Wasteland.

I have long dreamed of leaving the Stable, but never been more than that. An unattainable dream... one which I suddenly found myself living. Of course, the terms of my departure somewhat spoiled the moment. And what I saw outside ruined it entirely.

The books and papers that I collected always depicted Equestria as a beautiful place, one with green fields and clear skies that revealed the brightness of Celestia’s sun. No, this wasn’t Equestria, this was the remains of that once beautiful land. This was the wasteland.

The land was barren, devoid of any noticeable life. The sky above was not clear and blue, there wasn’t even a sun. A cloud cover hung above the wasteland, like the ceiling in the Stable. Light filtered through the clouds, filling the land with light brighter than any of the Stable lights. I blinked a few times to adjust to the brightness. The wasteland extended beyond what I could see. Ruins of what I presumed to be buildings were scattered on the horizon. It seemed to go one forever.

I was stunned by this, but I shook my head. I had to focus and find Volt. I checked my PipBuck.

South. Wherever he was going, it was South. I wondered if he knew where he was going, or was just wandering in a general direction. He must have been wandering, he had never been outside the Stable before, so how could he know where to go?

My PipBuck gave a small beep. I looked down at it.

Well that was new. A little map on the screen showed a waypoint directing me to the south. It also had a little marker that showed my position, and a line that led to the waypoint. I found it strange that the PipBuck had a map for the Wasteland, but I wasn’t going to complain.

While traveling through the wasteland, I learned two more useful abilities that the PipBuck possessed. The first made traveling somewhat easier; an inventory managing spell. It allowed me to select my weapons with ease, or to pull out whatever I needed. The second was more necessary than it was a luxury; a geiger counter. It detected the radiation around me.

In the Stable, we had always been taught that radiation could make your coat fall out, or mutate you and cause you to grow additional limbs, or just outright kill you. They had said that even a small amount of radiation was was deadly, but I was skeptical of this. Not enough to go running somewhere that causes my PipBuck to click like mad, but I was going to conserve my RadAway.

I had wandered for a few more minutes and quickly learned that following the path my Pipbuck gave was not as easy as it seemed, mostly because the path it set would have had me climb sheer cliffs and cross a large gorge. I eventually found paths around these obstacles.

I also discovered that the wasteland was not devoid of all life, as I had originally thought. Instead, it was full of things that wanted to kill me.

Flying masses of tumors and growths with the ability to fire spines were hovering a short distance away from me, spitting spines that stuck to my barding, piercing and stabbing themselves into my flesh. Whatever these things were, they were annoying, dangerous, and plentiful.

One of the bugs fired a spine that propelled itself deep into one of my shoulders. I dealt with the offending pest with a few S.A.T.S. guided pistol shots, causing the creature to burst. I fired a few more rounds at the others, one shot clipping the bug in the wings, causing it to fall.

I crouched behind the rock that kept me out of their line of fire and popped another clip into the pistol. Twelve shots didn’t last very long, and those things were quick enough to dodge most of the shots. I couldn’t really complain as the gun seemed to take them out fairly easily when it did hit. I levitated the gun back over the rock and continued spraying shots at them. I wasn’t accurate, but I was lucky enough to occasionally get a hit.

Only two were left as S.A.T.S. gave a little beep, fully charged. I activated the spell and fired two shots at each of the buzzing pests. I clipped the wing of one of them and it fell to the ground, and the other popped after being hit dead on by one of the shots. Half the shots hitting wasn’t bad.

Two of the bug things were still alive, writhing on the ground trying to achieve flight again. Their attempts were in vain, their injured wings spasmed at each attempt. I crept over, unsure if they could still fire their projectiles. A point blank shot to each put them out of their misery.

It suddenly dawned on me that my side was hurting a lot. The spines had kept the wound open and I was bleeding a fair amount. I really need to get better protection.

I gripped the spines with telekinesis and yanked them out quickly, painfully but quickly. I gave a little yelp of pain as each of them was pulled out. I then downed a healing potion. The bleeding stopped. The flesh around the wound began to grow rapidly, sealing the hole. A light grey coat regrew on the healed area. Potent stuff.

