Dear Diary,

In retrospect, I really should have consulted my friends on this one.

I had been it over all night, and for all of the morning before breakfast too, but I couldn’t think of anything. If I had more time, I’m sure some ideas would come to me naturally as they always do, but when I have to think of twenty questions to ask, right away, that could mean the difference between life or death, then I get stuck and can’t think of anything.

The questions I did end up asking Gagglestein when I saw him at breakfast today tended to be vague and nonspecific, open-ended ones that forced him to put far more effort into formulating answers than I did in formulating the questions.

Or, on second thought, maybe I had been played. The way his eyes lit up when I plopped the bag of bits down on the table really indicated that he may have just been using me for cheap labor. His answer to my first question, “What’s so important about these bottlecaps?,” confirmed this.

“Oh, it’s just that some of the ponies from down south have started using them as a currency,” he began. “It was actually an idea that started over on the east coast and spread west through vagabonds like me. As random as it may sound, it’s surprisingly effective since they’re easy to carry, much like bits before the hyperinflation. The idea still hasn’t gained traction in this region though, so you’ll probably have to barter for everything. Though you may want to start collecting some bottlecaps now, just in case your travels bring you across merchants who accept them.”

Most of my questions went something along the lines of, “What should I do about…?” And most of the answers went like, “Get more ammo,” “Get more guns,” “Get better guns,” “Get some armor,” “get more food, water, and medicine,” “carry a wide range of tools and weapons,” “carry what you need and discard or sell anything you have a better version of,” “Be careful around ledges, stay on the lookout for tripwires near raider encampments, and keep far away from any red barrels, especially if there’s any glowy stuff leaking out of them.”

The one piece of advice that I probably didn’t need though, was “Make some friends.” I understand why it was important, but I feel as though it just didn’t apply to me. I mean, what good are friends, anyway? I know, I know, it’s stupid to try to argue with someopony about whether having friends is a good thing. It is, and everypony knows that. But some ponies have trouble making friends, and for those who can’t, life is just better without them.

As I thought about this, I kept looking back at Grapevine and Dmitry, who kept straddling behind me as I walked down the highway. Are they my friends? Well, I guess they are, given that I’ve known them both since my first month in the Stable. However, I’ve never been close with them. Isn’t that what friends are for, for sharing your innermost secrets with and sharing special moments?

I’ve always had trouble defining the boundary between ‘friend’ and ‘acquaintance.’ I’ve had many acquaintances over my life, but hardly anypony I could truly call a ‘friend’ in any sense of the word. At school, I would often count other ponies as friends even if they really only knew me as an acquaintance. I knew far more about them than they ever would about me. Socially I was invisible, existing but never coexisting. I hardly talked to anyone, and they hardly ever talked to me.

Life without friends is… lonely, to say the least. But when you’re an introvert, does that really matter? I’d feel bad about myself here and there, but then tell myself to suck it up and move on with my business. Having friends is burdensome because of all the energy you have to spend maintaining those relationships. Endless social functions and trivial conversations about the most banal of topics, smiling politely and pretending to agree-- it’s exhausting! Why go to a party when you can have more fun alone? Who needs friends when you’ve got yourself?

Perhaps it’s just the ponies I’m surrounded by. Teenagers don’t really have much in the way of interesting conversations. It’s all about vanity for them: celebrities, gossip, trashy fashion, reality TV, sports, soap opera dramas and romances, sitcoms written for the lowest common denominator-- ugh! Nothing that interests me. I’d rather be forever alone than dumb myself down just to be popular.

It’s not that I don’t want friends-- I do. It’s just that I’ve found very few ponies who are on my level. Usually other ponies just drag me down… just like Dmitry and Grapevine behind me here. If they keep this up, then we might not make it to the city by nightfall. Then again, their slowness gives me time for little breaks here and there. Hold on, let me check the map-- ok, we’re making good progress.

