Dear Diary,

The four of us got up pretty early considering just how late we had gone to bed the previous night. We had a quick breakfast, then we set off on our adventure. We needed to cross the freeway so we had to go back to the bridge, which fortunately was free of griffons this time. It's amazing just how different a place looks between night and day, with the daytime world appearing much bigger and feeling vastly more safe.

As we crossed the bridge, I looked down at the freeway below and saw a lifeless ditch full of parked cars. Most of them had been broken into. A few articles of clothing, atlases, vehicle registration papers, and other stuff littered the roadway, things that were presumably thrown out of the cars when they were being cleaned out by looters. Strangely, none of their car alarms were sounding, so either the looters had found a way to disable them, or the alarms had been left to blare until the car batteries ran dry. Instead, a chilling silence rang through the air, now devoid of all the noise that one takes for granted when living in a city. Nothing moved except for a few crows picking around the decaying bodies of the griffons we had fought the previous night. The ominous silence and the emptiness of our surroundings seemed to indicate that we were now entering dangerous territory, a land of death from which, if we returned alive, would forever change us.

The others in my party also seemed to feel this, save Pumpkin Spice (who, need I remind you, had never been invited to travel with us in the first place). She had retained that same carefree attitude we had seen since we’d (I’d) met her. When the road we were following turned into a highway and we ascended the ramp, Pumpkin Spice was suddenly nervous and insisted that we take another way because “we might get hit by a car.” Now, I admit that even I felt nervous when I first started walking on roadways like this, but she insisted that we were doing something dangerous, and I don’t think she was joking at all. Later, when we told her that we were going to the mall, she got really excited and talked about what she intended to buy there.

At first I just thought she was being dramatic, but then I realized that this was just part of a long pattern of behavior: the casual clothing, loudly singing in an ambush zone, her mad dash towards the coffee shop, the reluctance to break basic laws like jaywalking or trespassing or burglary even though they were no longer enforced…

I don’t think she quite understands that all of that is now in the past and that we’re not in Equestria anymore.

What the hell was this? How could she be so dumb? I mean, I knew she was a bimbo before, but how could anypony possibly be this stupid? I don’t know if it’s just some weird coping device or if she’s actually delusional or what, but I-- just-- I can’t even.

As annoying as it is to travel with somepony who seems this detached from the world, I realized that I could use this to my advantage. She didn’t participate in the fight last night and seemed distraught at the sight of the ‘legendary’ griffon’s corpse. Perhaps if we were to get ourselves into a really dangerous situation, (like the one we had planned to go into today), then maybe...

We took the ‘Greenfield Road’ exit, which I had correctly guessed was just before the mall. It also happened to pass by the office park, which allowed us to do a little bit of what I call ‘flyby recon.’ From the outside it looked completely abandoned, but then I realized that the windows on three of the five red brick buildings had been boarded up with scrap metal and there were a few ponies on the roofs, likely snipers. To my great disappointment, I reasoned that the complex must have been taken over by some raider group, or possibly by this ‘Pegasus Enclave’ thing, but I was too far away to make out any details. I guess we’re going to find out in a few hours when we storm the place.

We kept traveling down the road a short ways to get to the mall, passing by a graveyard on the way. When we finally got to the mall, we discovered that most of the exits had been boarded up, so we circled the building until we finally found an entrance almost back where we started. The entrance in question had been the entrance of a sporting goods store, where two glass doors had been boarded up to protect the building from the outside while still remaining usable as a doorway, with a small block of wood bolted to the inside (but no the outside) of each door to serve as makeshift handles. Several indentations on the inside edges of each door indicated that some robber had managed to pry these doors open with a crowbar-- apparently it had never occurred to whoever had made their nest inside to install a padlock. These doors hung wide open, inviting any who wished to enter the structure’s cavernous depths.

We entered the mall, only to find the messiest building we had yet encountered. Messier yet than all of the abandoned retail establishments we had passed thus far, completely trashed in the panic before the bombs and further trashed by scavengers and squatters. It was almost as if the new owners of this mall were deliberately trying to be messy, as if to rebel against “the social construct of cleanliness” or some shit like that. In addition to the normal dust and dirt you would expect from a heavily trafficked building that hadn’t been cleaned in a year, many food wrappers lay strewn across the floor, many of them flattened into the ground by repeated hoof traffic. The advertisements of the old mall still remained on the walls, but most of them had been defaced or plastered over with vulgar graffiti.