I took a moment to rest. My hooves were killing me, and my stomach began to growl. I took out a small pack of rations and tore into it. The stuff was bland, taste being something that was overlooked in the creation of these things, but it managed to subside my hunger for the time being. My legs ached, but I needed to continue on. I hated being out here, but I knew that I needed to continue onward if I was going to have a chance to find Volt.

These bugs were rather plentiful. I encountered a small swarm of about three, but I was learning how to deal with them more effectively, and this time I was able to avoid taking any damage more serious than a few cuts. I imagined that the megaspells and their radiation had transformed these things into what they were today. I couldn’t really imagine anything so disturbing living in Equestria before it was a wasteland. I also became even more wary of radiation. If it could create these things, I didn’t want to see what it could do to ponies.

I had been traveling for about an hour, progress mainly hindered by those pests. I wasn’t adjusted to traveling long distances, as everything in the Stable was a short walk away. I passed by several buildings, long abandoned and falling apart. As much as I wanted to investigate the buildings, I wasn’t on a sightseeing tour, I needed to hurry and find Dead Volt. I couldn’t afford to be distracted by the buildings and all their potential wealths...

Old habits die hard. I took an hour or two to search through the buildings. Most of them contained locked containers, which I cracked open fairly easily. Years of lockpicking in the Stable. For completely honest reasons that is; accidentally locking myself out of my room, losing my key to my maintenance locker, somepony carelessly hiding away something valuable in a container...

Inside most of the lockers were potions and ammo of varying types. Strangely, there were copious amounts of bottlecaps hidden away in the lockers. If my life in the Stable has taught me anything, it is that if somepony locks something away, it must be valuable. I placed the bottlecaps in my bag. If they turned out to be useful, good for me. If they were garbage, I would just toss them.

I also found a bottle of a strange liquid. ‘Sparkle-cola’ was what the label said, the label was also boasting that it had ‘a delicious carrot flavor’. I wasn’t sure what a carrot was. The cap was well sealed, so it was possible that it was still drinkable. Probably. From what I had seen earlier, the water was irradiated, so best to have something to drink that won’t cause me to grow an extra head.

One thing that disturbed me was the lack of life. I had found many mutated abominations during my travel, but I hadn’t encountered anypony since I had left the Stable. Did the megaspells destroy all intelligent life in Equestria, leaving only these mutated beasts? No, there were still signs of life among the wreckage of the buildings. Piles of rubble arranged like walls, the occasional blood spatter that couldn’t be more than a day or two old, the spent casings of-oh crap.

The sound of gunfire was close, but from what I could tell, it wasn’t directed at me. I swear my curiosity will get me killed, but after being alone in the wasteland for a few hours, I was curious as to if there was anypony out there except me, Volt, and the few he brought with him. I crept over to the noise, staying out of sight as best I could and hiding behind the rubble.

What I saw was unlike any creature I had ever encountered in my readings. It looked feline in appearance, but was much more gruesome looking than any cat could be. It had a reddish mane that encompassed its neck, a pair of wings sprouted from its back, and an odd looking tail trailed behind it, oozing a greenish substance as it run. Running from the beast was a small group of rough looking ponies, one of them was bleeding from the side. A unicorn with a yellow coat that was riddled with scars was levitating a pistol behind her as she ran, firing round after round into the beast, but it was unwavering in its pursuit.

“You are not a hero, Live Wire. Don’t try to be a hero. Don’t do something stupid,” I muttered to myself. The beast took another swipe at the trio, hitting the bleeding earth pony. A flash of blood soaked the area around him as he landed on the ground, unmoving. “Don’t do something stupid.”

I rushed in to do something stupid.

I had no idea if I could even harm this thing, let alone kill it. It was bleeding from several of the small wounds that the mare’s pistol made. One of the wings on its back had a large hole through it, much larger than any pistol could make. One of the back legs bent at an odd angle, and at this distance I could tell that it was shifting its weight onto the other three. I knew that if it could bleed, there was a big chance it could die.

