Traveling with a companion was wonderful! Even though I may have been pretty observant under ideal conditions, I just didn't know enough about the great outdoors of the Wasteland to recognize and avoid the dangers hiding under every rock and bush. Jasper sure did. He even took the time to point out the signs to avoid for some of the more common creatures. Thanks to him, I now knew exactly what a bloatsprite nest looked like, and how to avoid the things if they were out and about. I would never have guessed that what I had previously thought were beehives (at least, that was what the picture books from when I was a filly told me) were actually bloatsprite dens. Learn something new every day.

In between my lessons, we talked about where we were from, how we'd grown up. You know, the kind of things people talk about when they're bored, traveling with each other, and met for the first time only recently. At first, it was hard (although decidedly not frustrating) trying to get him to open up a bit. For the entire first hour of the trip, I swear he didn't stop stuttering and blushing for more than ten minutes, unless he was talking about the wastes or I challenged one of his skills or the other. I think sometime around the end of the second hour something clicked and he realized we'd be in close proximity for at least the next couple days, and maybe beyond that. He was still adorably nervous, but had a tighter rein on it. Even then, despite my best efforts, he neatly sidestepped or redirected every question I threw at him, and none of my best charm and persuasion got him to give up anything.

Jasper and I were about five hours travel from Cantilly, as near as my pipbuck clock and map could tell me. We weren't hurrying, and good thing, too. Hurrying would have gotten us there sometime around sunset, and fighting raiders in the dark did not appeal to me at all. No, instead we took a leisurely walk down the road, and were about two hours of decent walking from the general area of the raider encampment according to Bonesaw's directions when Jasper told me now would be a good time to make camp.

His reasoning was simple enough. In the middle of the overcast night it was magnitudes harder to scan for all the little signs and give aways that kept our trip here trouble-free for as long as it had been. Plus, fighting in the middle of the night is a lot more hazardous and difficult than a broad daylight gunfight, assuming we weren't the ones doing the ambushing.

I wasn't personally one for camping, much preferring a nice warm bed and roof than wide open sky and whatever bedroll you brought with you, of which I did not have one. Fortunately, Jasper had two, which I found out after an absolutely hilarious little exchange where he tried to make a joke about sharing a bedroll but only got halfway through the delivery before stuttering to an embarrassed halt, blushing so much that I thought his face would catch on fire or something. When asked why he carried around two bedrolls in his saddlebags, he declined to comment.

Before tonight, I had never actually spent a night outside that didn't consist of me fighting for my life against mutated insects. With a nicely burning campfire, a comfortable bedroll (I was certain he gave me the better one), and a companion who knew exactly what he was doing, it was quite the experience. Even under the oppressive cloud cover intrinsic to the wastes, the night was wonderful. Not too hot, not too cold, not rainy, not too dry.

It felt like a set-up. I don't know how or why I thought that, but I did.

Then I realized: I couldn't hear anything besides the crackling fire and Jasper finishing up his latest story.

“...And by the time we got the bucket off, the whole place was on fire!” Despite my sudden unease, it was a legitimately funny story, and I laughed along with him. It didn't look like he noticed. Time to fix that.

As he started in on the next part, I cut him off, “Jasper, wait. Listen,” I stopped to give him a few seconds to listen and come to the same conclusion I did. Complete silence came over the little camp as he did so. “I don't hear anything.” I was on full alert, looking at every shadow like it was some horrid monstrosity waiting to jump into the light. “What does that mean out here in the wastes?”

His smile was gone, replaced by a grim expression that didn't leave me any better at ease. “Well, it can mean one of two things,” he started, “either we just got really lucky and everything in the area is away from home hunting or foraging or whatever and isn't around to bother something, or...” he trailed off.

Seriously, not helping. “...Or what?” I pressed, not really looking forward to the answer.

“Or there's something around here that's big, nasty, and mean enough to scare them all quiet.” Yeah, definitely had not been looking forward to that. If there was something nasty enough to do that to the kind of monsters living in the wastes, what chance did we have against it?

“And can you think of any creature that fits the bill, off the top of your head?”

Jasper just shook his head. “A manticore might, but there hasn't been a manticore within ten miles of Cantilly for as long as I can remember.”

