However, in this fateful hour, perhaps the most fateful hour of our entire history, I have decided that the time has come where I cannot be any of what you see me as. I cannot maintain a veil on my heart and soul as I have for so long. I must concede that I am not the mare to take you into this next chapter of our lives.

Entry 005 – A Way In

In the days before the war, the Crystaller Building had already been one of the tallest in Manehattan. Then the Balefire Bombs levelled almost everything else to pebbles and dirt and it had still stood, as a towering reminder of what ponies had created in their tenacity and pride. Only the Tenpony and Horseshoe Towers were its closest surviving rivals.

When I had fantasized about seeing the colossal giant finally lose its footing and come crashing down, I had expected to be standing a long, long distance away, with a Hard Apple Whiskey in one claw, kneading a sweet supple flank in the other. Whose flank varied, on one odd occasion I even allowed Elm’s derrière into the illusion.

Regardless, I’d always expected to be in a place of comfort and safety, not sat directly beneath it like a whack-a-mole expecting the squishing hammer. I was frozen in a front row seat to my imminent demise and coated in the shadow of the gigantic dispassionate face. I was certain I was going to die.

The sting of my incapacitated wing brought me quickly back to the ground. Elm had snagged me, pulling me forward.

My legs remembered how to work. My feet slapped across the stone. My speed built, I was beside Elm. The wind was ripping the air, the light was being swallow by the merciless dark.

We were through the theatre doors. If the name had remained, I did not see it. I nearly mistook the four walls for safety.

“THIS WAY!” Elmwood butted me and kept me running. He plunged through the doors into the auditorium, where a sharp gradient revealed the stage and seating had fallen through the ground.

My footing was lost, my wings failed to stop me. I tumbled terribly swiftly into the chasm, bounced from chair to chair and flailed for something to snag to save further injury.

In my first attempt, my talons caught on carpet. However, as soon as gravity tugged at my body, the filth-red scab lifted from the crumbling boards without a hint of resistance.

Despite the putrid remains of the mat stuck to my claws, I was able to grab onto the frail ledge of the upper balcony and stop myself. I hung over a long drop, but at least I was no longer falling.

Thud!

A large bouncing ball shape flew over the banister and struck me square in the beak. My nostrils were filled with the smell of warm, filthy horse hair. I had no time to reflect on who this was, as I felt the plaster bar in my grip shatter like dust.

Acting without thought, I snatched the thrashing creature that had thrown me from my insecure grapple. I beat both wings, knowing that there was searing pain coming from the deeply injured one, but my desire for self-preservation hid it. In mid-air, we switched places. My fate was now his, and even his hoof blackening my eye did not change the fact.

Crack!

Cushioning my fall did not end well for the pony. Their body buckled, their bones became brittle twigs, and their organs were the wet, squishy leaves. I could still hear their painful neigh as I rebounded over them and came to rest between the chairs of Row E in the sunken stalls.

Facing the crooked ceiling, I had a few precious seconds for my eyes to refocus and for my head to thank Celestia, Luna, any deity listening, that I was alive. My body stung in places I didn’t even know existed, and my heart wanted to escape my body via my anus, but I was alive.

My gratitude was short-lived.

On my back, I had a horribly clear view of the moment the Crystaller Building struck the theatre from above, turning it into the inside of an accordion. The walls concertinaed. The windows puffed dust, rock, and smog. The ceiling, once a brilliant triumph of pony art and engineering, creased and caved in.

Something within me took over my motor functions, and I was a passenger for the next few moments. My world flipped, I clattered onto the headrest of a sturdy seat, and I thrust forward. With feline nimbleness I sprang over the stalls and dodged the current survivors as I headed for the only thing keeping up the grand stage above; a dark steel tunnel. Above it was stapled the words, “THIS WAY TO STABLETEC STABLE T-THIRTY.” I could see the hall inside was partially collapsed, but we were rats by this point and a hole to anywhere was better than being stamped upon by a concrete foot.