In this store, most of the merchandise had been piled against the walls and shoved aside. Much of the camping gear and sports equipment which could conceivably be used for combat had been looted, but the store had enough in stock that it would take an army to remove it all in one trip. Grapevine eagerly galloped over to a pile of propane canisters, eager to find something to refill her flamethrower, but was quickly disappointed to find that they had all been emptied. Strewn throughout the room were numerous canvas chairs and sleeping bags arranged in circles around campfires and grills. Most of these had half-rotten corpses in various positions, though many of the ones in the bags had been clutching their throats. The fur and skin had been pierced through in many locations by very tiny, irregular holes. Their bodies were extremely thin and pale, but it didn’t appear like any of them had died of starvation; if I had to guess, they had died of some other cause, then have insects dig into their bodies and devour all the edible tissue. I soon began to notice several trails of dead ants and flies throughout the room, as well as several strategically placed pest traps. Perhaps the insects had resorted to eating these after they had run out of corpse?

The air smelled musty and putrid, indicating a lack of circulation, as if every conceivable hole had been blocked. The rot was made somewhat bearable by the smell of propane, which hung throughout the air.

Towards the back of the room, I stumbled upon a corpse in a sleeping bag with some sheets of paper sprawled out in front of it. A pen next to the corpse’s hoof, identifying it as the author. The hoofwriting indicated that the author was probably a mare. I will slip these papers between the pages of my journal for you to read:

December 18:

The world ended almost two months ago. I should feel lucky to still be alive, I guess, but I don’t. Every day since then has been a living nightmare. Most of our friends and family are gone, and everything just feels empty. Roving gangs of looters walk the streets, pillaging everything they can find and killing anypony who gets in their way. We’ve all begun to run out of food, so we need to go out there and scavenge.

It doesn’t make any sense to live in suburbia anymore-- we all live so far away from everything and each other. We’ve all decided to pool our resources and live here, in this old mall. We’re abandoning the creature comforts of our homes, but to be safe and have a community again makes it all worth it.

December 20:

It’s cold, unbelievably cold. We’ve had on and off snowfall since the End, but it’s the dead of winter and it’s starting to get colder than any of us had ever imagined. The temperature dropped below -20 today, and three layers still isn’t enough to do it. Hank wants us to start boarding up every window, door, vent, and crack there is except for the front door to keep the warmth in. Sure we’ll be blocking out all the sunlight, but Hank assures us we have enough propane to keep the lights on for a while. In the spring we can think about installing skylights, but for now we just have to survive the winter. He made it clear he wants absolutely no windows left unboarded-- we’re trying to keep robbers away by ‘playing dead’ and pretending this place is abandoned. I just hope this all works.

December 23:

We’ve finished boarding everything up, just in time for Hearth’s Warming Eve. It’s already making a difference, and we can comfortably dress down to two layers now. Still, we’re going to sit and sleep close together to stay even warmer. It’s funny-- we’re huddling close in a cave to keep warm, just like our ancestors did on the first HWE. Maybe Equestria will be reborn this way, just like the phoenix, our national bird. It’s a shame that only two of the tribes are represented though. There were a few pegasi with us at the beginning, but we took a vote and decided to ban pegasi for the treason of their fellows. They were nice ponies and I wished them well on whatever their next endeavour is, however slim their chances of survival out there may be. I just hope the rest of us can recreate the magic of Hearth’s Warming without them.

January 7:

Happy new year, I guess. It doesn’t really matter anymore, anyway. We’ve started to notice that some of our ill, old and infants are starting to suffer from some strange disease. There aren’t any doctors among us, so many ponies are freaking out and racking their brains trying to think of what it is. Yellow Canary keeps yapping about some Chollima magic called “fang-shooey” and how the rooms themselves are giving us all bad luck. I have no idea what she’s talking about-- it sounds too far fetched for me.

January 14:

The disease is spreading. A few have actually died. We’re getting desperate now and willing to try just about anything.

January 15:

It worked! We all moved to another part of the compound and it actually worked! It stopped spreading and the infected are beginning to recover. I guess those rooms really were cursed, weren’t they?

January 30:

Just two weeks after we thought we cured it, the curse of fang shooey is back. Maybe we didn’t move far enough? Hope this works.

February 7:

More sickness. It seems to follow us wherever we go. We moved again and quarantined the infected rooms, but we’re all afraid that it might not be enough…

February 15:

Some soldiers moved into the office park nearby. That’s where I wanted us to settle, but all the supplies are right here and nopony wanted to carry them over, so here we are. These guys aren’t thugs like all the others-- they just mind their own business and ignore us. They aren’t any more friendly though, and keep telling us to go away. They’ve started to board the towers up just like we did with their place. We offered to let them move in, but they said something about it distracting them from their ‘mission.’

