Fallout Equestria: Homelands

By Somber

Chapter 5: Sinking into Murky Waters

Two hours. Two hours not knowing if Precious was going to live or die. Two hours of everyone sitting in silence in the waiting room, with nothing but the ticking of the clock in the corner to mark the crawl of time. Again and again, Scotch would look to the other three. Again and again, no one spoke.

Pythia broke the silence with a mumble that made the rest jump as if it were a gunshot. “She’s probably going to make it.”

“You saw it?” Scotch asked with a relieved smile.

“No. The future here’s all tangled up. I mean, she’ll probably pull through. She’s a dragon. As long as he can extract the bullet before healing her up, she should be fine.” She glanced at the door. “It’s probably taking so long because sawing through dragonbone can’t be easy.”

“Do you really think so?” Majina asked. The potion the receptionist had given her had healed the slashes to her face, but she still had barely talked at all since they’d arrived in the office.

“Probably. And if she has any brain damage, how could we tell?” Pythia’s attempt at cutting humor fell flat, and as everyone else’s eyes dropped, she sighed. “All I’m saying is to be… optimistic.” She said the word like it tasted sour on her tongue.

“What will all of you do next?” Aleta asked as she regarded the three fillies with a wary eye.

“Huh?” Scotch Tape and the others all exchanged looks. “What do you mean?”

“You must have come to Rice River for a reason,” the mare said with a furrowing of her brows. “Or are you just commonly hunted by monsters wherever you are from?”

“We came to Zebrinica to find something called the ‘Eye of the World’. Specifically, if it was blinded or not,” Scotch explained, glancing at Majina to see if she wanted to elaborate; the filly didn’t seem to be in the mood, though. “I don’t know why those people are chasing me, but they are. They’re being led by a pirate from a ship called the Riptide. I have no idea why they’d be after me, though. I’m just a pony.”

“A cursed pony,” Pythia amended.

“Curses smurches. I’m not cursed. I’ve just had a run of bad luck since we left Hoofington,” Scotch said with a snort.

“Do you know anything about it?” Majina asked in a little voice. Aleta shook her head. “Of course not.”

“I’m sorry. I am just a farmer,” she said quietly.

“So,” Scotch began, “when are you going to go home? We can drive you there when we’re sure those hunters aren’t going to snag us. Probably a few days, at the most.” She tried to give the zebra a reassuring smile. When she didn’t respond or return the expression, Scotch continued “What? Can’t you go home?”

“I can’t. I’m–” Aleta began, but Scotch cut her off with a shriek.

“You’re not cursed! I’m not cursed! No one is cursed! If you want to go home, then just go! If you don’t want us to take you, then just say so, but stop it with the stupid curse nonsense!” she shouted.

Then a hoof covered her mouth, and she stared up at Aleta, who for the second time frowned at her as she glared down. “That is enough. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I’m not. I’ll not risk my family till I am sure no harm will come to them.” She then turned and stared out a window facing south. “Everything happens for a reason.”

“Wha… no they don’t! Plenty of things happen with no reason at all!” Scotch objected, getting another frown from the scarred mare. “Well… they do,” she repeated weakly, not able to meet her angry stare.

“You are a pony. You cannot understand,” she said with a dismissive sniff.

Scotch wanted to keep arguing, but the door to the back opened and the doctor emerged, sans lab coat. His tired brown eyes took in the four of them before he gave a small smile. “She’s still alive. We extracted the bullet and administered a healing potion. Now we just hope the insult hasn’t left any permanent damage.”

Scotch immediately relaxed a bit, sliding off the seat and onto her hooves. “Thank you, Doctor. Can we see her?”

“I think you should wait till she’s recovered,” he said as he examined the four of them. “Do you have a place to stay?” All four exchanged looks, and even Aleta shook her head. “Very well,” he said as he looked over his shoulder. “Osane, can you put up a pair of guests?”

“If one doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor,” she answered from the back room. Galen glanced at them, and again they seemed to agree, even if Aleta frowned, clearly upset by something the two Proditor had done or said.

“Good. I have an apartment in this office, and Osane is just down the block. Her husband is respected, so you should be safe there,” he said as he turned and started to retreat into the back. “Give us some time to attach the monitors and clean up.”

When he disappeared inside again, Aleta muttered, “Disgusting, vile monsters…”

“Okay. That’s it!” Scotch said as she whirled on Aleta, the scarred mare’s eyes going wide. “What is your problem? He just pulled a bullet out of my friend’s head, and you’re acting like he’s the one who shot her!”

“He is Proditor! He ends life before it even has a chance to draw breath!” she said, thrusting an accusatory hoof at the door. “All life is sacred! All! From the grandest zebra to the lowliest pony. All are alive and to be respected. He ends life, and does it under the disgusting excuse that he is saving lives. I bet he slays patients he can not save. You should be lucky that he didn’t give up and slay your friend.”

“All life? Like… even flesh-eating bacteria?” Pythia asked.

“Even that should be respected, its spirit sent away and appeased rather than killed with chemicals and poison,” she retorted.

Scotch shared a look with Pythia. “So… say there’s a nasty, pinchy bug about to burrow into your leg. You wouldn’t squash it?”

“No. I would move it elsewhere. I have no right to end its life.”

“And if a raider came to rape you and your whole family, you wouldn’t try to kill him? Even if he was like… the weakest and sickliest raider?” Scotch asked. Was laughter the correct response to this, or horror?

“No. We would hide, then if he found us we would ask him to stop, then we would… let him… till he was sated and moved on,” she said as she trembled. “All life is sacred.”

She glanced at Majina. “Please tell me the whole tribe isn’t like this!”

“They’re not,” a mare said from the door to the back. Osane made Scotch Tape appreciate the merits of bisexuality more than usual. Like Diane, she just had a body shape that made Scotch’s eyes roam all over her. The stripes that extended from her spine went all the way down her body to her fetlock-less ankles. Something about the positioning of those lines made Scotch feel tingly. Osane’s red eyes gazed at Aleta evenly. “You’re from a scar farm, aren’t you?”

Aleta inhaled. “I am.”

“Thought so,” she answered, then addressed Scotch Tape. “Most Carnilia aren’t above taking medicine or using grass killer or pesticides if they need to.”

“Most Carnilia have abandoned our Tradition. That brought about the Day of Doom,” Aleta asserted, and Osane simply shrugged, not arguing the point.

“To most Carnilia, zebra life is sacred, and Carnilian life most of all. Zebras who live on scars take the ‘life is sacred’ tenet to its most extreme.” She considered the frowning, scarred mare. “It’s pretty impressive they survive at all. I couldn’t do it.” That seemed to mollify Aleta a bit. “You’ll find Carnilians are a complex tribe. Unfortunately, most of them won’t be very receptive to a pony. Your kind did create the razorgrass, after all.”

Scotch didn’t argue the point. For all she knew, some earth ponies did make the grass, but she agreed with Precious. It just didn’t sound like a ‘pony weapon’. Too subtle. Ponies didn’t do subtle, at least not well. “And you? You’re Proditor.” The identification made Osane smile a little. “I knew a person… she was a Proditor as well.”

“Yes, I am. I have formally turned my back on some fundamental traditions of my tribe,” she said proudly.

“You should have left our tribe. Joined someone else,” Aleta said evenly.

“I will not lose my stripes any more than you will use a can of Carnico weed killer,” Osane stated, and for the first time Aleta smiled and gave her a little nod in turn. “We should go. It’s not safe when it gets dark.”

Scotch nodded and moved to Majina. The filly hadn’t moved at all during the discussion, “Hey, are you okay?”

“No, I’m not,” she said as she rose, her eyes to the floor. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she walked towards the door and slipped out into the hall before Scotch could follow. Osane and Aleta left as well, leaving Scotch wondering if she should run after her or not.

“She’s just upset that this story’s not turning out like she imagined,” Pythia said. “I bet she figured we’d be in the zebra lands on a great adventure. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she’d get hurt along the way. I’m more interested in Scylla. I’ve never seen another Starkatteri who wasn’t barking mad.”

“Is she a seer or something too?” Scotch asked, and received a shrug.

“Maybe. Definitely not a shaman or mystic though. Plenty of Starkatteri pretend we’ve got big, nasty spirits backing us up. It’s how you keep from having your legs broken by other zebras and being left to starve in the Wasteland. Only a few of us can actually back it up. If I’d pointed that out to the crowd and called her bluff, she’d probably have to run for her life. Of course, I would be next. It’d continue till they tried it on a real shaman and had their stripes cursed off. Then it’s back to ‘beware the evil Starkatteri who curse the stupid for their own stupidity’.” She snorted and skimmed a magazine so old that the cover had faded completely white. “I’m more interested in the implication that there’re more Starkatteri here, and that they’re organized.”

“That’s unusual?”

“You remember the three I was with back in the Ponylands?” she asked Scotch. Scotch recalled. It was hard to forget an old zebra crone with ice powers, a mutated balefire wielding zebra, or a stark raving mad pyromaniac. “That was a lot of Starkatteri. We don’t like each other much more than other ponies like us. Working together’s not easy for us. Most other Starkatteri are insecure, terrified, egotistical asses we’d throw to a mob to cover our escape. We’re not a nice tribe.”

Scotch pursed her lips but kept the observation to herself. “Are there Starkatteri Proditor?”

“Sure. They come in two flavors: dead and dead,” she said sharply, then took a breath. “Okay, that’s actually how they end up. Starkatteri who take the red either do so as slaves to the stars, giving up their free will, and a lot of their sanity, to serve them. Amadi was one of those,” she said, referring to the zebra legate who had tormented Blackjack up to the end.

“And the other kind?”

“Skakalakados. ‘Witch hunters’. Okay… bad translation. More like supernatural guards, keeping other Starkatteri in line and preventing us from harming others with curses. As if there weren’t higher powers involved already.” She sniffed disdainfully. “They go around and do the other tribes’ dirty work of keeping us in our place. They usually end up so cursed that a good sneeze will finish them off.”

“So, no chance of you taking the red?” Scotch Tape said with a small smile.

“Remember what I said about being cursed? Seriously. Being a Starkatteri Proditor makes us a target to our own tribe.” She sniffed as she turned the page. “My mother was one,” she said absently.

“Your mother?”

“Didn’t know her long but I remember the red stripes,” she said, returning to her magazine as she went on. “Atropos took care of me after she died. For all I know, she’s the one who killed her.” She glanced up from her magazine to stare at her. “Being a Proditor is a big deal. Cowards try to leave their tribe. Proditor say ‘screw you’ to their tribe. And they pay for it.”

“It’s more ‘I dissent’ than ‘screw you’, though many zebras would agree” the doctor said from the doorway leading to the back of the office where they’d taken Precious. “Sometimes the tribe needs to know they have to change. Some zebras don’t like change.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Back here. You can see your friend on the way.”

They passed an examination room and storage closet before reaching a medical room. A stainless steel table gleamed in the middle under a large light. There were a dozen cupboards loaded with all kinds of strange medical devices. Then they reached another exam room that had been turned into a post-op; there lay Precious with the top half of her head wrapped completely in gauze. A monitoring device beeped and booped quietly next to her.

“Is she going to be okay?” Scotch asked him.

“Hard to say. I’ve never had a patient like her. I’ve given her both zebra and pony healing potions, but neither were terribly effective. She really is an amazing fusion. Most patients with alterations, I can tell where the dragon hide’s been fused or the claws implanted. She’s seamless. It’s astonishing,” he said with a weary smile. “Unfortunately, it also complicated her medical treatment immensely. The bullet was intact, otherwise I don’t think we’d have been successful. As is, it inflicted some significant trauma to the left lobe of her brain. I don’t know how she’ll be after recovery.”

“Is there anyone who could help her more? Like, with magic?” Scotch asked with a worried frown.