I pulled out one of the pistols and the shotgun, levitating them beside me. I doubted I could fire them both at once, but I could at least switch between them. I was close to the creature, it either didn’t know I was there, or was focusing on the pony firing at it.

It took another slash at the two, catching the unicorn on her side, drawing what looked like a lot of blood. She kept going though, as stopping meant sure death. I had to act now.

Using the pistol, I opened fire on the creature. I didn’t use S.A.T.S., I would save that for the shotgun. The beast took three shots to the back, which did very little aside from making it focus on me. Just as I planned. It turned, showing a snarling maw of sharp teeth for a mouth.

I hoped this worked.I focused my mind, attempting something that was dangerous, idiotic, and just as likely to get me killed as it would be to work. My horn began to glow a familiar shade of grey, soon followed by a few sparks.

The beast was almost upon me. I couldn’t break my attention to run, I just stood there, an easy target. The sparks began to arc, gaining power and intensity. I could feel the power building, straining my magic beyond any limit I knew.

The air crackled around me, the beast mere feet away as began to leap at me. I released the spell I was holding, a bolt of electricity soared at the beast, making contact. I didn’t expect it to kill, but it did what I needed. The beast was momentarily stunned.

It was knocked onto its back after being hit full force by one of my only spells. It would be back on its paws in a few seconds, I had to make this count. I kicked on S.A.T.S. and fired two shotgun blasts almost point blank into the beast’s throat. A fountain of blood erupted from the neck of the creature as it was hit by the pellets. Whatever this creature was, I had just killed it.

My head was throbbing from casting the spell, but I wasn’t at the point of a burnout. I had been used to casting the spell continuously, but only at low levels. Building it up that much had taken a lot out of me. I certainly wouldn’t be doing that again anytime soon.

I stood there for a few moments, my breath ragged and heavy. The adrenaline from the experience coursed through my veins. Blood began to pool where the corpse of the creature lie, mixing with the green fluid dripping from the stump tail.

I looked over at where the two wastelanders were. The unicorn laid injured on the ground and the earth pony mare was simple shocked, pardon my choice of words, by the display. I trotted over to the two, lifting a healing potion out of my bag. I could be called selfish, maybe even greedy, but I wasn’t going to leave another pony to die.

“Thanks,” the unicorn murmured as she took the bottle into her magic. “Damn manticores.” She downed the contents of the bottle. I watched as the wound began to close. She was lucky it hadn’t hit any organs or severed her leg. I knew that healing potions were powerful, but I doubted they could regrow limbs.

“Manticores?” I questioned. Those things had a name?

She glanced at the hunk of metal attached to my leg. “Stable pony?” she asked. I nodded. “Of course,” she sighed as she shook her head. “Manticores are vicious creatures that have a habit of attacking ponies unprovoked. Tough to kill, and they often travel in packs. Our camp was lucky, if you could say that, enough to only be attacked by a stray. You can see the result.” She gestured in the opposite direction with the floating bottle. A trail of blood and the occasional corpse clearly indicated which direction the manticore had came from.

“So now, it looks like it is just me and Sugar Cakes,” she waved the empty bottle at the other mare. As I turned to look at her, she had a scowl on her face and a pistol in her mouth. Her jaw shook with the recoil of the shot, and the bullet strayed from her intended target, me. “What the hell are you doing?” shouted the unicorn. She wrestled the pistol out of the other’s mouth with her telekinesis.

“Killing him before he kills us!” the other responded, still with a look of hatred on her face.

“What? Why would I kill you?” I said, shocked by almost being killed by one of the ponies I saved.

“Yeah, he saved us!” said the yellow mare.

“He isn’t one of us! He killed the Manticore, now he is going to kill us!” she raved. If that was how the wasteland worked, I didn’t want to stay longer than I had to.