A chill made its way down my spine. A manticore? No, wait, he said no manticore. “Anything else?” I inquired, still intensely ill at ease. My eyes darted around our surroundings, desperate to pick out what could be wrong with the scene. As quietly and unobtrusively as I could, I slipped my combat shotgun out of my bags and loaded it. Two buckshot, one slug, two buckshot, one slug. Hopefully whatever it was wasn't looking for a fight, and the buckshot would get it to go away without seriously pissing it off.

Jasper was just as quietly readying his battlesaddle, or so he called it. Considerably quieter than I was being, actually. I figured just with how heavy it was that it would make noise, but he seemed to know exactly how to stop that from happening.

He stood up, motioned me to stay here and be quiet with a few hoof gestures, and then melted into the night. I wouldn't have a made a sound even if he hadn't bidden me to, seeing him there one minute and gone the next rendered me speechless. I couldn't hear or see him at all. The ease at which he disappeared what simply unbelievable. He didn't even show up on my E.F.S. as the tell-tale blue pip of 'friendly.' Unreal.

Time passed agonizingly slowly. I couldn't tell if it had been minutes or hours since he vanished. Every passing moment had me looking more fervently into the darkness, paranoia fuelling my still slowly rising apprehension.

Jasper appeared next to me so suddenly that it was a monumental exercise in self-control not to scream like a little filly. I managed, barely.

“We have to leave. Quietly, and right now.” I opened my mouth to protest and immediately reconsidered. Yes, argue with the experienced wasteland survival expert in the middle of the night with something presumably large and dangerous lurking around the corner and you've been out of the Stable for a grand total of a day and a half. Brilliant plan.

Instead, I did the smart thing and packed up as quickly and quietly as I could. My pipbuck light stayed in the securely 'off' position as we made the best time we could through the darkness, going only as fast as we could without raising too much of a commotion. In other words, not as fast as I would have liked. We even left the campfire burning instead of extinguishing it in our haste.

Nearly a full mile and the tensest hour I could ever remember experiencing later, we slowed to a stop. We were situated in the depression between a pair of decently large hills. He was scanning for something, checking the horizon as well as he could in the dark as if there should be something silhouetted against the clouds. After a few minutes of careful observation, he let out a relieved sigh, and I realized that I could hear the local wildlife again.

“What the hell were we just running from?” I was still greatly confused. Terrified, of course, but confused. “I never saw or heard anything.”

“Nor would you have. What we just avoided was an Ursa.” His voice was deadly serious. “Near total invisibility, the size of a large house back in Cantilly. Very quiet unless it's in the middle of a fight. It's probably the most dangerous thing you will ever encounter in the wastes, bar none.”

Well, that was comforting. “We have to tell Cantilly. There's no way anyone there knows about it yet, or Bonesaw would have warned me before we set off. At the very least, would have warned you.”

“That's for sure. Unfortunately, we're too far from the town to get back anytime soon. It didn't look like it was headed for Cantilly, but honestly I could barely tell where it was, much less where it was going. Travelling at night around here is a Bad Idea unless you want to end up on the wrong side of an ambush, and it'd take half a day to get there.” He shook his head, and then continued, “no, we've got to keep going.”

I didn't like it, and I told him as much. It didn't shake him.

“Trust me, that town can take care of itself. These raiders are honestly a bigger threat just because they have a reason to stop at the town if they wander by, the Ursa doesn't.” I'm glad he was so calm about it, that put me at ease more surely than him just saying it. He knew what he was talking about.

We set up camp quickly, getting ready to make the most out of what time we had before dawn. I checked the clock on my pipbuck. Near midnight. Dawn would be in about six, maybe seven hours and I wanted to be well rested before sneaking around a raider camp, but not so much that I'd neglect to keep watch. “You get some rest first. I'll wake you in a few hours to change shift.” He seemed surprised that I came up with that myself. I was slightly offended. I may be new to the wastes, but I wasn't stupid, and I was a quick learner. I gave him my best glare, and he shut his mouth without arguing and curled up on the bedroll. A few minutes later, I could hear his light snoring.

One thing I hadn't remembered was how paranoid I was. Every shadow became a monster waiting for me to nod off. Every shaking brush was an Ursa, come to finish the job it missed the first time.

Three very nerve-wracking hours later, I nudged Jasper awake for him to take his shift. He gave me a nasty look, but got up all the same. Being on a bedroll instead of awake and staring at shadows didn't make it any easier to go to sleep. I kept imagining the worst possible outcome, and how if I were to fall asleep, it would undoubtedly happen.