I was the third to reach it. In front of me were a pair of Snips I’d not had the pleasure of meeting yet. Behind me was Rocky Path, and I could spot Rose Bed and Mud still bobbing above the Equine tidal wave forcing towards me. No Elm, I had chance to notice before I was swept through the crack in the collapsed walls.

Behind us, the Crystaller Building finally reached the ground floor. The debris closed our path back to the outside. The screams, the crunching, and the crushing sounds all became one explosive, ceaseless thunder. The luckiest ones died, but those that had been fast enough narrowly missed the smashing wall sealing us in completely.

The intense darkness dropped instantly upon us. Sandy, gritty moths fluttered into our eyes to blind us and into our throats to choke us with every gasp of horrid breath. Terrified bodies behind me did not stop pushing into the tight, airless space to escape the storm. I was squeezed against a rock face whilst sequentially jabbed in the back by the squirming hooves. I didn’t have time to contemplate this or I would be dead. Until a boulder struck me, or a pony killed me, I was determined to live.

I knew that in this space it would not be long before idiotic panic would set in throughout the group. There needed to be a plan.

“Light?” I cried out. The anguish and horror drowned me out.

“We need light, now!” I barked. I expected to need to command this until my lungs hurt, yet miraculously, a pony illuminated the surroundings amongst the tangle of horses.

I didn’t immediately recognize Elm from the sooty, unkempt fur. The pea soup fog in the humid hole made it equally difficult to see him, but his hazy beacon created a spotlight through the fumes which he used to show the remaining ponies towards the next tight, foreboding gap in the caved in cavern.

“Follow me! Move it, this way!” He yelled, a sentiment I also encouraged to the ponies around me. In that moment, I’d forgotten what the Snips did to my wing and how Elm had created this goddess-awful situation. We were in this together and as a pack we could conquer it.

I took the rear of the group. There, I instructed the uninjured to help the sick, as well as the few unicorns in the group to use what their mothers gave them, and light the way.

As the last few struggling stragglers forced themselves to follow the rest, I luckily caught sight of a young ashen figure sat beside the still crumbling, thumping wall of rubble.

He was almost a foal, a teen for certain, one I’d not met until now. His flank was robed in crimson, and for a moment I believed that this was why he was frozen in shock. It was only when I got closer to him I saw the mangled filly crushed at his feet, half of her pinned under metal and masonry. There was nothing to be done, she was already long gone.

“Hey.” I punched him sharply in the shoulder. Some might consider me cruel for breaking into his final goodbyes with undue punishment, but this wasn’t the place to hang about.

“Spark up,” I flicked his horn as his eyes turned to me.

“N-no! My -my~”

“NOW!” I’d never seen so many emotions pass across anybody’s eyes so fast; sorrow, anger, defeat, and finally acceptance. He let me grab him by the shoulders as his horn spread a glow around the pair of us. I allowed him one last fleeting look.

“I-I love you, little sister~,”

The cave seemed to go on without end. The air was difficult to drink, even though a straw. The smoke and the acrid smell depleted the further we went, but the reminders didn’t.

Freshly deceased ponies collapsed between the bones and remains of the long dead in the cramped hole. I knew if I stopped, our fates would be the same. I kept pushing the Snip I’d taken temporary responsibility for to ensure he did not let the thought of stepping over his own kin enter his mind.

“Keep moving. Don’t stop.” Sniffles and whimpers echoed around our ears. Behind us, the rumbles and crackles still resounded as the Crystaller Building grew comfort in it’s new, final resting place.

There were stops, usually where the collapsed rocks had left the smallest of gaps. We each had to take turn climbing through these. Our feet were balls of iron, scuffing heavily over stone, across flesh, and through water. Though our bodies may all have been one color for once, our funeral procession found no harmony in the thought.

As my beak kept shut to conserve energy for movement, my brain dived into the confusing aspects of this catastrophe. Why had Elm gone to such drastic, suicidal lengths, just to get into a Stable? Why had he involved the Snips? And, above all of this, how on Tartarus did he expect to get us out of this mess?

I could see the faded light of his lamp up ahead, and as I looked, I could also see the path finally opening wider as well. Our crawl was nearing its end.

BAM!

