Fallout: Equestria’s Scoundrels

by Scaramouche

First published 13th of May, 2018

In a Stable unlike most other Stable Vaults in fallen Equestria, Crow the Griffon must discover why the ponies use a singing contest every month to ‘ascend’ their citizens to ‘the Gardens of Equestria,’ before it’s too late to save her friends...

“Below me stretched an underground city. Not a Stable, not Stable T-Thirty’s atrium as I had been expecting, but an entire subterranean municipality, with all the sounds and smells and even tastes that came with it...”

Fallout: Equestria's Scoundrels.
Part One - The Last Song.

(Cover art by Laura Sikes, Other cover image here)

Living within a band of Raiders camping inside the ruins of Manehattan, Crow the Trottish Griffon spends her days drinking, lusting after a mare named Gypsy Breeze and generally being part of the bad guys.

However, when Crow’s strange friend Deadwood drags her and the raiders into the mysterious, massive and previously unheard of Stable T-Thirty, all of her life’s decisions up to that point are put into question. Will she raid the Stable ponies who have been so kind to her and return to the wastelands, or side with them to help discover a much larger threat within the Stable itself?

With the help of her new stable dweller friend and fun lover Molasses Candy, Crow enters a race against time to discover the truth about a seemingly innocent competition in the Stable. One that forces every pony in the Stable to sing and has a sinister conclusion for the winners...

~*~

Based loosely on the story written by KKat ( see here ), this is my first venture into fan fiction as well as the first piece of writing that I've chosen to publish for a while.

Edited by BlazingMoon and Salty Alty.
Editorial advice, story suggestions and proofreading by Doomande, Synesisbassist, and Private Joke.
I still appreciate any constructive feedback and editing suggestions (OR OFFERS!) anyone is willing to give.

(Cover image here)

Sex tag is given for sexual references and minor sexualized scenes including M/F and F/F relationships but only mentions given to further the story.

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

Author note - I recognize that this has been a popular genre.
I have been strict on myself to avoid plagiarism. I have also been as careful as I can not to step on anybody's toes and make this a unique read. However, I realize there may be times that I write a plot device or a character that contradicts a different story. I, therefore, ask you to read this as a lone story in its own rights.

I also ask that any comments are kept civil and respectful to myself and any other commentators on this story.

The current artwork is by me as well. Sorry about that.
(Cover image here)

My goal was to treat this story as a personal experiment and to have fun with it, so I only hope by posting it here in installments that you enjoy it as much as I have when writing it.

All Good Things,
Scar

the following is a non-profit fan-based series. Fallout and all related things are TM and © Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax Media company. MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2018 Hasbro Inc.® Please Support the official releases.

Entry 000 - Prologue

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria...

... There were two sisters, elevated from mere unicorns to regal alicorns, who ruled together and created harmony for all the land. They defended their kingdom from many different threats and helped maintain the balance for their subjects; the unicorn, the pegasus, and the earth ponies, and many other magical beings. However, one sister grew jealous of the attention her other received and a black cloud of mistrust and greed befell her. One fateful night, the sister of the day was forced to imprison the fallen sibling in the moon, where she was to be sealed for a thousand years.

When her incarceration ended on the eve of the Summer Sun Celebration, the vengeful sister returned to bring eternal darkness on the lands of Equestria. It appeared that all was lost until one student of friendship sought the Elements of Harmony. She found them in her closest comrades and together they kept the balanced scales from tipping. The nightmare was defeated and the two sibling princesses reconciled to take their place as sisters of the sun and moon once more.

The era of peace that followed felt like it would remain forever with no end in sight. The student soon became the Princess of Friendship, her brother married the Princess of Love, and despite several trials, all was well with the realm. Yet, like the blackest thoughts that once enveloped one sister, the cogs of time turned towards such things as greed, gluttony, fear, and loathing. For even in the brightest of days the darkest shadows could be found.

A darker chapter in the history of Ponies would come to pass that would draw a permanent cloud over the lands. There were battles for dwindling resources, mistrust and anger for anything deemed different and a violent split between friends, families, siblings...

The sister of the day who had devoted her life to harmony lost her spirit to the heartbreak around her. She abdicated her throne to her sister of the night and wept as good became undone. Her choice and the choices made by princes, princesses, and ministries forever changed the harmonious land, driving it toward a future torched by balefire and dark magic...

Still, this was not the end. Through the flames of their homeland and beneath the blistered earth, many did not perish. Instead, they were forced to find new ways to survive in a world that no longer promised to protect them from the shadows. The time of friendship and harmony appeared to be at an end. The age of monsters, rogues and thieves had dawned...

Author's Notes:

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

Song for this chapter; 'My Little Pony Theme Slowed' by 'MissSeddieSunshine' originally composed by Daniel Ingram

"Why am I writing this part now," I hear Doomande cry! Do not fear my friend, there is a reason. The reason is, my dad (who has not watched the show nor read Fallout Equestria by KKat or any MLP:FIM fiction) has expressed an interest in reading this. I wanted to give him and others a gateway into understanding the world before it blew up.

Hopefully, this doesn't feel too condescending to old readers of this story and other FO:E tales. A new chapter IS in the works, I hope to bring it out in a few weeks.

All good things,

Duskhoof.

Entry 001 - Introduction

Entry 001 – Introduction

War

War is when everything changes.

Several years ago, the ponies of the lands called Equestria decided to stop being colorful, peace-loving creatures and instead became colorful, murder-hungry warmongers. They roasted their homes, destroyed their neighbors and stuffed their survivors into gigantic rabbit holes in the ground to avoid the eventual apocalypse. This was all in the hope that one day, the doors would roll open to reveal their world unchanged, and they would come out alive, ready to restart their new and happy lives.

So far, that plan has not worked.

My name is Crow. I'm a bitch Griffoness from the Wastelands of Trotland and now I'm a bitch Griffoness living in the Wastelands of Manehattan. That's the first thing you need to know.

The second thing I need to tell you about going into this is that I am not a fancy storyteller. Sure, I’ve read the Detective Pony books and a few other things for inspiration, but I’ve never written anything more than a note before. Then again, who does write anymore? Nopony, except for Ditzy Doo as far as I know, in these lands that Tartarus pissed on before setting the whole lot on fire.

I'm writing this because somebody had to document the discovery of Stable T-Thirty and who else was going to do that? That’s right. Nobody.

If any Stable can prove that every cognisant creature would have been better off boiling to death in the blasts that wiped out most of Equestria so long ago, rather than burrowing underground in a vain attempt to preserve the Equestrian race, then Stable T-Thirty was one of the strongest candidates for the job.

For me to recall every important detail and ensure I do not miss anything vital later, I'm going to tell you everything I can remember. Some of it might seem like inconsequential horseshit and some of it probably is, but this is the only way that I am able to capture everything as accurately as I can...

Sort of.

I must admit, I am also using this as an excuse to remember one of the most beautiful creatures I had ever known. When we discovered Stable T-Thirty, Gypsy Breeze was still with us.

That's not to say that I am lying about how important it is to tell you the vile experiments we found Stable-Tec had been forcing on the ponies in Stable T-Thirty but I have to stress how important Gypsy Breeze was to me. Just by writing her name on this terminal, I feel like I am preserving her memory for eternity. I hope somepony reads this someday and turns her into a legend or a Goddess or a hero like a character from the GrogMacIntosh comics.

Regardless of that, I cannot start this with her.

Instead, I must start by telling you about the drunken night I found a stallion in my shack wearing the skull of a pony on his head…

_{FOOTNOTE: R.A.S.C.A.L.S. stats added -}

5+ Robustness4+ Awareness5+ Stamina1+ Charisma2+ Acumen3+ Litheness1+ Success

_{Quest Begun - Deadwood}

Author's Notes:

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

Song for this chapter; Fallout Theme by Inon Zur (I recommend the London Music Works version

Okay.
I am looking for advice on how to better write and edit this.

This is the opener.

... Don't worry. I mean, there's a LOT more to come.
Next bit gets a little blue...

Thanks.

Bye bye.
All good things,
Dusk

Entry 002 - A Stable Relationship

My Dearest Subjects, here and abroad.

I never wanted to be revered. That was never my goal.

I never wanted to be seen as a ruler nor a conqueror of lands. I have only ever wanted ponies, creatures of all Equestria, to live without fear and to find their purposes in these lands and across our seas.

Entry 002 - A Stable Relationship

The strange pony I found in my shelter, wearing a worryingly well-fitting cranium upon his own head, was called Elmwood. Elm to his friends...

Friend.

Me.

I'm the only one alive to call him Elm, really. Gypsy used to nickname him Woody and everypony else called him Deadwood, if they wanted to be polite. Elm was not a well-liked stallion outside of the present company and that suited him just fine. He relished the disgust he earned from the other ponies we met on our travels. I think it gave him a sense of purpose to be the revered Deadwood, biggest dick in the wastes.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of how Elm, Gypsy and I met, that is for a different time. What I will tell you without any shame in it is that at the point of discovering Stable T-Thirty the three of us were all riding with a band of raiders. We called ourselves 'The Scoundrels' and we were damned proud of that title. We were not ashamed of it then and I am not ashamed of confessing it now. That was the claw we were dealt with to survive, just like every other Wastelander in Equestria.

Every day you get a choice whether to live life as one of the wicked or die with a clean conscience. The highest and mightiest ponies have lived by eating something that once belonged to their dead neighbor. If you didn't get a chance to eat it before expiring to the humongous, glittering Canterlot in the sky, then it didn't belong to you anymore.

