Secrets.

From what little I knew about The New Equestrians, they were a group of ponies who were very secretive. Almost every question I asked the voice in my head was one that it couldn’t answer. But now the pony that had been contacting me in my dreams was here.

“Who are you?” asked Pin. She was standing next to me, glaring at the mare.

“You may call me Lumina. I am a representative of The New Equestrians, sent here to speak with your buckfriend,” answered the mare. She seemed disinterested in the conversation, taking another drink from a bottle that she held in her magic. “I am the one who has been speaking with him in his sleep, though he has proven to be stubborn.”

“You were the one who caused his brother to destroy his stable!” Pin accused.

“Nope,” the mare replied flatly before taking another drink. “But one of my colleagues did.”

“How could you do such a thing? You ruined their lives!”

“Nope. Their lives were about to be ended, which is kind of worse than ruined. Also, ruined implies that things are worse. Your buck’s got friends now, and he’s got you, so unless you don’t think highly of yourself, I think that’d be an improvement over his life in the Stable.” She didn’t even look at Pin as she spoke, instead focusing on her bottle, which was now empty. “Miss, could I get another?” she asked Martini as she levitated out a few caps from one of the packs that laid on the ground next to her. The olive mare set another bottle down, taking the caps in exchange.

“What makes you think you have the right to decide his fate anyway?”

“It’s what was needed to be done. He’d have died, and we wouldn’t be able to use him. Plus his whole Stable would have died due to a faulty air talisman that was slowly poisoning the Stable. This was the best course of action for all.”

“You...but he...Gah!” Pin was furious now.

“Look, I came here to speak with him, not you. I’ve entertained your questions for long enough. Now run along and let the big ponies talk.” Lumina actually let out a half-hearted attempt at a laugh.

“Bitch!” Pin shouted.

“Midget whore,” Lumina replied without concern.

Pin leapt at the mare, pulling a syringe out of her feathers in midair. She never had a chance to connect with the New Equestrian, as Lumina’s horn glowed with a reddish light. She didn’t even look at Pin as she hovered next to her, enveloped in a red aura. Pin’s wings beat furiously as she tried to escape the grasp, but the magic didn’t yield.

“Let her go,” a voice came from behind me. I looked over to see Razor standing behind us, a rifle floating next to her, aimed at the mysterious mare’s head.

“Ah, the drug addict. Now all we need is the griffin, the foal, and the dead buck to complete the circle of friends,” replied Lumina, not even acknowledging the fact that she was being threatened. “I came here hoping to simply speak with Wire, but the short one had to become defensive of him. Fine, I will let her go.” Her horn flared and Pin was sent flying backwards into the ground.

“Enough. Razor, put the rifle away and make sure Pin is okay,” I declared. “And you, what do you want?”

“I’m just here to answer your questions.”

“Alright.” I didn’t trust the voice in my head when it didn’t have a face, but now I was beginning to hate Lumina. “Why me? Why all the trouble just to get me?”

“To be honest, there were dozens of others that we could have chose from. In fact, you are just one of our many projects. But as for why we chose you, you are special Wire.”

“You said that already, but you haven’t told me why I am special.”

“Don’t know. I’m just one of the messengers, they tell me what I need to know and usually nothing more. Though I can say that you are special because you can hear me. Only a couple hundred in the entire wasteland are able to, and a lot of those ponies aren’t right for what we need.”

“And just what is it that you want me to do?”

“Want the abridged version, or the entire list of things you need to do?” I just stared at her for a second. “Abridged then. We want you to take down the Iron Hoof.”

“You...you’re joking, right?” asked Razor.

“Nope,” Lumina replied flatly before taking another drink. “Though I don’t mean alone. We think Wire and a few other individuals have the potential to accomplish this. All that is really required is the death of a few select individuals, Bronze being one of them.”

“And why do you want to take down the Iron Hoof, what’s in it for you?” yelled Pin. She had recovered from being thrown, but was still pissed.

“For one, we will be another step closer to accomplishing our goal of restoring Equestria to its former glory. The Iron Hoof are a corrupt group of evil ponies who are bent on controlling the wasteland.”

“Funny, because from what we know of The New Equestrians, you just described your own group,” shouted Pin. She was glowing yellow as Razor was holding her back. If she wasn’t held back, I was certain she would try to attack the mare again, only to be injured again.

“That was funny I’ll give you that, shorty. You are funny.”

“I’LL KILL YOU!” She managed to break free from Razor’s magical hold, and flew at the mare with a syringe in her teeth. She collided with a red bubble that had formed around the mare.

“Not very clever though,” she said as she took another drink while inside her shield. Pin smashed her hooves against the barrier but to no avail.

“Pin, calm down please,” I pleaded. She turned to me, her golden eyes full of rage. She sighed and landed. “Lumina, how do The New Equestrians even know these things?”

