It turned out destiny was short. We came to a halt when Buddy stopped. He was the lead of our group and large enough that going around him would be incredibly difficult. We were at a junction, and the right branch was bathed in the flickering light of torches that glinted off the unfinished metal wall, while the left was consumed in darkness. This realization should have been obvious, but I suppose dead bodies had kept me distracted. I had a PipBuck!

With practiced precision, I pressed a button and the light cut on. The room lit up much brighter now, and we could see for a good ten paces without issues. Well, at least ten Sunrise-sized paces.

There were some glints as I swept my PipBuck over the corridors. The steel walls reflecting the light, and distant gleams in the shadows giving hints of what lay beyond; but the flashlight was so much better than any torch light could ever be. To the right there was the reflection of small objects in the darkness beyond the torches. To my left and ahead was another junction with two doors on either side of the hallway.

Chifundo trotted over to the door on our left and opened it. I stood beside the door as Alguacil stepped inside quickly and looked around. “What do you think, Chifundo?” Alguacil asked, keeping his voice lower than normal.

“I feel this room is safe to venture in, the spirits of the dead inside are thin.” Chifundo replied in the rhythm the zebra seemed to keep to. Great, am I going to have to have a whole dictionary just to get everything the pink zebra says?

Curious, I peeked my head in, and the room had gotten as quiet as a bunch of foals in front of Nightmare Moon. Chifundo shrugged at us and walked out into the hall again. The walls here were made of metal and I got a vague sense of deja vu again.

Why do I feel like I’ve been here before? What is going on? I swear I’ve seen hallways like this before. Something here was similar to a stable, but it wasn’t quite right.

It was more like an incomplete bunker without reinforcing or furniture. I turned around to see Alguacil had gotten out of the door, giving me a chance to examine the room while he decided to look through the keyhole of the door across the hall. In a moment or two, though, he raised a talon and motioned for us to come closer. As soon as I took two hoof steps, the griffin motioned to stop us.

“Mole-rats, a few of them. Looks like a supply closet,” he whispered in a voice that could grate cheese. My ear flopped onto my face, one of them hitting my eye and forcing me to close it. What in Celestia’s wildest dreams? Why had it done that, twitching that way?

Without saying anything, Nyota and Buddy got right up against the door while Alguacil and Chifundo positioned themselves behind them. From how swift they responded, I was certain they’d done this sort of thing before. I turned around and looked down the hall where we had come from. I wasn’t quite ready to see the violence this group was capable of.

I was still dealing with the bodies in the pool down the hall. The image of skeletons reflected beneath the water’s surface… it was an unforgettable one. Didn’t help that the torches in the pool room kept a grim vigil beyond the end of the PipBuck light.

Before I knew it, the door flew open as Buddy and Nyota charged in. I didn’t have to turn back to know what was happening, I could hear the snarl, followed by the snapping of bones and the high pitched scream of some creature that was cut off with a sickening squelch.

Alguacil spun the barrel of his revolver and shouted, “DUCK!” before three bullets quickly blasted out of the .357 magnum into the room. With every pull of the trigger I heard a rat’s high pitched squeal of pain and a heavy splatter from the impact. What was he firing at, that was large enough that I could hear the impact?

This was how the world was? I thought. I’m a tiny little mare, completely unprepared for this. I’m not even sure if we’re the good guys.

The box opened up a pair of holes on the sides and two single-shot shotguns popped out and fired. There wasn’t a scream or anything in response to the massive bang of those two rounds. The only sound beyond the door was a splatter echoing afterward that sickened my guts. Whatever Box Pone hit, it didn’t have a chance to let out a death cry.

Right as all the noises seemed to settle, however, I heard a mole-rat shriek and a shrill whinny of pain from Nyota. My perked ears swiveled in the sound’s direction, before I turned around.

Quickly, I poked my head in and immediately saw the horrific scene. A mole-rat, a big one, was mauling the gray-black zebra, and had him pinned to the ground. It must have landed its fangs on something vital, because next thing I knew, blood and sinew flew up into the air while Nyota neighed out helplessly. I panicked, yet at the same time—and to my surprise—my mind reacted instead of sputtering to a halt. I brandished the pump-action in my hooves and leveled it to the mole-rat, and my PipBuck reflexively activated S.A.T.S.

I had never activated that particular PipBuck program—short for Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell—before, so I didn’t know what to expect. There was an outline on the mole-rat red, while Nyota was outlined in green. A filled in yellow circle targeting reticle popped up that lined up with the end of my shotgun barrel. More importantly, time seemed to have slowed down and I could think and process more quickly.

The picture before me was like a perfectly frozen frame of a horror movie. S.A.T.S. was helping me compensate for the close quarters of combat by highlighting the outline of every creature in the room. I could see a green outline extended from my weapon’s barrel that had a label above it: ‘Shotgun Blast Zone’.

While the area was no bigger than a hoof, I knew exactly where to aim to hit the vicious filly-sized creature and not strike Nyota. I aimed at the spine of the creature, the sight of its leathery hide making me want to scream in disgust. While the frozen frame of action made me want to cover my eyes, I queued up the shot, only to then hesitate.

“Release the spell! Let it fly, Sunrise. Save that zebra.” Oddly, the voice in my head was foreign and not my own this time, though I didn’t get a chance to ask it anything.