Everybody has a fair choice. You can be a Wasteland scavenger and do your best to survive without corrupting yourself further, although the lands and situations this world leaves you with do not allow for many feel-good options. Then again, you might have a few illusions of grandeur, in which case mercenary work is right up your alley. Shoot at the big bads, get fawned over and blown by your adoring damsels and dams in distress, be a big, damn hero. Just note that your life expectancy is in minus figures.

You can be a Raider, roll with a team and although your morals are despicable and a rad hog wadding through its own shit could have a healthier hygiene than you, you’re more likely to get the good shit. Food, drugs, drink, guns. It wasn’t a good life but it was a helluva lot of fun. However, if you think I chose the worst of the worst to swing with, you’re sorely mistaken. That accolade went to Slavers.

Slavers don’t show remorse or pity for you or your family. They’ll happily fuck you with a spikey club then use the same club to finish you off if you’re lucky. If you’re not, they’ll send you off to let other ponies and critters do the same, over and over, until you dream of death. You either join their ranks then hope you don’t buck up, or you accept that Celestia always hated you and now she’s going to teabag you into oblivion.

Gypsy, Elmwood and I chose to join a gang of raiders together. Someday, the next Sun Goddess may show up on our doorstep to bring a new day to Equestria and we may all be dealt the true vengeful justice for our crimes. I would not blame them for doing so, but we all wanted to live, and we did not have a reason back then to worry about the survival of anypony else.

On the night in question, Elm had been missing for some considerable time.

Leaving the group to travel on his own was not unlike Elmwood. Doing whatever the Tartarus he liked was one of his favorite past times, to the annoyance and fear of the posse we were moving about with. There was often angry talk about him leading an attack on us from a rival Raiders, purposefully or accidentally. But they couldn’t stop him if they tried, nor could they deny that he did not come back with useful items or Intel.

If an enemy group was approaching our camp, then he was often the first to tell us. On numerous occasions he asked me to speak to the leader of our team and arrange for us to travel in a different direction, often reaching plentiful scavenger sites. Once or twice he had even been able to reveal any traitors in our little band, which made him a valued member of the team in the leader's eyes and an even greater unpopular ass to everybody else.

What was unique about this one occasion was that he had been gone for more than a few days this time around. His previous long excursions had been up to four days before he came swanning back into the fold. This time around he had disappeared for a full two weeks, which was long enough to generate concern within myself and Gypsy and force us to arrange a search party.

The party consisted of me, Gypsy and just a few other members who were only interested in the caps we had bargained for their services. Despite the knowledge that they would receive full payment for looking for any sign of our missing friend, they were still lackluster in their attempts to locate him. They quickly grew bored and condemned him to death, to the dismay of Gypsy.

As the others trudged away, I ruefully sent her after them. She would have an easier time convincing them to come back rather than me, she had a gift when it came to talking to other ponies. I would spend a little longer looking around, in hopes I might just find my friend lazing around having lost track of time.

An hour, or what my broken pocket watch considered was an hour, passed. I figured Gypsy had been unsuccessful in her attempts to recover the search squad and I was considering making my lonely return as well when I rounded the corner and fresh hell broke loose.

“Who the buck~?” All I heard before the shooting began. I backpedaled fast with a thrust of my wings to rush me behind a wall, feeling the heat barely missing my feathers.

“Yo, A griffon!” called one.

“She got some bucking nice gear too,” yelled another.

“I’m gonna make pillows out of those feathers, bitch, and then I’m gonna buck you on those pillows until I-” BANG! The one shooting his mouth off the most had made for an easy target. I barely even had to aim.

My rifle still smoked as I ducked back into cover. Raiders are not a social collective, and even less so when they bump into one another. I’d had the misfortune to step straight into the line of fire of a small nest of them. Luckily, these ones couldn’t string a brain cell together if their lives depended on it, and I was glad of that. I just had to trust my instincts and avoid misjudging them. Speaking of which…

Clink-Clank! A silver orb bounced over broken stones and busted masonry, finding its way to me.

“Oh, Shi-!” I didn’t wait around as soon as I heard the clang of metal, kicking myself off of the ground and spreading my wings.
“Come on, junior speedster lessons, don’t let me down-“

The rivals began to holler elatedly when I did not reappear from the smoke and dust kicked up by the apple grenade. They made orders to come forth and collect me, or my belongings, whichever had survived the explosion. Hooves clopped over the uneven surface towards the place I had been and a pair of mares, the two of them more like walking chainmail with the number of piercings they’d collected, came to check the spot I’d last been seen. Both were earth ponies, carrying pistols in their mouths, which made it nicer and easier for me to put extra holes and steel in them. It’s harder to swing a gun around in your jaws than it is in a magical grasp.

Bang! Bang! Bullets flew from the place I’d hidden, one missing but the other striking mare number two in her unprotected throat. Her eyes bulged, her head flipped back and her neck erupted in ribbons of scarlet. Metal mare one didn’t stop for futile attempts to save her dead comrade and immediately retreated, with one more shot skimming her hindquarters.

“Buck, buck, buck! Bitch griffon is still alive!” She cried, gunfire blasting but hitting nowhere near my location. Another explosive was thrown, and I hooked my wings into the triggers on my gun-saddle. When the first clatter of the grenade hit the street, I shot out of the corrugated sheet I’d covered myself with and jumped over the ball, kicking it back with a hind foot.

I didn’t look back at the explosion behind me as I raced for the offenders, pulling the pair of levers with my wings to light my twin saddle rifles up. I managed to scratch two more of the angry little scabs from the wounded wastelands before I reached the wooden barricade of their den. Able the see three more ponies inside the camp and once more outside of it, I took fresh cover behind more protective iron shielding, over the body of the victim of my first headshot.

“Give it up, dickheads!” I snarled as I reloaded my handheld rifle, preparing to shoot the last stallion holding up the fort entrance. Somehow I managed to hear the scrape above me before I was too deep into shit creek. The surviving metal mare had climbed up onto the blockade on the other side and was now tugging the pin from a fresh metal apple, preparing to tip her hoof and drop it onto me.

Thinking didn’t factor into the process. Just lifting the gun, pointing it up, and shooting. I’d hoped to hit something, I just never expected my metal pellet to fly through the silver ball and set it off prematurely before it had even left the poor dumb broad’s grasp.

I was back down to four, and then three as I took out the guy who had been gawping in shock and awe at the bloody remains of my freak shot. That left the final three inside the fort made of debris and trash.

“I’m going to kill you!” screeched a surprisingly young voice as a gun levitated over a metal bench when I stepped through the threshold. I didn’t have to duck from his fire, every shot was wild and miles away from doing me any damage. The mare that sprung out from a wall to attack me did take me by surprise, and I felt red pain in my claws as she smacked the rifle out of my claws with a bat tangled with barbed wire.

I parried sideways to avoid more whizzing metal bees racing past my head, seemingly from the pony I hadn’t seen yet as these shots proved closer, one scratching the skin on my shoulder and leaving a bloody crimson line. I screeched in pain, and my anger hit its limits.

In the blur of my next memories, I recall the bat hurtling towards my head, the mare brandishing it in a murky magical grasp screaming abuse at me. I dropped, the wood and iron thorns whistling repentantly over my head. Not giving her time to bring the implement back down on my cranium, I darted in, talons pulled back, eyes on her neck. My wings beat to propel me, my beak released a squawk, and my claws flew, impacted, dug and dragged flesh away from bone and sinew.

I skidded meters from where the body fell. The mare was convulsing, gurgling on terrified and dying whinnies, head partially parted from the rest of her body. I rose up, my left talons dripping the evidence of my hand in her fate. A sound drew my attention.

The last mare was covering the foal, her gun levitated in my direction. I took a deep breath and held it, expecting her to fire. Only five seconds later I realized she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

“Kill her, Mom! Kill her, kill her!” shrieked the foal, as its mother tried to hold my gaze. We were wild animals, and she was just trying to protect her cub.

“Stay away from us! I will shoot you, bitch!”

I sighed, collecting the bastardized bat coated in old and congealed blood. Then I collected my handheld rifle and examined it. A couple of scuffs but it would work.

“With what, hen? Air? Because that’s all that you’ve got in that wee peashooter.” I flung my rifle over my good shoulder and took a moment to look around at everything they had left. It wasn’t much unless they chose to turn into cannibals, and that wasn’t as long a stretch for ponies as some might believe.

I took a cursory glance at the weapon shaking in her wavering magic and then flipped open my other bag, tugging out one of two boxes of bullets I had for the rifle she owned. I showed her the box, turned it upside down and tipped the contents onto the floor at my feet.

“Collect ‘em, keep ‘em, use ‘em, but not on me or you and your wee potty mouth brat are history,” I informed her with my hawk-eyes staring into her confused gaze. “Once you’ve done that, pack up and buck off. Don’t meet me again, aye?” I gave one last important look around, collected a Power ponies comic and a box of snack cakes, and anything else I could find of use, informing her, “these are mine now.”

The youngster still insisted that she kill me as I trawled around their battered basecamp, looting their chilling dead. She only spoke once more when I was done and had turned to leave.

“Why?” I stopped, looked back and thought quickly about my answer.

I wanted to save my bullets.

It’s no fun when your opponent cannot fight back.

I didn’t want to kill another foal.

“I don’t know,” I said lazily in the end and left the survivors confused that after everything, the three of us had been unlucky enough to survive.

With Elmwood considered a goner, the Raiders had no reason to stay in the same place. The group moved on from our current camp and in the interest of safety and because all our resources from the current site were running dry. Water was scarce, and the food was nearly depleted. We had no choice but to head back into more populated areas.