She lunged at me, only to be intercepted by the other mare. The unicorn was at a disadvantage. The earth pony was clearly stronger to begin with, and she was still injured. The first two ponies I had encountered in the wasteland, and one of them wanted to kill me while the other was fighting to protect me.

I lifted the pistol up and fired it into the ground, not wanting to hit either of them, just to get their attention. The two ceased their fighting at the sound of a gunshot, but the earth pony still had malice in her eyes. She lunged at me. Then the look of malice in her eyes was gone, replaced by a look of pain.

I had instinctively fired at the lunging wastelander, hitting her in chest. I had likely hit a major organ, possibly her heart or lungs. She was dead in seconds. I looked her in the eyes as she died, her mouth forming one last profanity.

I had killed again. This time it was in self defense, but I still couldn’t shake off the fact that I had killed four ponies today. I was turning into a murderer. Maybe that pony was right to be afraid. I looked over at the other mare, hoping she wouldn’t decide to put a bullet through my skull for killing her friend.

“Good riddance,” she spat. What?

“I thought she was your friend,” I stammered, shocked by her lack of care for the dead mare.

“Friend? Her?” she chuckled. She was laughing at the death of another! “Listen buddy, Sugar Cakes was as close to being a raider as you could get.”

“Raider?” I asked.

“Right, stable pony,” she said, cursing under her breath. “A raider is essentially a pony that will kill you just so they could kill you. Worst of the worst. At least bandits have the sense to kill you for caps. They might even let you live if they are feeling generous.” Was she talking about bottlecaps? “You killing Sugar Cakes only saved me from having to do it myself.”

“Right, so who are you?” I asked.

“The name’s Razor Petal,” she said. “I used to work with a small band of ponies, but they all got killed by that Manticore, or they ran off. Either way, I am by myself now. What about you? What’s your tale, stable pony?”

I told her about my Stable, how it was dying from the loss of power, how my brother caused it all, and I told her I was looking for him now. “Why you looking for him? Going to put a bullet through his skull for dragging you into this?” she chuckled.

“No, I just want to know why he did this. And if possible, I want to retrieve the gems he stole. Maybe the Stable could be fixed,” I said. I remembered my promise to shoot him if his reason was not good enough, but I skipped over the fact.

“Well, if he is heading South, he is likely heading towards Circus.”

“A circus? You mean with clowns and stuff?” She had to be joking.

“Worse. Circus is a settlement commanded by the Laughingstocks, a group of mercenaries and bounty hunters with freaky abilities,” she said with a face that showed she wasn’t joking, though she did wave her hooves in the air for emphasis when she said ‘freaky abilities’. “They aren’t as bad as raiders, but some of the group has a sick sense of humor, so don’t upset them.”

“Alright, thanks for the advice.” I began to trot in the direction that E.F.S. told me was South. Petal was walking behind me. “Uhm, are you following me?”

“Didn’t you hear? My entire camp is dead or gone. I don’t have anything to do, might as well accompany you to Circus. Besides, a stable pony like you won’t last long in the wasteland.”

“Excuse me, but who saved you from that Manticore?”

“Beginner’s luck. I’ve lived in the wasteland my entire life. If you want to survive it, you’re going to need help from wherever you can get it.” She trotted ahead of me.

Ponies who would kill me just to kill me, a gang that had a clown motif, giant manticores that attack ponies on sight, flying tumor bug things that attack for no reason, and ponies I help either trying to kill me or laughing off the death of an ally. I had only been here a few hours, and the Wasteland was already starting to disturb me.

“Mind if we stop by my camp? I got a few things I want to grab before we set off,” said the brown-maned mare.

The path to the camp was a bloody one. Four, maybe five ponies lay dead on the trail, a victim of that creature. That thing wasn’t hunting, it had enough victims to feed it for a while. No, it was slaughtering them. Killing them just to kill them.

The scene of the camp was just as bad. One of the carts was smashed to bits, an unfortunate pony was impaled by one of the broken pieces of wood. A group of ponies were scattered around the cart, limbs hacked off by the beast’s claws. I noticed one pony that only had one open wound, and not a very large one at that.