She seemed to react to this. “Now that is an interesting question. As you know, The New Equestrians have access to a powerful form of telepathy. Now even though we can’t speak with everypony, we can hear what we want. Using the information gained, we are able to roughly predict future events. It isn’t entirely accurate, but we are accurate enough to get a general idea.”

“So how is it that you think I could take down the Iron Hoof?”

“You’ve already shown remarkable abilities in dealing with the rangers and the raiders, even a few Deltas have fallen to you and your friends. To be honest, you have done more than any of the others so far.” She took another drink and looked at the empty bottle. She realized she would have to drop her barrier for another. “I’ll be honest with you, we mainly try to guide anypony that can hear us and has the traits we want.”

“But why me? Why did you have Volt open the Stable to get to me if you could already speak with Volt? Why not use him?”

“I spoke with the buck that talked to Dead Volt. From his recount of the events, Volt wasn’t exactly what we needed, he was a little too...crazy. Especially after the incident with the Killing Joke. I want to let you know that we didn’t plan that, we had alternate methods of getting him to join the Laughingstocks. But you were much more qualified than him, and we would have had to open the Stable to get to him any way.”

“And doom every pony in the Stable to the wasteland in the process.”

“Look, you and several other ponies were about to be killed by the Overmare. What my friend neglected to tell Volt was that your Stable wasn’t even designed to run for that long. It was meant to fail long ago, to force you to the surface. As such, the air talismans had already begun to break down, slowly poisoning the Stable. Monitoring systems for the talismans were faulty as well, weren’t they?” I nodded. “The talismans could have been pouring out deadly gas and you wouldn’t realize it until you all dropped dead. Your Stable was dying in more ways than one, we just gave them a chance to survive. We aren’t monsters, we are the ones who are trying to save the wasteland.”

We all waited in silence for a few moments. Pin never stopped glaring at the mare. Razor still had her rifle on standby. I sat there, contemplating what she had just told me. Martini stood behind the bar with her usual grin, not really caring about what was going on so long as she was able to sell her alcohol.

“I was given orders to do two more things. The first is tell you that Smile is planning a small strike squad in order to attack Bronze’s camp while he is still weak. You should probably join that squad. The second is that I am going to teach you this spell,” she said as she waved her hoof at the barrier around her. Her horn began to glow even brighter. My head began to be filled with a mass of voices, voices that were indistinguishable from the others. I couldn’t understand what any of them were saying, but I seemed to know what they were teaching me. I winced in pain as the sudden surge of knowledge gave me a major headache. “There, that wasn’t so bad. That should help you out some, though I don’t recommend trying it out against heavy weaponry. Doubt it would hold up very well.” She lowered the shield that had encased her. “Damn, you three have driven me to heavy drinking again, hope you’re happy,” she said as she exchanged a few more caps for another bottle.

“How is it that you are so polite when speaking with me in my head, but now you are a total bitch?” I asked.

“Eh, mainly it is because I am watched by the others. They want us to be polite and shit in order to convince ponies like you. Also, because I only had to deal with you, not your psycho mare and the drunk drug addict.” She took a drink from the fresh bottle. “Also, I didn’t have to deal with the colt trying to invade my head. Go ahead and tell him to give up, it ain’t going to work.”

“Damnit,” I heard Whisper shout in my head. “Why can’t I read her mind? How can she block me out?”

“Because, I am part of a group of powerful telepaths. We kind of need to know how to block out others from invading our thoughts. Also pays to learn how to control what we hear, something you are probably incapable of ever doing.”

“I agree with Pin, she is a bitch.”

“Eh, I don’t really give a shit. I’ve got to be off now. Thank you for the drinks.” Her horn flared with a red aura and she disappeared in a flash of red light.

We stayed there in silence for a few seconds, that is until Aurea came down the stairs. “What the hell was all that yelling about?” she grumbled, still partially asleep.

“Some psycho mare from Wire’s dreams showed up and insulted all of us. Except Martini,” answered Razor.

“Hello,” she greeted. “Not entirely sure what that was all about, but she was a heavy drinker, so I profited,” she replied with a smile.

“Right, well, I wish you would have told me crazy shit happens to you before you hired me,” replied the griffin. She blinked her eyes a few times in an attempt to wake herself up. “Ugh, I need a drink.” At this, the mare behind the bar began smiling even more.

Aurea walked over to the bar and took a seat where the New Equestrian had been sitting moments before. Martini started levitating over drinks. She placed one in front of Aurea, one in front of Pin, who was now sitting next to me, two in front of Razor, and one on the bar in front of me.

“I don’t drink anymore,” I replied.

“Heh. Wire, you are a terrible liar,” Razor chuckled as she popped open her first bottle of whiskey. “Also an idiot,” she added in between drinks.

“Well I’m trying to not drink any more. Besides, isn’t there like some rule against mixing drugs and alcohol?” I asked Pin.