February 18:

The sickness is back! We’re going to quarantine the area again, but this time leave all the ill inside to die with it. Nopony wants to do this, but we don’t know what else to do. We don’t have a doctor, and those soldier ponies refuse to lend us theirs. Are we going to have to wear masks or something?

March 3:

A big snowstorm’s coming, everypony can feel it. We’ll all be huddled inside for a day or two. We’ve got just enough propane to last us a week, and we know where we can find more after the storm passes. A few ponies tried to leave because of the curse, but Hank insists that we can only survive if we stick together.

March 5:

Bad storm. Can’t leave. Everypony sick. Air too thin. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. Bodiz turn purpl.

Fang Shooey

After reading these notes, the creepy environment suddenly acquired a sinister and deadly feeling. Despite knowing that this ‘curse’ or ‘disease’ was likely not going to affect me, I wanted to make my time in this deathtrap as short as possible.

Grapevine had come over and began reading the list as well. Towards the end, her eyes lit up.

“Woah, that’s one serious curse!” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

“It wasn’t a curse,” I said. “They were burning all this propane in an unventilated space. They clearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Grapevine blinked, then looked around at all the grills and propane canisters. Then it clicked.

“Ohhhhhh! That makes perfect sense. Uh, I mean-- I totally knew that all along!”

“Riiiiight,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Now, with the door pried open it’s probably safe, right?”

“Of course,” said Grapevine. “Though we should prob’ly limit our time here. Y’know, just in case is a curse.”

“Totally,” I said. “By the way, where’d Pumpkin Spice go?”

“Deeper into the cave,” she said. “Can you go in and find her?”

I went deeper into the mall in search of more supplies. Unfortunately, I was only met with mountains of junk: cheap plastic trinkets of all kinds were stacked in mounds within each store, simple mementos of a bygone age. Everything useful to a survivalist like myself had been looted long ago, either in the two months before the mall had been inhabited or in the five months afterward. Anything remotely edible had either been eaten, looted, or spoiled and thrown out or consumed by insects. Of course, I had learned from my earlier adventures of dumpster diving that useful items can be found anywhere, but I certainly wasn’t willing to stay in this place for very long.

And why would I? It was the perfect horror movie setup: dark and dismal, somewhat confining, and with the occasional sound of dripping water or bits of rubble falling from the ceiling. All I could hear was the sound of my own hoofsteps-- not even rodents were willing to venture into this place, and that’s telling. There were occasional lights in the darkness, where the old skylights once stood. The apocalypse had done some serious damage to this building and probably broken many of these skylights. The squatters had attempted to patch these holes up, but they did such a hasty job that some of the planks had already begun to fall down. Through these holes water and snow had fallen, and created large puddles in the middle of the hallways. These mixed with the dust and dirt which had accumulated on the unclean floors to create mud. I noticed a trail of fresh hoofprints wandering down the hall and towards a large shoe store, next to a trendy clothing boutique, next to a....

She would probably be here for a very long time.

Grapevine and I walked outside to reunite with Dmitry. We found him talking with a merchant outside of a ‘Quills and Sofas’ outlet that was detached from the main mall.

"Oh, are those your friends?" asked the merchant.

"Yep, there they are," Dmitry replied. "Hey, where's Pumpkin Spice?"

“I thought it best that we leave her here while we go storm the tower,” I said. “She isn’t really much of a fighter.”

“Well, I appreciate your concern for your friend’s safety,” Dmitry said. “And since we’ll probably have to rely on stealth, the fewer of us the better.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The three of us already work well as a team. I don't think she could keep up."

Dmitry turned to the merchant and asked, "Do you happen to know anything about that office park just down the street?"

The merchant trembled.

"Oh, I wouldn't go there if I were you," she replied. "It's occupied by some really dangerous thugs."

"We survived the airport," Grapevine said. "I'm sure we'll survive this."

"I don't think you understand," the merchant said. "Those guys have military grade training and weaponry. It's generally believed that they're defects from the CPG."

"Well, they have something in there that we need," I replied. "Something that we can't get anywhere else."

"What is it?" the merchant asked.

"A... umm..." I hesitated to think of some kind of an object we could look for so I wouldn't have to explain the complex reasons for why we really left.

"A... a water chip," I said. "Yeah, that's right, a water chip."

"A 'water chip?'" asked the merchant. "Did you mean water crackers? You can get those anywhere. Heck, I have some with me right now."

"No, it's definitely called a 'water chip,'" I said. "It's a pretty important piece of technology crucial to our water purification system."

The merchant paused in thought. "Hmmm.... Nope, don't think I've ever heard of those before. Then again, water purifiers are outside of my expertise. Though you should probably buy some water crackers. They may be bland, but they last forever and taste slightly better than hardtack."