Gypsy and I were forced to move with them, even though we had not completely given up hope that Elm might yet find us. We tried leaving signs of where we’d been as ‘breadcrumbs’ for him to follow, whilst the band upped sticks and moved across to the eastern side of Manehattan’s ruins.

We made camp near the Crystaller building. We had scouted beneath the tallest building in the city but with its gigantic mohawked pony head threatening to come crashing down any day from now, we decided to build our settlement on a rooftop a safe distance away from it. The building we took seemed to have once been a restaurant with enough space for all of us and shelter for our supplies, injured and pregnant.

We had kids in our group, some born into it and some enlisted. Our leader was extremely insistent that we needed young to preserve and grow. She had a few illusions of grandeur for our mucky splatter of thieves and vagabonds, I’ll give her that.

What I did like about our current base was the view. Our camp was made in an area where the most alert of our team could observe most of the Manehattan wastes easily whilst the tired, sick or injured in our team could take a break, eat, sleep, buck, do whatever they needed to do to get themselves back to full strength.

Particularly, I liked looking up at that huge bust atop the tallest building and wondering whether it would come down that day. I knew it was going to be a spectacular sight when it did, and I often wished I’d be there to see it. Somepony more adventurous than myself had been up there with a can of paint and doodled glasses and a mustache on to it, along with a speech bubble containing the words, “Im mentall 4 Party Time Mint-ats (n a gd hrd bukkin)”. Based on the rest of the sentence, I was quite impressed that they had managed to spell Mint-als correctly and included the hyphen. That was until Gypsy suggested that they had more than likely taken a tin of the drugs up there with them and used it as a reference as well as inspiration to perform the daredevil act. I confessed that I had not thought of that.

That night, I chose to hit the traveling bartender we had in our band, with the sole aim to have one drink and hit the hay early so that I could spend a few hours looking out for Elmwood the next morning.

I wish now that I had stuck to my single beverage plan as I might have had the clearer mind and wit that night.

Instead, one drink of the hard stuff became six. I bet some hard-earned caps on a game of blackjack and lost. I won them back in a leg wrestling competition, but only just.

I’m being modest, I wiped the floor with the floppy maned fool who thought she was tougher than me, several times over. Ponies, they don’t realize claws trump hooves every time. They were good natured about their defeat however and paid up their share of the bet.

Unlike Elmwood, Gypsy and I were well liked within the Raider mob. We were useful, we were able to hold our own, we genuinely wanted to get along with our fellow Raiders and we didn’t insult anypony else’s intelligence without good reason. ‘Floppy mane’ didn’t have a good reason to be offended by my sharp tongue.

Finally, I bid goodnight to my drinking buddies and really did call it a night. It was late, but I had nothing to urgently wake up for. We were living completely bohemian lives as a unit; we did what we needed to do when it needed doing and otherwise got along with our other desires just fine.

I was drunk. Rat-arsed beyond compare. I don’t recall the walk back to my tent. I found bruises the next morning that I am certain came from tripping over guide ropes and loose debris, but I cannot be sure.

What I do know is that I sobered up swiftly when I saw him sitting there in my bunk, with half of an ivory white and polished skull perched upon his head like a zebra death mask.

We stared at each other blankly for an awfully long time in silence. Then I gave the stallion a poke to satisfy that this was not a spiked drink creating illusions for my brain. Nope, it was him alright.

Between us, we heard a couple of ponies in the camp not far away yelling angrily at each other about something unrelated before interrupting themselves with the lewd and cringeworthy moans of intercourse. Further out in the wastes there was the sound of clattering and popping weapons, too far away to be concerned about tonight.

“I didn't kill this one,” he said at last, pointing to his hat.

“Hello to you too, Elm.” I replied, staring as best as I could with my booze-addled vision into the skull sockets where I could just see his cool as ice eyes.

“She was already way past expired before I found her,” he continued, ignoring my greeting, “I just polished her up a bit and put her on. She fits very nicely I think.”

“What happened? Where'd you go? Did you find food? Gypsy's been worried sick about you.” I tried.

“This mare was some real clever clogs though.” He tapped his new and ghastly mask, “I call her Clover. She was a pretty filly, too, paid attention to her looks. She never rose to violence but was a glutton for punishment, especially in the bed. Must have given amazing head, she did it a lot. She loved unconditionally, was not a massive wielder of magic, she preferred to use her head over her horn unless you are talking about her bedroom antics again, because she- “

“Stop!” I finally growled. I was livid that this idiotic stallion had me so worried for weeks and was now blasting out facts gleaned from a dead mare's skull without a Luna-damned thought to the situation he put us in.

Thankfully, he did stop this time. He stared like a foal unsure of what he had done wrong. It was my duty to tell him.

“I don’t give a crap about your new friend. You bucked off for a fortnight and left us, left Gypsy without telling her where you were going. You could have been dead for all we knew, and we paid a shit load of caps to convince the trackers to look out for you. Despite all of that you just turn up, sit in my bucking chair in my bucking tent, with a hard-on for somebody’s damn bony head and you still aren’t telling me where in Tartarus you’ve been hiding!”

I could see him studying my angry, panting expression through the bone holes as he decided his first words.

“I wasn’t hiding~“ he started.

“Carry on being smart,” I snapped, “If you want Celestia’s horn resurrecting and putting in your unhappy place ...”

“Alright alright alright alright, Crow, alright!” He grunted quickly for my benefit more than for his safety.

His hooves reached for his grisly helmet first and he tilted it up off his face. As he slipped out of the chair into the moonlight, I caught a view of the guy I’d not seen for two weeks.

Elmwood’s skinny yet tall Earth pony frame was covered in brilliant white fur, which he managed to keep cleaner than any pony I knew.

His mane was messy, shorter at the back and longer at the front. Not that mane styles differed that much in those days. Most ponies had the small choice of a long, short, spiky or non-existent mane. His was pale, light grayish arctic blue with streaks of ivory. His tail matched in disorder and pigment, cropped as short as it could possibly be whilst still existing as a tail.

One of the unusual differences that unsettled anypony meeting Elm for the first time was his eyes. He had bright and often sociable eyes with sapphire pupils, but around them were deep permanent scorch marks, the color of coal.

On my first chance to get a closer inspection of these, I’d seen that each old wound had been made by several straight and thin burn lines. I could only guess that somepony hadn’t wanted to sear out his eyeballs, but instead to cause this barbaric kind of branding. It was scary how precise each disfigurement was and how close to bucking up his eyesight the inflictor had gotten without accidentally ruining it. It made him look like a bad guy to buck with.

If that wasn’t unnerving enough for some ponies, his Cutiemark truly upset the applecart. His mark had once been a single elm tree with a big green leafy head and an orangey-brown trunk. But at some point, Somepony had scarred both marks with a hanged stick-corpse swinging from a branch with crosses for eyes. If they’d wanted to make an example of my friend here, then they certainly accomplished their mission.

I never asked Elmwood why he looked the way he did, but Gypsy chose to when he was at his most approachable. The story he told implied that his mother had hit the jet so hard she had melted her brains to mush. Before she ended her days in a vegetative state, she had harmed the pair of them grievously, an act Elm had allowed her to do out of love and grief.

Gypsy and I later decided this was unlikely to be the true story, there were too many inconsistencies and Elm liked to tell tales regardless of the facts. All the same, we accepted his story for its face value and never asked him to repeat it or back up his claims. Regardless of the lesions, he was still an attractive stallion even then, if stallions were your thing.

His hooves clacking on my wooden boards as he walked across my personal space were one of the only sounds in the settlement by now. The gunfire had ceased, the overdramatized orgasm-screams from the tent a few spaces over had been silenced minutes ago by their neighbors yelling and hurling heavy objects at them. Now all that could be heard from them was snoring, which was as loud and as obnoxious as their lustful wails had been.

Elmwood held his gaze with my tipsy and annoyed stare. My indignation was made worse by his shit-eating grin.

“I’ve found a Stable.” He announced to me with a vain flick of his head. The skull hat slipped off his mane as he did so, shattering his proud stance as he scrambled to pick it back up.

“Sorry, Clover,” I caught him whisper as he rubbed off the dust and popped it back on, “I’ve found a Stable.”

“I heard you utter that nonsense the first time. We’re not raiding open Stables anymore, remember? Not after the beefed-up radroaches nest we disturbed in Stable 105...”

“This is different,” he proclaimed, acting like a statue of absolute confidence in his own cleverness.

“How could this possibly be different?” I remember thinking that this had to be good if he thought he could erase that memory. His grin widened.

“Because, my badflank little griffon friend, this Stable hasn’t been opened yet.”

“Why does he have a skull on his head?” Poxy was a gaunt mare with tanned fur and a grey mane, shaved at the sides but limp and tussled over one eye whilst teardrop tattoos decorated the other cheek. She looked exhausted, but I had woken her up from half a night’s sleep. Despite that, she’d looked pleased to see me until she saw that I had Elm by my side.

As our leader, Poxy didn’t speak directly to Elmwood. She much preferred to speak about him and to him through me. This wasn’t too much of an inconvenience for me, as I often had to get involved as a peacekeeper in the few times they had spoken to one another. She’d confided in me later that it wasn’t that she wanted him out of the group, rather that she wanted his brains without the mouth that came with it. Elmwood, for his part, stuck to the bargain and did not speak directly to her either, although he did like to find other ingenious ways to frustrate her and amuse himself.

“He found it outside the closed up Stable,” I explained.

“Why is he wearing it on his head?” She muttered, giving him a disgusted look.

“This would have gone much faster if you’d let me tell you all about Clover’s exploits, Crow!” Elm cackled behind me.

I had already explained the story to Poxy as Elm had detailed it out to me, yet I knew then that she’d missed the point whilst she had been more focused on my friend’s attire.