“GET OFF OF HIM!” I heard myself scream, my voice muffled by the gun trigger in my mouth. The trigger pulled with the release of S.A.T.S. The mole-rat stopped its vicious mauling and looked up just as S.A.T.S. ended and time resumed. It was like it had somehow heard me or knew of its impending fate. I could see the moment in time when the barrel lit up with fire reflected back from its cold, dark-black eyes.

The impact of recoil drove the stock into my mouth and shoulder with a pain I swore I had felt before. The creature flew into pieces as the buckshot ripped into its spine. Its blood flew out in every direction, splattering across the supply boxes in the room. Nyota in particular was covered in a pool of gore, bone, and body fluids mixing with his blood.

I dropped the shotgun and ran forward at full speed. I looked at my PipBuck for the inventory in my backpack, and thankfully it showed I had bandages in the left pocket. I ripped them out with my mouth, my shaky hooves immediately starting to apply them to the wounds.

“Nyota...are you gonna be okay?” I asked in a panic, just wanting the profuse bleeding to stop. My hooves were working frantically to tie the bandage and apply pressure.

He pushed me back after I had badly applied the bandage and pressed down with a hoof on the bite wounds. I could see slack in the bandages and knew I was no medical expert. “I have a healing potion. It will be fine, calm yourself.” Nyota coolly stated as he stood up. There were half a dozen bite marks, and several of them were soaking the bandages. I kept wanting to help, not entirely knowing how. I just wanted him to be okay.

He reached into his saddlebags and took out a purple potion in a red bottle with a set of butterflies on its label. After biting the cork off and spitting it out, the zebra downed it in one gulp. I watched in amazement as the bandages slowly were pushed off him and fell to the floor. He… he wasn’t bleeding anymore. While his coat was drenched in blood and had holes in it still, the wounds themselves had miraculously closed without scaring.

Chifundo got up and placed a pink striped hoof over my shoulder. He was much larger than I was, so he had little difficulty turning me around.”Come with me, Sunrise, my young friend, our friends have leather pelts to tend.” Chifundo led me out of the food storage room.

I could see several bits of food everywhere, as well as a total of five dead mole-rat bodies. Well, what I assume to be the guts and gore of five. My brain was still processing the wounds those creatures had inflicted.

How and when did mole-rats get that big? Last time I checked, they were about half the size of a full grown pony. I turned back to get a look at Nyota as he pulled out a knife, the same knife I had fixed earlier. He was using it to… skin the dead beasts. I couldn’t bear to look as he started stripping flesh and skin from the bones; the sounds his action produced made my ears fold up in vain attempt to block out the noise.

“Mmm~ Good eatin’ if we cook it right,” Buddy said as I looked at him with dismay.

“B-but ponies don’t eat meat!” I blurted out, picking up my shotgun in one hoof and passing it to my tail to stow the weapon. WAIT!? Since when could I grab things with my tail? Did my tail just put the shotgun in the holster? I turned my head to see my orange, white-highlighted tail put the shotgun in its holster before sliding a shell into the chamber to replace the one I had fired. Yep... that happened. Not the oddest thing that’s happened today, but let’s get back to that later.

“Listen ‘ear little lady. Ya can eat meat, so it won’t hurt ya ta try it,” Buddy said, practically brandishing a slice of dripping mole flesh at me. The fur at the back of my neck stood on end at the thought of putting that anywhere near my mouth. I choked back bile before I could give my reply.

“No thank you!” I shot back, my face that of pure disgust as I felt my stomach twisting into a tighter knot. Once we get out, will I ever be able to eat at all?

“Hm. You’ll have to get used to it if you wanna survive out here,” Alguacil replied as he worked to strip the last mole-rats of their hides, teeth, and meat. I stepped out into the hallway and tried to put it out of my mind.

A few minutes later, everyone stepped back outside the door into the hall, all covered in the mole-rats’ gore. Nyota had a few extra splotches of blood from his insides mingling with the gore from skinning and butchering. I could see the distinct difference in red with my PipBuck light. At least this pony is alive and friendly, Sunrise. Now, try to calm down.

Buddy took point again and we started down the hallway further into the unexplored depths. The dim, sometimes flickering, light provided a sense of foreboding. I stood in the center of the group as we came up to a junction that was beyond the cross-hallway doors. Buddy came to a stop, along with the sound of hooves, claws, and paw pads.

“Which way do ya wanna go?” Buddy called back to the rest of us.

I thought about it and shrugged, “Left seems to be the best bet, I say.” It was only logical: the left was illuminated by torches while the right was nothing but pitch black. As the others quietly discussed my suggestion amongst themselves, I took this moment to activate my PipBuck’s Eyes Forward Sparkle and tag everyone as friendly.

The visor in my helmet seemed to be the easiest way for the spell matrix to adjust to my vision and display the information. I saw five other green pips over the compass labeled with my companion’s names. Not sure if we were friends yet, but this gave me some information to keep up with them in the dark. They were friendly for now; not to mention not being mean for the sake of being mean.

Chifundo nodded as he looked to the right. “I am agreement with the tiny runt, the right houses spirits we should not affront,” Tiny Runt! I swear I’ll punt... If it wasn’t obvious, what he said didn’t sit well with me… I turned back and looked up at the pink-striped zebra with a strained smile and narrowed eyes.

Right as I was about to say something, Alguacil drew a revolver. He gave its cylinder one good spin and nodded with the loud cocking of the firearm’s next shot locking into the place. “Get moving that way, then, but stay together. Whoever took us and put us in that pool… most likely they’re still here.”