“I think we have enough food for now, thanks,” I said. “We’ll be back at the stable in a few days.”

“Ya know, we might get thrown for a loop again,” Grapevine said. “We haven’t exactly gone from point A to point B, and the stable didn’t really have much food to begin with.”

“Alright,” I said. “How much?”

As Dmitry and Grapevine bargained for the water crackers, I stared at the top of the office park tower in the distance and wondered how we were going to get past the snipers.

“Thank you kindly,” the merchant said as she received her payment. “And here are the crackers. I’d love to keep talking, but I have to get going. I have to go trade at the mall, then get to Emerald Head by sunset.”

“Yeah, you definitely don’t want to be by the lake at dusk,” Dmitry replied.

There was a brief pause as we each gathered up our stuff and prepared to move out.

“Oh, by the way,” the merchant added, “If you do end up storming the tower, I think they had a hostage.”

“A hostage, eh? Funny story about that,” Dmitry said. “A few days ago we were at the airport and heard that some raiders were keeping a hostage inside the control tower. Turned out to just be a rumor, no hostages whatsoever. I think it might have been a trap.”

“Oh, It isn’t a trap alright,” the merchant said. “It’s real. I actually saw one of their patrols the other day in Marewaukie. They had a captive they said they got from Sandy Shades. They were pretty nice as far as foalnappers go. I felt pretty sorry for her. I offered to buy her freedom, but they wouldn’t sell. So we just kinda traded some supplies and then parted ways.”

“A captive?” asked Dmitry. “Huh. What’d she look like?”

“Let’s see...” said the Merchant. “Well, I remember she was a brown earth pony with a jet black mane, kinda dirty, and she had these big mud-green eyes.”

Then she looked at me.

“Oh, and she was about your age.”

“My age?” I asked. The merchant nodded.

My eyes went wide.

We galloped towards the tower as fast as we could.

“A ‘water chip?’” Dmitry asked between breaths. “A ‘water chip?’ You could have just--”

“It would have taken too long to explain,” I said quickly with a hint of annoyance. “Unless you already told her, did you?”

“Um, no, I didn’t,” he answered. “I merely told her we were on a quest to save our stable, but she didn’t inquire further. It was almost as if she’s encountered ponies like us before.”

“She has,” he said. “She’s met ponies from Stable 75, 74, and even some from 73 from across the river. Can you imagine, rafting across the Coltumbia?”

“I’d love to hear about it, but not now,” I said. “Right now, we’ve got a hostage to save.”

We kept running until we got to the office building.

We entered a spacious lobby which I imagine had once been designed and furnished according to the height of modern architecture, but had since fallen into disrepair. Sleek, stark forms permeated the room and everything seemed to be at an angle, which only served to disorient me. Under any other circumstances I would have stopped to admire it, but at this moment I had three combat trained soldiers shooting at me from behind fortifications made of overturned office furniture and two more shooting at me from the balcony of the floor above. The entrance, which we had so foolishly barged into, was inside a sort of cavity which placed it lower than the rest of the room. The only way we could get out of the cavity without leaving the building was by ascending a short, broad flight of stairs in the middle of the room, which had been barricaded at the top.

Quickly assessing the situation, I realized there was no cover, and if we stood out in the open like this we were sitting ducks. I instinctively dove towards the only place I thought safe: the edge of the cavity just below their barricades. Grapevine and Dmitry, having no other options, followed suit. It turned out to be the perfect place since it was out of their lines of sight and fire. As long as I stood there, they couldn't hurt us, unless they got smart and dropped a grenade over the wall. I sincerely hoped they wouldn't do that.

My luck paid off: instead of taking the obvious choice and trying to flush me out, the soldiers on the ground actually opened the barricade and 'came down the flipping stairs' to fight us. Big mistake for them, because I was ready. Being momentarily stunned by our assault rifle fire, I quickly ran around behind them and up the stairs. Ducking behind their barrier, I had turned the tables on them and now possessed the high ground. Two of them tried to charge up the stairs to retake their position, but a direct spray of bullets pushed them back down. Meanwhile Grapevine had set them on fire. Then I casually tossed a grenade down the stairs to finish them off.

Once all three of us were inside the barrier, the guards on the balcony went to go look for the stairs. We were out of their sight anyway, and they may have gone to fetch reinforcements or better weapons. I didn't know when or where they would attack us, but we had a little time to heal our wounds and prepare.