“Because he’s Elmwood and that’s what he does.” I grumbled, “Ignore it, let me summarize; he found a Stable that hasn’t opened its doors to the Wastes yet and it’s not too far from here, in Bridleway before you hit Fleatown. If we’re the first ones to get to it, we could talk the Stable ponies into ‘donating’ supplies to us in exchange for protection from this shitty world we live in.”

This time the explanation was sinking in.

“We don’t do Stables, remember?”

“I hadn’t forgotten.” I instinctively rubbed a pair of marks under the feathers on my neck. That was the worst wound I’d had during the scramble to escape that Stable, others hadn’t been as lucky.

Even now I could recall the disembodied head of a stallion that had rolled past me as I was in mid-run towards the exit. Even now I could still remember how it felt to have the pincers clench tightly inches from my jugular. Even now my skin itched with the droplet of venom I’d endured afterward. If it wasn’t for my friend with the dead pony on his head, I’d have died an agonizing death.

“So why are you suggesting we do this one?” She moved closer to me, whispering it as if she were asking me to reveal some great secret to her.

“Supplies, shelter, maybe some new recruits. Food, running water. We have ponies who haven’t seen a clean drop of water in nearly a year, we’re all hungry. As far as risks go, this is a necessary one.” I replied fiercely. I’d glanced around her quarters and was more than a little annoyed to see she had more treats in here than some of our members saw in a lifetime, but them the breaks of being a leader I guessed.

“And if it’s another hole filled with stinkin’ killer bugs? What then?”

“If we follow Elmwood’s plan then that won’t be our problem.”

Poxy’s eyes darted from me to him and swiftly back to me.

“We could just send him in first, couldn’t we?”

“Nah, you’d miss me, Queen Pee~”

She grunted sagely.

“Tell me his ‘wonderful’ plan one more time.”

"It's really simple," I suggested, "we send somepony else in first."

"Who?"

"The Snips."

"Ohhh...." A grin. A nod. "That would work for me."

Poxy signed off on the plan and encouraged Elm out of her shack for the night since it needed a clear head and daylight and a team. She put her good leg out to stop me in her doorway.

“Stay the night.” It was no secret that Poxy had a thing for me. She had asked and accepted other mares and stallions to warm the bed with her, but she wanted me. Sometimes I’d taken her offers out of loneliness and as a survival instinct, it was wise to find a heated body to share the cold nights with.

“Not tonight,” I answered as kindly as I could. I didn’t want her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a good-looking mare, it was that we were sat on the same side of the same cap. Opposites attract but Poxy and I were too alike. Besides, I knew what I would miss if I took her up on her offer.

If it was anyone else, they’d have been out of the gates on their ass and given a ten-second head start before the guns turned on them. But like I said, she liked me.

“Fine. If you change your mind, don’t even knock. Just come straight on in.” I could see the flicker of longing in her eyes. With a respectful nod, her leg dropped to let me pass and I hurried off without another word. Better to cut the cord straight away rather than create false hope later.

Twinkle, twinkle.

As I caught up to Elm, something caught a moonbeam and reflected it into my face. Momentarily I was blinded, then I was seeing the light flashing across the end of my beak.

“Oof~“ The distraction caused my feathery breast to collide with Elm’s rear. I blinked sporadically as I regained my balance, looking about for the source of the rays in my eyes.

“Looks like the pair of you got Starlight mites. Woody musta found them out in the wastes and brought them back to the camp. Could be an infestation.” My heart skipped a beat.

The creator of these so-called Starlight Mites coolly slipped the mirror she’d found back into a scavenger’s loot and took several loitering steps towards me and Elm.

“Oh no, not Starlight Mites again,” The stallion in front of me quipped as the mare shimmered into visibility, “Curse my attractiveness to tiny things. What’s the cure this time, Miss Breeze?”

The most beautiful creature I had ever known. Loveliness didn’t even begin to describe her, sexy doesn’t come close, I am not certain I could find the right words without going through every single one I’d ever heard said to compliment another pony.

Rugged. I know that’s not the kind of word you use to admire a mare with but nonetheless, when I first saw Gypsy Breeze, I thought she had a rugged rogue-ish charm. She was like a proud rogue in the way that she posed, the way that she walked, the way that she spoke.

Most romantics gush about their muse’s eyes when they’re in polite company and whilst her rose-tinted gaze could light a spark of hope in the most villainous heart, I preferred to look lower.

Her mouth. She had pearls for teeth and the reddest tongue I had ever seen on a mare. Her throat, covered in mulberry fur, pulsed and quivered when she spoke. I could watch her talk all day and all night until the wastelands take us, turn us into dust and let our ashes become one.

Her blonde and sunflower mane was long, curled and tangled, so that when she played with it or shook it then it all moved as one. She kept it clean, which I could attest to because she’d let me bury my beak into it and sniff it once or twice.

Although I had never smelled real lavender before, I knew that was what it smelled of. It swelled over the back of her head, most of it keeping behind the ears except for one rebellious strand that she was never able to recapture. It all ended in a swirl along her shoulder, like a cat taking a nap with its tail loose and flicking. She’d taken to tying several rainbow-colored ribbons into it that she’d found in an abandoned mall, which fluttered and twisted when the wind blew them.

“Only darkness will treat Moonlight Mites, you have to expose yourself to the blackest of blacks.” Murmured the self-assured filly of my dreams to the recently-returned wanderer. Her voice was smoky, clear and precise with a tinge of thought to her words.

“I thought it was Starlight Mites,” he replied as she tiptoed nearer.

“It can be both. Don’t get pedantic about this,” she stopped inches away from him and her pale eyes darkened.

“Am I boring you, Elm? Two weeks~“ there was hurt in her voice.

“Tell me more about the Starlight Cure. Why's it got to be darkness? Why not a brighter light?” He'd always avoid a question if it wasn't in his favor.

She stared at him for a while and part of me imagined she finally might snap and slap him. The other half of me knew she’d kiss him.

It was that part of me won that round.

“To fight the light, you have to accept the dark.” She gave her answer as a matter of fact before their lips eventually met.

Jealousy was just another emotion I’d become numb to by this point. I loved Gypsy from the first moment I saw her, but she was never mine. I watched her fall in love with my friend Elm, listened to them make love, accepted her friendship and my inevitable life in the friend zone.

The unicorn mare finally noticed that I had turned my head from the damp slurps and slaps of mouths and she gave me a quick nudge.

“Tell me what he’s been up to.”

“You don’t want to hear it from me?” Elm asked with a curious blink.

“You’ll just tell me about the stupid skull on your head.” She answered with a smirk.

“She’s not stupid. She’s pretty and her name is Clover. Probably. She’s also super important. Super-probably.” The big child in the Nightmare Night mask pouted.

“Then you’ll be banging her super-important eye sockets tonight instead of me then?”

On the walk back to Gypsy’s shelter, I updated Gypsy on the Stable which Elm had found and the plan we had concocted to break into it. She listened carefully, posed a few questions I hadn’t thought of and a few that Elm had. I listened to the pair challenge each other whilst I interjected a few ideas of my own. We laughed, we fooled, and we collapsed together onto Miss Breeze’s bed of straw.

When it could not be held off any longer, Elm’s endeavor to tell us how he met ‘Clover’ was allowed.

There once was a mare called Cloverleaf who lived before the Great War. She was a total Brainiac from day one, swatted up before, during and after school. She loved her books and her studies, swelling her brain nice and tightly inside her skull.

The little filly became a tall, smart and very pretty mare, with no shortage of admirers. With her suitors came the carnal interests. She wasn’t scared to give anything a try, the rough as well as the smooth. One stallion got a little thorough with her horn job and left teeth marks in the bone. Another was particularly heavy on her muzzle, chipping a front tooth partially in the process.

After “sampling the menu” she finally settled down with the love of a good stallion. She found an important job which suited her brainy brain which was all about the paperwork and not at all about the magic. She had a tiny horn, just good enough for picking stuff up and peeling oranges and maybe signing signatures. Unfortunately for our mare, the Great War struck before the family planning began.

She was awarded a place in the Stable designated T-Thirty with her colt friend and her siblings. When the Balefire bombs fell, there was a mad dash for the Stable. They may have made it if tragedy had not struck.

Her mother tripped, and she twisted her ankle. They all tried to help her get to the Stable in time.

They may still have reached the door if the passageway had not collapsed over their heads when they were in sight of their sanctuary.

Some, like the mare’s beloved and her mother, were killed instantly, but the mare was not. She scrambled through and reached the Stable door, only to find it shut. She pleaded for them to open it for her and her surviving young siblings. Unfortunately for our mare, Stable T-Thirty’s door never reopened.

With little hope left, the mare turned and tried to crawl back through the rubble of the passageway. Her siblings dropped like flies around her, yet she kept going. She barely made it through, by then her energy was all used up.

She finally fell a few steps from the spot where fate wounded her mother’s leg. She gave the resting spot of her family one last cry of remorse, and her heart gave up.

“Sing, mmm… your songs, ohhh… little bird,

T-then the~AH~ s-ssssssssss-sun will r….riiise...

spread your w-wings, little birrrd~ ooohhh ohh…”

Melodies from a long-gone era jingled over the wireless. The voice singing to them quavered and rippled with the sweet whimpers of coitus.

Luna’s specter was still traveling across the night sky, crawling over snowy canyons where the pegasi used to dance. It must have only been an hour since I had dozed off and yet I did not need to open my eyes to know what my friends had gotten up to without my stimulating company.

I broke my eyelids open a crack and waited for the sleep to wash from my vision.