And get moving we did. For the first half a dozen steps we took down the hall, things were fine. However, we soon had to turn around when a shout of pain came from somewhere behind us. We spotted the box just lying there, and it seemed shorter than before.

It hadn’t moved, and it took a moment for me to realize that the pony previously inside was missing. I dashed past Chifundo and around the corner, forgetting my PipBuck was our only light source. Buddy’s torch flickered out and died as he turned to follow. “Great, you just left your friends in the dark,” was what the tiny pony in my head said.

I rounded the corner and my empty stomach twisted into a knot again. Please let me at least have one minute without feeling like I need to vomit, please, Goddesses. There laid a pony on the ground, holding her foreleg and biting her lip. This small mare was slightly larger than me, but definitely another earth pony filly. She had a pearl white coat and a snow white mane with matching tail. Also, she was a blank flank, like me.

Her eyes were the color of honey and, to be completely honest, I didn’t see why she would hide under the box. She was quite pretty for a filly. Although… I did notice that her pupils weren’t circles, but squares. This is going to keep me up at night later trying to figure this out!

I took a few moments to inspect her. She was holding her right foreleg and, from the unnatural way it was bending, it was clearly broken. I felt my stomach lurch when my eyes went back to the cripplingly twisted foreleg. As I examined her leg, my stomach twisted into a knot. She had two additional joints to her leg, beyond a knee and ankle. Wonderful; more death, injuries, and gore than I have seen in my entire life in, what, an hour? Maybe two? Goddess, can you have something nice happen today?

“Are you okay? What happened?” I asked as I heard the others trotting up behind me.

“I tried to open the door, and when I kicked it...” she chewed her lip to push back the pain.

Nyota walked up to the light of my PipBuck and smiled. “Calm down Sunrise, I can take care of this.” The zebra stallion informed me as he took out a couple of pieces of pipe, and I handed him my bandages. I did all I could to help before he turned my head away to look at box pony’s eyes.

Her eyes! Dear Celestia what is going on with her eyes? I stared into them and started to think that they were more cube shaped pupils than just squares. It was too freaky for me to stare for too long and I had to look away just to keep my sanity.

I thought of something to say to start a conversation with her in order to hopefully keep her mind off the pain. “Hey... wha-what’s your name?” I asked with the grace of a mechanic’s daughter.

“Sugarcube Serenade, though I sometimes go by Corners or Box Pone, for the great box keeps me safe,” the filly replied. Great, she’s either completely twigged or absolutely insane.

“Corners, can you please not wander off again?” I asked, looking at my PipBuck real quick. Huh, turned out I tagged the box instead of her. Luckily, it was a simple matter of removing the tag from the box and applying it directly to her. At least my Eyes Forward Sparkle, E.F.S., would keep track of her from now on, and not her box.

“I just got curious, wondering what was this way. Chifundo said bad juju and I really wanted to know,” the filly replied earnestly.

“Well, don’t—” my voice was silenced by a sickening crunch and the sight of Corners biting her lip to not scream. Well, I certainly unwittingly did my job; Nyota had set the bone and used me as a distraction. REALLY! I’m the distraction now? I’m your random mare? Was this a sign of friendship for a zebra?

“There, you won’t be able to run on it but you can at least move,” Nyota informed her coldly.

I hung my head before slowly walking back to get the box. Grabbing it between my teeth, I pulled it towards the two while Nyota gave Corners instructions. Our box pone was another mare, at least, and a smaller one like me to boot. Wait...was I even a filly anymore?

I had just found out I was 182 extra years old, yet I looked the same and I didn’t remember much of what happened at all. Now that I had stepped out of the stable these were the questions I had to find answers to. I hadn’t grown at all. What had those doctors done to me? Why was my coat now green? I had a vague memory of the color changing but not when. How long was I in stasis and not in stasis? How old am I really?

I put the box over Corners and gave the best reassuring smile I could. It must have worked, as the eyes inside the box looked a lot more warm from inside it, “There, you’re in your box, protected again.” I was trying to be as reassuring as possible, what with my friendly smile. I noticed Alguacil was looking inside the door’s key hole, the same one Corners had broken her leg on. How do you break a leg on a door? Seriously?

“Nothing inside but ponnequins with some old armor on them,” he stated bluntly before trying the door. Locked, it didn’t budge.

“Any y’all know how to pick a lock?” Buddy asked with a puzzled look.

I stepped forward and looked at my Pip-Buck. The inventory matrix said I had a screwdriver and several bobby pins. Those would work for that, right? I thought as I searched my coat pockets, fishing out a bobby pin with my teeth while my tail held the screwdriver out for my hoof. Thanks! ….wait. I shook away the thought of my tail having a mind of its own and the ability to act with it; setting to my work instead.

Putting what I’ve seen in old movies and read from novels into practice, I leaned forward and pressed the screwdriver into the lock. With one hoof I held it in place while also using the bobby pin in my mouth to fiddle with it. I kept at it for nearly two minutes before—SNAP! The bobby pin broke and I simply shrugged. I’d need to practice this or I suppose someone else would have to prove to be better at it.

“I... guess not,” I had discovered I had no knack for picking locks. If anything, I was downright terrible. The lock’s tumblers refused to move due to the broken bit of pin wedged inside it.