We found some well-stocked ammo containers behind the barrier which, along with looting the corpses, more than made up what we had expended here today. We began looking around the room for other stuff to loot, but it had already been stripped clean of useful items. There was even a small convenience store coming off of the lobby, but all of the shelves had been emptied. We picked the lock on the stockroom expecting some goodies, but it too had been cleared. Then we sat around the lobby for a few minutes waiting for the two balcony snipers to show up to face us, but they didn’t.

“Come on, let’s go through the corridors,” I said. “They’re probably preparing a big surprise for us if we just stay here.”

“Wait, shouldn’t we look at the directory first?” asked Dmitry, pointing at a directory of the building.

“Why didn’t I notice that?” I chided myself.

Getting the location from the directory, we ventured into the hallways. They were dimly lit and very long and narrow. It was deadly silent except for the sound of our hooves quietly trodding along the carpet.

“This has ambush written alllllll over it,” said Grapevine.

“You’re right,” I said. “Okay, when we get near corners, stick to the walls.”

So we stuck close to the walls, keeping an eye out for anything that might jump out at us from behind a corner or a door.

“Hey, why are we going this way?” asked Grapevine. “Shouldn’t we--”

“Shhhh!” I shushed. “Speak quietly. They might hear us.”

“Sorry,” Grapevine whispered. “It’s just that… shouldn’t we be goin’ down that hallway instead of this one? The elevators were over there.”

“I’m trying to confuse them,” I replied. “They’re probably expecting us to go that way. They know this building better than we do, so we can’t afford to let them ambush us.”

“She’s right,” Dmitry said. “And besides, we don’t even know if the elevators are still working. Or if they have enough power to run them. Just look at how dim these lights are.”

All three of us looked up at the lights and saw that they were, in fact, pretty dim. Even with the sun blotted out by clouds and again by the metal plates over the windows, the lobby was still way lighter than this hallway was.

We kept stalking down the corridor, jumping at every sudden noise just to be safe. I came to realize that I had no idea exactly how many of these ‘Testudos’ there were. There could be a hundred, or two hundred, or a thousand… or maybe they’re only around 30 or 50 ponies. I didn’t know, and I don’t think anypony outside knew either, since these guys tend to keep to themselves in this little compound… aptly fitting that they named themselves after the turtle.

Just as I thought, we arrived at the end of the hallway and found a stairwell. As we climbed it, I looked up and saw that it went all the way up to the building, some twelve stories, and I imagined all the different rooms there were for these ponies to hide in. The thought was dizzying.

We reached the landing for the second floor and I was about to open the door when I suddenly forgot which room we were going to.

“Does anypony remember what the room number was?” I asked.

“Hmmm...” Dmitry thought, then shrugged cluelessly.

“Ah think it was 626,” said Grapevine.

“Are you sure?” asked Dmitry. “626 seems a bit… high.”

“Ah remember it had the numbers ‘6’ and ‘2’ in it,” she said, “and that the first and last ones were the same.”

“Well, your guess is as good as mine,” said Dmitry.

I had a gut feeling it was supposed to be on the second floor, maybe something like 222 or 226, but I didn’t press the issue.

After climbing four flights of stairs, I stopped before opening the door to the sixth floor. The others, who had gone at a slower pace, arrived less exhausted but took longer to get there. By the time they reached the sixth floor landing, I had already caught my breath.

“How can you get up here so fast and not be out of breath?” Dmitry asked.

The truth was that I was panting heavily when I first got up here, but I just smiled and said, “Magic. Now ya ready to open the doo--”

I looked and saw that the door was already open.

“Wha-- how did--?” I asked.

Dmitry smiled and just said, “Magic.”

Then I realized the telekinetic aura was still glowing around his horn and the doorknob.

I gave him a ‘touche’ look, then walked through the doorway.

The sixth floor felt a lot more… lofty… than the first or the second. I could see through the cracks in the window plating that we were definitely very high up. I began to feel a bit nervous because of this, even though I knew consciously that I had nothing to fear and there was no risk of falling off.

We also weren’t as careful when stalking the hallways this time around. Chalk it up to forgetfulness or simply feeling more comfortable in a previously unknown location (even though this was the 6th floor, the hallways looked exactly the same as the first, just slightly more luminous), but my friends didn’t stick to the walls this time and I didn’t remind them.

This may have cost us dearly.

As we got nearer and nearer to Suite 626, I began to feel like somepony was there. But when I looked around, I saw nothing, and when I listened carefully, I heard nothing. I suspected that something was behind a door, but I couldn’t tell which.