The next thing I knew, Jasper was shaking me awake, telling me it was time to move. It was still dark, yes, but a subtle lightening tint lifted the intense feeling of gloom that had plagued me all night. The fire was already extinguished, and he was already all packed up, battlesaddle loaded and ready for any unwanted surprises. I made sure my shotgun was loaded (still) and shoved it in my saddlebags such that it would be easy to whip it out at a moment's notice.

I nodded my readiness, and we were off. Being so close to the raider camp, only a couple of miles at most, meant we were trying not to be too loud on our approach. We had a few simple objectives. One, get in without getting caught. Two, find the supplies from the Stable. Three, identify the raiders' strength, equipment, and leadership. Four, find the statuette. I'd filled Jasper in on the first three, but the fourth felt more like a personal obligation. Should all be easy enough. The trick was getting in and out without being caught and killed. Yeah. Easy.

It was a larger camp than I expected. It was also situated adjacent to an abandoned town that looked like it had been abandoned at least since the balefire bombs dropped that my pipbuck helpful and inexplicably labeled “Everfree Mills”. I was quick to note that the raiders seemed to have erected barricades between all of the buildings closest to the camp that they could. That made me immediately nervous. If the raiders were trying to defend themselves from that direction, there must be something nasty in there, even if I couldn't see it from here.

The camp itself was a haphazard collection of a half dozen ancient buildings and about a dozen tents. The tents combined with the buildings to fill out a roughly rectangular area only a little removed from the closest town buildings. It looked like a couple of the camp buildings weren't even being used. We were currently situated near the top of a nearby hill (not the very top, silhouetting yourself is bad), which gave us an excellent vantage point on the raiders walking around below.

In a few ways, it was too good. They were raiders, with everything that entails. I might not be able to smell everything as well as up close, but I could see the 'decorations.' In turn, I decorated the side of the hill a little bit. Repeatedly. That was going to be a problem. If I was voiding my guts just by being within sight of the damn place, it was going to be an exercise in futility to sneak around down there.

“Jasper?” I asked tentatively.

“Yeah?”

“I need a distraction.” There. Might as well be blunt about it.

He just blinked. “Uhm, are you crazy? There has to be two dozen raiders down there! Being a distraction would be suicide!”

Okay, looks like being blunt didn't work, now to try for smooth. “You're a big, strong buck, aren't you? I'm sure it'd be a piece of cake.” I gave him my best flattering grin and suggestive wiggle. “I'd be ever so grateful if you did it.”

He stiffened up so much I thought he was going to fall over. Wasn't that just adorable? “I'll take that as a 'yes'.”

We took the time to formulate a plan. Wouldn't do to get killed because we didn't know what the other was doing. It was pretty simple, not too difficult (relatively) for either party, and, most importantly, it existed, as opposed to a half though-up scheme that we would just wing though anyway.

Jasper would 'entice' the raiders patrolling the immediate area with a few well placed rifle rounds, hopefully thinning the ranks by a few before he had to move. When he did, he would head straight for the abandoned town. He knew all the signs and what to avoid for the most part, so I wasn't worried about him. He would lead the raiders that went after him on a merry chase through the abandoned buildings until they got bored, all died, or I finished my job. While doing this, he'd take mental notes on what the raiders were carrying, and hopefully who was leading them.

While he was doing that, my 'job' was to scour the raider camp for the stolen supplies, look for any survivors in the cages and tents down there (assuming I didn't vomit myself into unconsciousness before I got to them), and look for the statuette. I didn't tell him that last part. Didn't seem particularly important. When my job was done, I was to send up the signal, in this case a simple, harmless bolt of light from my horn like a flare.

Jasper readied his weapons again, little more than a calming exercise before he set up in a decent vantage point where they would be able to see him when he opened fire, but wouldn't be able to close very rapidly. The whole point of the distraction was to buy time, after all.

I crept as close as I thought I would be able to without being seen to by the patrolling raiders and waited for the first shots.

They were louder than I expected, twin thunderclaps that almost hurt my ears even from two hundred yards away. The raider closest to my position blinked off of my E.F.S.'s display. The twin hammers cracked twice more in quick succession, dropping another red bar from the display but only wounding another. His very loud curse was pain-laced and slurred, but he was still alive.