Right as I scratched my chin in thought, Buddy pushed me back, sliding my hooves over the tiles. The mighty sand dog stood up to his full height and brought his weight down onto the lock with a mighty crash of force.

His claw impaled the wood around the lock, and he gripped it tight. There was a wooden wrenching sound as he twisted it and he tore the door open with a mighty wail. The wooden door slammed against the steel wall as it violently swung open; the sound being similar to that of a sledge-hammer splitting firewood.

With the way open, the others all went in first and cleared the room. I took a few steps of trepidation behind them as my Pip-Buck light lit up the room. There were a dozen pony-shaped ponnequins of stallions in Canterlot royal guard-styled armor. The old armor was made of metal and slightly rusted.

The dust in the room was heavy as the six of us trotted inside, slowly leaving prints in it. I darted forward to an alcove off to our right and discovered that it was empty. I turned around to find Alguacil walking up to each of the ponnequins and stabbing them through the head with his knife.

“Do you feel the need to stab everything you perceive?” said Chifundo, who I noticed was staying by the door. The pink striped zebra just kept repeating in rhythm, “This voodoo is bad juju.” He shook his head between the beats of his canter. What is with this zebra?

“When a zebra says bad juju, you take no chances,” Alguacil replied and resumed stabbing the unmoving statues.

Just then, I noticed a door past the older griffin and walked over to it. As Buddy was stripping the armor off one of the ponnequins, I trotted past the older griffin and looked into the keyhole as Alguacil had done earlier. Oddly enough, the hole was right at my height. Huh, so there are advantages to being short.

At first I spotted nothing but shadows and a few bits of furniture on the other side. Right as I was about to pull away from the lock, however, a pony walked past my vision. A hoof grabbed something from a table before hearing a loud munching sound indicative of someone eating food. A...a pony was in there! Maybe they’re trapped down here, too!

Excitedly, I knocked upon the door without a second thought, loudly. I felt four sets of eyes from my five new friends staring at me quite suddenly. That’s right, four. Two of my companions seemed to have found a way to lose alternate eyes. I was incredibly self conscious as Nyota moved to the side of the door on my left. Buddy bolted upright and got on the right side of the door. Both were standing in a position like they were ready to put paw and hoof violently to anything that came out.

“Kid! What in tarnation? Do you have a death wish!?” Alguacil said in a harsh whisper at me.
There was a long, pregnant pause as I heard hooves on the other side of the door moving and shuffling, while all of us sat there, dead still.

The tension in the air was palpable. The response from the other side of the door, a voice sounding surprised and actually upset with us being there. As far as I could tell, it was a male adult voice.“What the hell? Hello?” Whoever he was, he sounded very confused.

I didn’t hesitate at this point. Hey, when you’re four hooves in the water, may as well swim, right?

“Oh, hi! We’re lost down here and wanted to know if you knew the way out—or are you lost too?” I turned to look for my companions’ approval; only to notice Alguacil had his beak slacked wide open and Chifundo was matching his expression.

There wasn’t a response right away, and I felt a twitch in my eyebrow as a feeling of someone else looking at me made my hoof itch. Wait...my hooves itch? Apparently now they do. I heard a hushed voice from beyond the door, a different voice, this one a mare?

In the dim light I swore I saw some eyes reflecting my PipBuck light from the door crack. “It’s a filly? When did we get a filly? I don’t remember the green one either.” This was followed by somepony shouting through the door, “Yeah, stay right there, we’ll show ya out. We’ll show ya out real nice.” At this point the twitch in my eyebrow was matched in rhythm by the itch in my hoof.

Nyota motioned for me to step back a bit. I was confused, but decided it was best to listen to the zebra. I took a few steps back and let my excitement go to my head. My filly hooves shook with it as I waited for the other ponies to come out to us. I scratched at the itch in my right forehoof as we waited.

The anticipation was torture, but soon the door flew open and before me were two shadows in the darkness and one pony. The pony was a beige and brown pegasus with a dozen scars over his body, and what looked like a half-crippled wing. He had a solid green mane and a long, rusted saber in his maw, caked with old blood.

Before anything else could happen, Alguacil leveled his revolver while Nyota rocketed like a coiled snake assaulting its prey. He grabbed the pegasus by the hooves and they tumbled through the air for just a second. Nyota slammed the winged stallion onto his back in the blink of an eye.

The pegasus’ rusty saber clattered to the ground and slid right at my hooves with a metal-on-cloven-bone clang as it stopped. The other two shadows cried out in surprise and gave out a yell of, “NOPE!” in unison before disappearing with the slam of a door in the distance.

“E-hey!! L-let me go!” the pegasus shouted, trying to get out from under Nyota. The zebra had him expertly pinned down by the shoulders and wings with his hooves.

“Stop moving or else you die.” Alguacil walked up to the struggling pegasus and pressed his revolver to the temple of the pegasus.

I blinked in disbelief at this. “WHAT!? Shouldn’t we talk to them first?” I demanded. If these five had turned out to be my friends, what is to say that they couldn’t make friends with this pegasus?

“Pipe down, Sunrise,” Buddy declared. He motioned his claw to Chifundo, me, and the door we came in through as he closed the door the scarred pegasus had come through.

Chifundo took me by the flank and led me out, and in doing so, I felt the duster had ridden up. When I turned to my flank, it had been exposed from under my duster. My brows knit as I realized I had, at some point, gained a cutie mark!