“Probably best you don’t drink. Both because you make a fool of yourself when you are drunk, and you could possibly die from it,” she replied as she started pouring the bottle into a glass. “Last thing I need is for you to be hitting on everyone here.”

“You doctor types always ruin the fun,” Martini grumbled as she took back my drink.

“Even if you could drink, you probably wouldn’t want to be drinking this early anyway,” she added.

“Then why are you three drinking?”

“Razor is probably going to stay here for most of the day, Aurea is a griffin so she can probably hold her liquor better than a lot of ponies, and I don’t really get drunk.”

“Yeah, she’s got like an iron liver or something,” agreed Razor. “I tried to challenge her to a drinking match while you were unconscious, but she said it wasn’t the time or some shit like that.”

“Well I was kind of in a coma,” I argued.

“Still don’t see how that would affect her drinking. If anything, she’d wanna drink more.”

“Drinking is your solution to everything, isn’t it?”

“Eh, probably. So if you ain’t going to be drinking, what are you doing today?” Razor asked as she set the empty bottle on the bar.

“Not sure. Probably going to go see what I can purchase at the shops, visit Volt, talk to Smile about the suicide mission where we attack a creature that shrugged off an anti-machine rifle round to the face. You know, the usual stuff.”

“So you’re actually going to listen to that crazy bitch? I think she was just spouting nonsense the entire time. Hell, the only truth I heard was where she called Pin short,” she chuckled. Pin started glaring at Razor. “Ah, enough with the death eyes. So what’d she mean by ‘teach you this spell’ anyway?”

“Yeah. I mean, did she actually teach you the spell?” Pin asked, looking away from Razor.

“I have no idea. I felt...something in my head after she said that. Like a bunch of voices telling me things, teaching me things.” The three of them looked at me like I was crazy, while Martini just set another bottle in front of Razor. “I think she did something at least.”

“Try to make a shield then,” Martini suggested.

“Alright.” My horn started to glow. I began to imagine a sphere forming around me, a bubble that protected me. I closed my eyes and focused on the orb. My head started to ache some. I opened my eyes and saw that everything was slightly gray in color. I realized that I had conjured a shield of pure magical energy around me. “Wow.”

“Impressive,” said Aurea as she finished her bottle of alcohol. “So how strong is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Razor’s face became a drunken smile. “Let’s test it,” she declared as she levitated the rifle off of her back.

“Uhm, Razor dear, I don’t think that is such a good-” began Martini.

BLAM!

The round smashed against the shield, but my magic didn’t yield to it. The bullet ricocheted off the barrier, smashing into the bottle in front of Pin.

“What the hell! Are you insane?” Pin shouted.

“Maybe a little, but don’t worry, I’m drunk. I’m sanest when I’m drunk,” answered Razor. “Besides, better to learn that it can take a bullet here than learn it can’t take a bullet while we are in the middle of a fight. And I only aimed at the empty space next to him, so if the bullet broke through it wouldn’t hit him.” Damn, her logic was flawless. Except for the fact that she fired a gun in a semi crowded bar.

“Damnit, you owe me a drink!” shouted Pin.

“Alright. But at least we know that your buckfriend is safe inside his little bubble. And he’s got a pretty cool spell,” she slurred. I had to agree, it was pretty cool having more than just two spells, especially when it was one as useful as this one. But as cool as this spell was, it was a pain to keep active. My horn ceased its shining and the barrier melted away.

“Yeah, this will save my hide on several occasions I can tell. I’m glad I could even learn this spell. I was never talented with magic when I was a colt.” I had a thought. “Hey Razor, what spells do you know?” I had only seen her use telekinesis.

“I can float things around, I’m pretty good at that. But I know a few other spells: like I can cast a light spell, create blades of magical energy, cause a pony to grow a mustache-”

“Wait, what was that last one?” I interrupted.

“Oh, the mustache spell? It’s my favourite, though I usually have problems finding ponies who want one-”

“No, the blade one,” I interrupted again.

“Oh, that one. Yeah, it was a spell I learned when I was just a filly. It even earned me this,” she said as she turned to show her scarred over flank. What had once been a cutie mark was now just a bundle of scars. “Huh, I forgot about that,” she said as she looked at the scars, a hint of sadness on her voice. “Wanna see the spell?” she asked with a sudden change in her tone, from sadness to eagerness.

“Uh, sure.”

“Great!” She stumbled over to one of the tables, her horn glowing slightly as the now empty bottle followed after her. She set the bottle on the table. “Okay, this is usually tough when I’m sober.” Her horn stopped glowing for a second, then quickly flared with a bright yellow light. The bottle broke in half as it connected with a thin wave of magic that appeared in the air and slashed at the bottle. Razor clopped her hooves together with delight. “Yay!”

I limped over to the remains of the bottle, careful to avoid the shards of glass that were on the floor. I examined the bottle. The bottom half remained mostly intact, a horizontal cut straight through the center left the bottle smoothed where the magic had connected. The top half likely would have been similar if the force of the slash hadn’t knocked it to the ground.