“One of the reasons Manticores are so dangerous is because of that,” the mare began, nodding towards the corpse with the single injury. “If they don’t kill you with their claws, they’ll stab you with their tail. Thing’s full of poison that’ll kill you quick. The worst part is how they can fly. They’ll swoop out of the sky and crush you beneath their paws. If you see a big shadow over you, it’s probably too late. Though if you shoot off their tail and put a couple holes in their wings, you only have to worry about their teeth and claws, which are still deadly.”

A few minutes ago, I thought that bloatsprites, that was what Razor called them, were a major threat. Now there were apparently poisonous, flying, deadly Manticores. How anypony can survive out here is beyond me.

Razor trotted up to an overturned cart, trying to flip it with her magic. It seemed she was a much more powerful telekinetic than I was, easily lifting the wagon. Underneath were two ponies, dead no more than a few hours ago. Both had a taken a single bullet to their head. I became a little uncomfortable at this sight. Manticores didn’t carry guns for all I knew.

She lifted up a saddle bag from one of the dead ponies, taking a few supplies out of it and transferring them to hers. She did the same with other things the cart contained. I wanted to voice my concerns about what sort of band she traveled with, but she beat me to it. She was becoming scary with her mind reading.

“Yeah, I was a bandit,” she said with a tone that sounded almost mournful. She turned to look at me. “I didn’t like it, but survival in the wasteland is almost impossible by yourself.” She was trembling with anger, provoked by her own hatred at the things she had done.

Before me was a pony who stole what she needed in order to survive. Sometimes she did so with force, maybe resulting in the loss of the life of another. “Okay,” was all I said.

She looked at me, stunned. “You...you don’t have a problem with this?”

I had no right to be offended by it. “I was somewhat of a thief in my Stable,” I said. There, I admitted it. Happy? “From what I have seen of the wasteland, survival has got to be tough.” I remembered the look of hatred in Sugar Cakes’s eyes, wanting to kill me for my supplies. No, not hatred. Crazed desperation. “You are a good pony, you tried to save me from Sugar Cakes. From what I have seen, you are no raider.”

I was new to the wasteland. I had no right to judge those that have had to endure the hardships of the land for their entire lives. That doesn’t mean I won’t stop a wicked pony from killing somepony else, but what is in the past is in the past. Razor saved me from somepony that wanted me dead. If she were a raider, she would have let me die, or even killed me herself.

She stood silently for a minute, then spoke. “I wasn’t the one who killed those two. Our band usually tried to avoid killing, just taking what we could from others and letting them leave. Cakes decided to put bullets in their skulls when they didn’t give up the bags,” she said mournfully. She didn’t look at me, just at the two dead ponies. “But there were some I killed...”

She turned back to me. “Let’s just go,” was all she said as she began to walk to the south. I silently followed after her. First two ponies I meet in the wasteland, one wanted to kill me, the other reveals her inner turmoils to me.

Razor proved to be a helpful ally. She knew a lot about the wasteland, and imparted what she could of that information to me. As it turned out, bottle caps were the currency of the wasteland. Weird. I was glad I saved the few I had found earlier.

She told me about some of the more dangerous creatures in the wasteland. Hellhounds were the worst ones in this area but they weren’t very common, but there were also bloodwings, mutated bats that can drain your blood in seconds, and they were plentiful. Manticores were one of the more dangerous ones due to them being in packs, but a lone one rarely provided much trouble unless it catches you off guard. She smacked me on the side of my head when I asked why her group couldn’t deal with it.

She tried to explain the concept of the various factions in the area, but that mostly went over my head. From what I could understand of it, there were a few major factions in this area of the Wasteland. The Laughingstocks, the Slavers, and the Iron Hoof were the major ones apparently.

She explained that the Laughingstocks were ponies afflicted by something called ‘Killing Joke’ and gained strange abilities from it. They operated out of a settlement called Circus, which was to the South of us. They were mainly mercenaries and bounty hunters.