Jasper fired one more time, finishing off the wounded raider before sprinting for the town. A mass of red pips lit up my E.F.S. Before most of them started moving in his direction. Five, ten, fifteen dots trailed after the lone blue dot on my scope. Several stayed. Well shit. I kicked myself for not expecting the raiders to leave guards.

No matter, I'd just have to deal with them. I crept around the outside tent and got a good look at the 'courtyard' between the buildings.

I threw up.

I kept going.

I had to find the supplies, any captives, and the statuette. Supplies, captives, statuette. I repeated them in my head like a mantra to keep me from losing my breakfast again and again. The raiders had apparently left six on-duty (or off-duty, I wasn't sure) guards in the camp when they headed out. The one closest to me was walking around the ring of tents slowly. Maybe he was doing laps around the camp, maybe he was on a patrol, maybe he was just so batshit crazy that he though he was walking in a straight line. I didn't particularly care. I found an alcove that was hidden from view of the rest of the guards that I could see (four in all) between a pair of tents on the lone patrolling guard's path. I readied my knife; the shotgun would bring them running, and then I'd be fucked.

He passed in front of me, and I threw the knife as hard as I could with my magic. It was a beautiful throw. The knife stuck in the back of his head and he went down like a sack of bricks. I didn't think any of the other guards saw, mostly because there were no shouts, no gunshots, no raiders-come-running. Excellent.

The handiest thing about telekinesis, I think, is that you don't have to be right next to the thing you want to move. I grasped the knife stuck in his skull from my hiding place and tugged until it came back out. The blood on the blade made still made me heave, but at least I hadn't had to shoot him.

By some miracle of circumstance, the tents nearest me all had flaps facing out of the circle, meaning I could get in and out without stepping into the wide-open middle of the camp. Oh yeah, and the mutilated corpses all around it. That was a nice bonus, too.

I could check four tents without wandering in front of a guard, from the looks of it. I idly wondered if they had a schedule to keep, but dismissed the thought. They were raiders, how organized could they be?

The first tent had nothing of note, not even a sleeping mat. Just a dirt floor and four tent walls.

The second tent had a footlocker with a 10 mm pistol almost identical to the one I'd left the vault with, a dozen 10 mm rounds, and three shotgun shells. Now this, I could use. The 10 mm rounds were the same kind as the ones I'd put through my SMG against the bloatsprites and raiders, but the shotgun shells threw me off a bit. They weren't the same as the buckshot and slugs that I already had with me. These ones were marked ‘4/0 buck’. I had no idea what it meant by that, but I kept them anyway. More ammo was always useful.

I was in the middle of looking through the third tent in the row (this one actually had a legitimate bed in it. I was impressed) when a raider walked in on me. Surprise widened her eyes, her horn flashed, and up came a pistol that I'd never seen before. That wasn't really saying much, obviously, but it was significantly different from my 10 mm. It was a revolver, for one, but the biggest difference was the scope, of all things, mounted on top. My shotgun left its rudimentary holster as she fired her first shot.

Sweet Celestia! That was almost as loud as Jasper's rifles! It's a very good thing she missed, even if that huge crack was the only meter to judge its potential lethality. My shotgun didn't. I have to admit, shotguns cover that base pretty well. Pellets found chinks in armor, and perhaps more importantly exposed flesh in the form of her head and neck. Unfortunately for me, that shot didn't kill her.

If the shots we'd just exchanged weren’t going to bring the whole camp running, the wounded howl she gave next sure would. Strips of flesh hung from her ruined face and blood trickled out from the dozens of small perforations in her exposed neck and where the pellets had gone through armor. My bile rose, and I had to push it down hard.

I must have blinded her or something, because she started firing as fast as she could in my general direction. I dove out of the way behind the bed, hoping that the flimsy covers and mattress would at least slow the bullet enough that I'd survive a hit. A couple of them even hit my general side of the tent. The gun clicked empty after only five more shots (very useful to know) and she tried to get out of the tent before I returned fire. She half made it, and then got very lucky when my next shot missed. At the very least she was out of the fight for now, and I would welcome any favors I could get, seeing as I now had a half dozen angry raiders descending on my position. They'd be here any second.