Wait, when did I get that? This… this was going to take some real explaining, as I didn’t even know where it had come from. It was a unicorn pony clad in silver power-armor, exploding from the inside-out. All emblazoned upon my flanks.

I looked over my shoulder to see Alguacil staring at me with a raised eyebrow over his EMPTY socket. He nodded to the cutie mark on my flank. “We’ll talk later, Sunrise,” he said, as if to say we would talk not only about the pegasus but about what was on my flank.

I suddenly felt self conscious about my cutie mark as we stepped outside. Chifundo turned to me and started to purposely talk over the hushed voices on the other side of the door.

“You have a sixth sense which is new, a skill to know before you view.,” Chifundo talking made my hoof itch more and I tried to scratch it.

“The sense? What do you mean?” I questioned back.

““Your hooves twitched and your tail shook, before the raiders got a look. I have seen these signs before, foresight is your skill, for sure.”Chifundo stated flatly, in a way that could only make my coat crawl. I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure what to make of Chifundo at this point, and just wanted to strain my ears to hear the voices inside the other room.

That was apparently all the time they needed through. Buddy opened the door after a couple of minutes. “Y’all can come back in now.” They still had the pegasus pinned down with a gun to his temple. Chifundo put his hoof around me and led me back inside like he was escorting a little foal.

After staring down at the pegasus for a spell, Alguacil sighed. “Alright, you, we’re gonna take you with us to lead us out. But before we do, I’ve got to break yer wings.”

I was shocked by what I just heard. I broke out of Chifundo’s hoof and rushed forward. “NO! He hasn’t hurt any of us yet!” I yelled out, loud enough that I’m pretty sure the entire cave heard it.

Alguacil looked surprised that I moved that fast, or that I would protest. “This is a raider! What do you care?” he demanded.

“Please, don’t break my wings. I mean, my left one is bad enough, I can barely fly as is,” he pleaded through the hold Nyota had around his forehead and throat.

I didn’t know what a raider was, but that didn’t stop me from staring up at Alguacil in frustration. “Look, we’ll compromise,” I said as I turned to the pegasus.“Would it be okay if I tied your wings to your body? Just till we can find our way out?” I looked between Alguacil and the pegasus with a nervous smile. I hoped they couldn’t see just how upset I was at the idea of having to hurt another pony or my companions. Can I call them friends yet? They were inflicting damage on this pegasus that I wouldn’t dream of.

“Alright, Sunrise, but if he makes a wrong move...” Alguacil wasn’t able to finish that veiled threat. I took out a rope and began working it around the pegasus’s body, securing his wings. I wasn’t entirely sure what Alguacil meant by his would-be threat but with a flick of his wrist, he had a magnum revolver against the pegasus’ head. He kept it pressed to the back of the pegasus’s head as I worked. He is doing that just for show, right?

“What’s your name?” I asked our captive, looking at his cutie mark. It was a set of soft clouds and a full rainbow over it. It was rather chipper, in contrast to his badly mangled wing, knife-wound scars, and a bullet-wound scar on his chest.

“Spring Bronco,” he replied with a relieved sigh. The expression on his face got slightly less tense when my hooves finished their work.

“Were you forced into attacking other ponies? And why did we wake up in the pool back there? Did you put us there?” All of my questions were meant to get to know him better and hopefully make Alguacil want to shoot or maim him less. Buddy grabbed the end of the untied bit of rope and used it to lead the pegasus forward towards the door we had come in through.

“I needed the caps. Boss said get those who look strong and gather ‘em up for what he needed. I don’t remember putting you in there, though we do sometimes get a filly or a scrawny-looking pony as a joke,” he said with what sounded like a hint of remorse.

We made our way back to the hallway and my questions at Spring Bronco were mostly just rebuffed with the same old answers: “I’m a bad pony, Sunrise.” Or “I needed the caps, I only did it because I needed them that badly.”

I wasn’t sure if the sadness in his voice was remorse or if he was simply upset he’d been caught. We moved down the hallway to the door at the end, passing another junction and ignoring it as the pegasus opened the door into a large room. We looked at an elevator door to our right, and daylight coming from a set of double doors at the top of two flights of stairs to our left.

“Yeah... Sunrise, was it? I’m not a good pony. I don’t think I ever will be.” He let out a regretful sigh, approaching the elevator door. Once we moved into the open atrium-like room, Buddy tightened his grip on the rope around Spring Bronco’s sides. Alguacil, meanwhile, had moved to his side and placed his pistol to the back of Spring Bronco’s head. I really hoped the griffon wouldn’t need to pull that trigger. I didn’t think I was prepared for that.

“Surely you can come back from it. I don’t care what you’ve done, you can always be better,” I replied with a smile, placing a hoof against his cutie mark. “You have a mark that seems like you have a right to be happy.”

He looked down in my eyes and shook his head. There was my reflection deep in his pupils, and a single tear rolled down his cheek before he closed his eyes. I could feel the pangs of regret coming off him, and my hoof started itching again. He seemed to be resigning himself to some unseen fate. He had led us out, right? He had started down a path to redemption, right? He could be a good pony if he really wanted, couldn’t he? My soul ached for something good to come out of all this, something that would let me know the world I escaped to wasn’t completely devoid of kindness.

Coming to a closed gate, Bronco moved to the wall next to it. He rose onto his hind legs and placed his hoof against a switch. “No, Sunrise. I’m a bad pony. I can’t come back from that.” He apologized before flipping the switch.

