponies?
Could I live with myself like this?

I recalled a night, not so very long ago, when I had concluded that I couldn’t continue on as I was. A moment of cold clarity when I realized that I didn’t want to go on living if my talent was just to end the lives of others. Even now I could remember how the cold steel of Jackboot’s heavy revolver had felt against the underside of my chin. But for an errant scream carried on the wind, I’d have painted the wall of that room with my own blood and brains.

Summer Glade and her daughter’s plight had surely saved my life just as much as I had saved them that night. The simple, pure, elation that I had felt when I’d subdued those Lancers and gotten the pair to safety had seemed to renew my whole sense of purpose. That was what I wanted to do with my life! I wanted to protect ponies, not kill them. Why couldn’t that have been my cutie mark?

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of somepony groaning from nearby and I turned to see Arginine’s large bulk moving beneath his sheets. The stallion’s head lifted off the pillow and his amber eyes peered through the narrow slits of eyelids that were reluctant to open. He glanced around the motel room in mild confusion before his gaze finally found me.

He quirked an eyebrow, “we’re not dead?”

I couldn’t help but smile, a little sorry that I didn’t have some tomato juice and a raw egg to offer the stallion, “nope. We’re going to be fine.”

Arginine grunted. Then, “are we in danger?”

“Probably not,” I said after a moment’s thought. Litany very clearly cared about how the ponies of the town saw him, and unless either of us proved ourselves to be a clear and present threat to that image, he’d be hard pressed to come up with any way to justify to the ponies of the town why the town bedridden ponies that they’d saved from the Wasteland needed to be dealt with. As long as I kept quiet about what Meadowlark had said in this room, he wasn’t going to do anything to us.

The stallion grunted again and then rolled over and went back to sleep.

I rolled my eyes and gave a little amused snort. Idly, I wondered if I was ever going to be able to get him to drink again.

Unfortunately, sleep didn’t find me nearly as easily. My thoughts were too occupied but what I had seen that night, and the realization of how little I had done about it. For the second time in my life, I wondered if, perhaps, the Wasteland would be better off without a mare like myself in it.

I was hard pressed to find compelling arguments against that argument.

Footnote:...

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