“Shamans with those capabilities are in short supply here. If you’re looking for a unicorn, you might find one on the other side of the river, though,” he said as he pointed east with his hoof.

“What? Really?” Scotch blinked in amazement.

“You didn’t think you were the only ponies in the zebra lands, did you?”

“I kinda did,” she murmured weakly.

“There’re a few dozen or so over there. I can’t say I know any of them. They never come here.” His smile faded. “A few work for Carnico. Unicorns, as you said. The rest work on the boardwalk. It’s the, ah… well, where they work.”

So magic was a possibility. “I’ll look into it tomorrow,” she said with a nod. She walked over and gave Precious’s leg a hug, then trotted with the doctor into the rear of the office. A break room had been converted into a kitchenette and studio, with a cot in one corner. A couch sat opposite an old TV. Bookcases full of medical texts filled one corner. “Bathroom and shower are through there,” he said, pointing with a hoof at a door. “You two can share the couch, can’t you?”

“Sure,” Scotch said, then pointed at the TV. “Wait. Does that thing actually work?”

He nodded and walked over, tapping one of a row of buttons set in along the base. “There’re only a few channels. You must get far more over in the Ponylands.”

They had won the war. They still had their TV. “Only the pegasi had anything like this. Even my stable didn’t have TV. I just read about them in books.” The image flickered and coalesced into view, and from a speaker in the base came a nasally mare’s voice whining about her sister… or cousin… or something. It was hard to follow as the black and white picture showed a pair of Carnilian zebras in an apartment squabbling over something.

“Ah. ‘Black and White’. Classic comedy,” he said with a smile. “I’ve seen this one before. Most of our shows are pre-war reruns.”

Scotch didn’t look away, fascinated by the mare and stallion arguing as a whiny young mare joined the pair, and apparently her added trouble made the audience laugh. “Wait… who’s she? And what…” Scotch trailed off as the stallion thudded his hoof on the table yelling about no more mares. Just then, another two zebra mares walked in talking to each other and were pulled into the rapidly escalating argument. “But why is he…” she muttered in bafflement.

Then they all started to have sex.

“O…kay…” Scotch murmured weakly, quirking an eyebrow. And this was ‘comedy’?

“Wait. Here it comes,” he said with a grin. Then another mare entered, but her stripes were strange, swirly affairs. She carried a tray on her head, but at the sight of the orgy, yipped, sitting down stiffly and launching the tray into the air. She jabbed a hoof at the Carnilians and spoke a string of zebra so rapid Scotch couldn’t begin to follow, then sat and covered her eyes, and the tray clanged down atop her head. Both the audience and Doctor Galen found that hilarious as she grabbed the tray, covered her rear with it, and hobbled out as if doing a pee-pee dance. “Oh Hapihao. Best cook ever.” His smile faded a little. “The series never did show us when she finally had sex with Penulimo. They teased over it for years. He loved her. She loved him. But then the Day of Doom came.”

Then they finished with five minutes of sex, and once the stallion had blown his quite copious and messy load, the next mare said ‘my turn!’ and the stallion gave the camera a weary, hapless stare before the scene faded to black and the credits rolled.

Okay. When Scotch had imagined zebra entertainment, that wasn’t it.

“Is that typical?” she asked, her cheeks still burning. Sex happened a lot in 99. It was a big part of stable life, and yet it still hadn’t been so… brazen… as the show depicted.

“Fairly, for most Carnilian shows,” he said, his smile casual. “I’m guessing you, like most everyone else, find the sex offensive?”

“Er… kinda? Not offensive. Just… surprising.” Honestly, swap out the zebras for ponies, and it probably would have been a huge hit in 99. Of course, that would have required working televisions, too. “I mean, I can kinda see the humor in it.”

“You just like getting laid,” Pythia muttered, ignoring the TV as she continued reading the magazine she’d absconded from the waiting room with.

“Who doesn’t?” Galen asked with a smile. “As long as it’s consensual and safe, there’s nothing bad about sex. Now, what comes afterward is far more tricky.”

Scotch regarded the stallion. “So you’d have it with me?” she asked. “Hypothetically?”

“Sorry. You’re a bit immature, and green,” he replied, completely not offended by her question. “I might be Proditor, but some of the old biases against miscegenation are hard to shake.”

Immature?! She fought the urge to fill him in on her history, and instead asked, “Miscegenation?”

“Traditional Carnilians have taboos against interspecies intercourse. Zonies are sterile, which is an abomination to most Carnilians. Other species are nonviable reproductively, and so that sex is sex for pleasure alone, which is a waste of semen. Traditionalists would rather see zebras mate with zebras, ponies with ponies, and griffons with griffons. Thus, they add to the life of the world.” He waved his hoof through the air at that. “Of course, the modernists across the river say sex is sex, and who you have it with, or how often, is your own business.”

“So you’re a traditionalist?” Pythia asked with an arch smile.

“I’d say so. I was raised such,” he replied.

“Then it’s really interesting that you terminate pregnancies,” Pythia commented as she studied him.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That is a complicated matter, and I’m not sure I wish to discuss it with you,” he said, his smile gone.

“I don’t mean to pry. She does, but I don’t,” Scotch said. “I’m curious too. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

He blinked in surprise. “You don’t?”

“I came from a stable where we had strict population requirements. Even with contraceptive implants, accidents happened. Better to stop a pregnancy early if the stable systems couldn’t support the baby once it was born,” Scotch explained.

The comment electrified the doctor. “Yes! Yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to explain for years!” He rose and trotted. “I understand the Tradition, but the cold fact is that with the grass consuming our arable land, we can’t maintain constant population growth. It’s crippled us for a century or more. We need to stabilize our population, focus on breeding healthier children, and expand the population as we push back the grass. Three quarters of our tribe is lost to famine or conflicts, or taken as slaves to other tribes. We simply can’t keep to the old ways and expatriate our surplus population to other regions!” He sighed and gave Scotch a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I don’t often get to say that to a receptive audience.”

“I’m not receptive,” Pythia said as she returned to her magazine. “She is, but I just was curious about your hypocrisy.”

“Starkatteri,” he muttered with a shake of his head, then smiled to Scotch. “Anyway, yes, I am Proditor because I believe we, as a tribe, must curtail our population growth. Contraceptives and abortions are anathema to a tribe that venerates life and the creation of it.”

“I’m surprised you’re not a modernist, if they’re more open minded,” Scotch said.

He twisted his face a little in thought. “It’s not that simple. They’re not just more sexually permissive. They modify themselves like your dragon friend. It’s one thing to control how many of us there are. It’s another to change what we are. So I’m a Proditor traditionalist, giving contraceptive surgery when requested and ending a pregnancy when I must.” He gave a little shrug. “It’s the most honest I can be.”

“Learn to lie better,” Pythia muttered, not looking up from her magazine she asked, “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to know what the Eye of the World is and if it’s blind or not, would you? That’d be great.”

“Sure,” he said.

“You do?” she blurted, sitting upright.

“Well, I heard about it once,” he said as he leaned a little away from her, “in a story.”

Pythia immediately slumped and lay back down on the couch. “Pass. I’m not our storytelling fanatic. I need some serious directions if I’m going to get excited.”

“Pythia!” Scotch barked, then addressed Galen, “I’d like to know.”

“It’s just from an old story. Abras the Wanderer. He climbs the holy mountain at the heart of the Empire, looks towards the dawn, and sees the Eye of the World. Through it, he sees everything happening in the world and sees that the mare he loves is now a widow.”

“Let me guess, he goes to her and she has his baby slash babies?” Pythia said as she returned to her magazine.

“Oh. You know the story.”

“If it’s a Carnilian story, it’s a safe bet babies are at the end,” she said as she turned the page. “Anyway, if we come across a holy mountain, hopefully it’s got an elevator and we can just see where the Eye is and if it’s blinded. Hopefully it is one lone peak of exceptional beauty with ambient song and music with the word ‘holy’ glowing in a nimbus above it so we can pick it out from all the other mountains that might be here.”

Scotch frowned at Pythia’s impertinence. “What are you reading that’s got you so…” Whatever she was. Annoying? Frustrating? Disrespectful? Pythish?

“The Caesar granting my tribe protection in the Empire,” she said as she turned the page.

“Ah, yes. That.” Galen pursed his lips in a remarkable similarity to Aleta.

“It is this day that we extend the hoof of friendship to our estranged tribe. No longer set apart, the law shall now extend towards all thirteen tribes. In friendship, we shall embrace them, and in turn, they shall embrace us,” Pythia read from the magazine. “Let the animosities of the old be left behind, so that together we may walk into the future, united.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Scotch asked in bafflement. Pythia just looked at Galen, arching a brow.

He flushed a little and didn’t answer, instead rising and going over to the kitchenette, filling a pot with water and setting it on a hotplate. Pythia just returned to the magazine. “Well, according to this, it cursed the entire Empire, possibly the world, and that anyone who killed a Starkatteri was a hero in the eyes of the author.” She closed the magazine. “Ah, progress,” she said as she set it down at her side. “You work for Scylla, don’t you? I can’t imagine your patients pay you enough to cover this place, and extracting bullets from skulls isn’t the usual bread and butter of your typical gynecologist.”

“You’re very perceptive,” he said evenly, not looking at them.

“Too perceptive,” she said as she rolled onto her back. “So. What is this ‘Syndicate’ she mentioned? I’ve never heard of it before.”

“You haven’t?” He blinked in surprise.

“We were in the Ponylands till a few weeks ago.”

“Ah. That explains the accent,” he said, then took a deep breath. “The Syndicate are… people. They do things. Some of them good. Some of them very bad, depending on who you are. Crime, yes, but they also help people for a price. They maintain the peace in Rice River, but they have no jurisdiction over the tribe. They have ties everywhere, but no open alliances. Most think of them as criminals, others as saviors of last resort.”

“And you?” Scotch asked.

“I think they bring people to me who are injured, and I make them less injured, and they provide me with supplies to keep doing my work,” he said evenly as he took out a package of some kind of noodle and slipped it into the pot. Then he started to cut some sort of fruit into thin slices. “I try not to think of the harm they may cause. They need me as much as I need them.”

Pythia nodded slowly. “Scylla wants me to meet them.”

“It is a good opportunity for someone of your tribe. The Syndicate cares nothing for tribes, only results.”

Pythia nodded slowly. The three watched television for some time while Galen cooked and provided the pair with a salty, limp noodle soup with little bits of vegetables floating pathetically on the top. The classic shows were all reruns, but there was a news channel, an ‘educational’ channel for foals, and a public broadcast, all interspaced with commercials from ‘Carnico’, which apparently ran the television broadcasts. Most of them were black and white, or with slightly washed out colors, but still… color! It was a window to a time before the bombs and megaspells fell, showing zebra life for the Carnilian tribe. Oddly, the four shows Scotch watched were all comedies of varying themes, one of a harried zebra mother managing nine foals with a rather airheaded husband and bondsister who was a little sharper than the lead. Another was a zebra stallion attempting to woo one lone zebra mare but being blocked at every turn by his coworkers, who were all negotiating their own sexual politics. They showed families larger than she could ever imagine.

She’d only had a few years with her mother that she could appreciate, before she’d died, and only a few months before her father died too. What was it like to have brothers and sisters? If television was any indication, friends and enemies you couldn’t get away from, often in the same person!

Each episode also showed sex, sometimes for just a few seconds, other times with whole scenes devoted to it. Only one of the four programs seemed to be intended to arouse the viewer, while the rest were more ‘and they had sex, see?’ Getting caught rutting your mate wasn’t embarrassing, getting caught rutting someone else was. Whenever ponies appeared, and they did in two shows, they were always depicted as sex-frightened prudes who furiously masturbated when the zebras teasing them left. Did the zebras have their own Ministry of Image, or was this just a typical stereotype?