The sound made the already petrified ponies hysterical as they ran in all directions to escape the sound. Some even wanted to risk turning back into the tomb behind us rather than face the new threat. I could hear a voice filled with screech rage over the alarmed wails.

My young casualty was forced to be a shield as I used him to part the agitated crowd, so that we could get into the wider space. Once in, I moved him aside so that he could rest, passing him an encouraging nod. No matter what we had been through in the past few minutes, I could not see anything other than hate and loss in his eyes. Some of it aimed at me.

I propelled myself into the circle of judgement that the remaining Snips had formed. They surrounded around the familiar, furiously preaching mare with a rifle in hoof and the cold, disheveled stallion, his torch dropped, facing him.

“Muddy Waters is dead!” She took in a deep gulp of air as the Snips gaped and gawped at the news.

“Our Brothers, and Sisters, and loved ones are dead! And it is all his fault!” she shook her rifle fitfully at Elmwood as she continued to goad her audience, “If he lives one more second, he will kill us all. We must smite this demon once and for all!”

“If you smite me, you’ll definitely die in here.” Elm cut a far more dangerous figure in the radiance at his hooves, which created malevolent shadows across his face.

“No! You dragged us down here for your nefarious purposes! You intend us to~hrk!” She did not have time to stop me pouncing her from behind and seizing her by the neck with strong talons. Her gun slipped out of her telekinetic grasp and clattered in the deadly silence.

“Let her go, Crow,” Elm directed, almost immediately.

“Erm, let’s think about that?” I hissed, as though these ponies could not hear me.

“Okay. We’ll think about it,” He calmly agreed, “we are outnumbered. If we kill one of them, the others will avenge her. They’re weak, they’ve got little left to live for, so they won’t fear making a few rash decisions…”

He stopped talking when I let Rose Bed drop to the floor. She released a choking cough as Elm’s hooves pattered past her.

“Why –hrk- did you?” She attempted. Elm anticipated her actual question.

“We need ponies to go into this Stable first, just in case it’s dangerous. You are going to be those ponies~”

“I think not…” The rifle was floating again, this time between my eyes. A magical maroon mist shone around Rose’s horn.

“You will enter the Stable first, and then we will execute you.”

“Don’t you mean, “or” you’ll execute us?” Elm’s question only made scorn grow across Rose’s fierce expression.

She’d been correct the first time.

Downhill. it felt like we were on a constant descending path, from the moment Rose’s rifle thrust into the backs of Elm and me.

It seemed like Stabletec were not happy unless this Stable was built so far underground, that it was deeper than Tartarus itself. The path looped around several times until I was sure we had passed corners and signs before. The promising statements that “STABLETEC STABLE T-THIRTY IS THIS WAY!” in excited letters. This eventually gave me a surreal sense of déjà vu.

I was thankful for the pre-war artifacts and vehicles that remained as we ambled along. Seeing something different in the dark at least provided self-assurance that this wasn’t just a big, mind-fuck loop made to feel like it was going somewhere. One length of the channel was full of immobile diggers and other tunneling equipment that lay under a thick coat of sand-dandruff. Time had taken bites into the old machines, leaving them to leak from their rusty, bubbled welts. The looked as sad and alone as the bones scattered around them.

Marching together in absolute silence seemed like the smartest thing the pair of us had done that day. I did brave the occasional glance to my fellow convict, but his own head faced forwards and he did not grace me with any looks of comfort. Not that I expected any from Elm, it would have been extremely out of character for the stallion to be apologetic for anything. I caught a glance of the stallion I’d dragged from the remains of his dead sister. His eyes killed Elm a thousand times, yet when they saw mine they mixed with regret and dropped to the floor.

At the end of his torchlight, something far different than anything else we’d seen on the trip to the underworld finally came into view. A tall cog built into the brick wall with its tracks scarred along the top and bottom of it. Beside it sat a newly dusted console for anyone lucky enough to own a PipBuck. When I wondered just who had cleaned it, I assumed Elmwood had when he’d last been down here. That presented a new problem; without a PipBuck, we were never going to get through that door. Not one of us had the magic key.