I had two choices. I could hunker down in this tent, try to find some cover, set up an ambush, something like that. That felt like a bad idea, considering there was no cover in the tent, and it was a tent, with the canvas-thin walls that implies. So I ran for it. As quietly as I could, which probably wasn't very quiet, all things considered.

I knew, or rather suspected, that the building closest to this tent was currently unused. At the very least, it wasn't decorated, and there hadn't been any raiders walking around it outside. It was my best option; the door was hanging off its hinges away from the doorframe, and the coast looked clear. I covered the three dozen yards in between in a matter of a few seconds. Not quite fast enough to outright escape detection from the incoming raiders. At least one of them saw me enter the building. I heard shouts as I bolted through the door, but any incoming shots missed horribly enough that they didn't even hit where I could hear them as I quickly took in my surroundings.

The room looked like the main room to a bar, complete with bartop, behind the counter area, scattered stools, and a few ruined booths. My immediate instinct was to dive behind the bar with my shotgun and wait for the raiders to walk through the door. Panic was strangely absent from my thoughts, fortunately, and I realized that if it was the first thing I thought of, it was the first thing they'd think of too. Instead I kept moving straight through the building, looking for an exit. There wasn't another door to be found, but I did find a staircase in the next room and took it without hesitation.

Upstairs had to be sleeping quarters or guest rooms, with a long hallway that split at the end of the hall with single doors down the length. I could hear the raiders entering the first level. Not good, I didn't have much time. I ran down the hall, looking for a door that wasn't locked. No luck, no luck, no luck, no lu--. The fourth one I tried stuck for a second, and then gave up, swinging into a room that was obviously lived in, and just as obviously not home to a raider. I slammed the door behind me and turned to inspect the room.

Surprise found a spot on my face when I saw, prominently displayed on the end-table next to a surprisingly comfortable looking bed, the figure of Pinkie Pie. Unreal. The one door that hadn't been locked. I felt like getting this lucky now would end up biting me in the flank later on.

Better not waste it now. I intended to just grab the figurine and hide, no questions asked, but when I enveloped it in my magic, the shock almost made me drop it. I couldn't really explain it. I felt... sharper. Like I could see and hear better than ever. I examined the statuette a little more closely. Around the bottom it read “Awareness! It was under “E”!” I didn't know exactly what that meant, but it felt significant.

Reality snapped back into focus. I heard the raiders rummaging around the building below me, making sure I wasn't hidden away on the ground floor before sweeping the upstairs. I could hear muffled mutterings through the floor as raiders called to one another that one part of a room or the other was clear. Dammit! If only I could hear what they were doing more clearly, I might be able to set up an ambush.

A sudden flash of inspiration struck me. I channeled a bit of magic into my horn, and carefully, tentatively, hopefully pressed it against the floor. My hearing dulled and became muffled for half a second, and then slowly came back into focus, but with one major difference. Now I could hear the raiders' every word.

“Stark, Cut, check upstairs. Blast, cover the way we came in. I'll check the basement. Move.”

I heard a chorus of affirmatives, and one quietly added “that bitch is going to pay. Health potions are expensive.” Shit, the raider I thought was out of action was down there too. A small, ignored voice thought that these ponies didn't sound like raiders.

Think, think, think! How could I even the odds? There was the sound of footsteps headed up the stairs, I had maybe thirty seconds before they found my room, and me in it. I shifted my horn to the wall adjacent to the hallway they were in. Muffled voices flashed into clarity again, and I could hear everything. One of them was just muttering various profanities, most often “bitch, cunt, twat” and the like. I figured that was scoped-pistol raider. I still couldn't see them, and without that I couldn't set up anything that could possibly be guaranteed to get both of them.

I tried something else. My horn flared brighter, and the sound faded away entirely. Instead, it was replaced by a very blurry image of the raiders walking down the hallway. Disappointingly (if I could be disappointed at how awesome this newfound ability was), I could only see them from a point on the wall directly where my horn touched. No matter, now I could see everything. Including the grenades hung across the rear-most raider's bandoleer. Cue wicked grin.