The Slavers were what they sounded like. They find ponies, enslave them, sell them. I didn’t like the thought of it, but at least they were better than raiders. There were many small settlements of slavers, but the main hub was a place called Paradise. “Anypony that isn’t a slaver is free game to them. Don’t get caught by them and expect some bleeding heart to try to free you. Most of the time, that just ends with the slaves’ heads blowing up.” Explosive collars seemed like a bit much.

The Iron Hoof used to be a part of a larger group of ponies called ‘Steel Rangers’ but they broke away for some reason. I knew somewhat about the Steel Rangers. I had collected any bit of information about them I could get my hooves on. I will admit I had idealized them when I was young. Now I learned that they recruited groups of bandits and raiders.

“I think they are building an army,” said Razor,

“What makes you think that?”

“Steel Rangers usually hoard technology and weapons. The leader of the Rangers in this area didn’t agree with just hoarding it, she wanted to use it instead. I think they’re intent on taking over the Wasteland.”

“I don’t see why that would be a bad thing,” I said. “From what I had seen of the wasteland so far, it had no form of government, no control over the chaos. Putting somepony in charge might make things better.”

“It wouldn’t be bad if Silver Star wasn’t a psychopath. Her idea of control is to kill those who oppose her.” Reminds me of a certain mare in the Stable.

“Now I would love to continue this crash course of wasteland politics, but I think we have company,” she whispered, crouching behind a chunk of a wall. I checked E.F.S. and saw six red dots moving about. I really needed to pay more attention to this thing, I had already been ambushed by a few swarms of bloatsprites. If it weren’t for Razor, I would have walked straight into an ambush.

We crept forward to investigate the enemies. I was wondering why we didn’t just go around them, avoiding the conflict entirely, but I wasn’t going to argue with the ex(?)-bandit though.

Six ponies matching Razor’s description of what raiders looked like were preoccupied with defiling the walls of the building they were in. Graffiti depicting lewd pictures and various profanities coated the wall, made with fresh red paint. Wait...

Laying on the ground was the body of a unicorn buck, his throat slit. A pool of blood coated the ground around him. The raiders would dab their hooves in it and go about their painting, unaware of our presence. The whole thing was very disturbing, especially the enthusiasm of the raiders as they painted.

I started to levitate my pistol up, taking aim at the unicorn with the rifle on her back. Razor waved a hoof in front of me, stopping me from firing. She searched in her saddle bag for a second and levitated out what looked like a metal apple. “Don’t shoot yet, this may save us the trouble,” she whispered. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but she levitated the apple thing away from us, hovering it over the raiders. It hovered there for a few seconds, then a little metal pin was pulled out of it. A second later it dropped on the corpse of the unicorn, right in the middle of the group.

The raiders turned at the fleshy thud it made as it hit the body. “SHIT!” shouted one of the raiders as they clambered to escape. Razor pushed me down behind the wall with a hoof, a second later a loud, wet explosion was heard. I popped my head back over the wall, levitating the pistol cautiously. The corpse of the unicorn was no more, the walls and the ground around it were soaked with blood, covering the vulgar paintings of the raiders. Half of the raiders lie dead on the ground, not quick enough to escape the blast. Two of them were alive, but bleeding from shrapnel, the last was levitating her shotgun around, searching for the perpetrators of the attack.

I brought up S.A.T.S. and queued up four shots from the pistol, all of them aimed at the standing raider. First shot grazed her shoulder, second hit her side as she turned to face me, third missed entirely, as did the fourth. When time began to move regularly, I received a buckshot to the chest. I had never been shot before, not counting the spines from the bloatsprites. All I can say is that it really hurt.

A few of the pellets smashed against my barding, not penetrating, but still causing an impact. Some of the pellets missed entirely, shotguns were not very accurate at long range. The rest of the pellets punched through my barding, sinking into my chest.

A shot right to the head ended the raider. Razor fired at the other two before they could even get their weapons readied. She was an effective killer, I’ll give her that.