Pythia wadded up the corners of her cloak, shoved them into her ears, and read her magazines and books between slurps of soup. Carnilian cuisine left a lot to be desired; even the Orah food had been tastier than this.

Scotch was fighting back a yawn when suddenly the TV flickered and filled with static, and then a mare sang out, “I want my… I want my… I want my Z TV,” repeating it as ‘Z TV!!!’ appeared like spray paint. Galen immediately sat up and smiled as he watched intently.

“Wha–” Scotch began to ask.

Suddenly, the image changed to that of a zebra with broad, horizontal, neon blue stripes, grinning ear to ear as he stared into the camera. The vividity of the color, not just of the zebra but of everything else, blew her mind, pupils shrinking as she was assaulted by the brilliant hues. Behind him were littered dozens of televisions and terminals, all flickering and changing from one image to the next. “Hello Zebratopia! Zebrabrinica! Zebzinica! This is your unauthorized, unlicensed, unaffiliated, unaffected, uncompromised, uncompromising Z TV! To you from me so we can all be free! I have returned, interrupting your regularly scheduled broadcast to bring you the view of the Wasteland, whether you want it or not. Start the timer, and let’s see how long I last!”

“Guh?” was all Scotch could manage.

In the bottom of the screen, a timer appeared, ticking up. “In first news, it seems that the Atoli, or Atori, or whatever they call themselves have gotten their sails in a severe ruffle. Apparently the once pirate, then ex-pirate, now re-pirate Riptide seems to be blasting away at her own people. And this was one of her bondsisters! Remember that the next time you have a fight with your own bondsister, and be glad she’s not packing heavy ordinance with her. Or, if she is, run for a megaspell and hope for the best! That’s what her last target did, and she can count herself as the first person ever to get away from the infamous pirate. Quote Riptide, ‘It was just a little misunderstanding.’”

“What is this?” Scotch gasped. “Did she really say that?” Galen shushed her as the electric-blue-striped zebra continued.

“Now to sports. If you’ve heard people talking about the advancing Iron Legion, you heard right. They’re moving their way east and sacked the settlement of Rogue Hill. The White Legion’s getting the ever loving shit kicked out of them, and it’s just a question of how long it’ll be before they’re booted off the Golden River completely. The Golden Ring Legion are benched this week; taking a powder break, or getting ready for something big? I’d love the inside scoop! The Bloody Hoof got their hooves really bloody in a tussle with the Jade Talons, but that game was called on account of a balewyrm attack! Both captains were eaten, and they settled for a draw. Keep clear of the Gray Reach if you don’t want to be dinner. And let this be a lesson to all you would-be legionnaires: there’s always something willing to make you lunch, no matter which legion you join!

“For the people’s section, I’d like to give a shout-out to Prince Hapahi the Ninteenth of the Tappahani for blowing of his sixteenth betrothal. I’m pretty sure he’s trying to set a new record here, so all you would-be elders, keep throwing your mares at him. Or throw him a stallion. Seriously, props to the guy for never telling us what he wants in bed.

“Now to our feature story for the folks in Rice River. Everyone knows the razorgrass has been making life miserable for centuries, and the popular theory is we have Equestria to thank for it! But ever wonder how you have grass you can’t cut, can’t eat, and can’t burn, that slices you to ribbons if you touch the stuff, but there’s one particular weed killer that’s great for the stuff? What, they just had the stuff lying around, ready to go? I don’t know about Carnilians, but here at Z TV, we find that stuff pretty interesting,” the glowing-striped stallion said as a terminal screen next to him showed a desiccated zebra ghoul. “This here is Antoine, who claims he worked with a team that developed that weed killer. More importantly, he worked on the strain of seed that isn’t killed by the weed killer, the one that Carnico sells to you for whatever bits, bullets, bombs, or bullshit you can trade for it.”

The image of the ghoul filled the screen. “Carnico claims they’ve been working non-stop to find a better way to stem the grass spread, but that’s griffon shit! I know. I worked for them for years before radiation exposure in the lab turned me into this. The management didn’t care about our findings, though, and any results that were remotely positive were shut away. It’s all money and power to these assholes. They know that if you don’t use their killer, the grass takes your land, and if you do use their killer, you have to use their seeds or starve. It’s win-win for them. If you’re driven off your plot, someone else with the poison and the seed will take it, and keep paying.”

The eye-wateringly-blue-striped zebra stallion reappeared. “Now, I know what you Carnilians are saying. He’s an undead abomination, how could you possibly trust him? But consider if he’s right, Carnico could be sitting on piles of other methods to kill the grass but ignoring them because they know they’ve got their own tribe by the walnuts. Inquiring minds want to know!”

There was a burst of static. “Woo! Five minutes and thirteen. They’re getting better! For now, this is Z TV telling you to expand your minds, zebras! To you from me, information wants to be free only on Z TV! Out!” The logo reappeared, along with the singsong tagline, and then the regular show reappeared.

“Wha– How– Who–” Scotch sputtered, then finally blurted, “Why were his stripes glowing blue?!” The one coherent question that escaped her mouth earned her a cool eyebrow arch from Pythia.

“That’s Doctor Z of Z TV,” Galen explained. “No idea who he is, really. Some crazy Propoli who interrupts television and radio all over the place. Been doing it for ages, though he’s gotten a lot more manic in recent years.”

“Like DJ Pon3,” Scotch said, understanding a little bit more. “Inspiring the Wasteland and such.”

“Well, something like that,” Galen answered with an indulging smile. “He mostly spouts conspiracy theories, insults tribal leaders, and watches the movement of the legions. Most of it is nonsense. There’s no way the leader of the Red Hooves is a mare, and no ship escapes from Riptide. That’s a known fact. And people have been making insinuations against Carnico for centuries.” But how? Scotch hadn’t seen anything like the EBS towers here in the zebra lands.

“Yeah, but we did escape from her,” Scotch Tape said with a frown. “The Abalone sailed right through the middle of the Okambo megaspell to get away from her.” That shook his slightly patronizing smile a bit. “We then got lost in the Orah’s swamp and walked, and drove, across the grass plains to get here.”

He stared for several seconds before adjusting his glasses. “I think I need the whole story here,” he said evenly, and she told him everything as they went deep into the night.

There’s nothing more disturbing than waking up abruptly in a strange place, and Doctor Galen’s apartment smelled of stale noodles and antiseptic. The musty couch had hard lumps in it, and Pythia kicked her frequently in her sleep.

So waking face to face with a dragonfilly inches away wasn’t how Scotch’d planned on starting the day. She almost shouted, but Precious covered her mouth. “What happened? Where are we? Did I kill anyone? Do I need to kill anyone?”

“You’re okay!” Scotch blurted, throwing her hooves around Precious and hugging her tight. “That bullet went into your head! The doctor here pulled it out again.” She gestured at Galen, who blinked owlishly at the three from his cot.

“Ugh, what’s the point of being half dragon if you’re not bulletproof?” she groaned as she fell back on her rump, rubbing the side of her head. “Will I at least have an awesome scar? You know, one that says ‘I got a bullet in the brain and lived’?”

“You’re lucky to be alive. We were worried about you!” Scotch said, then looked to Pythia. “Right?”

“She was worried. I knew you were too annoying to die,” she stated primly, then pulled the sheets over her head.

“Thanks!” Precious replied, then scowled. “Wait. Was that a dig?”

“If you have to ask…” Pythia said from within her cocoon of cloth.

Galen trotted over and pulled out a light, shining it in her eyes. “Amazing recovery. I’ve never seen a fused pony, or zebra, for that matter, recover so quickly.”

“Look! The two of you better get out of my face or I’m gonna…” she said weakly, then suddenly collapsed on her side, legs twitching. “Okay. Lying down till the room stops spinning.”

Apparently she had more healing to do, but, two potions later, she was sipping vegetable broth. Osane, Majina, and Aleta returned while the doctor was fussing over her. The dragonfilly gave Majina a wave. “Heyas. Guess the armor piercing bullet faerie caught up with me, huh?” she asked; the filly just dropped her eyes, though, and Precious’s grin faded as well.

“Doctor!” Osane snapped as she darted past them and into the operating room, then shrieked. “You used our rejuvenation potions! There’s almost no sunweed left! Six packs of enchanted gauze!” Then there came an even higher shriek. “And the entire jar of phoenix ash!?” The Proditor mare returned to the examination room, glowering at the doctor as he rubbed his head with a sheepish smile. She thrust a tiny empty jar at him. “This was given to us specifically for if, and only if, the head of the Syndicate needed us!”

“Well, I was losing her,” Galen muttered, turning his head to gaze at the wall. “I don’t like losing patients.”

“Well now the Syndicate’s going to kill us if they ever find out!” The nurse stared at the baffled Precious. “No wonder you’re recovering so well! He used virtually irreplaceable supplies!”

“Screw you, lady!” Precious growled indignantly. “Sorry for not dying!”

Osane whirled on Galen. “Of course, he should be sorry! The only thing phoenix ash doesn’t cure is death! You should be a drooling moron or corpse, but he used all of it!” She threw the bottle down. “And if something happens to the head–”

“Osane, that is enough,“ Galen said firmly, cutting her short. “I will not sacrifice a patient now for a potential patient in the future when I have the means to save them. The Mendi taught me better. A person’s life is too precious.”

Osane huffed a moment, glaring right at him. “Damn you, Galen. Phoenix ash aside, what are we to do if the Syndicate brings in one of their people with a gunshot? Tell them that we used all our supplies up on a strange dragon thing?” Her glare faltered as she glanced at Precious. “No offence meant, but from what I saw on the counter alone, not counting the ash, that was almost a thousand food ration chits. Possibly more!” She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t suppose you’re five secretly super-wealthy vagabonds, by any chance?”

“Um… we have a gold coin and some junk in our trailer,” Scotch said, fishing out the gold coin that the captain of the Abalone had given them. “Is this good enough?”

“One Imperio? That’s worth about ten or eleven food chits, depending on how generous the trader is feeling,” Osane said gravely, and then she glowered at the doctor. “Why do you keep doing this? You just can’t keep using everything in the stockroom on one patient!”

“I don’t bring life into this world, so I try to take care of what life I can that’s already here. You know that,” he said with that tired smile. Osane just sighed, as if she’d heard this all before. Aleta just stared in bafflement at the doctor, like he’d grown a second head.

Scotch looked at the others, then back at him. “We’ll pay you back. There must be something we can do to pay back what you used up on Precious.” Scotch glanced at the necklace glinting around Precious’s neck. “What about that?”

Precious immediately narrowed her eyes. “Hey! Don’t you be volunteering my shiny.”

“He saved your life,” Scotch pointed out.

“Eh, I might have pulled through on my own,” Precious snorted, then received hard glares from all directions. She pressed the back of her claw to her brow. “Oh, I’m faint…” Then she swayed and collapsed, lying still for a moment before peeking up at the still hard looks. Rising, she snorted and muttered, “I’ll pay him back in something that isn’t my shiny…”

“You don’t have–” the doctor began to say when Osane seized him and covered his mouth with a hoof.

“–to pay it back all at once. Just a bit here and there and everything will be fine.” Then she scowled at him. “And you are going to use it to restock everything you used last night!” She closed her eyes. “I have no idea what we’re going to do for the ash. That jar was priceless.”

“I wanted to be sure, and look at her! She’s doing great!” Galen said with a weak smile in Precious’s direction.

“Ugh! I should trot all the way out east and study with the Mendi myself. Then I can be doctor, and you can be nurse, and I’ll put a lock on the supply cabinet!” She turned, stalking out of the room, then whirled and added, “Oh, and someone bloodied the door again, Galen. Maybe one of these people owing you money could scrub it clean? I need to tally exactly how much saving her life cost us before patients arrive.”