I tried to use my telekinesis, but it felt magnitudes harder than usual. I strained, pouring every ounce of my power into pulling the pin on one of those grenades. A small voice in the back of my head was cheering about how awesome this was going to sound as a story I told my foals someday. I couldn't see it, eyes clenched shut in concentration, still magically staring at the grenades taunting me on the other side of the wall, but an overglow stretched around my horn, fully illuminating the room I was standing in. The strain was actually starting to hurt. If it didn't happen soon, I was going to be a sit--

The pin popped free with a metallic clink. Success! A wave of dizziness ended with me pulling my head away from the wall. Good thing, too. I heard the curse loud and clear even without eavesdropping, and the explosion that followed still knocked me to the floor, even through the door.

In retrospect, probably a very good thing that my horn came away from contact with the wall, or I would have seen the carnage happen firsthand. As it was, I still vomited when I staggered out of the room anyway, as soon as I saw the new wallpaper.

Hoofsteps thundered up the stairs as the two raiders downstairs rushed to investigate the explosion. I readied my shotgun and aimed down the hallway, half-ducked into the door to get the most cover I could. The first raider came charging into my field of vision and went down in a spectacular spray of blood as my shotgun slug buried itself deep in his torso. Holding down the bile was easier that time, although that might have been because bits and pieces of raider still decorated the hallway and made my expressionist painting session seem a little less significant.

I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself. I'd killed and/or seriously injured four raiders, one of them twice without taking a single hit. There was just one thing that bugged me about this whole thing.

None of them felt like raiders.

The first one I'd killed I hadn't been close enough to get a good look at, but he hadn't reeked like the raiders in the house that I'd encountered first, and like most of the raiders we'd seen looked like they would smell like. I'd pulled the pin on the one decorating the hall without getting a really clear look at him. The one that I had first shot and then presumably knocked out with the grenade explosion (she didn't look quite dead yet) had been entirely justified in calling me all sorts of mean and hurtful names. After all, I did shoot her. The room I had just busied myself rummaging through was decidedly not a raider hovel, judging by the courtyard outside.

Who were these ponies?

I didn't have very much time to ponder my newfound question. A grenade sailed up the stairs and bounced down the hall. I quickly wrapped it in a field of my magic to send it flying back down the stairs to the stupid idiot who threw it up against what he knew had to be a unicorn.

It exploded before I even fully wrapped it in magic. The explosion blinded and deafened me momentarily, and opened a score of cuts along any exposed part of my coat. A dozen small cuts on my face and lower legs contributed a dull throbbing ache to my sensory issues and headache, and a few more major shrapnel wounds threatened to make major issues of themselves unless I got some kind of attention before trying to get anywhere exceptionally fast. All things considered, I was probably pretty lucky, but I sure didn't feel like it.

I staggered against the room door and fell over, deliberately directing my fall into the room instead of out into the hallway. I pried open my eyes and blinked rapidly, trying to clear the splotches before the last whatever-he-was came up after me. I staggered to my hooves, readying my shotgun.

The first indication I had that something was wrong was a nasty buck to my flank that knocked the wind out of me and dropped me back to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Dammit! That pony was either impossibly fast, or I'd taken far longer than I should have in recovering. I struggled to draw in air and struggle back upright. A hoof pressed against my neck put a stop the latter pretty quick.

In the time since the grenade went off, my ears had recovered from “completely deaf” to “bell tower ringing” to something that passed for listening devices. Well, for the most part, at least.

“... the hell you are or what the hell you think you're doing here, but I want to know right now where the fuck you got this armor.” His request was punctuated with a none-too-subtle application of pressure with his hoof. Resisting or refusing to answer suddenly seemed much less attractive than it did a few seconds ago.

“Bo- -cough, hack- Bonesaw. Doctor in Cantilly. Sent me here to scout raiders.” I wasn't in a hurry to piss this pony off. Telling him whatever I thought he wanted to hear sounded like the best option available.

That only seemed to make him press harder, for reasons that made no sense to me, or, more probably, made no sense to any sane pony in general. “Don't lie to me, bitch. Tell me. Where. Did. You. Get. This. Uniform!”

The pressure on my throat made it hard to breath, especially after everything that had just happened, and what was still going on, for that matter. “Not lying!” I gasped out. “That's what he told me.” I sucked in air. “Big buck, tan, golden-brown mane and tail. Cutie mark was a medical saw,” I spat out as fast as I could. I really didn't relish the thought of dying like my first raider.