Two silhouettes tussled in the dark not far from where I roosted. A pair of shadows stuck in a moment, struggling half-heartedly to part.

I tried to close my eyes again, to avoid witnessing the pairs’ very public display of affection, but in the end, I had to spy and watch them from the beginnings of gentle lovemaking through to the noisy, passionate end. And throughout, Gypsy sang her song.

I could swear that her eyes darted to mine at the point that her song ended with the show. Was that last line directed to me?
I tried to hide the fact I’d been watching, but once breath was recaptured, I heard a very smug Breeze gasp a horrible line my way.

“Mornin’? Enjoying the show, Squawk?”

“ARGGHH!” I howled, pulled the prickly blanket over my head.

The two giggled, and I felt a dainty hoof nudge at me.

"Come on. We know you enjoyed it..." sang the mare's voice through the scratchy fabric. I grunted to them that they could both promptly buck themselves into a coma for all I cared and kept my cloak of invisibility over me, waiting until the pair’s pillow talk reduced to snoring.

They did talk. For a long time, they talked about nothing. They talked about songs and ponies and even about me. I say they because Gypsy did most of the talking and Elm just grunted in the affirmative.

Once her voice dropped to sleepy mumbles and finally silence, I slipped my protective cape off and looked at them. I could tell Breeze was asleep, yet I had the slight inclination to believe Wood had just closed his eyes and assumed the position. I do not think he ever truly slept.

All the same, I got up from my mat, shook out my feathers as quietly as I could muster, before I tiptoed away to freshen up and find the remainder of my slumber in a secluded spot.

I'd be glad I got even one wink of sleep, knowing what the next day would hold for me. For us.

<sub>Footnote: Quest Completed - Deadwood
Quest Perk added - Clover the Cold - Intimidating speech checks are 20% more effective.

Level up!
New Perk: Peeping Turkey - +1 to Success

Quest begun - Snip Snips</sub>

Author's Notes:

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

Song for this chapter; Little Bird, Little Bird by Elizabeth Mitchell

This is the first true chapter of a 3 or 4 part story, maybe 5... I know where it’s going but how it got here has already changed dramatically.

EDIT: So I cleaned up that ending. "I CAME, THE END" never sat right with me.
Hope this makes up for that earlier cheap ending.

Edit 2: HAAAA!!!! How optimistic was I? 4 or 5 chapters?! Opps!!!

Hope you enjoy everything to come and that you can look past my writing.

My characters and I are happy to answer any questions, no spoilers.

All good things,
Dusk

Entry 003 - Little Birds (song)

Entry 003 - Little Birds (song)

Little Birds.

Gypsy used to sing this song to me all the time.

I think I remember the lyrics...

Once, we discussed what it meant. I figured it was about a bunch of birds who feared dying and being alone, but she said that wasn't quite right.

Gypsy seemed to think the song was about ponies who wanted to get along, but the events of the war had twisted them too far apart. They want desperately to reunite even though they know they never will.

It's a pretty song, I wish I could do it justice on here...

”Oh, young town bird,
Is it the clouds or magic-castles to which you flee ?
Did the Pegasus steal your highest home?
Did the ponies burn down your favorite tree ?

Oh, young country bird,
They don’t hear your honest work,
They don’t listen to your songs of hope and peace,
Hoping it will relight the brightest spark.

Sing your songs, little birds,
Then the sun shall rise,
Spread your wings, little birds,
and return to the bluer skies.

Oh, young pale bird,
You worry you cannot share your generosity,
You don't see the stripes or blanks or polka dots,
Where others cry and fight for equality.

Oh, young pink bird,
To continue to laugh must be so tough,
Do not hide your giggles in a house of cards,
Confess that you really needed my love.

Sing your songs, little birds,
Then the sun shall rise,
Spread your wings, little birds,
and return to the bluer skies.

Oh, my blue bird,
Be loyal to yourself from the start,
Changing yourself now is too long a path ,
Your strength and resilience is an art.

Please, sweet young birds,
know that kindness and trust never burns,
I see your innocent beauty under tattered feathers,
and still feel the good in my oldest friends.

Sing your songs, little birds,
Then the sun shall rise,
Spread your wings, little birds,
and return to the bluer skies.

Sing your songs, little birds,
Then the sun shall rise,
Spread your wings, little birds,
and return to the bluer skies.

Whether I am yours, whether I am not,
I will love you, no matter what.”

Author's Notes:

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

Song for this chapter: ‘Sophia’ from the Walking Dead soundtrack, by Bear McCready

I wrote this at three in the morning alone, apologies if it's a little clumsy.

I did have a tune in mind when I was writing this.

If you ever fancy trying to sing it, my suggestion is to listen the Bear McCready's 'Sophia' for the soundtrack of the Walking Dead, from 1min 36secs in.

The last chorus, repeated x2 and then with the two final lines, was written to be able to be sung with that piece of beautiful music.

Um, by the way, I do not own any rights to that music. Not sure if that needs saying or not, but now it's been said. I'd love to hear it sung against a fresh tune.

All My Goodest Things,
Dusk

Entry 004 - The Snips

As I speak to you now, I am aware that for most, I am still your Princess. For others, I am your traitor, and for some sorrowful many souls, I am your enemy. I never wished to be any of these things. I only ever wished to be a teacher.

Entry 004 - The Snips

“AGGGH! Celestia’s sparkly shits, Elm, take that damned thing off! Are you trying to kill me?”

That following morning, Ol’ Scarface had retrieved his toothy headdress and slid in beside me wordlessly at the communal area. He completed the freakish look with a slab of grease-dripping meat between his teeth. It was enough to make me leap out of my seat in shock.

“You’re offending Clover!” he teased at my gasp of horror whilst still full-mouthed.

“She’s offending me.” Once recovered, I returned half-heartedly to my breakfast, “Seriously, why do you still have that thing on?”

“Because I need a helmet.” He shrugged, crunching into a dried Yao Guai steak. Had to respect the pony for having the same tastes in delicious meats as me, even if it was a few days from being inedible. “You never answered my question last night. Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Go fuck yourself.” I grunted into my breakfast.

“I've tried, but Miss Breeze does it far better than I ever could.” he was rubbing the end of the skull's horn experimentally, as if expecting to release a genie from it. For a second, I thought I caught sight of a small glimmer of light on the ridges in the bone. It was gone before I could be assured it had been there and I kept eating.

As we ate, I couldn’t help looking at my rations. I had a few bits I could stretch across a few days, maybe a week if I was savvy, but it would not be enough to keep my energy up. I took a long, unsteady gulp on my flask of water.

“We need to gather a team this morning, we gotta hit this Stable of~ “

“Leave it to Gypsy. She can handle Captain Goo-goo Eyes without fucking her or ripping her head off.”

“I wouldn't rip her head off?” I retorted.

“Exactly.” A snigger rumbled off of his lips, “But you would buck her. Honestly, you could lead this motley crew of tramps and thieves if you had an ounce of ambition, Squawk. “

“That’s your idea of ambition, Elm?” Which raised an eyebrow.

“I thought I was being generous, Birdbrain.” Once again, I suggested he might better enjoy finding out the carnal secrets of his own body, but before we could loop back to his suggestion that Gypsy did it better, I added, “If we’re not going to the Stable, where are we going?”

He held up a hoof to sign that he needed me to give him a moment, then he reached down into his canvas bag and slapped something on the table with a metallic clank. It took me a short second to realize what that thing was, but when I did I yelled out and scrambled backwards off my chair.

“Celestia’s sparkly cunt, Elm, you can’t just slam Fragmentation Mines around like that!” I scrambled back further as he picked it up, shook it and gave it a listen.

“It’s fine, Squawk, it’s not ticking,” he gave it a tap, “deactivated.” It was tossed my way and I caught it gingerly, holding it away from vital organs and my precious face.

“Shit~ alright! Stop paying me in cats, you bastard, and tell me exactly what a bag full of deactivated mines has to do with the plan to get into the Stable? You want to scare out the Dwellers or something?”

“Nah, too easy.” He grinned, “I want to scare the Snips into it.”

The Snips, a small-time gang, mostly harmless.

For a while, the gang myself and Elm belonged to considered them completely harmless until they fought back and wounded a few of our Raiding Party.

Can’t say I blamed them, we were raiding them after all.

These were ponies who simply wanted to be the nice guys next door, share anything they had plenty of and in return offer a short sermon about their founding leader. The name they devoted to him was the Grand Magician Snips.

One time, as I was loading my bags with her apples, I humored a filly named Rose Bed and let her ‘teach me how to be more like GM. Snips.’ This Snips guy was a unicorn who supposedly lived before the Great War. When it came time for the next big bang he became an Overstallion of a Stable. He must have done a good job of it too because even then the minions in his hidey hole quite liked him and listened to him. So much so that when he said it should be safe to go out now after only a few years of being cooped up, they all agreed to open the door. The Balefire hadn’t quite got to their side of Equestria and he successfully led his ponies out of the warren.

For once, these ponies didn’t immediately get their flanks broken into by some big burly mutant or gobbled by a hungry hellhound. Snips found a secluded spot for them in some ancient castle-turned-fortress out in Everfree, claiming he had been shown it in a vision from Luna. They lapped this up like the gullible little cloppers they were, and they turned him into an idol.

The inevitable happened next. Another group of ponies with less scruples showed up and the Snips accepted them in, sharing their valued harvest with the newcomers. The guests liked the fortress so much, they killed old stallion GM. Snips, kicked the dwellers out and kept it for themselves.

Cheerfully accepting the mournful loss and defeat, the Stable ponies cremated their revered leader before moving on in hope that they might find newer, safer pastures. They never did. They just bounced from town to ruined town.