From the bar I heard a sigh. “You really shouldn’t encourage her while she’s drunk. Now I have to pick up the glass,” said Martini.

“Sorry,” mumbled Razor, a hint of remorse in her slurring.

“It’s okay,” Martini sighed as the pieces of glass the lined the floor began to glow and be picked up. The pieces floated by as they were dumped into a trash can.

“Shit, that sliced right through it,” exclaimed Pin as she looked at the bottom half of the bottle, which still remained on the table. “What is the strongest thing that could slice through?”

“Dunno. I know from an encounter with a frisky bandit that it can slice through bone if I concentrate enough.” She started drunkenly laughing. “My whole camp called em Stubby from then on. Boy, he sure hated me after that.” I didn’t know whether that was true, or just her being drunk, but I knew I was afraid of her. A pony that drinks as much as she does with such a powerful spell? That wasn’t a good thing.

“Do you think it could tear through power armor?” Pin suggested.

“I dunno. Never thought to try. Every time we fought a Steel Ranger, I was always out of range, and I never even fought them before I started hanging out with you guys.” Razor took her seat at the bar again and looked over at me. “You attract all sorts of trouble, don’t you?”

“Don’t remind me,” I groaned in reply. My life had become so much more complicated since I entered the wasteland.

“Yeah, whatever. Just go speak with creepy smiley guy, I’m going to get drunk...err...drunker,” replied Razor as Martini set down another bottle. Seriously, how much could she drink?

“Right. You coming with us?” I asked Aurea.

“Eh, sure. I work for you now, so I don’t really have much else to do,” she replied as she set down the empty bottle. “Gotta say, you’re the most boring job I’ve had so far.”

“Still better than the ghoul?” I asked as I started walking towards the door. Pin and Aurea followed after me.

“By a long shot. I’d rather do nothing than do some of the shit he had me do.”

“Twenty caps,” declared the trader.

“Ten,” I argued.

“Seventeen,” he countered.

“Fifteen.”

“Sixteen each, you get a cap back anyway,” he reasoned.

“Fine,” I agreed. Bartering was something I was new to, but I had a knack for it. I took the caps out of my pack and he gave me the two Sparkle-Colas. I had already purchased a few healing potions and some spare ammo for my weapons. The caravans that had come through, along with the traders that remained in town were profiting greatly from the battle that had occurred a few days ago. The Laughingstocks were stocking up on ammo and medical supplies, while citizens of Circus and other nearby settlements were in a state of panic, and most were also stocking up on supplies. The prices were high, but the trader, Fair Deal (yeah right), managed to find some leftovers.

“Got anything stronger?” asked the griffin.

“Hmm? Ah, no. Sorry. I have a deal to sell all bottles of alcohol to Martini over at The Drunken Princess,” replied the tan unicorn. “Although...I suppose a few bottles could have gone missing...for the right price.”

“Not interested. I can probably get it cheaper from Martini,” replied Aurea.

“Fair enough, fair enough. Can’t blame me for trying to make an honest cap.”

“Now, tell me if you have anything for this,” she said as she took the grenade launcher that was slung over her shoulder and placed it on the table. “Barrel is starting to crack, likely from the stress placed on it during the battle. Tell me you’ve got the parts to replace it, I don’t want it blowing up in the middle of a fight.”

“Hmm, I might have a few spare parts...for the-”

“Yeah yeah, for the right price, I know.”

I exited the shop while Aurea was still speaking with the trader. Fair Deal’s Deals was a terrible name for a store, but I guess it worked as long as it had items ponies wanted.

“Where’s Aurea?” asked Pin as I gave her the flat soda.

“Inside, fixing her grenade launcher or something.”

“So is she really going to be coming with us?”

“Yeah, I guess. I bought her contract off of that ghoul.”

“It’s just, do we really need a griffin following us around? You’ve heard the stories about how they are only in it for the caps. Once she gets a better offer, she could turn on us.”

“You saw how she couldn’t break her contract, she won’t turn on us. Besides, she seems nice enough. She saved me twice during the battle, the least I can do is trust her.”

“Fine. If you trust her, I will as well.”

Just then, Aurea exited the building. She placed a few spare grenades into the pouches on her armour, and slung the grenade launcher across her back again. “Useless trader didn’t know a thing about taking care of weapons properly, but I managed to fix up my launcher.”

“What, no special name for it?” I chuckled.

“No, that would be weird. What, is that a pony thing or something?”

“More like a Razor thing. Oh well, we still need to visit the tower.” I started walking towards the tower with the two of them following after me.

The lobby of the tower was full of Laughingstocks as usual. A few of them I recognized from other times I entered the tower, some I knew from the battlefield, but I didn’t know many of their names.

“Hey, Wire!” shouted a voice. The large form of the alicorn glided down from the second floor. “Good to see you on your feet, I got a job for you.”