I levitated out a health potion, intent on healing these wounds before they get worse. “Don’t!” shouted Razor. I hesitated on drinking the potion. “If you have bullets in you, a health potion will only close them in.” Ok, potions became somewhat dangerous now.

She walked over to me and looked at the wounds. “I ain’t a medical pony, but I think I know how to fix this.” Her horn started glowing. “Now this is going to hurt, a lot.” That was reassuring.

The pain in my chest doubled as I felt the pellets wiggling. I was lucky they didn’t hit anything major, but this still hurt. Slowly, one by one, the pellets popped out, along with a good amount of blood. Finally, the last of the pellets came out. She needed to work on here telekinesis some, but I was glad I didn’t have bits of metal still in me.

She levitated the potion back up. “Now it’s safe to drink.” Glug, glug, glug. The wounds tingled for a few seconds, and then sealed shut. I had lost a fair amount of blood today, and was unsure if potions could replace it. I needed to avoid getting shot any further. “You’re lucky I stopped you from sealing those pellets in your chest. Surgery in the wasteland is either dangerous or expensive. Sometimes both.” First rule of the wasteland, don’t get shot. Second rule, when you fail rule one, remove the bullet before healing. Gah, somepony needed to make a survival guide or something.

“What was that thing you had earlier?” I asked. She looked puzzled. “The metal apple?”

“They really don’t teach stable ponies anything, do they? That was a grenade. A throwable explosive. When you see one, get back.” From the damage it did earlier, I would have to remember to follow this lesson. “I really do have to tell you everything the wasteland can throw at you, don’t I?” I nodded, and she just sighed as we searched the dead. “You’re like a foal, asking questions about everything,” she muttered.

Something Razor forgot to mention about raiders, they are everywhere! Every other building we searched had a small group, all eager to put a bullet in us, or use whatever makeshift melee item they had. I might have felt bad killing so many ponies if it were not for the fact that all raiders seemed to be crazy. Half of those we found were in the middle of some form of mutilation of a corpse. The others simply attacked us.

I was shocked to see how badly these constant attacks ate through our supplies, the buildings we scavenged and the raiders we killed did little to replenish them. These raiders had very little in terms of supplies on them. Maybe that was why they were so eager to kill us, to take our supplies when we were dead. Killing others as a means of surviving.

As it turned out, I was bad at not getting shot. My barding provided little protection to bullets. I briefly considered taking the armor the raiders had, but eventually decided against it. Something about wearing barding that came off the corpse of a pony I killed didn’t feel right to me. Besides, it would be a terrible thing to get shot because somepony thought you were a raider.

“Hey, we are running low on potions,” I said to the scarred mare. We had just cleared out another raider group, this one had a few pony heads on pikes lying around.

“Yeah, I think there might be a clinic somewhere up ahead,” she said. I heard a little beep on my PipBuck. I looked down at it.

These alerts were likely going to become annoying, but they were helpful. The screen now displayed a building a short distance away, labeling it the Ministry of Peace Clinic.

“What’s the Ministry of Peace?” I asked.

“Really? What do they teach you stable ponies?” she sighed as she shook her head. I will be honest, school was not something the Stable did well. Most ponies were only trained for the profession we were going into, with some general lessons that didn’t go very in depth. Most of my knowledge of Equestria came from books and other resources that I... acquired. “Back during the war, there were six ministries, each tasked with various roles. The Ministry of Peace is the only one I really care about right now. They focused on healing ponies and winning the war peacefully.”

“Well it sure looks like they did a great job,” I replied flatly as I looked at the destroyed building and the expanses of the wasteland.

“Doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that when the megaspells did hit, they left plenty of potions and supplies in their clinics just ripe for the taking,” she said as she began walking in the direction of the clinic. “Hell, maybe if we’re really lucky, they got some whisky stashed in there.”