The gate opened slowly, and I could hear the winding up of something robotic as we looked into the PipBuck-lit room. To my surprise, Spring Bronco switched from gray to red on my E.F.S. and another red dot appeared in the direction of the door. Gears ground as the gate rose, whining in protest to pull out of the way.

First, I could see heavy, metallic treads as the storage room opened. The door moved upwards slowly and steam hissed from the other side. Each moment that passed revealed more of a towering, dragon-shaped steel chassis. Spring Bronco had just opened the Gates of Hades, and here was the demon to drag us in.

Its right arm was equipped with a missile pod, loaded with four warheads poking out. Its left arm was a mini-gun, slowly winding up. At the top of its frame was a pair of red lights and a speaker behind what looked like a metal roll cage. All of its upper torso was shaped like a dragon, and covered in spikes that were caked with long-since-dried blood.

“Intruder detected! Powering up weapons!” A chipper, robotic voice declared before several things happened very quickly.
Bronco’s eyes widened as Alguacil pulled the trigger and the revolver’s hammer fell. The pegasus’s gaze was resting on me as the hollow point entered his skull. With his other talon, Alguacil leapt forward and slammed the switch in the opposite direction.

The gate fell back down and sealed the sentry bot on the other side of the door. I recognized the robot model from before we went into the stable. It was new type of heavy security and military assault robot, one that had been advertised by the Ministry of Wartime Technology.

This was a Sentry Dragon Mark 2. Were it not for the smashed eyeball of a pegasus sliding down the visor to my helmet; I would have been in awe at having seen such a marvel of technology in person. Spring Bronco’s gaze had never left my own when his head exploded in his final moments. Bits of blood had hit my mouth and tongue, and I could smell the gore. My throat gagged, tasting pony remains. “What... why... he... did...” I couldn’t believe it.

With a gun to his head, his wings tied, the remorse in his voice, Spring Bronco had just betrayed us, knowing full well he would die. What kind of ponies were these? Was this what raiders were? Is this what they’re like? What had just happened!?

BOOM!!!!

The gate in front of us started to dent, and a burst of fire lit up from under the door. My brain registered it as a missile from the sentry bot, and several rounds pinged off the steel gate. I was standing right in front of the gate, staring at the headless corpse of what was once a whole pegasus just a few seconds ago.

“Sunrise! MOVE!” Nyota shouted at me. I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t process what had just happened. The eyeball continued to slide down my visor, hanging onto the edge by a few pieces of nerve endings.
BOOM!!!!!

This is too much! What was I supposed to do against insanity like that!? We warned him that if he did anything, he’d die, and Alguacil had just executed Bronco to prove that he… they —we meant it!

Buddy’s two arms wrapped around my unresponsive body, picking me up and rolling with me in tow as he took cover next to the doorway. Buddy set me down, and out came his claws. I stood next to him, motionless and flabbergasted as he pressed his back to the doorframe.

“What do we do!?” Chifundo shouted, notably the only time he didn’t rhyme, as my tail pushed something red, hard and plastic up to my eyes. I looked down, and there was a bundle of dynamite. A glance at my PipBuck revealed that I certainly had a bundle of dynamite this entire time and that this wasn’t an illusion. I should check my own inventory more often... Also, MY TAIL CAN PICK UP TNT? And...and it knew I had it? Listen here, Miss Tail, we’re going to talk about this later, but not right now because—

BOOM!!!

The door wasn’t holding up very well. Several holes had been blown into it, and a tear was running down its center. It couldn’t take another impact like that.

Running off the new found surge of adrenaline, I checked my PipBuck inventory again and found a lighter. While my hoof went to get it, I took the bundle of five extreme boom sticks from my tail into my mouth.

“Thank you,” I said before realizing I was thanking my own tail. Quickly dismissing that, I lit the fuse as a fourth and a final boom echoed through the room. The gate flew off the mountings as the metal was torn free and landed with a crash near the base of the stairs almost forty feet away. Without even thinking, I threw the bundle of soon-to-be-exploding sticks into the room the sentry bot was in. My legs moved on instinct now as I turned, bolting for the stairway towards the sunlight-outlined door.

“RUUUN!!!” I declared at the top of my lungs, the rush of air from the gallop making the eyeball finally fall from my visor. I felt something inside me die at that moment, but didn’t have any real time to figure out what it was exactly. All I knew was that Bronco’s eyeball dropping to the floor was far heavier on my soul than any tear I had shed in all my life.

I turned to look back, seeing Nyota, Buddy, and Corners hard on my tail, Corners having left her box in front of her as a decoy. Within seconds, the dynamite exploded, and the world shook with the force of a magically enhanced alicorn belly flop. Recovering from my hurried run brought on by the explosion, I looked back as the sentry bot was engulfed in a massive gout of flame.

Its missile launcher was ripped open and torn to pieces, rendered useless. The right side of its treads were completely blown apart, with road wheels scattered and hunks of armored plating from the body falling off. The room it was in was tiny, and the walls’ reinforced metal and concrete had lead to the concussive waves hitting the robot inside over and over again. Despite all that, though, the sentry bot was still moving.

The ensuing waves of fire inevitably died down, with small flickers of remnant flame illuminating the machine of destruction. It rolled out slowly, much slower than it should. The death machine was dragging its right side. Its wheels were rolling off of the tread away from the death-spitting machine. The heavy leviathan shell it was encased in was cracked in several places. However, the mini-gun still seemed functional as it revved up to full speed, prompting Alguacil to try to beat it to the punch by firing off three shots at it. We were all still in full flight as revolver shots rang out in rapid succession.