Each time that they lost a member to the fate of the Wastes, another fresh disciple took their place. When we finally met the Snips, they were like a pass-me-down broom that had seven new heads and five new handles, so it simply wasn’t the same broom anymore.

I left the filly who told me the story a couple of apples. I still took most of her stuff; it wasn't ‘THAT’ good a story. She was gracious enough to let me. They all were.

Naive and fuzzy creatures have a way of fooling you into believing that you can get away with anything around them. These kids didn’t launch us to stop us walking away with their gear. They didn’t blanch at our profanity or encourage the lonesome of us not to walk away with their prettier mares.

Among other things, it was eventually Elmwood relieving himself in a pot that turned their kind hearts to lead and twisted their smiles to snarls.

The pot in question had only contained the last dust and ashes of their adored founding father, GM. Snips. Elm told them that they should not have left it in a place so prime as to inspire him to urinate into it. That only made it worse.

Following that fateful evening, the Snips armed themselves and scraped their peaceful, generous ways rapidly. They laid traps for us and promised that the spirit of the minister still swimming in the juices of Elm’s waste would one day smite us for our wickedness.

This hadn’t upset or ruined our party. From this point on we saw the matter as healthy sport and a fun rivalry. The Snips accuracy with weapons was deplorable and their tactical warfare was non-existent. We could have picked them all off a long time ago, but it was much more fun letting them think they had a chance of avenging the dishonor brought by my friend’s bladder.

On his last jolly travels, Elm had caught the Snips making camp on the other side the Crystaller Building. Funnily enough, we’d been ridiculously close to bumping into them back when we were looking to settle in the Crystaller building ourselves. They’d packed themselves into a much more exposed settlement with wooden walls and canvas tents. Yet it was as though they’d found air on the moon; they were making such a ruckus that I was surprised that every hungry creature in the wastes hadn’t pounced them already.

Crouched at a gap in their flimsy walls, the pair of us observed the grimy bodies walking around their makeshift village without the slightest clue they were being watched.

I had my modified Carbine rifle under my wing, which was rearranged to fire with a backwards tug of my wings. I could easily hook and unhook my wings from it to switch between shooting and flying in a swift movement. Elm had his rucksack full of useless explosives and his ivory hat and that was it. Part of his plan was not startling these peace-loving muck swimmers any more than we had to.

“You go left, I go right, and then we make as much noise as possible like herding radhogs...” I suggested. I hopped up stealthily and started to move to my position, only to have his leg snag me before I could take more than five steps.

“No. We need to drop back first and plant these under there.” He pointed to the giant broken building topped with a decaying chess knight and gave me a rattle of his bag. Suspicion arose in my mind.

“You want to drop the building on them.”

“No no no, it’s just an incentive, they’re not strong enough to destroy anything, just to make a noise and some smoke and get them running. Like Radhogs!” He had a way of recreating the Riddle-Cat grin from the pre-war Wonderworld books that should have told me sooner that this plot was more twisted than he was making out. Unfortunately, like the blue-dressed filly of those stories, I was already too deep in the rabbit’s hole too pull back out. So, I followed my bonkers General and let him have command.

We kept low and shuffled our way back in the direction we’d come from. We didn’t need to be so covert with the racket the residents were making, heck, one of them was even singing at the top of her voice!

A dewdrop-speckled body drenched in moonlight re-entered my memory at the sound of another voice in chorus and I drowned out the caterwauling in my head with the song of my far more talented pin-up.

It might seem odd to some that Gypsy would sing during sex but to me it was as natural as moaning and squealing through an orgasmic finale. She loved to raise her voice to a song, she explained to me that it gave her no greater high, even compared to knocking old horse-shoes alone. Adding the two was like flicking the bean for that songstress.

First time I heard her lullaby lovemaking, I thought she was just having a singsong. Walking in on Elm’s face snug between her thighs as her pipes played was how I discovered the two were an item and my hopes had been dashed again.

I came out of this revere to find Elm had ushered me into the lobby of the Crystaller Building and was inspecting the foundations. His stub of a tail flicked thoughtfully as he checked out each pillar, skipping from one to the other as contentedly as a carefree foal.

Suddenly, my reflexes were forced to kick in as the dirty cream sack of bombs flew over to me. I seized the boom bag quickly before it could hit anything hard and once safe, threw him a few outraged expletives.

“Relax, potty mouth, I knew you’d catch ‘em. I need you to place the rest of those mines around the pillars on this side.” He clanged a few of the mines he’d already taken out from one hoof to the other like a card trick. “Don’t waste them on the other side, we just want our friends in Boom Town to think this place is coming down on them.”

Cli-Clank!

Each mine had some of its magical enchantment left so that every time it was introduced to a surface, it would eagerly glue itself to it. Honestly, the whole process was fairly satisfying, letting the circular objects fly from my claws without any assistance from me. You could liken it to cracking an aching joint or popping a bug. It wasn’t meant to feel good, it just did.

Cli-Clank!

“Did I ever tell you the time the Junkrats tried to catch me?”

“Nope. Is this fact or fiction?” Cli-Clank. My feathers ruffled happily under my patched and worn griffon armor.

“Everything I tell you is 100% fact, Hen! I just like making the details more exciting.” The stallion had disappeared around a post, but I could still hear the grin inside his voice.

“The Junkrats had this thing about me, they thought if they had me on their side, they’d own the Wastelands. Isn’t it funny how everypony seems to think that? Back in those days, I was an itty-bitty-bit too predictable, I had this pathway I liked to take along Cheddar-Cheese canyon, the view would go on for miles...” his voice grew misty for a moment, as if he really did remember a landscape better than the bleak lands we lived in today.

“Those pesky Junk-rodents figured this out. One evening, during one of my walks, a figure in Junkrat overalls sits in my way.

“Being the ever-polite gentlecolt that I am, I gave them a friendly greeting. No reply. I ask them how they are doing. Still nothing. Finally, I try to shake them, just to see if they got caught in some kind of spell.”

“Well, it was! Except the spell was on me. Suddenly, I realize the figure was just a mannequin put down to trick me, which it did. Soon as I touched the dummy, I was all frozen up, incarcerated in a block of ice. The Junk rats soon slipped out of their hiding spots and squeaked about having caught the witty and wild Deadwood.”

Cli-Clank.

I was almost done. I had one mine left. If I hadn't been enjoying myself with the task in paw and the quirky ramblings of my colleague, I might have been more spatially aware. As it was, I had a whole back half of me unguarded. I hadn't remembered the important rule when it comes to raiding; don't stare at one spot for too long.

“But, obviously, you escaped. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, buddy.” I peeked out from my wall, but he was still missing. His voice seemed to suggest he was upstairs now, somewhere near the escalators. What was he doing up there?

“Of course, I did! See, as they were figuring out how to carry me away, I suggested the smartest should do it. You know, the leader. Or the one who came up with the plan. Or the one who found the dummy. Or the one who cast the spell on the figurine.

“That started an argument. ‘I did this,’ ‘no I’m the leader,’ ‘well I cast the spell,’ bitch bitch moan. In all the confusion, they dropped the crystalized me into the ravine, shattering the ice and freeing me. I grabbed a branch before I fell and smashed up too, then I climbed the rest of the way down and made my escape...”

That lifted a chuckle out of me. That story didn’t deserve any praise, but I applauded him anyway.

“Oh, the cleverness of you,” I offered sarcastically, “so really, was that true or not?”

Cli-Clank, went my last mine in the resulting silence.

“Oh, Woody, I’m waiting!” I tried out my best impression of Gypsy in heat. It didn’t even get a titter.

“Elm?” I asked with more trepidation.

Cli-click.

This sound was right beside my head. I could hear the barrel rattling in uncertain hooves, but it was still a point-blank range. That, and the fact that I could hear other rifles raising in my direction, made me obey the next commands without complaint.

“Turn around, impure one.” Peeped the young and very familiar voice. Shit.

Rotating my body steadily with my talons high, I stared up the barrel of the gun into the eyes of the Snips mare holding it. I gave a long, uncomfortable sigh and sagged.

“Hello, Rose Bed.”

The murmurs began as I was marched through the decrepit gates, followed by a pair of angry cries from the guards holding the gate. These increased to jeers as we passed the first huts, ten or twelve residents following alongside us. Once the center of the shanty town was in sight, the calls had become an uproar and things began to get thrown.

My sharp griffon eyes scanned everything the dump had for data on my situation. I couldn’t see Elmwood, no matter where I looked. I trusted him just enough not to leave me in the predicament but there was no sign nor skull of the horse. The scales in my mind were tipping towards niggling doubts.

“It’s been a while, Rose Bed, how have you been, eh?” The point of my small talk was to show that theses ponies didn’t frighten me. A pomato narrowly missed my beak and I glared at the thrower, who filched back to my great pride.

“Eyes ahead, whore!” the simple pastel blush mare screeched back at me.

“Whoa! Language! Where was that tongue when we were bed buddies? That would have spiced things up much more than ‘Oh, gosh, Grand Magician Snips, oh yes, send me to th~’ “

Thud!

A black U-shape spiraled across my newly blurred vision.

“That was a shoe! Who throws a shoe?! Honestly!” Griffons can make themselves look much more intimidating on their hind legs with their wings flaring. In my dark and gleaming armor, I added an extra ounce of menace.

“Maybe it knocked sense into you, heretic! Get down before I make an example of you!” The circle of cold metal that jabbed under my fur was enough to make me obey without question.