“Actually, I was just about to speak with Smile about a job,” I responded.

“Tough. Smile wants you and your friends on this job first.”

“But what about the attack on Bronze?” I asked.

“How did you even know about that?” Illex asked in response. “You know what, I don’t even care. We can’t strike back against him until the spritebot control system is working again. And in order to get it working, we need parts from an old factory. It just so happens that you were available, so you and your friends get to hunt down some parts for us. Congratulations buddy, for once in your life you are doing something important.”

“And what if we refuse this task?” asked Pin.

“Eh, not a very good idea. I mean, you could refuse it. It isn’t like we’re holding a gun to your head or anything. But I’m just saying that this is actually important. I didn’t even want you all to be the ones to do it, but Smile personally requested you four.”

“Four?”

“Yeah. You, the pegasus, the griffin, and that unicorn that looked like she was in a fight with a hellhound,” he replied snidely. He actually wasn’t wrong.

“What about Whisper?” I asked.

“Smile had another job for him. Besides, why would you want a colt to tag along?” The pseudo-alicorn sighed and shook his head. “Listen, there’s a nice sum of caps if you can get us the parts.”

“From what I recall, didn’t you say that this was a dangerous mission into Iron Hoof territory?” I began. “Shouldn’t we have some form of additional payment in order to aid us in our endeavour?”

“Damn, you sound just like that annoying brother of yours. Fine, I’ll throw in some special ammo. Just get the job done,” he said as he began to walk towards the staircase. “Speak with Doc Harvest, he’ll tell you what all we need,” he called back to us.

“Yes, I need to speak with the doctor as well. I’m almost out of syringes,” said Pin as we began our descent into the hospital like area. “Come to think of it, I need to get a few things to rebuild my syringe gun.”

“Wait, you built that?” I asked.

“Yeah, didn’t I tell you the story?” She probably had. “It was back when I was just a filly, a few weeks after we had first left Armistice...”

The hallways leading to the doctors room were long and winding. We had actually gotten lost a few times, as none of us knew the layout of the tower very well. The path to the doctor’s room consisted largely of several hallways with small rooms that had been converted into makeshift medical rooms. A few injured ponies slept inside the rooms, recovering from the injuries they sustained during the battle. From a glance, I doubted a few of them would survive. Others had their limbs wrapped in gauze, a few lacked the gauze and the limb.

Damnit, dead end. I would have liked to meet the pony who designed this building and kick them in the teeth. Of course they are probably dead already, so it wouldn’t matter.

“-and when the lab caved in, I found a staircase that lead us to safety. It had a little workshop with the blueprints for a gun that fired syringes. Took me a few days to find all the parts I needed, but I managed to make one. It’s what I’ve been primarily using ever since,” she concluded. I nodded my head as if I had payed attention.

“What happened to your other one?” asked the griffin.

“Lost it during the fight. Got hit by one of the Iron Hoof griffins and I dropped it. I probably would have been killed if Illex didn’t catch me. The griffin wasn’t so lucky,” Pin murmured thoughtlessly. “Oh, I’m sorry if it was someone you knew.”

“It’s not like it mattered. I’ve killed other griffins before, killed a few that day. They were just following their contracts, I guess,” replied Aurea. “I swear, most Talons don’t care what they do so long as the pay is good. I mean, I follow my contract, but I’m usually careful when making one. Usually.”

“Yet you would still kill an innocent pony if that was what the contract said?” asked Pin.

“Have to. One of our rules. Breaking a contract is a big no no.”

Finally, we reached the large room that I had first met Doctor Harvest in. Unfortunately, the room was being used for what the doctor did: recycling as he called it.

The ghoul was standing over one of the tables, on top of which was a deceased pony, their chest cut open. The pony had once been encased in power armour, but it had been cut away, piece by piece, and placed in a small pile. Harvest took notice of our entrance into his workshop.

“Oh! Clockwork, we have guests,” chimed the ghoul as he levitated...something out of a corpse that laid on one of the slabs of metal. The organ landed with a plop into one of the jars that was on a table next to the doctor.

“Gah!” I gasped as I noticed the doctor’s assistant enter the room from a small closet. It looked like part of his face had been melted off. Where there should have been bone, there was metal.

“Sorry if I startled you,” he apologized. “Got a little too close to an explosive while we were clearing the battlefield. Burnt off part of my face. Shocked me to learn that even my bones were metal now. Although I am thankful that they are, as the shrapnel from the blast would have killed me otherwise.”

“Ah, Wire. Good to see you are on your hooves again. How is the new kidney treating you?” asked the ghoul in his eerily cheerful tone.

“Wait, what?”