I stopped my angsty mind-rant and took a look around. We’re still in the middle of nowhere, but this time it’s a good nowhere. A close nowhere. A familiar nowhere. Like all nowheres, most of it was just empty space with a road going through it. Around the edges there were a few trees, some of them leafless and barren, like burnt griffon claws reaching out from beneath the earth, while the rest were hardy evergreens, bearing out the cold wrapped in thick, dark green hides. The latter kind were especially common in our region, and one such tree stands proudly on our province’s flag. Perhaps it’s a symbol for the toughness of our ponies, who have survived not only twentysomething years of war and the bombs, but also the coming of a second ice age!

Nowhere. The word seems to embody this land even moreso than say… a year ago. Before you could at least see the tilled fields and know there were still ponies who tended to these lands, but now… now it looks like it’s been abandoned for years.

I start to veer off the road towards a barn when suddenly, with a yelp, I fall. But only for a second-- landing on a pile of soft snow, I realize quickly that I’ve simply fallen into a ditch on the side of the road. Dmitry and Grapevine peer over the side, looking worried.

“Silver, are you okay?” Asked Dmitry.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say with a somewhat embarrassed blush. “It’s actually pretty comfy in here...”

Then I trail off as I suddenly remember something. Something that I either thought or wrote a long time ago:

“Even the ditch on the side of the road looked like a comfortable place.”

I climbed back out of the ditch and took another look around.

“Yes, I remember this place,” I think. “If I’m not mistaken, this is the exact same stretch of road I was on when I thought that thought, way back on that day, the day when… when I… when the…. LAST OCTOBER.”

I look back at the ditch and realize that it’s also the exact same ditch.

The. Exact. Same. Ditch.

Then I randomly got a notification on my pipbuck. I opened it and saw that it had ‘found’ a new location: ‘Wanderer’s Ditch.’ Strange. This wasn’t on the map before, and it just appeared, instead of immediately once we arrive like it usually does with places. Did my pipbuck just create a new location marker all on its own? Or maybe it’s just getting a bad transmission from whatever GPS satellite it’s hooked up to or something, I don’t know.

Whatever the case, we entered the barn and set our packs down for a while so we could warm up from the cold. Grapevine gathered a pile of dry straw and tried to start a fire while I curled up against a wall and opened my diary (that’s you!), flipping back to the very first pages. Lo and behold, I had found it:

“The tiredness that had nearly overcome me before had now returned, and was even heavier and more determined than before. All I wanted was to curl up somewhere, in a barn or under a bridge perhaps, and just go to sleep. Even the ditch on the side of the road looked like a comfortable place. Yet I pressed on, promising myself all the sleep in the world once I got to where I was trying to go.”

I experienced that feeling that you feel when you’re reading something you wrote a long time ago and you still remember why you wrote it. This entry was dated October 23rd, though it was written at one or two or three o’clock in the morning, so it was more like October 22nd. I was on that road, headed east towards the mountain, not knowing where I was going or when I was going to get there, only knowing that I was headed for a safer place. I had never expected that I would come back, in this year or next year… or even at all.

At the end of the day, we arrived at another eerily familiar place: the Provincial Guard roadblock on the outskirts of Greyham. Here, a long wooden fence running north to south separated a labyrinth of single family homes from a large field of tall brown grass. Interrupted only by the highway, the massive fence separated the city from the country, dividing the land into two different worlds. In between the two fences, a small barricade made up of concrete highway dividers had been placed from one end of the fence to the other, blocking all traffic except for one narrow, heavily fortified chokepoint near the middle of the highway. Aside from that, the checkpoint really hadn’t changed that much, given that the army truck and the tent were still there and the ponies manning it appeared to be in uniform (albeit much dirtier ones).

“What’s that sign say?” Asked Grapevine, squinting her eyes at a metal sheet hastily hoofpainted with red letters in the distance. I was about to say, but then she answered her own question.

“‘Toll Road: Pay us 20 bullets, any kind (please don’t fire them at us!) PER PONY, or go away. Price is final, no bartering. Ponies attempting to cross without paying will be shot.’ Huh. Looks like the army’s strapped for cash. Never thought this day would come.”