A gnarled stallion sat upon a thorny throne of derelict broken wood, artefacts and rags. It had all been thrown together by these Scavvies from the surrounding wastes. When he spoke, it was with a dull monotone to his voice that gave me the impression of a horse who was bored with his lot in life.

"Silence, silence, everypony might I please have a bit of silence here?" His skinny forelegs were now chicken wings flapping needlessly at the crowd. They dropped to a hushed scorning as he cast his raven eyes at me.

“Ms. Crow. You may be a Miscreant, but you can still leave here with a small punishment for your crimes against the ponies of the Great Magician lord. All you need to do is tell us the location of your scarred friend.”

“King Mud,” I saluted cynically. He was one of the few Snips remaining whom I recognized instantly. Muddy Waters had been chief of the group’s security when his previous leader, Feather Bed, passed away from complications caused by a knife jabbed in between his ribs. Nobody caught the culprit, which was a shame because King Feather was a much more interesting fellow.

Since our group was still in the vicinity and available to have the blame landed upon us, hooves were jabbed in our direction. Not a thought was given as to whether the knife had been seen in Mud’s care before the incident, nor did they question his instant desire to stand in and bring justice to their fallen ruler.

Nopony had to be the greatest detective. Maybe it was in protest of this event that Elm did his business on their poor forefather.

Knowing they hadn’t caught Elm made my beak curve with smug satisfaction.

“Still naming your children after the places they are born? I can’t wait to meet Shit Hole and Cat Piss~”

Thwack!

The butt of Rose’s gun let the back of my head taste a lesson on behalf of my mouth. I swore, which was deserving of seconds in her opinion.

“Oww.” My eyes wheeled on her. “Hit me with your rifle again and we’ll see if it can go further into your wee bucket than my claw went…”

The handle raised again. My clenched claw did likewise.

“Enough.” One word from her leader was enough for the filly to decline her weapon. I only lowered my paw when I was certain she was not going to strike again.

“You are going to tell us where Mr. Wood is.” He switched on a false-softness, getting up out of his seat and coming down half way to me. “None of us want to see you harmed, Ms. Crow. However, justice must be brought to those who do not see the error of their ways. If you do not tell us where Mr. Wood is, we will be forced to pry it out of you.”

I couldn’t stop the laugh if I’d been the most serious bitch alive.

“You’re talking about torturing me for information, aye? You cannot even say the word! What’s the plan, tickle me with your feather dusters?” As much as I was enjoying myself, I was starting to get concerned that I hadn’t seen Elm poking his head up from amongst this crowd.

“For that, we’d need feathers, Ms. Crow.”

Letting my eyes off of the spoiled monarch for a moment turned out to be a mistake as he must have signaled to his loyal disciples surrounding me. In an instant, the four ponies had launched themselves on top of me and wrestled me down.

With a fuller stomach I may have had the energy to put up more of a fight. As it was, my chin was impacting the dirt with a snap, my beak snipping a clumsy corner of my tongue. I could taste the cut as I growled and swore at my captors.

They struggled with my wing and tugged it out wide, my attempts to keep it in against my side failing. All it took was a stallion to kneel on it, and I was vulnerable. I was forced to glare at the glorified greasy, silver bearded stallion. He gestured lazily.

“Would you please, Rose Bed?”

As I continued struggling, I heard Rose’s gun clatter, followed by a scratch of metal. There was a tug on my wings armor, several snaps and the full piece was ripped away, exposing my cobalt and speckled feathers. With a perturbing breeze, I felt the serrated and almost certainly rusty knife pushed underneath the join of my wing and pressed hard.

“We do not want to do this, Ms. Crow. An eye for an eye after all~”

“I... I think I misheard you. You want me to tell you where Elmwood is, r-right?” I stammered. Out came a sigh in relief.

“Yes, thank you. Where is he?”

“Oh... w-well... the... the last time I saw him... the last time I saw him...” I looked swiftly around at them all.

“Yes?”

“L-last time I saw him.... he’d bent your mother over that pathetic throne of yours and was banging the Grand Magician Snips out of her.” The sneer passed over my beak before I could regret it. His second sigh was much more long suffering, he waved a signal and the knife moved.

"SQWARK!"

My brain was a screeched nest of evil gulls. My feathers were viper bites along the entirety of my wing. My voice took on a mind of its own and cursed every single one of them and their parentage twice over in pain. This was it, I believed, this was going to end with me losing my wings and maybe even my life to some prissy pansy ponies.

At some point, they stopped. I’m not sure when. The mocking cries had stopped. The knife had been dropped. The fur in my side was seeping wet tulip petals. My blurry eyes raised once more.

Nobody was watching me anymore. All eyes were staring in horror at the throne. I squinted, trying to encourage my eyes to co-operate as I gazed up as well.

Perched on the landfill, there was a figure. At first, I assumed his coat was coal and his face smoky. As my vision improved, I realized his was in fact dressed in a shadowy cloak, with his hood thrown up and only the ghoulish nose and smirk visible. A short-pointed erection was presenting itself from beneath the glooms of this being’s forehead. It did not look like a living unicorn.

“It’s one of the Four! Death!” Cried one mare.

“The Four have come for us!” Screeched another.

Across the wastes, voices whisper ghost stories about the Four. Death-thirsty horses capable of changing their shapes with agendas set to eradicate the remaining irradiated life from Equestria. Parents told their foals these tall tales in hopes that they might grow to be better than their corrupted and crooked elders. However, with such dark and blood-soaked legends to their names, even the wisest mares and stallions still quivered upon their horseshoes at the merest mention of their names.

“Silence!” Boomed Death, putting on an impression oddly similar of King Mud, even waving his hooves in the same manner. His horn twinkled, a green flicker on its curved and decayed tip.

“Sir, yes sir,” Whimpered the pathetic king of the dump, “please, we are simple folk, have pity on~”

“I demanded silence!” Snarled Death, slamming a hoof down. They all dropped into worried, trembling sobs.

“That is better. Pity shall be taken if you all obey.” His eyes fixed upon mine and a flash of blue twinkled through the eye holes. Upon his cloak was irregular, unusual markings. It was the stitching of the underside. He had it on inside out.

That’s when I had my suspicions confirmed. Even in agony, I was still smiling hard, something I should have kept in check. However, seeing these idiots trembling after what they’d done to me was worth a grin.

It didn’t go unnoticed. I saw Rose Bed stare at me, then at the figure, and squinted at the figure. Then, she bounced forth, gesturing a hoof up at the figure.

“I ask only one thing from you,” He continued to cry, “give me the bird, and I shall let you all live. Show me favor and I will show you a safe place to- “

“It’s him!” interrupted my ex abruptly.

“Stand down, Sister Rose Bed, you shall get us all killed,” whimpered Mud. She stood defiant.

“He is no Changeling of Death. That is Deadwood!” She snarled, jabbing the air in the hooded figure’s direction.

“What?! Explain this nonsense! I shall destr~”

“Take off the ceremonial cloak of the Great Mage, you disgusting swine!”

The posturing skeleton sagged in defeat and then whipped his hood back, snatching his bone head and twisting it up to reveal the panda-eyed face hidden beneath.

“Surprise! Hello there, how are you all doing?” He flopped into the garbage chair, wiggling his flank into it to get comfy as the rest of the crowd gasped, dumbfounded by the yet more brazen behavior from the wastrel. He twirled his hoof at all of them.

“Go on, point your guns at me, I’m sure it will make you all feel much better.” Every weapon available to hoof applauded his crafty appearance.

Elmwood’s expression was ominous. I knew something severely destructive was coming just from the glassy clouds over his usually sparkling pupils. His soulless windows appeared when he was at his cruelest and most unsympathetic. The lidded curtains drooped listlessly on his eyes, almost attempting to shut before he had to witness whatever vindictive deed he would inflict.

The unrest that welcomed me into town was nothing compared to the nest of horrid hornets these ponies turned into at the sight of their unfazed demon. Everything tossed seemed to deflect around and past the unmasked Elmwood. King Mud attempted to regain the control.

"Mr. Wood. You will hoof yourself over to us at once and~"

“Nice new digs!” Elm could shout louder. "I love the pointy chair! I might have one of my own, make it out of swords, you know, practical things like that…”

"Mr. Wood~"

“And what a view!” He gave a shrill whistle, spinning around. His borrowed cloak jumped off of his back momentarily to flash his Cutie Mark to them all. He marveled up, his forelegs spread in reverence. “The Crystaller building. Pretty … tall, right? You see that writing up there? Yeah, that was me. Not going to brag but it was really, really hard.”

"STOP TALKING!" Snapped the weathered horse, stamping a hoof and spraying as his spoke, "you are now our prisoner, you are at our mercy you both have nowhere else to go!"

"You're not going to win in a shouting battle with him..." I mumbled.

"You're right." the cloaked colt crumpled. A bolt of triumph flashed over the king's expression. The mask’s horn flashed jade for another odd second, enough to catch my gaze.

"Good. Now, come down from there, despoiler, so we might~"

"Not yet." Elm offer almost apologetically.

"What?"

"I have an apology to make!" He called to the audience. The king attempted to tell him they were far beyond apologies, but their new town crier wasn't stopping. "I am sorry for mistaking the ashes of your dead guy for a rest room. In my defense, you did put him a wide pot that was just the right size for my~"

"Silence him!" Ready rattles proved the crowd was ready to complete this order. I tried to push my captors off in an attempt to save my friend.

"WAIT wait wait!" he held his hooves up, attempting to wave them down, "If you kill me you'll never find out where I've hidden those ashes!"

"Wait!" agreed Mud and marched forward, thrusting his hoof to Elm accusingly. "You lie!"