He looked at me in confusion for a second. “Didn’t Miss Pinprick describe in detail the lengths to which we went to cure you? I do that with all my patients.” He shook his head. “That is poor etiquette, Miss Pinprick. I thought you would know better.” He looked back at me again. “When I cut you open, I found that one of your kidneys was riddled with growths, most likely from the Hydra you had taken earlier. I simply removed it and popped in a fresh one. I think it came from one of the raiders we collected from the battlefield.” I almost vomited right there. The combination of the putrid odor that lingered in the room and this disturbing information was a bit too much

“Ugh, that’s sick!” gagged the griffin. She seemed to have similar sentiments towards the procedure.

“No, I made sure to pick one of the healthier kidneys for the transplant. The raider it came from was surprisingly healthy. Well, that is until his head received a new opening. Bullet broke through the skull and severed the brainstem. Remarkable shot really, you could see bloodspray for a few feet away from his corpse, might have been a record even.” Okay, I did vomit. “Oh. Clockwork, mind dealing with that,” he said to the mostly mechanical unicorn. Flange only sighed and went into the closet to retrieve the cleaning supplies. “What is wrong?” he asked in his calm, raspy voice. “Is your stomach troubling you? I have a few extras if you need a replacement.”

“No, you are staying away from me!” I shouted in response. “Illex told us that you would tell us what we needed to retrieve from the Robronco factory in order to repair the spritebot control system. Just tell us what we need so I can get the hell out of this place.”

“Ah, you were the lucky ones who get to retrieve the parts. Here, let me finish my work on this ranger and then I can aid you,” he chimed as he turned back to the corpse on the table. “Remarkable case really. This ranger was trapped in his armour for a few days. Charred areas of the armor suggest an overload of the spell matrix was the cause. Either way, he was trapped for several days before I found him, and he wasn’t quite dead yet. I soon remedied that. Reminds me of an interesting encounter I had when I was a surgeon for the Ministry of Peace, before I lost my license at least.” He pulled something out of the corpse. “Oh, well that looks odd,” he remarked before placing it in one of the jars. “Back during the war...” Okay, I couldn’t take anymore of this.

I quickly left the surgery room. I was feeling nauseous, and very disturbed.

“Why does anyone even let that psycho live?” asked Aurea quietly. We stood outside the chop shop workshop, waiting for the demented doctor to finish his procedure.

A few minutes passed before the surgeon emerged from the room. He gave us a description of the pieces that we needed to retrieve. Something called a signal booster was one of them, or maybe that was what the part was used for. I’m not sure, but Aurea seemed to understand what the parts looked like and what they did.

“How does a surgeon even know all of this?” I asked.

“When you are alive for well over two hundred years, you need something to keep you preoccupied,” he replied. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling due to his mask, but his tone conveyed he likely was. “Learning various skills and things about Equestria before the war is how I spend my time. Well, that and performing surgeries on those who I think need it.”

“Right, are we done here or what?” I asked. I didn’t really have anything against ghouls, but this particular ghoul freaked me out.

“Yes, I believe I’ve covered everything that is required. Do be careful in that factory. There is likely a reason the Steel Rangers haven’t claimed its contents.” He turned and began to walk towards the double doors of the surgery room. “Clockwork, would you mind preparing another specimen? I want to get those organs before the bacteria do!”

“Let’s get out of here before Wire pukes again,” said Pin.

“Did you know he did that?” I asked.

The pegasus shifted hesitantly. “...yes,” she responded. “But it was necessary. I wouldn’t allow him to do some crazy experiment on you.”

“I have a raider’s kidney,” I replied grimly.

“Eh, it’s better than no kidney,” interjected the griffin. “So what are we going to do now?”

“Back to the bar I guess,” I sighed. Forget doctor’s orders, I needed a drink.

“No more!” came a shout from inside the bar.

“You can’t do this to me!” came a familiar slurred shout.

“You’re cut off!” replied the first voice.

We entered the bar to find Razor, drunk, sitting at the bar shouting at Martini, pissed off. Several broken bottles were scattered on the floor, an unconscious earth pony stallion was on the floor as well.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Razor attacked a customer! Again!” Martini responded with an angry shout. “She can’t have any more whiskey for quite a while!”

“But he was the one who was flirting with you!” slurred Razor. She was beyond a point of inebriety I had seen her before while she was still conscious. Her eyes were bloodshot, she seemed to stumble even when she tried to stand still. “Can I at least have the vodka?” she pleaded.

“No!”

“Ya know what? I was wrong about you, you’re just a bitch!” With that, Razor stormed off to the rooms. Or, at least she tried to. She made it about three steps before she fell to the ground, unconscious. Martini stood behind the bar, an actual frown on her face. Okay, this was serious if she was frowning.

“What happened?” I asked.

The olive mare sighed. “I flirted a little with the buck on the floor. It was only to get more sales, I swear. Ponies seem to drink more if they think they have a shot of getting lucky. Well, it was partially to make Razor a little jealous as well. I had no idea she would get so aggressive though. Then again she is very drunk...”

“Yeah, she seems to be drinking a lot more than usual, why is that?”