The first two hit the sentry, yet the armor plating didn’t appear to care. After the third shot, we all heard a yelp from the gravelly-voiced griffin. The gun chamber exploded in his talon, as the revolver cylinder was either not in place properly or just too badly damaged to function. The griffin squawked out in pain above the explosion as his blood flicked on my helmet visor.

The minigun roared, and Corners’ abandoned box was suddenly being riddled with holes. If she had been in there, she most likely would have been dead. Instead, the bullets shot through the box, embedding themselves into the grout tiles behind it, tearing up a mess of ceramic and bits of dirt.

Buddy pulled out an energy weapon I didn’t recognize and opened up with it, as Corners fired her shotguns mounted to her flanks with a bite on the bit in front of her mouth. All of their shots connected, through they didn’t seem to do any real damage. Corners turned to me and pulled out a pair of grenade launchers and tossed them at me. “USE THIS!” she ordered over the roar of gunfire.

Things were moving fast now as the sentry bot turned its minigun from the ripped up cardboard box to the next nearest target: Buddy. My mind flashed with the image of the sand dog, the creature that had been so nice to me. We had only known each other a short while, yet he had looked out for me and tried to be as soft about the reality of all this as he could. Now I was getting a vision of bullets rending him to bits and pulverizing his body into meat salad. The barrels began to spin... and then there was a loud CLICK!

It was like divine intervention! The minigun had mercifully stopped with a mechanical grinding, a noise indicating that the weapon’s gears had failed. The sound of machinery ripping filled the air as the gun feed jammed and tore the mechanism apart. Dozens of unspent shells fell onto the ground. Either the explosion had done much more damage than what we could see, or the Goddesses were looking out for us right now.

I let out a sigh of relief as everyone bolted past me. Behind us were a set of stairs leading out of this large, vacant atrium room. Alguacil fired off three more shots, then popped his cylinder to load in another six rounds. I picked up one of the tube rifles into my mouth and my tail scooped up the second one.

I ran past Alguacil and lay on my belly, raising the tube rifle with my hooves as I checked to see what ammo was loaded. More shots rang out as I read ‘25mm HE’ on the casing inside. Grenades! This is a Grenade Launcher? I slammed the breach closed and looked through the sites. Buddy was still down range near the sentry bot, closing to attack it with his claws.

“BUDDY! GET CLEAR!” I yelled, my mind operating on survival, rage, and the need to protect these ponies. They were my only hope of surviving, and that robot had just tried to kill them! Bronco’s attack, betrayal, and death, the mole-rats, the dead ponies in the lake; all of it flashed before my eyes in that moment as Buddy stopped just in front of me. I went to aim, only to stop myself from biting down on the firing bit.

“Buddy, get behind me! If I mess up I don’t want this going up your...” I didn’t finish the sentence, it didn’t feel appropriate to do so. WHAT!? I’d never called someone’s ass, well... their ass. My mother would have had a fit for me to use that language. Oh, right, death bot coming, pay attention!

Buddy looked back in time and jumped out of the way. I took aim again and activated S.A.T.S., this time making sure my aim was spot-on. Surprisingly, all it took was the lightest touch to pull the trigger, time speeding up again while S.A.T.S. worked its magic. The weapon produced a loud thump.

I could see the the heavy round flying through the air. It lit a fiery explosion as it slammed squarely on the death machine’s chest. My shot was highly effective; the cage around its red murder eyes fell apart as the detonation ripped at it. I noticed in numb shock that the HE grenade also incinerated part of Bronco’s body.

I looked to Alguacil as I reached for my tail to get the other rifle. His three shots followed. The first bounced off. The second went right into one of the red lights, shattering it. The third flew into the area where its internals were exposed, deeper into the machine. There was a pause as the massive death trap stopped and began to make much louder grinding noises. I knew it was its engine or spell matrix breaking apart.

There was a sudden loud warning sound from the crippled agent of destruction. The air around the sentry bot began heating up radically. It got so hot we could see the waves of thermal energy rolling off it.

“SELF DESTRUCT ACTIVATED!” It shrieked as I aimed the next grenade. At that moment, staring down the sight, my tail shielded my eyes. A bright flash filled the room. The spell-matrix of the sentry bot overloaded and detonated like a mini-megaspell. The wild magic lanced towards the six of us with a rainbow colored fury that would surely kill all of us. The world moved in slow motion, and as all this happened I could only stare in awe.

I saw my death coming right at me and couldn’t move. Fate seemed to have other plans, though, as a wall of dark black fur and flesh moved in front of me and blocked out the explosion from my sight.

Two familiar arms lift me up and pull me into the chest of this warm, large creature. Buddy? The outward wave of force soon washed over us, and he was absorbing it all, his body taking the full impact of the explosion as he shielded me. The world sped back up and Corners wailed in agony at the top of her lungs while the wave of flames passed over us.

Just as soon as it arrived, the explosion dissipated, and I stared up at the sand dog, my eyes full of tears. I felt like I had a friend now, for certain. This sand dog, Buddy, had just saved my life. There was a long pause as he held me tight, till I realized it was hard to breathe from his hug.