Around it sat abandoned shacks, bollards and fences, and tucked between them were long-dead carcasses. Some lay cuddled under moth-eaten patchwork quilts, some on top of decayed clothes.

I’d been into abandoned Stables before. Bones picked clean of all fleshy remains were not uncommon in the entryways, once belonging to the unlucky souls who'd hoped to receive asylum in a rabbit warren only to find a door closed and bolted.

This hallway should have been the same. The hatch should have been stained with marks from the bodies that had been flung into it until they broke like used toys. The bare leftovers of the families not chosen to live through the end of Equestria should have been piled up on the doorstep. It had been the same for every other Stable I'd quested within.

Every other Stable except this one.

"They... made camp here?" asked a mare with a deep, ugly graze across the breast.

"They waited," Elm bowed his head to the boneyard.

Those two simple words made me understand the necropolis I was seeing here.

This Stable had been dug at such a depth that the radiation did not reach the ponies locked out of their sanctuary. Instead of watching themselves grow sick on rads and rot, they sat patiently and rationed the supplies in the security bunkers. There was no reason for them to believe their peers sheltered behind the blast-proof metal would not let them in once they realized they were not the only survivors.

These ivory shells were a graphic reminder of what happened to ponies who put misplaced hope in their insensitive cousins. The stable dwellers had avoided utter destruction, and these starved and empty remnants were the collateral damage of their survival.

"Now what? The door is still closed," my old flame with the boom stick was growing impatient with us, mostly with Elmwood, although my part in this was still recognized by her and her stricken party.

Elmwood’s head whipped left to right with such ferocity, that I expect it to snap from his shoulders and roll away. His hooves moved skittishly as he turned around twice upon the spot. His whole demeanor had sacrificed the unperturbed edge he’d had on the Snips thus far, for a trembling unease. He was looking for something, someone, who was not here.

This was not like the dangerous stallion I knew.

Something in Elmwood’s plan had gone very seriously wrong.

“Get the door open or we~”

“SHUT UP!” the startling and risky cry stopped everyone in their tracks. The strange, panicky behavior was setting every pony on edge, including me.

“Elm?”

“They’re not here! They’re not here, Crow! They were supposed to be here and they’re not here! They-they must have been too late... I’VE BUCKING KILLED GYPSY!” Boulders of dread sank to the pit of my stomach. My tongue lost all saliva, making it nothing but a lump of dust in my beak.

“No.... no they... they’re just~”

“THEY. ARE. NOT. HERE!” The ghost of a pony snatched me by the shoulders in such an animalistic way that I found myself cringing at his anguish. “They were meant to be here, hiding and waiting for us, to back us up. But… But they’re still out there…. And the balefire would… would have…”

Elm shuddered, breaking down against me. The comprehension screwed itself agonizing, slowly into my broken heart. My friend, the mare I’d devoted my life to adoring, was gone. Lost to a Balefire Bomb in a building we had dropped on top of them. All my friends were nothing but dust now, if they were lucky.

“You were going to ambush us?” There was no sympathy in Rose’s voice and in must have made the blood boil in my last comrade.

“My love is dead!” Monstrous snarls rumbled through his clenched teeth, shoulders raised, and lifeless eyes locked on her.

“SO IS MINE!” Rose retorted in miserable rage, pushing the rifle to his temple. Her sensibilities had all been devoured by the beast inside her by now.

“How do you feel, Deadwood? Knowing you paid for your crimes the moment you committed them?! You dropped a Balefire bomb into Manehattan and became no better than the Zebrican slime that put us here!

“Are you suffering now? Are you in pain?”

She leaned right in to him, righteous eyes blazing.

“I want it to hurt,” she lifted her cheeks to perform a maddened grin. Her own tribe were taking a few steps back from the irrational mare, “I want your last moments to break you. I want you to know how truly fucked your evil soul is from this moment on.”

Talons bared as I headed for her, only to have pistols, shotguns and rifles block my path. Rose might have gone fifty- five miles too far over the line between sane and psychopath, but her people still had her side in their best interests.