Suddenly, the pressure was gone. I took a massive, shuddering gulp of air. No sooner had I started breathing regularly again was I roughly jerked to my feet to look my de-facto captor in the eyes. His face was pretty horribly scarred, missing half of an ear, what looked like massive claw marks running from left eye to his chin, reappearing on his neck and disappearing beneath the collar of his armor. His coat was some kind of pale blue color, like the displays on my pipbuck, and his mane was a much darker blue. One eye was this red/pink color, and the other, the left one, was just a white sphere. He'd probably lost it when he got the scar.

“You're a lucky little cunt, you know that? If you had just told me anything, and I do mean anything else, and you wouldn't have gotten back up. Ever. I'd have left you here for the raiders to have their fun with, especially after you did this to my team. But now, I want you to take a message back to the pretentious asshole that gave you this.”

I was very clearly deeply involved in something that went back more than just a raider camp. I gulped nervously. “And that is?” I probed, eager to get out of here, but also even more nervous about setting him off. He seemed to be neither the most stable nor the most... forgiving pony in the wastes.

There was a barely contained fury just waiting to find an unfortunate target, seething under a carefully controlled facade. “You tell him this, and exactly this: 'Sparky knows what you did, and you're next.' Word for fucking word.” He stormed out the door and was down the stairs by the time I made it to the door.

The female unicorn that I'd already almost killed twice today gave a feeble stir. Looked like she wasn't dead after all. I wasn't above sucking up to the very-angry pony that had just exited ahead of me, and decided to help the poor mare. She was in bad shape. I assume she'd had a healing potion, because her face wasn't a bloody mess in and of itself. The shock, overpressure, and shrapnel from the grenade had ruptured something important. Blood was spilling from her mouth and nose, and her ears were missing the tips and also bleeding. Shrapnel had torn large holes in her barding, even if most of them hadn't plunged deep enough to do serious damage. She looked like she had maybe an hour without attention. Two, at the most.

I had a healing potion, but I was loathe to use it if I didn't have to. I checked through her bags (and unloaded her weapons as I found them, just in case) for anything that might help. There! She had another health potion. Another two, actually. I snuck one into my saddlebags even as I practically fed the other one to her.

I almost left right then and there, before she fully regained consciousness. All things considered, it would have been the smart thing to do. I'd almost killed her twice in the space of ten minutes. But, unfortunately, I'm not always the most clever pony to ever live.

She punched me in the face. I reeled back, blood flowing from my nose as she stood up. She punched me again. Have I mentioned just how stupid of an idea this was? Then she rummaged around in her bags, pulled out her pistol, and shot me.

She wasn't aiming to kill, just hurt, and badly. I couldn't really blame her, not really. It still hurt, a brilliant white pain shooting into my flank. It hurt a lot. Fortunately, it wasn't nearly as vital of an area as the last shot I took had gone. Getting shot in the ass is hardly as life-threatening as taking a shot to the chest.

“I know you've got a healing potion. Now we're even.” Well that was good, at least. It game me some cold comfort as I writhed in pain in the middle of the floor.

As she left, I popped the healing potion I took from her bags out of mine and downed it. Oh, Luna that was so much better. My shrapnel wounds closed back up, the bullet in my flank was ejected and the entry wound closed back up. My bruised neck even felt better. Now I could get back to my mis--

My mission. Shit. How long had I spent doing this? I still had to find the supplies and rescue any captives I could before I launched the flare. Well, still had to find the supplies. I'd gotten a better look at the pile of “decoration” in the courtyard, and that pretty thoroughly disabused me of the thought that raiders kept prisoners long enough for there to still be a few I needed to help. I trotted downstairs, not really sure if I'd get shot at again or not. Fortunately, “Sparky,” or whatever his name actually was seemed to need me to get to Bonesaw alive. Good on him.

I searched the raider camp top to bottom, or as near as I could in ten more minutes. I found a dozen shotgun shells, another combat shotgun that I took in case I needed more parts, a pair of unused grenades, two (two!) more healing potions, and an assortment of other, smaller guns that I didn't particularly care about. Oh, and a cool hat. It was done in what I learned as a filly was “Appleoosan” style, with a wide brim to keep the sun out of your eyes. I thought I looked rather dashing.

Nowhere did I find supplies. The way Doc described it to me, the supplies-gone-missing were substantial, hard to miss. They weren't here, full stop. Not good. I high-tailed it out of the camp, reached the rendezvous point, and launched my magic flare.