“I guess that is partially my fault, as I give her drinks for free. But earlier, she mumbled something about losing one of her friends, and she said she was probably going to lose another one.”

“Wait, was she talking about Needles?” asked Pin.

“Not sure. I know she meant Wire, as he was still in the coma, but I guess the friend she lost could have been him.”

I had been traumatized by the loss of a friend. It was the first actual loss I had to deal with. Pin had lost almost everything. She tried to conceal it, and she concealed it well, but she was still suffering from the pain. But Razor, she didn’t seem to be affected by it. She just kept drinking as usual.

“Drinking is your solution to everything, isn’t it?” I recalled asking her.

“Eh, probably,” I remembered her replying. Drinking was how she dealt with it. How she dealt with all of the pain and suffering the wasteland brought her.

“But I’m limiting the amount of alcohol she is allowed. She could really hurt somepony when she gets drunk, maybe even herself,” said Martini, interrupting my thoughts. “And when you’re travel, do try to watch out for her. I know she can handle herself, but I still worry about her.”

“We’ll keep her safe as best we can,” answered Pin before I could say anything.

“Thank you. Now, either of you up for a drink?” she asked, her smile reforming on her face.

“Actually, I am,” I answered. Pin looked at me, a look of concern on her face, while Martini just happily set a bottle on the bar. Aurea just took a seat at the bar as well.

“I’m in,” proclaimed the griffin. She grabbed the bottle in her claws and started drinking. Having claws has got to be strange, though I guess they would be better than a hoof at manipulating objects. Still prefer my magic though.

“I guess I will as well,” sighed Pin.

Martini placed another bottle, along with a bottle of Sparkle-Cola and a glass in front of Pin. “Cheers,” I said as I levitated the bottle up.

The alcohol warmed my throat as I drank it, even though the drink itself was cool. The liquid collected in my stomach, giving it a warming feeling.

“Wait, shouldn’t we do something about these two?” asked Pin, gesturing towards the two unconscious ponies on the ground with one of her wings.

“Eh, they’ll be fine,” I mumbled in return. Things started to blur a quarter of the way through the bottle. I blacked out before it was even half empty.

Well. This was familiar at least.

Headache? Check. Scent of vomit in the room? Check. Somepony waking me up with water? Also check. Though when I opened my eyes, I saw it was actually some griffin.

“Ugh, what the hell!” I grumbled as I woke up. A blurry image of a griffin stood above me, a bucket of water in her talons.

The blurry image turned to the blurry image of a pegasus. “Hey, you were right. It woke him up easily,” chuckled Aurea.

“It always does,” Pin replied warmly. “Now did we learn anything this time?”

“Uh, don’t get drunk?” I guessed. My head was killing me and she was playing games? Joy.

“Correct,” she said with a smile. Oh shit, I did something very bad.

“Also, I may be under contract, but try that again, and I’ll break your leg off,” hissed the griffin. Yep, something very bad.

“Ugh...do I even want to know what I did last night?” I groaned.

“Probably not,” responded Aurea. “Also, nice mustache.” What?

I raised my hoof up to my lip. Indeed, there was a mustache there. When did I get this? How could I have grown a mustache in just one-”Razor!” I shouted. I heard a snickering in the hallway.

“Call it your punishment!” she shouted from outside the room.

“Damnit,” I groaned as I shakily raised to my hooves. I stumbled across the room to the small bathroom connected to it. The room had received new graffiti since my last bout of drunken shenanigans, though to be fair, some of the older ones seemed to have been washed away, or at least attempted to be removed. There was a small pool of vomit next to where I was lying. The bathroom still held the cracked mirror.

The image in the mirror was similar to my own, though the eyes were bloodshot. The eyes also held dark circles around them. Oh, and there was a dark grey patch of hair on the lip.

“Goddesses damnit, Razor!” I shouted. The mare responded with only more laughter. Regular laughter, not her drunken laughter. I walked back into the room, Pin was still smiling while Aurea had a slight scowl. At least I think it was a scowl. I’m not very good at reading griffin facial expressions.

“Hey, I had a hangover, you were drunk, and I needed something to cheer me up. You didn’t seem to mind earlier,” she chuckled in response.

“It isn’t so bad, I like it even,” said Pin.

“Reverse it, or get me something to shave it off with,” I demanded.

“Killjoy,” grumbled Razor as she walked into the room. She looked...normal, which for her isn’t normal. She appeared to actually be sober, without a hangover even. Her horn began to glow, and it flashed a bright yellow before stopping. I raised a hoof to my face and confirmed the mustache was gone, only the hairs of my coat were present.

“Here,” said Pin as she placed a bottle in front of me. “This will help with the hangover.”

I floated the glass container in front of me. The brew smelled terrible. Sparkle-Cola, radsnake venom, and some other ingredients. Bottoms up.