Getting to the clinic was not as easy as the PipBuck’s map had said. In between here and there were about a dozen raiders, drawn by the earlier explosions and gunfire. As it turns out, sniping with a pistol is not very effective. Even with S.A.T.S. the shots either missed or did very little damage. It did however alert every raider to our position.

It had been a few hours since my encounter with the manticore, and my horn was feeling much better. Levitating a weapon wasn’t as exerting. I felt confident enough that I could use the shotgun without it being knocked out of my magical grip.

A few of the raiders wielding melee weapons had rushed ahead. Earth ponies with shovels and knives in mouths charged at the two unicorns wielding a pistol and a shotgun. You have to admit, they had guts.

They had guts on the ground that is. The shotgun was a twelve shot, taking down a raider with two point blank shots at most. I managed to take down a few using the two shot method. Razor took down another couple by a combination of her brute strength and her deadly accuracy with the pistol.

Click.

And now I was out of ammo, with a large earth pony buck wielding a shovel charging at me. He leaped up and slammed into me full force. I was lucky I didn’t land underneath his hooves, as that might have crushed me. Instead, I landed a few feet away from him. He took a second to regain himself, and was rushing at me again. Well, I was screwed.

That was until Razor shot him point blank with the pistol, coating me in some of his brain matter. I fought the urge to lose my lunch and stood back up, reloading the shotgun as I did so.

The raiders had not stopped firing at us. Luckily their aim was terrible, and they didn’t have S.A.T.S. to help them. I did. Four pistol shots, two directed at the heads of the rifle wielders. One of the shots had missed, but the other three hit their marks, killing the two.

Razor took down another two. Only two red dots were left on E.F.S., one of which had a shotgun. Remembering my last encounter with a buckshot, I kept my distance and fired at them with a pistol. A lucky shot hit one of them, a unicorn mare, in the neck. She fell to the ground, trying to press her hooves against the wound to stop the bleeding. Razor got in a shot that I think was more skill than it was luck, hitting the buck with the pistol in his teeth square in the eyes.

I was injured badly. One of their shots had hit me in my right foreleg, causing me to fall to the ground after the fight was finished. Razor wasn’t as badly hurt, but I could tell she needed a potion. I tried to walk, but fell to the ground again due to the pain. I laid there for a few seconds, unable to move because of my injuries. We were very close to the clinic, almost right outside. So close, yet so far.

The movement of a dot on E.F.S. caught my attention. It wasn’t a raider we had missed, it was yellow. It wasn’t Razor either, her dot was off to the side. I looked in the direction of the dot but saw nothing. Suddenly the dot spun around to my side. I diverted my sight to the left, wondering what it was that was driving E.F.S. crazy. It swung back around to the front. Whatever it was, it was circling me. I saw nothing in front of me.

I glanced up, and was met by a shadowy figure flying through the air. It resembled some of the pictures I had seen in some of my books. A winged pony. A pegasus.

The pegasus landed in front of me, a black coated filly with a dark grey mane that had a single red streak through it. Most of her face was concealed by a surgical mask, but I could see her golden eyes focusing on me. She turned her head back to the clinic and shouted, “Hey! We got a live one here!”

A second dot blipped onto E.F.S., still yellow. My vision was beginning to blur, but I could make out what appeared to be a large unicorn walking from the clinic to where I was. The buck was much larger than me, more muscular than most ponies.

A metal clad hoof stomped down in front of me, followed by one with a white coat. I looked up through my blurry vision and looked into his eyes. His horn was glowing a glorious white. His head lowered down, his horn aimed at me.

“Don’t worry,” he said in a calm voice. “Going to have you fixed up soon.” His horn gave a flash as I felt my body go numb. A familiar numbness. One that I remembered because it was the second time it had been cast on me today.

I lost consciousness.

=====================================================================

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Rapid Reload- All your weapons reload 25% faster.
Quest Perk: Lightning Bolt (level 1)-In an act of desperation, you found a way to weaponize your electrical spell. Lightning bolt can be cast to damage and possibly stun opponents. Lightning bolt can be cast a limited amount of times a day.
(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 good tale.)