Rose Bed was prepared to kill us there, if Elm hadn’t succumbed himself to her hooves hopelessly. His head tucked under his legs and he wept with horrific, echoing screams. The hallway seemed to grow oppressive and blacker in that terrible moment.

“Rose…?” a younger mare moved towards her, “they’re in the same position as us now. We… we need them to help us get into this Stable. Can we just get along?”

Our newly psychotic tormenter looked from us to her. Her eyes searched for an answer to the question, and when her expression changed I knew she’d taken two plus two and made a million.

Smack!

The mare tumbled in shock from the gun handle spun across her unprepared cheek. Helplessly she lay on her side, blinking up at the immediately furious bully.

“I see you are working with them, Garden Path.”

“No! I’m not, I’m just s-saying…”

“SILENCE!” Rose’s barrel pointed at each of us. “Garden Path and you two, line up in front of the door.”

Compliance came easily to me now that my one reason for living was still smoldering somewhere above us. Elm seemed to be in the same position as me, taking his place before the gate with heavy drags from his lungs. Garden Path was not nearly as easy to convince.

“N-no! No, you can’t … Everypony, c-can’t you see? Th-this is madness! I-They~!” The cocking gun by her head stopped her pleading. Behind Rose, more ponies were stepping forward.

The whimpers did not cease even as the mare backed up beside me. I gave her a sympathetic glance and opened my beak as I looked back to at the last Snips. Seeing the expressions resigned to our fates, I shut it without a useless word for this pitiful thing.

The last thing I saw was Rose Bed signal to the ponies with weapons. My eyes shut, I sucked in my final breath, and I waited for the end.

“EMERGENCY PROTOCOL, TW-1L-16-HT! I repeat, EMERGENCY PROTOCOL, TW-1L-16-HT!”

The resounding voice jumped around the cave, seemingly wanting to fill every crevice with its strange command. I was thankful to see that the Snips were as confused as me to be hearing it, as I got myself up from the safe spot I’d leapt into on the floor.

Things did not return to normal once the voice was gone, as a siren howled to be noticed. A pair of amber lights strobed from both sides of the wheel, coinciding with loud squeals and whirring behind it.

Garden rushed beneath my wing as a series of the sudden metallic bangs shocked through us. I waited for the pain, which never came. There was double-take for a moment as we still stood with our lives still intact. Our eyes darting to the withdrawing ponies, their guns still cold and dropped.

I wanted to see what my destroyed associate thought of this revelation, only to see him whole and smiling once more. More bemused than ever, I was subconsciously turned to the newly forming hole in the wall as a new sound rang from it.

The clatters stopped, and screw sank forward, pausing after a weighty slam. It held there for an unhurried second, ceremoniously breathing steam from between its metal teeth, before it finally shrieked aside. The illumination filled the stable’s porch and stung my eyes, forcing me to throw my front leg up until my sight could adjust.

In my temporary blind state, I became aware of more bodies flooding from the gap that hadn’t creaked open in a century. I panicked, attempted to flap and find a gun as my neck’s scars recalled the troubles of my last stable. Somepony grabbed me and pushed me down. Several bellows raised at once, the most dominant commanding weapons to be laid down.

I stretched my dripping eyes open as far as they would allow, seeing identical flanks dressed in navy and yellow. Faces were covered by matching helmets, and untouched armor covered proud chests.

“Raiders! You are all under arrest!” the guard’s shout was magically enhanced for all to hear, “resistance will not end well. Drop your guns, flatten yourselves to the floor and put your hooves behind your head!”

Elm gave me a tap after I completed the request of the stable police. Raising my head, I stared at him like he was an idiot, infuriated further when he asked why I was following the demand.

The azure creatures had not seen us. I checked myself to see whether I had been slipped a Stealthbuck during the confusion and eventually shrugged for my own benefit as I found nothing.

Rose interrupted my musing with a protest of virtue for herself and her associated Snips. The cyan forces snapped their own guns towards her.

“Step back, drop to the floor, or you will be eliminated!” These ponies were not messing about.