I managed to free a hoof from his grasp and used it to tap desperately at his side. “Buddy...air...” I sputtered through my compressed lungs.

Thankfully, he got the message and dropped me to my hooves. Buddy shook off his duster and stood upright like a tough dog. I looked at him through the tears that I had to force back, suppressed for later. He was covered in burns. Cuts scattered his body where his skin had been torn open by the blast. He was bleeding anywhere that hadn’t cauterized from the heat.

Overwhelmed by concern, I scrambled to take out bandages. Immediately, I tried to wrap them on him. My body shook and nothing was steady; all I could think of was the pain he must be in. “Buddy...you....thank you. Please, please, please stop bleeding,” I chattered through my teeth. Every glance at the horrific wounds only making me cry more.

“I need a sewing kit! And does anypony have heavy bandages?” I heard Nyota’s voice and turned around. At the stairs he was standing over Corners. I couldn’t make out why, but Corners was on the ground, screaming in agony. The faint ringing lingering in my ears was deadening the screams to me. I looked at my PipBuck; there was a sewing kit and magical bandages in my pack. I still don’t know where all this stuff came from! What all had I done to get all these things?

“Nyota, backpack! Inner pocket next to the kitchen kit. There are magical bandages and a sewing kit.” I declared as I forced all the emotions away from my mind and worked to stop Buddy’s bleeding. My hooves moved frantically; I wasn’t trained for medical work at all. Buddy didn’t seem to mind and just smiled down at me.

I lifted my bloody and ash-caked visor so I could see better and kept working, with beads of sweat on my brow. My helmet fell off when I bumped his claw, though I could care less in my frenzy.

Buddy reached down and placed a paw onto my mane and started to softly pet me. “It’s okay, little ‘un. ‘ll be fine. Go help Nyota.” He reassured me and we stared into each others eyes.

He looked as though he saw something beautiful that he wanted to shield from the world. His dark green eyes were staring into my bright violet ones. I saw my reflection in his. My body covered in blood, gore, and soot. It was the same look Spring Bronco had, but something about it was slightly more... pure.
I envisioned something in his soul there; I felt it grow. It warmed my heart and stilled my shakes. All of it rang within me and I gave a nod acknowledging his request. “Okay, but please, bandage yourself.”

I ran up to Nyota and reached out to help him as he was stitching along Corners broken leg. The stitches went all the way around, from one end to the other—a warning that the leg had nearly been severed. I got the magical bandages and prepared to apply them as he finished his work. My mind was in pure work mode and I didn’t have time to comprehend the damage done to Corners. With the purity of the exchange with Buddy, my emotions remained still and I found myself operating on logic to get every creature with us through this.

I felt helpless compared to Nyota. He was a field medic—if not an outright doctor!—compared to me. My tail took a healing potion from Nyota to give him more room to work. After swiftly uncorking it, I shoved the potion into Corners’s mouth with my tail and tilted her head back with my hoof back to get her to drink it all.

This area wasn’t as well lit, so I let Nyota direct my PipBuck leg around to keep the light where he needed it. Let this be right. I don’t want her to lose that leg!

Nyota finished after what felt like an eternity. Already I could see the flesh starting to heal. Regrettably, there was definitely going to be a scar. Corners would have a horrific slash across her leg for the rest of her life. I handed the bandage back to Nyota to finish up with the wound and looked at Corners’ box near to us.

The explosion had sent it airborne and it somehow hadn’t been turned to dust. There were some holes it in and it was singed. Other than that, it was surprisingly intact. I took it and placed it on her head and Corners curled up against the box. All but the leg that Nyota had stitched up was now concealed from this underground hell hole.

“It’ll be okay Corners.” Nyota gave a soft, reassuring smile. I realized this was the first time I’d seen him show any emotion. He nuzzled the cardboard box she was in and looked me over, “Go on, Sunrise. You check outside for us with Alguacil, make sure it’s clear.”

At least he has some decent bedside manners. I logically followed his direction, still emotionally cut off. If I stayed any longer and I’d have a chance to think about our party’s horrific wounds. I’d certainly find that my stomach might not be completely empty if that happened.

I slowly walked up the stairs and stood beside Alguacil. The griffon’s left claw was wrapped up in several bandages. He must have treated his wound while I was tending to Corners. He shot me an acknowledging nod. I gave him one in return. He pushed open the doors with his undamaged claw and reveal a dull and cloudy day.

Level up:

New Perk: Tail Trick – Your tail seems to have a mind of its own. In addition to this, it can act like a hand/hoof for items that can be operated by 1 hand/hoof/claw/talon/etc.

New Trait Discovered: Pinkie Sense – You get random itches and/or twitches about you that indicate danger or potentially something that your other senses can’t quite detect yet. This also gives you a presence that is slightly off putting till people get used to you. The DM rolls gives you a luck roll at -2 and tell you if you have a twitch when something is amiss. Also all NPCs are at -1 to disposition when you first meet.

Author's Notes:

First off thanks to Kkat for creating Fallout: Equestria and letting the Project Dead Tree guys compile edit and make the full version of the Fallout: Equestria into a Pen and Paper game we can all play.

Second thanks to the Project Dead Tree guys for making the game and running it for me on Wednesday nights for the live stream.

Third, thanks to Hitomi for the edits turning this into something at least readable and more fun for us all.

Fourth thanks to our Artist for Images Imbedded: Glacier Frostclaw

Rewrite Editor: Enigmatic Otaku