Then we reached the entrance to Suite 626, which was distinguished from the rest of the hallway by a set of glass windows looking into a small lobby, with a set of glass double doors in the middle. This setup was shared by roughly all of the suites, with the exception of the ‘Suite 626’ printed next to the doors and the presence of the tenant’s logo, a storm cloud with purple wings and a tricolor lightning bolt shoved up its ass… or was that a tail? Who knows and who cares? Still a strange logo for a utility company. The office inside looked just like every other office we’ve passed, except it was somehow… tidier?

Dmitry noticed the logo and stepped closer to take a good look at it. “Hey, it’s the MoA Office of--”

I was about to go inside when Grapevine gently pried open an unmarked door, her curiosity getting the better of her. Inside was a dimly lit control room filled with tiny glowing lights and screens filled with spreadsheets and graphs. One screen showed a rooftop camera pointed at Mt. Hoof, and one wall prominently featured a map of the province studded with little lights near each major town and city, a few of them glowing. And worst of all, there were three ponies inside the room, one dressed like a scientist and two others in military fatigues.

“Hey!” one of them yelled, and all three drew their guns.

“Come on, this way!” I yelled, running further down the hallway. I presumed that this side of the building would also have a staircase, given the building’s symmetrical design. Just as we got inside the stairwell, we heard a few more soldiers running up the stairs from the floor below. This left us with no choice but to run up the stairwell to the seventh floor, where we had to get off because somepony had spilled a drink on the next flight of stairs.

We bolted down a hallway going towards the back of the building, which worked for a while until we stumbled across a patrol coming from around the corner. Faced with hostiles coming at us from front and back, I had no choice but to duck into an office suite and take cover behind a row of desks.

“We might as well make a stand,” I said as I brought out an assault rifle and aimed it at the doorway. When the first soldier appeared in the doorway, I made quick work of his forelegs, forcing him to limp back into the hallway and out of range.

It was a minute or two before they made their next move. Realizing we had taken up position and that charging wouldn’t work, they got smart and decided to throw a grenade. I set a mine and tossed it out like a frisbee, landing squarely in the middle of the room just before it exploded. I ducked to avoid the explosion, but instead of shrapnel or gunpowder, the room filled with smoke.

“Clever,” I thought, realizing that they intended to blur our field of view and then charge us. “But not clever enough.”

Three of them charged in and set off the mine, not seeing it in all the smoke. They too were injured, and had to drag themselves out of the room to safety. I would have liked to shoot them to finish the job, but the smoke still lingered in the air, preventing seeing and breathing.

Then it took a few minutes longer for them to leave. I considered just getting up and going, but then second-guessed myself; they could just be waiting to ambush us, after all. Finally, they arrived, using probably the silliest mode of attack I had ever seen from a professional soldier: three of them came in riding on the backs of some swivel chairs they pulled from another room like tanks. Protected behind the backs of the tanks, they were protected from anything we could shoot at them, which I admit was actually pretty clever, but there was still one fatal flaw in their strategy:

I simply chucked a grenade over their heads and it exploded behind them. Boom. Totally ass-devastated from the explosion (literally, their asses were devastated). One of them just sputtered to a stop, while the other two reflexively kicked the ground, propelling their chairs towards desks. I decided this was a good time to make a break for it.

In hindsight, maybe I should have waited, but as it stood, there was nopony waiting outside to ambush us except for the ones we had already injured. Our escape was clean, and we continued down the hall we were going, in search of another stairwell.

Upon opening the door to the sixth floor, we were greeted with a hail of bullets. We quickly clambered back up to the seventh where we had came, but found that somepony had locked the door. Dmitry offered to pick it, but then the soldiers on the sixth floor opened the door to the stairwell and we had to keep climbing.

When we reached the eighth, i was alarmed at how much junk there was in the hallways: furniture and crates were piled along the walls, severely limiting our field of vision and ability to run. But it also provided a bit of cover.

We set some mines just outside the stairwell and took cover. The soldiers bolted through the door and right into our trap, instantly taking out the first two or three in their group. Then I threw another grenade, expecting the rest to storm out into the open. But they didn’t. Seeing what had happened to the others, they decided they had better chances just hiding behind the door and shooting at us from behind it. I was certainly disappointed, as it locked us into a long and arduous firefight. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to hit them as long as they stayed behind that door so I stopped shooting, but kept my gun pointed at them in case they came out.

It kept on for ten minutes, though gradually the other side stopped shooting as frequently, and then altogether, creating a tense de facto ceasefire for about five minutes.

We had kind of let our guard down, which I suppose the ceasefire was intended to do, because suddenly we were startled by some gunfire coming from further down our side of the hallway. Grapevine was the closest so she handled the response, but it was a shock for all of us, which distracted me and Dmitry long enough for the stairwell squad to move forward and establish a foothold in the hallway.