Galen gave a weak smile. “She really is a great nurse. Really! And it’s hard to find a Carnilian Proditor with medical skills. So hard…”

“Bloodied the door?” Scotch said, blinking.

“Eh…” He gave a little wave towards the lobby. “Sometimes people lodge complaints by throwing blood against the door. Just a way of saying hello.”

“It’s a death threat,” Aleta said evenly. “A promise to spill his blood. It takes a lot for a Carnilian to end a life.”

“Technically, they won’t,” the doctor said with that hapless smile. “They’ll tie me up and throw me in a field of razorgrass. That’ll kill me. It’s all in the details.”

“You need to flee,” Aleta told him.

He simply gave her a mirthless smile. “It’s not the first time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to be ready for my patients.” He looked towards the back. “Now, where’d I leave that bucket?”

“I will take care of it,” Aleta said, walking to the supply room Osane had vanished into.

“Um… thanks?” he said before sighing and regarding the four. “Anyway, if you pay me back, great. If not… well… you won’t be the first.” He trotted to the entrance and opened it up. Sure enough, someone had taken a brush, painted sticky glyphs over his door, and splashed the walls. “Ugh…” He glanced back at them. “Maybe you should find somewhere else to stay, too. See if Scylla or someone can set you up on the other side of the river. I’m sorry to say this, but you’re not safe with me here.”

“We’ve got a pirate madmare after us, too,” Scotch said, her ears dropping, but she couldn’t blame him. Still, this was a town. An actual, bonafide, not-living-in-a-hotel-or-gutted-statue-or-country-club town. Maybe not the best one, but still, there had to be something she could do for money.

“Care to swap?” he asked, then looked at Pythia. “If you want to touch base with the Syndicate, there’s a cafe on the east side near the river. Happy Cow. Order the Starlight Special. They’ll talk to you.” He rubbed his head and turned to Precious. “If your head starts bothering you again… I can’t really think of anything I can do that I haven’t done already. Aspirin?”

“Eh, I’ll live,” Precious said with a shrug.

Scotch Tape shook her head, then told him. “Could you tell Aleta where to find us when she’s done, if she wants to catch up? Or just tell her she’s not cursed anymore and can go home? Whichever she wants.” Sure, there was a risk of the bounty hunters finding them through her, but, honestly, if they had cursed her, then the further away they were, the better, right?

They found the Whiskey Express right where they left it, and the trailer was still full of its bags of junk. Someone had rifled through them, scattering the contents all over the bed of the trailer, but she couldn’t tell what, if anything, had been taken. The cart was still disabled, though the levers and wheel no longer rested in their original positions. Scotch gave a little smirk of triumph. Precious was on her somewhat wobbly feet. Miss ‘Curses’ was ditched. All they had to do was find some odd jobs to pay back the doctor and find out where they were going next.

Finally, things were starting to come together!

“Pony,” someone muttered in the alley they’d parked in. Two zebras approached, dressed in heavy canvas barding. Heavy, but not exactly raider material. “Where’d you steal that tractor, Pony?”

“I didn’t steal it. I found it,” Scotch countered as they walked by. “Out in the grass.”

“Sure you did. Fucking pony,” the other snapped back as they continued past.

“What was that about?” Scotch said in bafflement.

“Maybe you should let Majina drive?” Pythia suggested as Scotch examined the firebox of embers. Still warm.

“Why?” Scotch asked, blinking in surprise.

“Because when we came in here, we had an adult Carnilian with us, and I don’t think anyone really had time to think things through because we were in such a hurry. I think that either Majina should drive, or we need to at least get on the other side of the river,” Pythia said, frowning as the two zebras suddenly ran off. “Because I’m pretty sure whatever passes for police here is going to be by, and they’re going to think you stole it too.”

“Why? I scavenged it and fixed it up myself! I didn’t steal–” And then it came to her. “You mean they think I’m a thief ‘cause I’m a pony?!”

“Apparently,” Pythia said, looking over her shoulder where the two had disappeared out of sight.

“But that’s… stupid! I don’t think all zebras are thieves or anything else! Why would they think I’m a thief just because I’m a pony!” she said, fuming as she shoved coal into the firebox and mixed it with the embers. There was enough water left in the water tank to get them moving, at least.

“Well, you’re a pony in zebra lands with something valuable,” she said, pointing at the vehicle. “When you’re just a wandering child, it’s not so bad. A vehicle like the Whiskey Express is something a lot of zebras don’t have, and they’re not going to be happy you do.”

Scotch clenched her jaw together and worked the embers in the firebox briskly as she narrowed her eyes. She knew folks might not like her because of the war thing, or blame her for the grass thing, but assuming she was a criminal just for being a pony…

She hopped in the seat and made for the bridge. She’d be damned if anyone was going to take the Whiskey Express from her or think less of her just because she was a pony!

The wide bridge was a mass of zebras and vehicles trudging across to the east bank, where the large factory buildings could be seen. She moved at a crawl to avoid running over zebras trotting in the middle of the street, as if they couldn’t be bothered to get out of her way. Other zebra steam tractors didn’t seem to have the problem of people indolently trotting along in front of them, but she didn’t know what punishment she’d suffer for running over people. Eventually, however, they reached the far side, where the crowd filtered into the various places of work.

In spite of her irritation, Scotch couldn’t help but marvel at this glimpse into a life before the bombs. Ponies had done this too: lived, worked, and played in towns similar to this one. Hopefully not as smoggy, but still. Jobs. Work. Life.

Then she spotted one particular zebra and realized that there was no way this could have been like the old days. He stood on the corner, enjoying a cigarette… that was delicately held in the pincer of a chitinous claw that erupted from his shoulder. A matching one on the other side calmly held some sort of publication, with a fleshy heap atop his shoulders connecting the two unnatural appendages. She very nearly ran over two strollers in her astonishment, but the strange… zebra-thing… was oblivious to her fascination.

And he wasn’t the only one. Here and there were zebras with bizarre mutations that boggled her mind. Zebras with chitinous plates or scaly hides fused to their skin. Strange scarab, crab, or giant centipede-like insects with legs embedded into the flesh of their hosts. Some had slimy leeches adhered to their hides, and the other zebras showed only blasé indifference or mild disgust at the sight. There were claws sprouting from the sides of faces, eyeballs of dragons and insects replacing normal eyes, fleshy pseudopod eyestalks, and even a few zebras with entire limbs of other species attached. She even spotted one with a bulbous growth on her brow tipped with a unicorn spire that was shakily holding a coffee cup in a telekinetic glow.

There were different species, too. She recognized the griffons from Equestria, and the centaurs, gargoyles, and hounds from her attackers, but there were plenty of other creatures. Apelike things with hands sprouting from the tips of their long, prehensile tails. Beasts with three, or four, or five heads all having conversations with each other. Zebra-sized birds that crackled with lightning as they perched on eaves overhead. Lithe, painfully graceful equine people with long, elegant horns curving back from their brows. Shaggy predatory beasts that were all fur and claw, like feline hellhounds, that were given wide berths as they travelled through the crowds.

There were ponies, too. Rare splashes of color here or there wandering through the crowd, keeping their heads low. Oddly, almost all of them had stripes painted on their bodies. If that was to prevent hostility or blend in, she had no idea, but the few that noticed her gaped in astonishment before hurrying on their way.

The factory dominated the landscape. Several buildings all interconnected with pipes, girders, and grain silos loomed over the rest of the buildings squatting in their shadow. ‘Carnico’ was emblazoned in rust-streaked letters across the face of the factory, with the last ‘o’ transformed into a smiling sun. She couldn’t see the end of the facility through the haze of coal smog settling from the smokestacks above, and her PipBuck gave an anemic click every other minute. Some workers trudged in the front gate, but others gathered around a platform where zebras scribbled glyphs and numbers on a chalkboard. They held up little plastic tiles, calling out, “I got four food chits here! Four food chits! Fertilizer duty. Who wants to shovel shit?” And then they would pick four out of the crowd of thousands, sending them back towards a special gate. Some received two chits. Some three. One stallion was awarded ten, much to the howls of anger from the mob of those unpicked. The majority were left waiting and waving their hooves as jobs were called out.

“I think that’s the cafe Galen mentioned,” Pythia said. ‘Happy cow noodle shop’ sat just to the side of the mob, built into the side of a larger, unmarked building. The only ‘happy cow’ she saw was the mascot of a grinning cow vaulting over a crescent moon. Most of the zebras stood around tiny tables that barely held their bowls, standing on their hind legs, slurping noodles and broth or drinking little glasses of something white that might have been milk.

“How do you know?” Scotch asked as she pulled the tractor in next to the large building.

“The cow’s jumping over the moon,” Pythia said as she climbed out of the tractor, then looked at the four. “We need to have a meeting first, though.”

“We do?” Precious blinked. “Mommy and daddy are having a baby?”

Pythia closed her eyes, emitting only a long-suffering sigh. Majina transformed from black and white to black and infra-red. “What! No! How would they… I mean…” Then she paused and narrowed her eyes. “Which one of you would be the daddy?”

Precious couldn’t grin any further. “I don’t know. Which one are you thinking is the daddy, because this is too much!”

“Meeting. Now,” Pythia said with a snort, pointing to the ground next to the tractor. “Circle up.” When everyone was assembled, she looked from one to the next. “Okay, are we seriously going to pay back Galen? We didn’t ask him to spend a billion caps, or chits, or whatever the heck they use for money. We got things to do.”

“How can you ask that?” Scotch responded, aghast. She glanced at Majina, but the filly only stared at her hooves.

“Easy,” Pythia answered. “We find out where the Eye is and go, or where the letter came from and go. Either way, we’ve got no reason to hang around this place. Remember? We’re being hunted?”

“Yeah, but now we’re in a town with thousands of people to hide among. Out there, it’s not hard to ask if anyone’s seen a pony, dragonpony, Starkatteri, and zebra. Here, I’m not the only pony, and if I have to paint some stripes on me to fit in even more, then I’ll paint some stripes. And this is also the only place I can think of that Precious can fit in too!” Scotch said, jabbing a hoof at a zebra walking down the street with a pangolin-like coat of scales rippling with each step.

“Yeah! I finally found my people!” Precious said with a smile.

Pythia grit her teeth and tilted her head. “Still, if we’re not careful, we could get bogged down here, or caught.”

“Sure, but we could also get some things we need,” Scotch countered. “Let’s face it. We didn’t exactly plan this out when we got here. We have one gun, and I’m not one hundred percent sure how to use it right. Some decent barding, weapons, and supplies wouldn’t be a bad thing to have when we go on to find the Eye.”

“Are we still caring about this eye thingy being blind or not?” Precious asked. “Raise your hoof if you don’t care about blind world eyes.” And she raised her claw. To Scotch’s shock, Majina raised hers a little too.

“Yes!” Pythia snapped at once. “We need… I need… to find out. I hear the phrase ‘Eye of the World is Blind’ and hits me like ‘Project Horizons’ or ‘Eater of Souls’. That this is important, and I need to know. I don’t know why, but there are things up there that are really stirred up about it.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “If you don’t want to help, fine. I’ll go on my own. But I’m not ready to just drop this.”

“But Pythia, we might find out what you need to know if we stick around a while. We left the Hoof because no one in Equestria knew anything about things happening in the zebra lands! Well, here we are!” Scotch said with a grin. “There’re thousands of zebras here, and one of them has to be someone who can give you solid answers.”

“Yeah. Thousands of zebras that hate ponies, half ponies, and Starkatteri!” Pythia snapped.

“I dunno. This side of the river seems okay,” Precious said as she surveyed the crowd around the platform. “Maybe a little dirtier.”