“We are not the Raiders, they are! We hark from~”

“I said cease and descend to the floor, ma’am!” I watched her disgusted reaction with morbid fascination from behind this pony divider. Her head turned, she gave a staggered laugh and threw her stare at me.

“…Oh, buck this!” When I remember her eyes, I believe she knew her fate then and there.

She lifted her rifle before she’d finished expelling the words, and chaos exploded between them. Her rifle boomed, for once striking true and knocking the closest protector back. But she had no time to celebrate her first and only kill shot, as blasts rained on her from every firearm aimed in her direction.

Krooom!

As the strikes impacted her frame, it glowed with emerald embers and shattered. By the time the guns were silenced, she was gone, and a hill of soot was all that was left of Rose Bed.

“A griffon! Well, isn’t this novel?” A stallion exclaimed in amusement as he trotted over to me. His long white coat was the cleanest garment I’d ever seen, worn over the top of his bright red fur. He’d chose to approach me as I lay on top of the stretcher that had magically floated me into the Stable entrance.

He was right, this was novel, but I doubted it was the same reasons for me. These ponies had put me on a stretcher. They did not know me, they were not my friends nor in my group, and yet, they’d sent me in to be healed once they saw how much blood my wing had lost.

They’d obliterated my enemy and arrested my foes. I held a quick talon up to the Doctor.

“Just one tad,” I waved across the foyer, “Excuse me? Mister? You in the blue! No, the other one. NO! The other, other one! LOOK WHERE I AM POINTING! Great, thank you,” a weary sigh warmed my beak.

“The two Sn- I mean, Raiders there, in your custody? Long story short, they’re part of the good guys, aye?”

In his company he had Garden Path and the colt with the dead sister. The mare deserved saving, but the young guy? I guess I just did that because I felt sorry for him.

The officer faltered and gave me a shrug. I repeated myself, which seemed worse for his damned ears somehow. By the time I was giving him an angry third rendition, Elm stepped in on my behalf.

“You’ll have to excuse her, she’s from Trotland. They talk differently up there. She said to free these two because they are innocent,” To my great annoyance, the Stable stallion understood that. He gave them both a look over and then shrugged, unshackling the pair of them. Even after he did that, the surviving sibling still showed a grudge against me in his slate-gray stare.

Buck him, I thought then. I’d returned the favor tenfold. I’d shown him a shoulder to cry on. It wasn’t like he was the only one mourning the loss of a loved one.

For that moment, Gypsy was on my mind again. Her hair, her eyes, her lips, her smile… all the things I’d never see again…

“Ah-ahem,” the doc waved a hoof over my daydreaming stupor, “If we might proceed? I need to heal this wing. We do not have winged fellows down here, but I assume it is like most injured limbs?” It took me a moment to realize that the question wasn’t rhetorical.

“Err… you’re the doc, doc. You patch me up the way you know how. Just make sure I can still fly with it by the time you’re done.” My unprofessional answer still seemed to satisfy him, and he went about checking me for any other bumps and bruises. Thankfully, my other cuts were far less serious.

I craned my head to one side as he performed a bit of mumbling first aid on me and watched the other Snips jangle past. Connected by manacles, the small group were conveyed slowly past me and further into the Stable. It was odd, knowing that these ponies who had been our scapegoats to get into this Stable, that none of them were complaining about their situation. They’d lived through a collapsed skyscraper, I guessed these circumstances were better than they could have hoped for after that.

As I watched the young Snip at the back of the group limp away, my attention was distracted by a different pony. Dressed in Stabletec blue with yellow banding, his fur and mane continued to reflect these colors like a Stable Colt mascot. He wore a set of wire-frame glasses on the end of his nose and when he grinned, his teeth reflected the light of the beams above us. A silly blonde attempt at a crap beard dribbled from his chin. He was deep in conversation with Elmwood.

“… We will put you all up in the warehouse temporarily. Don’t worry, it’s a lot quieter than the Reactor, we’ll ensure you have clean bunks and blankets and access to everything you need.” The beardy dude must have felt me observing since he finally turned to look at me.