We were brought into a long, mahogany paneled, dilapidated corporate boardroom with a set of wide windows on one side, overlooking the sprawling cityscape. For miles upon miles we could see neighborhoods and industrial parks spreading, with generous helpings of half-dead trees interspersed between them. Little grooves of asphalt cut through the scene throughout, but only the biggest streets were discernable as such, and some, like the highways, ignored all patterns and simply meandered through the landscape like rivers of concrete that could be tamed by nothing short of a dam. The horizon was hemmed in by a mountain range, emerging from an endless field of trees beyond the city and each peak reaching for the sky, though all but a few fell drastically short. The highest and most prominent peak stood directly in the middle of the field of view, its imposing majesty made all the moreso by the addition of a large grey tower jutting from its peak, which climbed endlessly into the sky until it disappeared above the clouds.

Standing in front of this landscape stood a young-ish stallion wearing a thick brown coat on top of a standard military uniform. He was fairly disheveled and looked as though he had not showered in a week, and had probably given up on shaving or grooming his hair months ago save for the occasional comb. There were visible creases on his face, borne out of the perpetual frustration of a leader who has just barely kept an organization from collapsing entirely. He stood in front of the window, carefully studying the scenery, which I got the impression that he did a lot. The moment the door opened, his eyebrow raised reflexively in annoyance and he slightly turned towards us, but upon seeing the prisoners, he became more curious and pleasantly surprised than annoyed.

“Well, good. You actually surrendered instead of trying something ballsy,” he began. “I was worried that your little rampage would make its way all the way here.”

He spoke with a continuous shout, obviously passionate about his goals but also as if he had an endless reservoir of rage he needed to vent.

“You’ve made a quarter of this force into casualties,” he continued. “This greatly limits our operational capabilities and completely derails our plans, and I despise you for that. Luckily, you didn’t actually kill any of them, and I must admit I’m also impressed with your combat ability. Who would have thought that three civilians could take down a fortified compound like this? You had a solid grasp on small unit tactics up until the end there. I’ll have to have the sergeant analyze the CCTV footage and archive it for training purposes.”

“Are you their leader?” I asked.

“Commanding officer,” he corrected. “And yes, I am. I am Major Whiplash, and I have been the highest ranking officer in this regiment ever since our lieutenant colonel was betrayed and murdered in cold blood by her own HQ staff.”

“This hardly looks like a regiment, Major,” I said.

“It isn’t,” he replied. “It’s a company. My company. It’s been my company since before the apocalypse, and will remain my company until I die.”

He paused for a second and looked back at his emaciated and weary crew.

“But you’re right, in its current state, it’s hardly even a company. It used to be bigger, but mere survival has taken a heavy toll.”

He lowered his head and began plodding away from us towards the window.

“Which is a shame, because now we can’t help civilians as effectively as we used to...”

"Your troops at the city limit down in Greyham don't seem very interested in helping civilians," I scoffed. "They've been harassing travelers, and they nearly killed us."

"They are not true soldiers," Whiplash scoffed. "They're former soldiers-- Deserters! Hell, they're even worse than that!"

"Then what are they?" I demanded. "And how are they any different from you?"

Whiplash gave a deep, heavy sigh, and then explained, "What makes us better than them, or you, for that matter, is that we do things with a purpose. We have stayed true to our duty to restore peace and order to this city, while those rogues out there on highway 20, or IR-5, or WHEREVER-- they go through life with no greater purpose. They have no mission, no objectives to achieve. Instead, they just sit behind their barricades, waiting for ponies to come along so they can harass them for supplies. They're beggars, kid. Beggars armed with military grade weaponry. They've resigned themselves to simple survival, working only as hard as it takes for them to get tonight's meal, but no more. They care about nothing else apart from their own survival, so to me they're no different than the gangs."

"We, on the other hoof, we stayed true,” he continued. “We hunkered down and kept in the fight. After the bombs fell, the whole city fell into chaos and everypony began hoarding supplies. Our regiment tried to keep order, but as the winter set in, most of the unit realized it was much easier to join the gangs rather than fight them, and there were desertions left and right. Even the fucking officers abandoned the cause! But my company kept on fighting. We had our fair share of desertions as well, but we rebuilt ourselves by cobbling up the loyal remnants of the other companies. We used to actively protect civilians, guarding merchants and refugee camps and all that, but when we realized that we could stop the winter, the real source of all the misery and hopelessness, I was forced to divert all of our resources towards achieving that goal."

Sensing his monologue wouldn’t fix the world, he cut it off and trotted back toward us with an air of impatience.