“They might hate us, but Majina’s none of those things, right?” Scotch said, trying to get the filly out of her funk and enthusiastic again. Majina just looked away. “Point is, there are things we can explore here.”

“And if Riptide shows up and shells the town if it doesn’t hand us over?” Pythia asked.

“If she comes, then we run with the rest of the city for our lives. But there are no walls here, just tons of people. Those hunters won’t know if we stay or go. Which direction do we take? When do we leave? We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled, but that’s normal for anywhere,” Scotch said.

Pythia finally slumped. “I don’t like this place. It feels like a trap.”

“Well, if it is, then it’s caught a few thousand people. Just be patient. We’ll pay back Galen, find where we need to go, and make sure we have the right stuff when we go,” Scotch said, giving her a smile.

“Stars, I wish I knew how to be stupid and optimistic like that,” Pythia marveled, then sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. I guess I haven’t been given a timetable for finding this stuff out. Just… don’t want to wait too long.” She turned and started towards the entrance of the cafe. “Let’s go.”

Scotch glanced at Majina, then called to Pythia, “Hey! We’ll catch up.” She pulled out the Imperio and tossed the coin to them. Precious lunged for it, but Pythia snatched it out of the air before the dragonfilly could catch it. “Get something to eat in the meantime.”

“Let me carry it!” Precious said as Pythia walked with it in her mouth. “Come on, it’s shiny! Looks heavy, I can haul it. You don’t know where that’s been!” she was saying as the pair disappeared around the corner.

“Looks like the phoenix ash is pretty amazing stuff. Should look for more for us,” Scotch said, then glanced at Majina sitting there as if trying to collapse in on herself. Scotch moved up next to her. “Hey. Wanna go see the river?” Majina didn’t answer, so they walked to the front of the cafe as well, crossing the street and moving towards the concrete embankment next to the murky water’s edge. Once, there’d been planters built along the edge, but they were full of garbage now. Still, the edge gave them something to sit on.

The eponymous torrent running through Rice River was a broad slurry a kilometer wide rolling down towards the sea in a great, foamy surge. Even now, zebras had… something… like life before the bombs. No matter how you sliced it, that was pretty impressive. She checked to make sure there weren’t any bounty hunters ready to snatch her up. Coal ash drifted down around them as she put a hoof across Majina’s shoulders and tugged her closer. “What’s wrong?”

She sniffed and rubbed her nose. “I’m tired of people getting hurt,” she said.

“Precious is fine. The doctor used…”

“And what if he hadn’t? What if Precious had died or… or worse! What if she’d lived but been drooling or brain damaged or… would we have just abandoned her?!” She trembled and shook her head. “I keep seeing people getting hurt, like those poor farmers, and… and I don’t like it!” She held the cheek that Precious had slashed. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it either, but we can’t change it. People get hurt,” Scotch Tape said. “It’s a fact of life.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be!” Majina said as she sniffed, tears forming new stripes in the dust on her cheeks. “At Osane’s… they laughed. They were happy! Her husband’s not Proditor, and she has five kids, and everyone was happy. No one was screaming or clawed or… it was how the world should be! Where the only pain is getting teased because your sister turned your stripes plaid or hid your doll.”

She curled up as Scotch struggled to think of something to say. Majina curled up a bit on her side. “Mom got hurt a lot. Then she got killed. When we were in Chapel, I thought we’d stop hurting, but even that didn’t last. Then she died.” She clenched her eyes closed, turning her face to the dirty concrete as she wept silently.

Scotch felt a hole she’d thought safely covered over open up inside her. “I… I know, Majina. My mom… it was like she left and never came home. They put her in the recycler before I even saw her body. Said it was a kindness…” She shook and swallowed. “I thought… I used to think that it was all a mistake. That she’d come in and we’d laugh, and I’d go back to school with my friends, rather than going down to maintenance. But she never did. And Daddy…” She trailed off as she felt that hole threaten to open so wide that she wouldn’t be able to close it again.

“I’m tired of being hurt,” Majina said as she peered up at Scotch. “I want to be Momma’s happy tale, but I don’t know if I am. I’m not even sure if you girls like me.”

“I like you. I’m pretty sure Precious does too.” Scotch balked as she wiped her own cheeks. “Pythia’s… I don’t know if she can like someone, but I don’t think she hates you.”

“I don’t know if she even likes herself,” Majina said, wiping her eyes, then looked at Scotch. “Was this how it was when you were travelling with Blackjack?”

Scotch sat bolt upright, as if someone had dumped ice water down her back. “Oh horseapples!” she gasped. “No! Not at all. There was a lot more… um… shooting! And… um… sex! Yep! Lots of sex! Tons.” Then she cocked her head. “Actually… yeah. Blackjack really loved doing it. Glory. Daddy. Stygius. She really wasn’t picky.” She stomped her hoof. “None of that here! So… yeah! Nothing like Blackjack!”

Thinking about sex helped her not think about all the bad things that happened, and she looked down at Majina. “Point is, we’re not Blackjack and her friends. We’re… something else. Okay?” And she gave Majina her most encouraging smile and finally got one in return. “Come on. I’m hungry.”

They’d started across the street when Majina asked, “What’s sex like, Scotch?” The question made her skip a step and land on her face in the middle of the street. Fortunately, there weren’t any steam tractors moving through at the moment… though, honestly, had one run her over right then, that’d be just grand!

“Um… great! Can we discuss it… some other time? Any other time?” Scotch asked as she blushed furiously, picking herself up and getting out of the street.

“I was just curious. You’re a lot like Blackjack was, and–”

“I’m not like her!” Scotch said, turning on Majina. “Okay? She’s her and I’m me, and I’m not her and she’s not me and I am never, ever, ever going to do the things that she did, okay?!” Majina shrank away, and Scotch immediately gasped. “Oh… but I’m not mad with you, Majina! I’m… I…” she faltered as Majina turned and quickly trotted inside.

Scotch walked to the side of the building and thumped her head against the stucco. Because that was totally something Blackjack would never do. She’d get her horn stuck. I’m not like Blackjack. I’m nothing like her.

“Of course,” a dry whisper rasped in her ear. She didn’t look. She clenched her eyes closed and rushed in the door as it opened, bumping whatever occupant was leaving.

Inside, her eyes beheld a wonder. The cafe was a long rectangle with a glass counter in the shape of an L. Faded and chipped smiling cows were everywhere in a yellow and blue motif that was just a little creepy. One section of the long counter had the sign ‘MEAT’ hanging above it. Another read ‘FLESH’. Further down she could see ‘GRAIN’, ‘FRUIT’, and ‘SOUP’. A half dozen zebras worked the area behind the counter, carefully packaging up servings for customers in boxes and some kind of paper bowls. Others received trays and were eating on those high tables with tiny tops. Apparently these people didn’t believe in sitting to eat.

“You two got to see this!” Precious gushed as she pointed at the counter, mouth watering. “They have everything! Cooked food. Raw food! This is like… amazing!” She leaned back and forth, peering at the offerings. “Do they have gems? I’d like mine with rubies!”

Scotch had to admit that the rich smells coming from behind that counter were definitely making her mouth water. Over each section were pictures, and next to them numbers in chalk, one set fractions in yellow and the other whole numbers. “What’s that?”

“Prices,” Pythia said sourly. “One chit is one serving. The size of the serving depends on what you want. It might be half a berry of super yummy goodness, or a bucket of slop. You want more, you pay more chits,” she said as she pointed at the fractions. “That’s in Imperio. They actually still use their old currency instead of bottlecaps. Also, they accept bullets. Nine bullets for that meal. Twelve for that one.” She screwed up her face thoughtfully. “Not sure if the kind of bullet matters or not. Not like we have much of either.”

The occupants were a condensation of the weirdness out on the street. Most were zebras, but many of them had freakish alterations. Bizarre colorations of manes, strange growths and creatures stuck to their skin, and just odd bodies. One was the biggest, fattest zebra she’d ever seen. He sat on his tubby haunches, scarfing down a bucket of something that resembled wallpaper paste and a bowl full of fresh vegetables. A zebra ghoul read a paper as he munched down on wiggling radroaches impaled on wooden skewers. A young griffon struggled to scrape every bit of meat off a bone while a teenaged dragon roasted… something… on a claw with his bluish flame.

The four got together in the grain line, moving towards the front. When they reached the counter, a zebra with strange, swishy, curly stripes blinked down at them. His markings resembled those of the mare from the episode of ‘Black and White’. “Watchuwan?” he snapped, tapping his hoof on the counter.

“Huh?” Scotch blinked.

“Watchuwantaeat!?” he blurted. “Cumonangimeyorder!”

A stallion next to him with a Carnilian’s thick stripes translated with a grin. “He wants to know your order.”

“Thawatised!” the curly striped stallion snapped with a roll of his eyes.

Pythia stepped up. “Your Starlight Special was recommended.”

“Wedonhavtha! Ordersomthinelse!” the swishy striped zebra snapped as he jabbed at the pictures above him, eyes bulging wide as he glared down at the four.

“Whoa, Hachipa! Swap with me!” the Carnilian stallion said, pulling the stallion aside and frowning down at them. “We don’t carry that special anymore.”

Pythia tugged her hood back and stared up at him, the stallion recoiling visibly. “Still, I’d like to try it. It was recommended by a friend. Doctor Galen. And a mare like me named Scylla.”

“Right. Right.” He frowned, knitting his brows together. “Let me go talk to the manager. Why don’t you order anything you want.” He turned to the curl striped zebra, who was just on the verge of addressing another customer when the Carnilian grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back. “Give them one of whatever thing they want. Okay. Free samples. I’ve got to go in the back a second.” Then he trotted for a door in the back.

“Makupurmind!” the other stallion shouted, returning to stare down at the four of them with eyes so wide that they seemed like they’d come right out of his head as he leaned over the glass shield and said loudly, “Wat! Du! Yu! Wan! To! Eait!?”

“Um…” Scotch Tape and the others shared looks, and finally she answered, “Um… make us… whatever’s good?” Pythia pursed her lips, and a moment later smacked Scotch upside the head. “Ow! What was th–”

Instantly the stallion beamed at them and whirled into action. Three of the Carnilian zebras fell back, shouting, “Watch out! Hachipa’s in action!” Some of the diners halted and began to chant, “Hah-chi-pa!” over and over as the convoluted striped zebra went from station to station, snatching up bits of food left and right, carrying them on his rump, shoulders, and head before tossing them on the table. Then his hooves went for the knives, and the ingredients didn’t stand a chance. He chopped, pared, and minced with abandon. His tail held a scoop and, when he turned to get some sort of meat, continued to mix the vegetables on the cutting board. The meat went on a pan with a sizzle, and he crushed the meat to the griddle with his hoof! Before Scotch could say ‘unsanitary’ he flipped it over and repeated the process, mashing it to the hot metal with a scream of steam.

In what felt like moments, the meat was taken off, cubed, and then placed in a bowl. Three other bowls were filled with vegetables, and then some sort of sauce was dribbled over, then fruit placed on top. More sauce. Then four bowls were placed on a tray, and he carried them down to the end of the end of the counter, presenting them to the four fillies. “Um… thanks!” she said, aware that a lot of people were watching them.

To stall, they went to a table for foals, only half as tall as the others, and set the bowls down. Unfortunately, there was Hachipa right behind them, his wide eyes and grin suggesting they’d be chopped up in the next bowl if they didn’t eat it. Precious ate cubed steak on top of some sort of salad, and immediately her eyes popped wide too. “Aw, this is great!” she said. “I’ve never eaten anything so good before!”

Scotch and Majina stuck their faces into their bowls and took their first bites.