“Ah, hello madam. Miss Crow, isn’t it? I’ve heard a lot about you.” I tried not to look too judgmentally at Elm. I returned my greeting to the new stallion and took the offered hoof to shake. Whilst my sorrow burned a hole within me, I still managed a sardonic smile when he had to brush the muck from his hoof.

“I’m Overlook, the Overstallion of this Stable. I’m sure there’s many questions, many things you need, just know that you are safe and welcome here now. We were all sorry to hear about what happened to your last Stable, and we want to make you feel at home in ours.” Out came the glittering tombstones once again.

“Last Stable?”

“Oh, sorry Overbuck, my squawky friend got hit by a confusion spell from those raiders, but she should be right as rain in a few hours…” Elm patted my lame wing before I had chance to call him out on his lie. I settled for a hearty offer to stab his eyes out with Prince Armor’s prick. That comment earned a few blinks from the Overstallion.

“Overlook, not Overbuck… and of course, we understand. We have a fantastic medical team here at Stable T-Thirty. We’ve done a lot of things differently compared to your Stable, I’m certain, which has ensured our existence.”

“If you do not mind, Overstallion, I need to get this one to that fantastic medical team that you speak of so that we can fix this wound.” My physician requested. Overlook nodded enthusiastically.

“Of course, and once you are done in surgery, Miss Crow, I shall send your friends to reunite with you.” The words jumped out at me like Radgators from beneath a bridge.

“My… Friends?”

She was alive!

The moment she stepped through the clinic door, I forgot my recent operation and ignored my surgeon’s orders to lie back down. I gathered her swiftly into my front legs and pulled her tightly into a constricting hug until she patted on me to release her.

“I thought you were dead!” I enlightened Gypsy as she swept the tears from my eyes with a delicate hoof. Her chuckles were respectful of my relief, as she explained that she was very much alive and steered me back towards my bed.

Resting back down, I took in the sight of the mare I thought I’d never seen again.

“You’ve had a bath,” I sniggered, squirming into the sheets, so soft they became weird and uncomfortable for my back. I’d been conditioned to feel lucky if my hard beds of the past did not contain shards of glass or splinters.

“I’ve had many things!” Gypsy beamed. She waited for the doctor to be sure I was going to lie still and heal. Once he was out of hearing range, she gushed about the hot water, about the real soaps, the hot meals, clean beverages, and the scented towels. As she spoke, something different came over her. A wistful smile and a mist in her eyes, a look I’d not even seen her use when she’d spoken about Elmwood.

“... and I’ve actually been able to trim the fur around my mare garden! You have no idea how good it feels not to have that irritation. Even these clothes, they fit so snugly and~”

“Gypsy!” I laughed gently, “the uniforms are crap. Soon as you put Stabletec gear on, you might as well be saying ‘give me a number and designate me as your bucking slave.’ Plus, they’re about as useful in the Wastes as a dried turd balaclava.”

I wasn’t sure whether the brief glimpse of antipathy in her face was directed at my crude imagination or my abhorrence for Stabletec. I moved on quickly.

“Is that a PipBuck?” I saw the weighty apparel just as I was about to ask how on Equestria she got in here before us. She blinked and lifted it with a strong confirmation.

“Elm gave it to me. It’s how we got in to the Stable. You know, I think this is his...”

“What?” My temper quickly boiled from the tips of my claws to the back of my neck.

“I think this PipBuck is his. Do you think he used to live in a Stable? He never talks about~”

“He knew you were alive?” She caught the danger in my tone that time. She sighed and raised a hoof diplomatically.

“Now, Crow. You must understand. It was part of Elm’s plan. If you believed that we had all survived then you may not have acted realistically enough for the Snips to fall for the plot,” her soothing voice did nothing to release the steaming fury built up inside me. In fact, it only provoked it.

“You both knew. You let me believe you were dead.” I dropped my head onto the pillow. Its comfort felt bittersweet now that the truth was out.

Gypsy tried to cool me down by filling me in on the part of the plan I’d not been privy to. Whilst I’d been a distraction for the Snips, our raiding party had slipped past and followed Elm’s directions all the way down to the Stable.