“If I didn’t have as much respect for what you’ve done, and if we weren’t so short on ammo, I’d have you three shot. Releasing you into the wastes isn’t going to do anypony much good, especially us if you decide to come back and try again. But, since you were willing to surrender, maybe we can come to an agreement. What the hell do you want from us? If it’s food then forget it, ‘cause we’re down to 11,000 calories a day*. If its ammo or medicine, you’ve just severely drained our stocks of both.”

“We’re not here to raid your supplies, Major,” I said. “Our only demand is that you release the mayor’s daughter.”

“And maybe us too, if you don’t mind,” added Dmitry.

“Oh, the filly?” Whiplash asked, somewhat surprised. “That’s it? You did all this just for her?”

“We also wanted to search the Stable-Tec office,” I added. “That’s what we came for originally, but rescuing hostages is also important to us.”

“We don’t take hostages,” Whiplash said. “There’s nothing that village can provide us that we can’t get ourselves. We’re merely requisitioning her services to fulfil our own goals.”

Grimaces of disgust formed on all three of our faces.

“No, that is not an innuendo,” Whiplash said with a facehoof. “I meant her computer skills. That’s what we want. I have no desire for STD’s or pregnancies in my company.”

"Will you at least release her after you're done?" I asked.

"We will keep her as long as we need her," Whiplash stated. “Afterward, you can have your friend back. And only if you don’t cause any more trouble.”

“And how much longer will you need her?” I asked. “We’re not leaving until you release her.”

“Is that a threat?” Whiplash asked.

Realizing the implications of what I had just said, I had been caught totally off guard. I may have just jeopardized our position by threatening this stallion who very much had the means to kill us if he wanted to, and was only a hair’s breadth away from doing so. After a moment of nervous panic, I turned my head around to judge my companions’ opinions. Grapevine was also shaking with and only watched helplessly, putting the onus to act on me. Dmitry was also nervous, but to my surprise the normally diplomatic and good-natured changeling was slowly nodding his head.

Turning back to answer Whiplash, I mustered as much courage as I could, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Yes, it is.”

Whiplash soured, but said nothing and simply growled in frustration. Our attempt at intimidation seemed to have worked, as it forced him to carefully consider his response.

Finally, he walked over to a white courtesy phone on a desk and dialed a number.

“Warrant Officer Colon, how much longer will you be needing the filly?”

“Not much longer sir,” replied a rather youthful stallion. “We’ve just broken through the firewall. Should be only an hour or two.”

This news greatly surprised the Major, who tried to hide his excitement under a veil of ambivalence.

“A-hem, well then,” he answered us. “She may be ready to leave sometime this afternoon, depending on whether she can breach the security system. If not, she will need to stay another day. As for you three, you may stay here until evening as long as you don’t wander off or get in the way, but you must be out of the building by 18 hundred hours or once your friend gets discharged, whichever comes first. Got it?”

The Testudos parked us in a breakroom on the floor below, mostly because Grapevine started complaining of hunger in transit. In this room, every single aspect about the furnishings, fixtures, and placement of objects appeared to have been deliberately calculated to maximize its convenience or pleasure inferred upon its users, out of some form of feng shui bastardized by an HR department cynically bent on extracting as much utility out of its employees as possible.

In other words, everything felt fake.

On one of the walls, a large sign bearing a sleek, formal-looking corporate logo ominously loomed, as if to remind ponies not to have too much fun because they were still at work:

And as an even subtle reminder of who lorded over them, pink plastic flowers were placed in vases at the center of each table, flowers which Grapevine informed me, were called ‘peonies.’

The Testudos had much changed the original character of the room, primarily by not cleaning it, but also by placing some of their little green storage bins around the edges and by picking the locks on the vending machines and eating their contents. They now served as pantries to store the food they had scavenged outside, and to their credit, it almost looked like nopony had ever touched them… if you excused the rather haphazard placement and crumpled appearance of the items as the work of a drunken restocker…

Apparently, they also trusted us enough to leave three hungry wastelanders alone with their food stash. Okay, more likely they just didn’t have enough ponies on hoof to guard us. I assumed they had at most maybe a hundred ponies, and given the circumstances that’s a fairly generous estimate. Now take those hundred ponies and subtract everypony who is out doing a scouting or scavenger mission, then subtract all the wounded. That might leave them with two half-depleted platoons with which to guard the building, in addition to guarding their other ‘guest.’ Then again, they did choose to spare us when we were a hair’s breadth from death…

Progress to Next Level: 911/3450

Status Ailments:

Mild Food Poisoning: -1 Endurance. Could resolve itself or get worse, depending on your endurance, rest, and actions. Curable with antibiotics.