It almost killed them. A fireball went off in Scotch’s mouth, and it was all she could do not to spit it out or throw up. It was as if a billion wasps had made her mouth their home and tenderized it with stings. She couldn’t breathe from the smoke in her lungs. It was only through profound effort that she was able to swallow. That one bite had enough heat to power Equestria for a year. No! A century!

“G…g… good.” Majina said, and he leaned towards her a little, that slasher grin not wavering in the slightest as his eyes went from one to another. “Um… I’m full… can’t eat another bite!” She started panting and waving air over her tongue. “Waaa! How is it getting hotter!?” she cried out. Scotch turned and grabbed a cup of something… she hoped it was water… and poured it down her throat. To her horror, it only stoked the flames.

Pythia, who hadn’t touched her bowl, simply said, “No thanks. I don’t like spicy food.”

“Urrrrraaaaghhhh!” Hachipa screamed, grabbing his head as he stood upright, leaning back. “Houcayonotlikit?! Wycatifinthaperfecdish?! Waiwaiwai! AHHHHHH!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, then ripped off his apron and threw it against the wall, reached over and flipped a table, sending dishes flying, and then ran out of the cafe. He sprinted across the street, still screaming, and leapt right into the river. At once, the entire cafe burst into cheers and chants of ‘Hah-chi-pa’ again. As they laughed, Pythia leaned over and swapped her bowl with a laughing stallion the next table over.

Scotch just stared blankly. “Was it something she said?”

The ghoul with his radroaches cackled. “He’s Tappahani, that’s all. He does this all the time. They’re funny like that. You should see what he does if you ask him to make a quiche.” He peered at them with his filmy white eyes. A ragged gray coat and fedora were draped across the far side of his little table. “First time in a long time I’ve seen a pony with no stripes tattooed on. Interesting.”

“Yeah. I guess,” she said, glancing at two pony stallions with the stripes. The ghoul’s stripes almost all went in thin horizontal across his body rather than down from his spine, not quite continuous. They intermeshed at about his ribcage. His rump had a vague glyph that seemed to resemble a crossed wrench and hammer. “Why do they do that? The painting stripes thing?”

“To get mates. You’ll understand when you’re older,” he said with a wave of his hoof.

“You’re not Carnilian. What tribe are you?” Scotch asked. Her free friends were either eating or waiting with bored expressions, not listening to Scotch’s conversation. Majina seemed fascinated by the people around them, and a bit wary. Precious was working on her second bowl. Pythia was simply… bored, picking at her bowl as the stallion next to them collapsed to the ground, clutching his throat and crying.

He seemed to smile a bit. “Propoli. Been stuck here forever. Carnilians don’t like me because I’m a ghoul. Propoli don’t like me because I’m old.” He shrugged. “Ehhh…” he gave a wave of his hoof and a curl of his lip… or maybe that was just the default expression of his ragged face.

Scotch closed her eyes. “I think I met one of your tribe back in the Ponylands. In Hoofington.”

“Seriously? They’re still sticking around that place? I thought the ponies blew it up for good.”

“Well, this was before that,” Scotch said. “I think she’s still there though.”

“Ehh…” Another hoof wave. “Yeah. Not surprising, I guess. We get around. People need shit fixed. Call a Propoli. People need shit planned, they look for us.” He rolled his filmy eyes. “‘Course, getting paid and getting home can be pretty tricky.”

“So the Carnilians don’t like ghouls?” Scotch asked.

“They’re the tribe of life, and I don’t have a pulse. What do you think?” he asked with a snort, then pulled the last few legs off the radroach and popped them in his mouth with a crunch.

“Sorry. Dumb question, I guess.” She suddenly shivered as if a draft had blown up her spine, making her look around. Pythia also glanced around with a frown, but Scotch returned her attention to the ghoul.

“Eh. Not your fault. Carnilians are just folks, and folks generally follow the loudest jackass with a pulpit, megaphone, or soapbox. Those jackasses say that if it can’t breed, or produce babies that can breed, then it’s wasted life. They’re not big fans of sapient robot workers, either, for that reason. Why build mechanical farmers to clear that damned grass when you can do what Carnico says?” He snorted little flecks of radroach chitin over his tray. “You’ll see. If you try to… ah… do adult things with their tribe, they’ll take up arms about how bad you are, but if one of your zebra friends does, they’ll be gushing about how beautiful it is.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Scotch said. “If you don’t like it here, why stay?”

“One, travel from here to Bastion is a damned nightmare. Two, they don’t like ghouls there either. Especially ghouls from before the war. We’re old and stuck on the past. Three, they really don’t like ghouls that call them on their shit. Fourth, the Carnilians actually need me to fix their stuff, so while they don’t like me, they’ll still pay me. In Bastion, I’d be just another wrench jockey. An unemployed wrench jockey. So… ehhhh…”

“I guess I’m a little surprised to find ghouls here at all. I thought they were all in Equestria,” Scotch said.

He laughed, spraying little flecks of shell. “Pony, where do you think they built balefire bombs? Shit, there were factories churning the damned things out. And after we ‘won’,” he said, making air quotes with his chipped hooves, “it wasn’t long before assholes here took the ones we didn’t fire and started using them on ourselves! As if megaspells weren’t enough. Ehh…” He snorted and picked up the limbless roach. “Trust me, kid. There’re plenty of ghouls here.” He popped the roach into his mouth and chewed enthusiastically.

“But you still have cities. Rice River’s bigger than any town in the Wasteland.”

He swallowed, eying her flatly. “You sound like a first year civil engineering student. All a city is is a bunch of buildings letting a whole lot of people live together. If those people are starving, filthy, desperate jerks, then it’s just a whole bunch of jerks living together. City needs a spirit if it’s to be more than a collection of buildings.”

“Oh. Yeah, good point,” she conceded.

“Ehhh, don’t worry about it. Nice to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t think I’m an abomination… or who’s nice enough to hide it if you do.”

Scotch smiled as she looked him in the eye. She’d met plenty of ghouls in the Hoof that were nice. A little old and strange, but nice. “Is Bastion another city like Rice River?” Scotch asked.

He started to answer, paused, then pursed his scarred lips. “I’m not the right one to ask. What it is and what it was ain’t the same anymore. I’ll say it’s our capital and leave it at that. Out on the west coast near the bridge to Equestria.” He gave a wave of his hoof.

“Do they hate ponies there?”

“‘Course not. That’d be civil of them. They dismiss ponies there, just like they dismiss everyone else not worth their time. Trust me, kid. Stay the heck away from Bastion. It is no place you want to visit.” He sighed and then bit the head off another roach. Scotch wasn’t sure of him, but he’d been more informative than most zebras she’d met.

“Thanks. I’m Scotch Tape, by the way,” she said, offering him her name and a smile.

“Xarius. If you’re sticking around and need work, come down to my shop. Over on Fifth and Imperial. We’re always happy to pay chits to kids with half a brain in their heads for deliveries.” He popped the last piece of radroach into his mouth, masticated furiously, then swallowed and let out a belch, spraying his tray with more bits of radroach before he rose, donned his coat and hat, gave a nod, and departed carrying his head low with a long, drawn out, “Ehhh…”

As he exited, he bumped shoulders with the waterlogged Hachipa. Still dripping, his head held high, eyes flat and cool. He walked to where he’d tossed his apron, put it back around his neck, and walked behind the counter, resuming his previous position. He sniffed loudly but otherwise showed no reaction to the fact he’d just jumped in a river.

The Carnilian stallion returned and made his way to their table, glancing over his shoulder at the drenched Hachipa. “You asked him to make you something good, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Scotch said, quickly.

“I would have,” Precious said around a mouthful of food, three empty bowls in front of her, then swallowed. “If I’d known he’d do that. Can we make him do it again?”

“Probably not for an hour or two. He needs to recharge to reach that level of hysteria,” the stallion said. “Anyway, the manager would like to see you about your order.”

Instantly, all four smiles dissolved. Together, they followed him into the back of the cafe, where shelves and refrigerators held the ingredients being used by the zebras behind the counter, and to a set of stairs heading down into a basement with even more storage. A ramp up led to a pair of heavy metal doors Scotch Tape guessed led outside. They could have driven the Whiskey Express down here, no problem. In fact, there were way more crates and boxes down here than the cafe above would ever need.

Set up in the corner was a large desk with papers stacked all around it and a chalkboard against the wall covered in glyphs that Scotch couldn’t read. There were three individuals around the desk: a zebra stallion behind it, a zebra stallion standing against the wall wearing a cloak, and a unicorn mare tattooed in Carnilian stripes. The Carnilian leading them waved for them to wait.

The second the standing zebra looked at Scotch Tape, she felt it. Thousands of eyes upon her. Watching. Waiting. Wanting. One word, and they’d be upon the four of them. His stripes matched Pythia’s, the glyphs around his face and his bright red eyes setting her on edge. Pythia had frozen as well, her brows knitted in concern. It also didn’t hurt that he was damned fit. Toned muscles and a defined physique of a style that wasn’t so much sexy as threatening. Rough scars snaking all over his body clashed with the sweeping arcs of his stripes.

The unicorn reminded Scotch of Blackjack, with wide and kind lavender eyes and an unstriped periwinkle-colored coat. Her orchid-colored mane was tied back in a small tail, and her long tail was braided tightly and wrapped with leather. She had a PipBuck, too! Pretty. Very pretty. Also, very armed. The combat webbing she wore had a knife strapped to the side of every hoof, a pair of swords on her belt, and heavy caliber revolver. She also wore a thick leather collar, and her cutie mark was three crossed swords. She gave Scotch a friendly smile.

“…doesn’t matter how powerful it is if we tear ourselves to pieces trying to get it,” the zebra stallion behind the desk said into a phone. Unlike the other tribes she’d met, his stripes were more like thin dashes than solid bands. “I know. Supreme power, blah blah blah. Anyone that uses that phrase doesn’t understand supremacy or power.” Aside from his erect, trimmed mohawk mane, he was… plain. Not too fit. Not too soft. Pale green eyes considered the four of them. “Listen, gush all you want, but I have business. When you get something more concrete, I’ll listen. Right. Right. Okay. Bye.” He hung up the phone and then smiled and waved them over.

As they approached, the unicorn gave a slight nod of her head. “They’re pineapple,” she said.

“Pineapple?” Scotch echoed, then realized. “Oh. You mean we’re yellow.” The mare actually grinned in approval.

“What if we were ‘strawberry’?” Precious asked with a grin.

The unicorn’s smile didn’t waver in the slightest. “I’d make strawberry jam.”

“Oh, I like her,” Precious said to Scotch. The unicorn laughed, and never took her eyes off them.

The stallion behind the desk wore a pleasant enough smile. “So you’re her. The one that Scylla mentioned. ‘Not your average Starkatteri’, in her words.” He leaned back. “I suppose introductions are in order. My name is Vega. This is Tchernobog and Vicious.” He gestured to the zebra and unicorn in turn, then pressed his hooves together before him. “I have to admit, I’ve never had four kids come to me before asking for the special.”

“Scylla encouraged me to stop by, and she pointed me to Galen. He said that your… organization might be helpful to us,” Pythia said as she stepped forward and gestured to each of them. “Scotch. Majina. Pain in the ass.”

“Precious!” the dragonfilly snapped.

“So hard to remember,” Pythia said as she faced Vega again.

“‘Organization’. Nice. You already have the euphemisms down. We also go by ‘association’, ‘company’, and ‘cabal’. Publicly, most people call us the Syndicate. Do you know what we do?”

“You’re criminals,” Pythia said flatly, and that got a laugh from the stallion.

“Hardly. Criminals break the law as a rule. We work around laws to facilitate the transfer of goods from those who have to those who want, regardless of the wishes of established powers, for the economic betterment of the common people of the Empire,” Vega said smoothly.

“Now who’s using euphemisms?” Pythia asked.