We laughed at her joke, but then the gravity of the situation quickly set in.

“Twenty bullets?” I exclaimed. “Are they kidding us? That’s sixty pieces of ammo just to get in!”

“It looks like they’re doing it on the other side, too,” said Dmitry. “That’s 120 for a round trip.”

“But that’s insane!” I cried. “We’d have to give up all our 10 millimeter rounds.”

“What choice do we have?” Asked Dmitry. “There’s no way around, and paying the toll is far safer than trying to break through. They’ve got a military grade arsenal, after all.”

“That fence over there is pretty low,” said Grapevine. “I bet we could climb over it.”

“No,” I said. “That fence is covered in ice. We couldn’t possibly climb the ledge.”

“We could always make a way through,” said Grapevine, eyes glowing as she began to pull out her flamethrower.

“NO,” I said firmly, gently pushing the flamethrower’s barrel towards the ground with his hoof. “In this temperature that would take forever. You’re going to burn up all your fuel.”

“She has a point,” said Dmitry, backing me up. “Besides, they’d realize what we were doing soon enough, and they’d be on to us.”

“I guess you’re right,” sighed Grapevine as she disappointedly slid her flamethrower back into her saddlebag.

We approached the roadblock to pay the toll when suddenly the eyes of one of the ponies lit up in astonishment. Pointing at me, he turned to his colleague and said,

“Hey! It’s her! That fucker who almost got us court-martialed!”

His partner’s eyes also lit up.

“Holy shit!” She exclaimed. “It really is her!”

“Fuck. They remembered,” I think.

A third, who had just been walking out of their tent when he overheard their conversation, took one look at me and fumed into a burning rage.

“THIS is for getting us in hot water with the Colonel!” He cried, picking up a minigun and opening fire at us.

Startled, we scrambled out of the way just before the bullets hit where we were standing.

“Run away, run away!” I cried.

And so we did. We ran and hid behind the ruins of a blown up car parked on the side of the road, a safe distance from the soldiers.

“Silver, what the hay was that all about?” Asked an exasperated Dmitry.

“They just took one look at her and suddenly they all had a vendetta against her,” said Grapevine. “Now that’s something you don’t see everyday.”

“No, no, no,” said Dmitry. “I grew up in the ghetto, I know all about spontaneous rivalries, and this isn’t it. She clearly did something to piss them off before.”

“What on earth did you do then?” Asked Grapevine.

They both stared at me with probing eyes.

“Well, I uh...” I began, but then I hesitated. Should I really tell them about what happened that night?

“I uhhh… can we talk about this later?” I snapped. “Me explaining my life before I met you isn’t going to stop them shooting at us, you know.”

“Okay, okay,” said Dmitry. “I guess you’re right. Let’s swing around South and try the next road in.”

“But how ah we gonna get out from behind this hunk of metal?” Asked Grapevine. “I bet they’ve got their sights trained on it, just waitin’ for us to make a move!!”

“I’ll fly up there and create a distraction,” said Dmitry, taking his saddlebags off, “while you two make a run for it. But I’ll have to leave these here, otherwise I won’t be fast enough. Later one of us can sneak back here and get them, or maybe one of you could stay here and bring them back once they think we’ve all escaped, I dunno. I’d probably get all shot full of holes, but I’ll do it for you guys.”

“Wait!” Exclaimed Grapevine. “I have an idea. Just trust me on this one, okay?”

“Okay,” said Dmitri and I in unison, not knowing what to expect.

Grapevine jumped out in front of the car, sprinted a bit, then hurled an apple-shaped grenade at the encampment while screaming “TI KALLISTI!!!”

The grenade landed within the concrete barriers. The soldier ponies ducked for cover on our side of the barriers, making prime targets. However, as soon as Dmitri and I could draw our guns and aim them, one of the soldiers, a unicorn, had enveloped the group within a shield. I was still kind of happy though, because as long as they had their shield up, they couldn’t shoot at us.