Jasper coughed lightly behind me, making me jump. I hadn't even seen him there when I walked up, but he was there, nonchalant as a pony could be. I arched a quizzical eyebrow in his direction.

“I've been here for a while, now. The raiders followed me into the abandoned town. I had long enough to separate and cut down every single one of them in the time it took you to scout the camp and get back here.”

“That was fifteen raiders. You've got to be kidding me.” I was incredulous.

He just grinned at me. It was insufferable. “Alright, alright. I guess it doesn't matter what actually happened to them as long as we accomplished the objective.” There, diplomatic.

“And, aheh, in your case,l- looks like you picked up a little something, uh, extra,” he nickered, “nice hat.”

I couldn't really tell if he was being serious or sarcastic, so I took it in stride. “Why thank you. I think it's rather dashing.”

I filled him in on the details at the camp, about the not-raiders. He seemed surprised, especially at the part where their leader let me go (relatively) unharmed.

“...And he told me to tell Bonesaw that 'Sparky knows what you did, and you're next.'” I finished. “I have no idea what it means.”

He played it off as if it were a mystery to him too, but I saw the subtle change in his gait, the tightening of the stride. Whoever Sparky was, it must have spooked him. Curious. That was something to ask about sometime later, though, when we weren't still seven hours from Cantilly.

The inventory spell on my Pipbuck might have been wonderful at cataloging and sorting my items and notes, but I liked to go through it myself to keep a realistic handle on what I was carrying around with me. It was doing that I discovered the note.

'Stark Contrast – Mercenary at Arms

Contract information available through

the Manehattan area contract board.'

On the back was written: 'You've proven your worth. If you ever need a helping hoof, check in at the boards and ask for Stark. They'll know what to do.”

Well. That was certainly unexpected. Had I somehow gained an ally in the wastes by almost killing her? The concept was alien to me, but that didn't mean I was blind to the possible benefits. Having a hired gun might not be a bad idea out here from time to time. I'd sleep on it, at least for now.

I switched on the radio and searched for a channel to break the silence during a lull in the conversation on the way back; we didn't have so much to talk about that we'd fill the entire fourteen hours round trip with it. I eventually settled on a station. Some haunting but beautiful music was playing at the moment that I'd never heard before. Hardly a feat, but it was s till something new. More specifically, something new that didn't want to kill me.

“...let me get it right!” The song trailed off and I was left feeling strongly for whatever mare had been doing the singing. Beautiful.

“This is DJ Pon3, and that was Sweetie Belle, singing about that one great truth of the wasteland: every pony has done something they regret. And now, my little ponies, it’s time for the news! Now you ponies remember when I told you ‘bout those two ponies who crawled themselves out of Stable Two? Well...” Oh, so this station played the news, too. Excellent, I needed to find a way to keep up with the wasteland anyway. Then again, this 'Stable-Dweller' as the DJ called her sounded almost too good to be true. My confidence flagged a bit. Looks like I'd have to find a new channel.

I decided to humor it for a few more seconds. “In other news, it looks like one of the towns around Manehattan is about to get a whole lot safer. My sources tell me a pony no one in the area or anywhere has seen before walked into Everfree Mills and cleaned the place out. No more raiders. You know what that means...”

What. My brain practically shut down. That had happened literally hours ago. How the hell had this... DJ Pon3 even heard of it, much less gotten it on the air so fast?

“... and the locals, at least around Cantilly, just call her 'Barkeep.' Nice and simple, I like it. One last thing....”

Jasper, meanwhile, was just chuckling at my apparent cluelessness. When I asked him how the hell the DJ could already know something like that, let alone turn it into something so blatantly over-exaggerated, he just replied with, “DJ Pon3 always knows. If there's one good thing in the wasteland that never changes, that's it.”

Okay then. I gave up trying to figure it out. Besides, being known in the area always comes with a few perks. Maybe I could give this a try.

My mind was awash with possibilities as the next Sweetie Belle song drifted forlornly out of my pipbuck's speakers.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Open Season -- In combat, you do +10% damage against male opponents. Outside of combat, you'll sometimes have access to unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex.
Quest Perk: Magic Eavesdrop – Using a bit of your magic, you can now listen or see through solid walls as if they were doors or windows just by pressing your horn again them.
Companion Perk: Expert Survivor – As long as Jasper remains in the party, your Survival is increased by 10.