Vega lost his smile. “My point is, you came to us because you need something. Something that I may have. I was just curious enough about the oddity of four kids asking that I allowed this meeting. If this is a waste of time, I’ll have Viccy show you out.”

“We need help,” Scotch said, stepping next to Pythia. “And we need information.”

Vega’s eyes switched to Scotch’s. “We offer both at reasonably priced and tiered rates. What kind of help and information?”

Scotch opened her mouth to explain, then paused, then turned to Majina. “Can you tell them?”

The filly blinked in shock. “I thought you were just going to… you know… summarize.”

“I think Mr. Vega here deserves details. You don’t mind details, right?” Scotch asked him.

“I find the most fascinating things in them,” the stallion said with a small smile. He glanced at Tchernobog, and the stallion gave a slight nod of his head. “Go ahead… Majina, was it? Majina.”

The filly took a shaky breath. “Well, I guess it started when Blackjack slew the Eater of Souls and saved the world…”

Two hours and some snacks later, Majina finished. She’d let out a lot more information than Scotch had intended to tell, and Pythia in particular seemed to bristle at points. The three were attentive to the story, and Vega began taking notes a few minutes in and asking for clarification here and there. It wasn’t quite a story so much as a dramatic debriefing. When it finished, Majina finally slumped and wiped her brow, then beamed a smile at Scotch.

“You realize you just told a bunch of criminals that Riptide will probably pay a ton for our heads, right?” Pythia hissed in a whisper.

“Everyone has a price on their heads,” Vega said as he sat back, drinking some sort of purple soda called ‘Healade’. “It’s just a question of collection.” He glanced at Tchernobog, who gave the smallest of shrugs, then at Vicious, who shook her head, before setting the bottle aside and leaning towards them. “You should be relieved to know that Riptide is not a member of our organization, and that she’s repeatedly burned her bridges with us so that, even if we were to offer you to her, we’d have no way to collect payment. I don’t see any reason to diminish her ignorance as to your whereabouts.”

All four visibly relaxed, letting out a mutually held breath. Vega went on, “I’m more upset to learn that Galen used supplies that were given to him for specific circumstances. I’ll have to have a talk with him about that.”

“We’re going to pay him back!” Scotch assured him, getting another skeptical brow. “Somehow…” she muttered, dropping her eyes.

“Right. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I’m at a loss regarding what we can do for each other. I love Starkatteri, if for nothing else than their ability to scare the ignorant out of their wits, but I’m not sure if I need another. And unless you can point me in the direction of that cache of building materials in the swamp…?” He trailed off as he gazed at Scotch. While she might have been able to do so, she doubted if Granny or the other Orah would appreciate the intrusion, so she shook her head. “Well in that case, not sure how I can help you.”

“Vega,” Tchernobog said in a low, almost subvocal voice. “There is more here than just four children. I can feel it. One of them is a shaman. The shadows are hungry for her.”

“I only did that once. Never again,” Pythia said sharply.

“Of course,” Tchernobog chuckled, his voice low and seeming to carry much farther than it should. “Much of what you say, though, interests me. This Eye of the World, for instance. The actions of two centuries back. Yes. Much of this interests me.” He regarded Vega. “May I take her measure?”

The boss stallion’s brows arched in surprise, and then he gave a nod of his head. Slowly, Tchernobog walked in front of Pythia and stared into her eyes. Pythia stared back, but gave a swallow as they maintained contact. “You’re a seer?” he rumbled.

“Yeah,” she said dryly. “Not a shaman.”

“So you claim, as others have. Prove it. Tell me what I will be doing tonight,” he said in that low rumble. “Show me your power.”

Pythia backed away, then drew herself up, took out her starmap and crystal pendant, and started to wave the latter over the former.

As she watched it, Vicious eyed Scotch, all smiles and friendliness. “Are you a stable pony too, or did you just find a PipBuck?” Scotch asked.

“It was my grandmother’s. Her stable collapsed, and she was lucky enough to get out before they all suffocated. Mom was brought here by zebra slavers when she was pregnant with me,” she said casually. “Not quite as thrilling as your story, but I might have skipped a few details.”

“Is it hard being a pony here?” Scotch asked.

“In Rice River?” Vicious asked, raising her eyebrows. Scotch nodded, and the unicorn smiled. “Paint some stripes on your ass, and you can usually find somezebra with a pony fetish. The more taboo something is, the more you’ll find someone desperate to do exactly that. Otherwise, it’s what you can do to earn chits. Life’s easier on this side of the river, but good luck finding anywhere to live. Crowded like crazy.” She regarded Precious a moment. “You never mentioned how your friend got so many dragon grafts. Seriously, she should be dead with that much bodywork.”

“I was born this way,” Precious growled.

“Seriously?” Vicious scoffed. Precious just growled, baring her teeth. “Hey, if you say so. I just know Carnico’d love to crack that nut.”

“Pity we’re nothing but terrorists, criminals, and thieves to them,” Vega said. “I’d kill for a more enlightened CEO.”

“Like the last one I whacked?” Vicious asked, with a grin. Vega sighed but gave a little nod. “Yeah. This one’s too paranoid to give us another shot at him.”

“Who… or what… is Carnico? It’s some kind of weed killer business?” Scotch asked, remembering the huge factory outside.

“They were, before the war,” Vega explained. “Carnico made two things: plants and plant killing products. They still produce both. The weed killer they give away. Everyone can take one can a year, and used carefully, it’s enough to keep an acre or so clear of the grass. However, if you want to grow anything on that acre, you have to use their crops. Since they’re the only thing keeping the weeds from covering the entire world, they act like they run Rice River. Unfortunately, the seeds of the crops they produce are sterile. You can eat them, but they don’t germinate. So Carnico has a monopoly on two critical resources, and they exploit the fuck out of it.”

“What about the tribal elders? They can’t be okay with it,” Majina said with a frown.

“What can they do about it?” Vega snorted. “They don’t like the fact the weed killer’s used at all; they certainly don’t know how to make it. And growing sterile seeds? Only Carnico knows how to pull that off. So while the elders might technically be in charge, everyone knows the real players. And anytime they make things difficult for Carnico, Carnico has ‘supply problems’ with the weed killer, and the grass spreads a little more. It ruins the soil, too, so even killing it a year or two later is still a mess.” He smiled. “We do good business in bootleg weed killer and ‘misplaced’ seeds.”

“There!” Pythia suddenly snapped. “Thank you, Messier! Dead but not gone,” she said as the crystal pendant swayed back and forth over the page. “You will be… tonight… you will be…” She blinked at Tchernobog, then back down at the map, then back at him. Suddenly, she blinked and scowled at the map. “Seriously?” she mumbled.

“Yes?” Tchernobog rumbled.

Pythia didn’t answer for a few seconds, looking at the map and then at him again. Finally, she spat, “Balls deep in your boss over there.” She glared around her. “This whole city needs a cold shower.”

“Oh… we’re dead,” Scotch Tape muttered. No one else said a word for several seconds. Then Vicious suddenly burst out laughing, sitting down hard and holding herself as she cackled.

“I’m not sure how comfortable I should be about the stars knowing the details of our sex life,” Vega muttered.

“She’s the real thing,” Tchernobog rumbled with a small smile.

“She could have guessed! It’s a secret, but she could have found out,” Vega said.

“But not that we agreed it was my turn tonight,” Tchernobog said. Vega scowled, but gave a little nod of concession. “We should use her,” the stallion pressed.

“I’m not convinced–” Vega began.

Vicious rolled her eyes, and Pythia threw herself to the side a second before a magically flung knife would have skewered her brain through her eye. As the blade skipped off the floor behind Pythia, the zebra filly shrieked, “What is wrong with you?”

“I missed. Looks like she can see the future after all,” Vicious said as she levitated the knife back, checked the edge, and returned it smoothly to its sheath. Scotch hadn’t even seen her draw it. Tchernobog arched a brow as Vega thought.

“I hate using seers. They’re unreliable,” he muttered.

“Which is why you take their predictions under advisement, not base your actions off them,” Tchernobog said as he walked around behind the desk, putting a hoof on Vega’s shoulder. “Things are happening. She’s valuable. We need to know more. We should use them.”

Vega sighed and closed his eyes a moment, covering them with a hoof. “One year,” he said evenly.

“What?” they almost unanimously blurted.

“You work for me for one year,” he said to Pythia. “You work under Tchernobog and stay with us. After one year, we renegotiate your contract. I’ll do what I can to keep Riptide off your back,” he finished, then looked at the rest. “What about the others? Where are we supposed to keep them?”

Vicious stared at Scotch a moment. “Hey. Can you cook? Clean? Do laundry?”

“What?” Scotch blinked.

“Good. You’re hired. We’ll find some work or something for you to do.” Vicious grinned.

“What about us?” Precious asked with a snort.

“Yes. What about you?” Vega said, rubbing his chin a moment. Then he smiled. “You both know Doctor Galen. You know about the harassment and threats he receives, right? I’ll make arrangements for you to protect him.”

“What? Me? Play bodyguard?” Precious asked skeptically, thought a moment, then narrowed her eyes and continued, “Will I get to kick flank and collect shinies?”

“Presumably, assuming someone on the west side of the river tries something,” Vega said with a nod. “If you can’t stay on the premises, I’ll make arrangements for you somewhere in the building. Keep him safe and alive. He’s valuable.”

Majina looked away. “Osane and her family need help. Maybe I could do something for them.”

“I’m sure that she’d appreciate that,” Vega said with a slow nod.

Pythia sighed and faced them. “So, are we seriously doing this? It’s a year. A whole year.”

“That’s like two forevers,” Precious pointed out. “Still, it might be nice to settle down here a little. See if we can’t make this place feel like home.”

“And how do we know that you won’t betray us?” Pythia demanded.

“You don’t. However, you’re not much of a seer if you don’t see it coming, now are you?” Vega said with a half smirk. “The Syndicate operates on our reputation for honoring a deal, and inflicting horrible violence on those who break it.”

Scotch stepped forward. “You can’t do anything bad to Doctor Galen. He was just trying to help us.”

He twisted his lips thoughtfully. “Very well. Her bodyguard work can be payment for those supplies. Of course, if something happens to him, I’ll seek compensation,” he said calmly as he stared at Precious.

The four friends considered. A year was a long time, but after a year they’d know more, have more, and be ready for more. They were in the zebra lands now. They could plan their next step, and if the Syndicate was honest, the organization might be of even more help. Each one gave a nod, with Pythia being the last. “All right,” Scotch Tape said as she faced the others. “We agree.”

Not a mile away, an old warehouse struggled to avoid slipping completely into the churning waters of the river. The saturated pillars groaned, and already one corner was submerged, the beams a tangled mess of rotting wood. Back and forth Lamprey paced while closer to dry land the centaur, gargoyle, and hound waited. Lamprey swallowed again and again, like a fish gasping for water as it slowly suffocated.

Then he heard the soft splash of oars. Bit by bit, it grew louder and louder. Then soft thuds underneath as the boat was pulled along the pilings under the warehouse. A trap door opened right in front of Lamprey, and a hulking, surly Atoli climbed out. From head to hoof, he wore blue Imperial Navy barding, and his eyes drilled into Lamprey as they swept across the groaning, waterlogged space. Piercing blue eyes shifted to the three bounty hunters, and Lamprey said quickly, “They’re with me!”

“Clear,” the zebra rumbled. A second one emerged. A third. A fourth.

“Lieutenant, I can explain. Tell the captain–” Lamprey began as he rubbed the back of his head.

Then he swallowed his tongue as from the hatch emerged not another zebra stallion but a zebra mare. Her body as hard and lean as a swordfish, she climbed up deftly, shaking out her blood-clot-red and black curls. Her uniform was cut for a captain centuries ago, but she wore it as if she’d stepped right out of that turbulent tide without a single curl of her mane amiss. Eyes as blue and cold as they sea focused on him. “Tell me what, Ako’e? That somehow, as crazy as it sounds, you have allowed children to escape you. Children, Ako’e. Little, ignorant people.”