Clad with Wood’s PipBuck, she plugged into the console in the hall before the door and spoke to the Overstallion. Elm had laid the groundwork with this guy already in his previous visit, all Breeze had to do was confirm it.

“’We’re from Stable Fifty-Four, we’ve been dragged from our Stable by Raiders! Some of our families have been killed. Please, we need sanctuary!’ Overlook believed me, he opened up the door for us and we suggested to him that the Snips had you and Elm captive. We offered to help fend them off if they could provide us with weapons, but the chief of security here wouldn’t hear of it. He got the door shut again and waited. You know the rest!”

My deceiving acquaintance finished the recount and sat back in her chair, expecting me to weigh in. I just held my gaze with the dull tiles on the ceiling. Her guilt became intense in the air between us, but her indignance beat the race to her tongue.

“We got here safely because of Woody’s plan. We’ve done far more dangerous bullshit for far less so drop the attitude. No bucker cares that your feelings got hurt,” her voice was a whisper. Mine was not.

“If no bucker cares about my feelings, then you might as well buck, or fuck, or piss the ass off!”

“Mares, mares, please!” the doctor was back to ease the tensions, “could you please keep it down? Ma’am, it might be best that you leave for now. I believe the confusion spell is still wearing off.” I huffed at the pair of idiots and turned my head, punching the wet streak from my cheek.

Gypsy agreed this was for the best. Turned away from her, I still heard the pony get up, move to the foot of my bed and hesitate.

“Crow, I… it’s good that we’re here. Okay? You need to get over… everything that happened.” Leaving me with her coded message, she trotted away until I heard the doorway ding and click shut. My medicine stallion tutted softly.

“There. Now, rest. Sleep if you need to. Can I get you anything to eat, drink?”

I sniffed in thought.

“I’ll take a bottle of whiskey, a cigar, and whatever you’ve got for a broken heart.” He chuckled and disappeared for several minutes.

To my dismay when he returned, he brought me a glass of water, a hayburger with hayfries and a Daring Do book. My look told him of my disappointment, and he breathed deeply through his nose.

“Get through that first, and maybe – maybe- I’ll get you a glass of apple whiskey.” I kept up my end of that bargain, although the burgers had the consistency of leather armor and the taste to match.

To my respite, the doctor, calling himself Dr. Moon Ache, was as good as his word too. The whiskey was smooth. It came with a conversation, and I had the distinct impression he was trying to flirt with me, but I did not mind that.

I let him talk and I let my mind wander again, as I sipped, over the entire path of horseshit that led me to here. Maybe Gypsy had been right. Maybe I should have let it go and forgiven them, but when I remembered the colt sobbing over his mutilated sister I couldn’t help feeling that the cost to get here was too high.

I didn’t know how hard that opinion would bite me in the ass over the next few weeks.

<sub>Footnote: Quest Completed- Gotta Knock A Little Harder…
Quest Perk - Bluffmaster - Bluff speech checks are 20% more successful

Level up!
New Perk: Birdbrain (level one) - You are a swift learner. You gain an additional +10% whenever experience points are earned.

Quest Begun - Stable T-30
Quest Begun - Bed, Bath and Befriend</sub>

Author's Notes:

Want to discuss the story? Follow me to the Scoundrel’s Settlement on Discord...

Song for this chapter: Requiem for a Tower by Escala (although all versions are good!)

So, we made it into Stable T-Thirty. And someponies didn't.

We've met Overlook and Dr Moon Ache, we'll be meeting several other Stable ponies too in the next chapter. I've got another character coming along that I'm particularly excited about.

And now we're going to start to find out just why Stable T-30 is on Crow's shit list. I'm excited, I don't even know myself!

Well, that's a lie. I know where this is going, but when I write I do so from my head rather than from notes. If it lasts the turmoil up there then it's worth pursuit.

I quick shout out to TomKnollRFV and MHBones23321 for the helpful suggestions on what constitutes luxuries we take for granted. Clothes and clean pubes! Of course! :D

Ask me many questions, I might lie but I'll always tell the truth. :P <3

I love you guys, thanks for reading this up to this point.

All good things,

DuskHoof.