We all waited for a bit, but nothing happened. A fourth soldier pony, who had been holding back but waiting in case his fellows needed reinforcement, cantered over to where the grenade lay. He poked at it with his hoof while everypony else watched. Then he picked it up with his telekinesis and held it for everypony to see.

“See this?” He asked his comrades. “Nothing to worry about. It’s a dud. A DUD! What else you got for us, ya stupid hooli--”

Then it exploded. And rather conveniently too, since the thing was only a few hooves away from his head. The blast obliterated his skull, but also mutilated the rest of his body for good measure. Okay, I admit it was a little unnerving, even for me, but since he was taunting us, it was okay.

His comrades just stood there in shock, mouths agape, and literally frozen in place with horror. They shouldn’t have, however, because the grenade’s explosion had also punctured the motor of their huge army truck. I watched it smolder for a little before I got to my senses and shouted,

“Rrrruuuuunnnnnnnn!!!!”

KA-BOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

My friends and I had gotten out just in time. The soldiers, on the other hoof, did not.
The blast must have been too much for their shield because when the smoke cleared, they were literally toast. I swear there must have been a stash of kerosene somewhere nearby because the explosion was a bit larger than it should have been. It also caught one of the nearby houses on fire, even though the roof was covered in snow.

We waited for a while until the truck stopped burning and what was left of the housefire was a reasonable distance from the road. Then we crept right through the roadblock, low to the ground, trying to stay away from smoke and out of sight of any ‘soldiers’ who may have survived the blast and were still hanging around. On our way through we raided what was left of their ammunition supplies (which admittedly wasn’t much), then headed into the city.

We found a rather nice place to settle tonight: a small, colorful little victorian style house on the edge of a construction site that’s not too large (which makes it easy to defend) and is very cozy. Dmitri had to go through several bobby pins in order to pick the locks on the door (it had three deadbolts!) and all the doors and furniture were really tiny, like the place was meant for midgets. Although it was somewhat unnerving living in what seemed like a literal dollhouse, it’s still extremely homey.

What makes it even weirder are some of the possessions of its former owners. On top of the fireplace there’s this huge painting of, what appears to be this very house, at the top of a waterfall. On one of the bookshelves there’s a dusty old jar labeled ‘Paradise Falls’ (which sounds like a rather nice place to visit =D ) containing, I kid you not, a moth. I don’t know how that thing got in there, but I’ve sealed it with a cork to prevent myself from swatting, squishing, shooting, or otherwise killing it before we leave (And even then, it’s still pretty creepy). Grapevine also found a shit ton of balloons and helium tanks in one of the rooms, way more than anypony would ever need. Either somepony had a job selling balloons or they just really really really really really really really liked balloons.

Well, that about wraps it up for this day’s events. I’m going to go to sleep soon, just after I finish writing this entry. I feel very cozy right here under the sheets-- my only complaint is that Dmitry and Grapevine made me sleep on the couch in the living room, right next to that creepy moth thing. They claim it’s because “I’ve been a bad girl” for getting us into trouble with those soldier-renegade ponies, but I know the real reason is that there’s only one bed in this house.

Level up!

Level 3: Stable Dweller

Next perk at level 4.

Status Ailments:

Your butt no longer hurts. Your agility has returned to normal.

Stats:

Ponies Led: 2

Puzzle Pieces Collected: 2

Price of Silver: 7 bits per Troy Ounce

Author's Notes:

This story was originally going to be written in chronological order, with diary entries starting the night before the apocalypse. However, I soon found that that it would have been completely boring, so I decided to just start from when the main characters leave the stable, and possibly insert the missing chapters throughout the story, possibly every 10 chapters or so. The earlier diary entry that is recalled in this section was one of the first chapters that was written, in which Silver is going towards the stable. In this chapter she is going away from it, and has encountered a landmark from her prior trip.

It would also be helpful to know that the impetus for this story was 100% pure teenage angst.