“Captain! It was not as simple as that! The terrain worked against me, and the fliers–” Lamprey began to stammer, but she put her boot to his lips.

“Shhh, Ako’e. I fully understand you had many difficulties in your search. The land is a nightmare. I wouldn’t set one foot upon it if I could,” she said as she lowered her hoof, standing over the gurgling water. “However, what you fail to appreciate is how little I care. One pony… a green pony… a child. That should not be so hard for you to find.”

“She’s not such a child, Captain! She’s… she’s cursed!” Ako’e swallowed. “She’s travelling with a Starkatteri!”

“Is she?” Riptide purred, tapping her chin.

“Yes. I’ll find her, Captain. I just need more time!” He pointed at the three. “These bounty hunters have seen her too. They can help me find her!”

“Have they?” Riptide said as she regarded the three. “And you are?”

“Korgax, Spurgle, and Trog,” the centaur said as he rose and bowed, pressing a fist to his chest. The other two rose and stood behind him awkwardly, the hound giving a hapless little wave. “We ran into them while trying to trap Orah for sale. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding, and they slipped away before we knew how much you wanted them.”

Riptide laughed brightly. “Oh, I do. I really do. You have no idea how much!” She regarded her boot as she went on absently, “I assume you’re the best of the best? None ever escaped? Never failed a contract?”

“Not quite, ma’am,” the centaur rumbled. “We’re good, we don’t give up, and we get the job done, but I won’t claim to be perfect. I did see the filly and her friends, though, before they disabled our steamtruck.”

“Honesty. Modesty. How novel. And how would you find this frustratingly elusive young pony?” she asked.

“I need to know more about her. Who is she? Where is she from? Where is she going?” the centaur rumbled. “She’s in the city now, so there’s a million places to hide. We’d need to pay some people for information, discreetly. Don’t want to run her out of town without us knowing where and when. There’s a small pony population here, but she may be there or with others. It’ll be difficult to say. One of her friends is a half dragon, though, so she’ll stand out.”

“I see…” she purred. “I don’t know her name. She’s from the Ponylands, and she’s here…” She paused, and her smile slipped a moment before she continued in a softer voice, “to stand in my way. She needs to be dealt with.”

“Alive or dead?” the centaur asked.

Riptide laughed gaily. “Oh, I would adore alive. Truly. But dead. Dead.” She rose up on her hindhooves, calling out, “As spectacularly dead as you can make her! Drape her entrails from rooftop to rooftop! Paint the walls in her blood! So long as she lives, she’s a threat to my interests!”

“That costs extra,” the centaur rumbled, and Riptide laughed in glee.

“It’ll be worth it,” she said as she fluttered her lashes at him.

“Captain! We don’t have to stop with them. With a big enough bounty on her head, she’ll be driven from the city! We can have a whole mob tear her apart for you!” Lamprey said in a rush.

She tisked softly. “Oh no. I know that never works. I don’t want to have to pay out to whatever mob brings me a green pony carcass. No. Especially not when it would signal to others that she’s here. No,” she said as she shook her head. Then she smiled at the three. “However, I may be contracting with other professionals before too long. You understand how it is.”

“Yes ma’am.” He nodded his head to her. “I understand.”

“I love professionals,” she gushed, walking towards him. Abruptly, she halted, her face screwing up in pain, and backed away from the three. “Well, I do hope you get results. Five hundred Imperio should be incentive enough, yes?”

“Fuck my stony bunghole, yes!” the gargoyle cackled. “Korgax, if you don’t say yes, I will! And I’ll keep it to myself, too!”

“That’s more than two, right? Is that a lot?” the hound asked, picking his nose, finding a nice, green, slimy glob, and popping it into his mouth.

Riptide regarded Korgax flatly. “He’s got his uses,” the centaur said.

“She’s stopped,” a voice said from the sunken corner. Amidst the gloom and groaning beams, a zebra filly came into view. Her long, waterlogged mane lay plastered to her neck as she stared at nothing with dead, dark eyes. The emaciated filly moaned softly, “She’s not moving forward anymore.”

Riptide approached slowly. “Dead. Say she’s dead. I need to hear these words, my love.”

“I don’t know, but she’s not moving. She might be dead. She might have given up. She might be on the wrong track,” she said as she crouched on the edge of the water, swishing her hooves through it. “I can barely smell her anymore, Mommy.”

“Mommy?” Korgax asked before the captain gave him a look that made him back up a step.

Riptide stroked her mane. “She’s not in the way, though, right?”

“Maybe. She’s so close, but she’s not moving anymore. It’s hard to tell. I’m so hungry, Mommy,” the zebra filly moaned as she clutched her tummy.

“Shh… shh… Can you find her, Niuhi?” she asked, stroking her water-soaked mane.

“I’m trying, Mommy, but I can’t. Her smell is too weak.” She turned and pressed her face into Riptide’s mane, sobbing.

“Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay,” Riptide murred into her ear.

“See! She can’t find them either!” Lamprey blurted. Riptide didn’t even glance at him. She gave the smallest flick of her tail, and the Atoli moved. One on either side of him seized him, holding him in place as the other two applied kicks to his hindlegs. His joints snapped like fishbones, and he collapsed, vomited, and sobbed. Then he was released as the four stepped back again.

“Do not criticize my child. Don’t ever,” Riptide murmured as he sprawled on his face. Slowly, she left her daughter and approached Lamprey again. “Now. One last bit of business,” she said softly. “The box, please!” she shouted to the skiff below. Someone pushed up a worn green sea chest, and she laid it out next to him. Carefully, she unlocked it and pulled it open.

Inside were a number of glass jars filled with slimy, squirmy, tumorous worms thrashing about in a fluid the color and consistency of semen. Bottles full of viscous potions bubbled in their containers as an overwhelming sulfurous stench of garlic rolled out. Half of the chest was occupied by a folded suit of leather armor and a gas mask.

“No! No! No!” Lamprey screamed as he struggled to back away, the Atoli in barding stopping him from escaping. “You’re not going to put those in me! No!”

She grabbed him and yanked his face around to hers, silencing him. “Of course I’m not,” she said, and bafflement twisted his features. “I never… ever… force anyone to take the worm. Ever. How could you think of such a thing, Ako’e?” She pouted, her deep blue-black eyes hurt. Then she smiled. “You’re going to put them in yourself.” She gestured at the slippery, white, wiggling masses. “Those go under your tail, by the way. You don’t want to eat them. Trust me. They make such a mess if they have to chew to their destination.”

“You’re insane…” Lamprey whispered as he stared at the contents of that box, his busted legs throbbing as if thrust in a fire. “You’re crazy if you think I’d put those in me.”

His response made her laugh in delight. “Oh no, my near Ako’e! No no no no no no no,” she said as she shook her head. “No. What you really need to think of… in your heart of hearts… in your very soul…” The smiles and beauty disappeared as her face suddenly turned slack and old and the sweetness became a snarled, “What’s going to happen if you don’t?”

Ako’e swallowed, glancing from the bounty hunters to the crew to the filly splashing her hooves errantly in the water to the slack face of the captain as she glared at him. “No. Dying is better than living as one of those things. Forget it! If you’re going to kill me, then just get on with it!”

Then the smile returned. “Fair enough!” she said brightly. She closed the lid, relocked it, and slipped it back down through the trap door. She turned to the three bounty hunters. “I’ll be checking in from time to time, and will send you some assistance as I can! My little girl will get a message to you, one way or another.” Then her voice dropped as she turned her back on them. “You should be on your way now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the centaur said with a nod of his head before the three turned and backed away, leaving the old warehouse. Lamprey pressed his face into the wood and closed his eyes, waiting for his execution. At least it would be fast. Nothing was as bad as becoming one of her pet monsters.

Then…

Nothing. He blinked and looked around, but no one was to be seen. Distantly, he could hear the sounds of oars rowing downstream. He stared, listening to them fade away. “Ha…” he said as all the fear transformed to exhilaration. All that, and she was just talk! All that had been bluff! He laughed as he sprawled there next to the trap door.

“I’ll find that frigging pony first! Find out what she’s got that that mule is so scared of! Fuck her. Make her wish she killed me,” he said as he started to drag himself towards the door, grimacing. “First, a healing potion, though.”

From the shadows of the decrepit edifice, a soft humming issued, and a large drop of water landed right on his nose. The hum was a simple tune, two slow alternating notes, and he peered into the gloom.

He wasn’t alone. The waterlogged filly walked slowly around the edge of the building as water pattered down along the rotten beams and through the holes in the roof. Was it raining? It’d been a clear day an hour ago! “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, gaping at her as she slowly moved around him. Her dead black eyes just stared straight ahead as she watched the water falling in streams around him. “Who are you?” he asked.

She didn’t reply. She simply hummed softly as she moved closer and closer. Damn him if he’d be intimidated by a drowned, slat-sided filly. “Get away from me, you freak!” he said as he turned his back and dragged himself towards the door.

The warehouse filled with a sound akin to a gunshot, if said shot was fired by snapping bones and torn tendons, as the bottom half of his right hindleg disappeared. He screamed, rolling onto his back as he curled up, trying desperately to stem the flow of blood. His bulging eyes caught her as she slowly circled… chewing.

“Get away! Get away!” he screamed as he flailed and flopped away from the filly, towards the open trap door as more water poured in upon him. He took his eyes off her for a moment, searching for an avenue of escape–

A second crunch, and his other broken leg disappeared. He started at her standing over him, mouth chewing, swallowing. There wasn’t any malice in her eyes. Only cool, dark, indifference.

The salt set his stumps ablaze with pain as he flopped and flailed away from her. He almost fell through the door, twisting and flailing to catch his forelegs on the edge as he heard something deep and hungry growl below.

The river beneath him was gone. Instead, all the water poured past in a great red whirlpool of blood. There was no bottom to it. Only screams. He peered up through the stinging saltwater at the drenched filly and screamed at her, “What are you?”

She leaned in, eyes dull and emotionless. She reached out, grabbing his shoulders, somehow keeping him from falling into that vortex. Her eyes stared into his, and the corner of her mouth wiggled a moment before she said in her quiet little voice, “Hungry.”

A mouth that belonged on no filly, with teeth that belonged on no zebra, spread wide and, with a resounding crunch, bit his face clean off. From outside, the warehouse shook as if it would collapse, and a few people stared and wondered what should be done, only to settle, as was custom, on ‘nothing’. After the crunching stopped, the shaking stilled. The waters returned to their muddy brown. A long, bedraggled mane disappeared into the froth.

For years to come, none would ever set foot in that decrepit building. It would remain, untouched, until it disappeared into the water.

And somewhere, in a place between now and eternity, a tiny glowing mote squirmed in the dark, desperate and alone. And in that place, teeth closed upon it, again and again…

Forever…

Author's Notes:

Another chapter of Homelands, done. Sorry it took so long. Real life was not working well with editing times. Still, it's done and I hope it's not too bad.

So thanks to Kkat for creating Fallout Equestria, thanks to Hinds, Bronode, and Swicked for helped me brush out as much awful as I possibly can, and thanks to you kind folks for reading it. Next chapter will be interesting, I hope, as we see what a year in Rice River will bring.

Also, money is unfortunately super tight due to extra bills so if folks want to help out, it will be extremely appreciated. You can make a one time donation via Paypal (just mark it gift), or you can support all my writing in general through patreon. Every bit helps keep me going and keeps me writing.

If I can figure a way of offer a commission, I'll do that. Not sure how that works though. >.>

Anyway, thanks for reading!