I immediately regretted drinking the mixture. It had small chunks of something floating in it, which caused me to gag as I tried to drink it. The taste could only be described as terrible, as there aren't enough words to describe how bad it was. I barely managed to keep the solution down, but it began to work quickly. My vision cleared, my headache subsided, and the hangover just seemed to vanish.

“Alright, did either of you tell Razor what is going on?” I asked.

“I skimmed over it some,” said Pin.

“Heh, raider kidney,” Razor said with a laugh. “But yeah, I’m glad we are finally going. It’s been forever since I killed a raider.” Okay, her enthusiasm for killing others, even if they were raiders, was a little disturbing.

“Right...Get what ever you need; ammo, food, and anything else for the trip. We’ll leave in a few hours.”

“Good, I’ve been craving something interesting to do. At least Switchblade let me throw out customers. He was an evil bastard, but at least I did stuff,” added Aurea.

I spent the next few hours stocking up on whatever spare ammo I could get. I liked my revolver the most out of my arsenal, but ammo for it was sparse, so having plenty of ammo for the shotgun and rifle was for the best. Aurea even offered to fix my weapons so that they were in better shape. For a price of course.

Pin managed to obtain the parts needed to make her syringe pistol and had assembled it. She even went to see the demented doctor and brought back a variety of syringes, each filled with some sort of liquid. She sat next to me in the Drunken Princess, diligently placing syringes into her feathers in such a way that she could access them, but they wouldn’t fall out.

Razor had bought more ammo for Can Opener, which is fortunate, as we are heading into Ranger territory. She also obtained a few spare missiles, and a fair amount of ammo for her backup rifle. Now, she was sitting at the bar, speaking with Martini. I didn’t pay attention to the conversation, but from bits I heard, Razor was apologizing to her.

Aurea sat at one of the tables, taking apart various small weapons. She inspected each piece carefully, and selected the ones that seemed to be the best. She then began to carefully reassemble the best pieces into a single weapon. The finished rifle looked much better.

“Here,” she said as she held the rifle out towards me. The rifle began to glow, but Aurea snatched it away from my magical grip. “Caps first.”

“Fine,” I grumbled as I took a small sum of caps from my pack and levitated them to her. She released the rifle and levitated it in front of myself. The barrel looked almost perfect, a stark contrast to the previous one that had several small dents and scratches on it, along with a few minor fractures. The inner workings of the weapon seemed to be better as well, replacing the damaged and rusted pieces with more functional ones. It would certainly hold together better than the other rifle, maybe even pack a little more of a punch.

“Awesome, great job,” I said as I inspected the rifle. There were still a few flaws, but it was as best as it could be with the items we had. “Alright, are we all ready?”

“Are you sure I can’t have more for the road?” asked Razor.

“No, those few bottles will hold you until you get back. Be thankful I’m letting you have those,” Martini replied in a stern tone that was uncommon for her.

“Ugh, fine,” she grumbled in return. She levitated her saddlebags onto her back and trotted over to join us. “I’m ready I guess.”

“Hmm,” said Pin as she stretched out her wings. The syringes of liquid were visible on the underside of the wings, mixed in with her feathers. She flapped her wings a few times and the syringes stayed in place. “Alright then.”

“Yeah, let’s go already. This town is boring,” complained Aurea.

Martini waved goodbye as we left the tavern. A few Laughingstocks we passed on the way out of town greeted us with a smile or a hello. A few even wished us luck on our task. I didn’t know very many of them, but Razor and Pin seemed familiar with a few of them. Aurea seemed to not really care for the ponies that stopped to greet us. The large town gate was held open. One of the guards on the wall gave us a nod as we left.

“Alright,” began Razor as we cleared the gates. “Where exactly are we going?”

“An old Robronco factory to the East. Don’t worry, I have the location in my PipBuck,” I replied. How it managed to know where we needed to go, let alone where the location is was beyond me. I took a second to check the map. “Okay, from the looks of it, it will be a few days trek.” The factory was labeled on the map with a little indicator, but something else was labeled as well. A Stable that looked to be just a short distance away from the factory. “Huh, that’s odd.”

“What?” asked Pin.

“There’s another location on the map. Might be worth checking out later. Let’s get going.” It was at this moment I came to a terrifying realization. We were going to have to walk the entire way there.

Shit.
=====================================================================

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Sniper Pony- You aren’t as good a shot as Razor, but S.A.T.S. gives you an edge. Chance to hit the head of an enemy has increased by 25% while in S.A.T.S.
Quest Perk: Magic Shield (Level 1)- You’ve been granted the ability to cast a spell that can shield yourself. This shield is able to resist minor damage before dissipating.
Quest Perk: Lightweight (level 2)- You get drunk even easier. Unique dialog options while drunk. Too bad you won’t remember them.

(I would like to thank Kkat for writing Fallout Equestria, one of the best stories I have read, and I would like to thank Somber for writing Project Horizons, another great tale. I would also like to thank Melon Hunter for reviewing the chapter and submitting suggestions.)