"I swear on... what was his name? Grand Master Snorts? If you kill me before you check, you'll never find it. You lot, you never learn to keep the things you treasure the most under lock and key, away from busy hooves," The forelegs wiggled, then crossed confidentially, despite danger and death surrounding him. Mud was trying to hastily weigh his options and quell the rising panic in his people.

"Rocky Path! Check the chamber of our Great Magician!" He pointed to a long, blonde maned stallion bowed and dashed into a glorified shrine, even with twinkling fairies around the door. The fear-stuck scream answered Elm in the affirmative, but the fool still scrambled back out to answer his nothing-master.

"The ashes of the Great Magician, they're gone!" He threw up his gun and tugged his trigger in fury. Five or six bullets flew over Elm's ducking head before Mud bellowed at them to stop.

"He's right! If we kill him and we've lost our Great Snips forever," He stormed onto the platform and climbed up to face the grinning ghastly fiend, "Tell us! Where have you hid the Great Magician?" Smack! "TELL US!"

Regardless of the foot he'd just received to his snout and the hot tear running from one nostril, he was still giving the older stallion and sleepy-eyed sneer.

"A Stable."

"Liar! There's not a Stable close enough for you to reach in the time it took us to find your friend here!" each word was phlegm crossing the boundary from mouth to laughing face, not ceasing it in the slightest.

"Oh yes there is. I can take you all there, you just need to release my friend and not shoot either of us."

"He's a liar!" yipped Rose Bed from beside me, "We should torture them both for information!"

"Why did you stop hanging around that filly, Crow?" gawked Elm in elation, "I like her! Howevs, I'm not lying. Also, I have a plan that will stop you all from killing, maiming or seriously injuring me or my friend." I couldn't help feeling he was a little late to be offering that as my wing throbbed wrathfully.

"What plan?" snorted Muddy.

"I'm so glad you asked!" My clown-prince chum leapt onto the top of the throne and gestured to the tower. "You see that bust up there? The head, yes? Inside that is a dusty but very active Balefire bomb, and if you all of you do not follow me in, oh, three minutes and forty-three seconds, that building will be coming down to total Manehattan and you lot along with it."

He made sure he had their attention before he continued. “My friend here has placed charges all over the bottom of the building. Three minutes and then its Equestria’s Apocalypse 1.5! There’s no time to stop them all. Just enough time to get to the stable if you start running with us.” They all blinked at him in dumb suspension, the horror of his words sinking into them all.

“You lie!” Mud had never sounded less sure of his words.

“He doesn’t!” Warbled Rocky Path, “when we found her, she was putting plates on the pillars of the building. Oh, Great Magician Snips save us, they’re going to destroy us!”

Chaos fueled the crowd as they created a choir of terror. The ponies pinning me flew away to their friends and families. The town devolved into madness and my friend was at the pinnacle of it, still smiling eagerly.

I did not hear what he said to the wide-eyed Mud as he turned to him, but I did hear the wizened horse hollering to his people to follow us as Elm leaped down, galloped through the distressed obstacles and lifted me to my feet by my good wing.

I had enough time to look at the wing. Despite scarlet ribbons drizzling from the gash beneath it, my dear wing was still attached. I’d need aid soon, but for now I was going to live. That didn’t stop me snatching Rose by the skull as she faltered beside me. I caught a taste of her fear as she reached for her gun, but I was faster. I pushed her hard into the nearest wall with an angry screech and moved up my talons, ready to kill.

Elm stopped me with a strong hoof. It was one of the few times he did stop me fulfilling an execution.

“Run!” He pulled me so hard towards the opening back into Manehattan that I had no chance to argue.

Of course, as we burst out of the exit of the Snips’ homestead, I still couldn’t help applauding Elm for his plan thus far. I checked over my shoulder hurriedly.

“It’s working, they’re following!” My head twisted back to him. I was loud enough for just him. “They think the story is real, Elm!”

“Don’t stop!” He pushed ahead. His hooves fell like there really was a potential world ending bomb in the Crystaller Building. I almost questioned the fact myself.

We rounded one corner and pushed towards a theatre almost whole amongst the rubble of its brothers and sisters. As we were nearing it, Elm skidded to a stop momentarily and brought his organic hard hat off of his head.

“Unicorn horns make great antennae. Their range can reach for miles.”

For a moment, he confused me. However, when he turned the skull around, a finally saw what he had concealed inside of it. A remote.

He jabbed at the button before he dropped the skull, returning it to the rest of its separated, thin owner with her hoof still extended to the theatre. I did not have time to realize that this was the remains of Clover.

BOOM.

It wasn’t just an explosion. It was the ground being pulled from underneath by unseen claws. It was the thunder of a million hooves charging over every sense in my body. It was a beast shaking my ragdoll body.

I turned to see flames barfing from below the Crystaller Building, toxic fumes puffing from its jagged windows and filling the sky with an early, unstoppable night at a great speed. For a moment, it really had just been a smoke and light show to scare the Snips.

In the next few moments, I learned that Elmwood had lied to me.

SCREEECH. CRACK. CRUNCH.

The Crystaller Building lurched, turned its enormous vandalized head towards us. With its eyes set on the screaming ponies running from it, it toppled.

"Oh Fuck! You really ARE trying to kill me!"

<sub>Footnote: Quest Failed - Snip Snips

Quest Begun - Gotta Knock A Little Harder...</sub>

Author's Notes:

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

Song for this chapter: Nobody Gets Out Alive by Samuel L ‘Mofo’ Jackson (from Hitman’s Bodyguard)

I hope you enjoy this chapter! The time meeting the Snips took a lot longer than I expected it to!

Thanks for reading. Soon we'll be in Stable T-Thirty, and we'll find out why the Snips were important...

kind regards,
all good things
Duskhoof

Entry 005 - A Way In

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.

Entry 006 - Stable T-Thirty

I realise how terrifying a prospect that is and believe me when I say that it is not one made lightly. I promise you, however, that it was one made out of love, respect and care for every one of you, no matter your opinion of me. I have every confidence that my sister, aided by my faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, and her friends, will now carry out my responsibilities with more capability than I have recently been able to.

Entry 006 – Stable T-Thirty

“I’m not a bloody freak show to come ogle at!”

A dozen agog eyes were staring at me from the end of my comfy hospital bed.

I had woken to the sound of Dr. Ache gently trying to advise a group of foals and their adult that it was nice of them to come visit me, but that this was a hospital and not a zoo.

As soon as the kids saw I was awake, they began to interrogate me. Who I was? What had I come to the hospital for? When they asked why I was so different compared to them, I snapped. Mrs. Building Block, who promptly introduced herself as the teacher of this class, quickly defused the grievance.

“I’m sorry, miss, the foals were eager to meet the ponies who saved our Stable from Raiders!” The silly look I shot her must have spoken volumes, as a politely grimacing smile spread across her muzzle.

“I didn’t save anything. You saved me.” I explained my puzzlement.

“Oh no, you did save us. Your group raised the alarm to warn us that there were ponies who intended to take our Stable from us, just as Raiders had done to you. You were all so very brave.” Kudos to this mare. As she stood behind the kids, she had the patience of a saint with me.

I squirmed up in my bed, just glad to feel that my wing was not in as much pain as yesterday. Right then and there, I could have quite happily given the Doctor a beak job just to show my gratitude, even if he wasn’t my preferred gender. However, even in the Wasteland, that is not completely appropriate to do that in front of foals. It still happens, mind you, but I was not that kind of bitch griffon.

“Thank you. It’s pure berry just to know you’re all safe now.” When I used my full Trottish expressions, it was either because I wanted to confuse my audience, or because it was a little politer than telling them to buck off. On this occasion, it was the former.

“Do you think the foals could ask you some questions or hear a few stories? They’ve never known anypony come back from the Wastelands, and they did not know Griffons existed!”

I was a little different looking, but that didn’t make me anything special compared to any of them in my opinion, and I told them as much. Dr. Moon Ache deciphered this as me needing less company now. My healer asked that they move on so that I could finish my bed-rest, but the droopy heads and disheartened nickers cut me deeper than any knife had up to that point.

“Hold on, I suppose I can answer a few questions, aye?” The Mexicolt wave of smiles reassured me that the decision was a good one.

They were urged back into place by the ruby-maned teacher. She ushered the kids to listen to me as she queried where I’d come from and how I’d gotten here. I’d not had chance to collaborate with my fellow “Stable Fifty-Four comrades” so I tried to keep my answers vague and not go off script.

“I came from Stable fifty… fifty-something. I don’t remember, I was hit with some spell before getting here and it has made my head funny. Raiders killed my family, I’m pretty sad about that so, aye.”

The teacher and a few of the foals gave me a look of sympathy, whilst two of the others were wearing perplexed expressions. Thankfully, it wasn’t at my poor attempt at a cover story.

“Do you speak Equestrian?” a brazen little foal asked me, with a slow, patronizing tone.

“Aye, I’m speaking Equestrian right now.” I growled, grinding my beak.

“I have no idea what she just said.” He turned to his fellow classmates and shrugged.

“She speaks Equestrian, she just sounds funny,” the filly beside him educated her class, pushing her spectacles up from the end of her nose.

“I speak Trottish! It’s where I’m from!” I couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of my mouth fast enough, “I mean, it’s where my folks came from, or their folks… Sorry, this confusion spell has really done one on me, aye?”

“Did you see any other ponies outside?” This filly got her eager question out before anypony could agree to let me off on the last one. At least I believed I knew the answer to this.

“Oh, aye! Lots of ponies hang about outside, but most of them are a bunch of bampots, you’re all tidy in here.” My smiled, my answer intended to reassure.

Uncomfortable glances between the ponies in the group seemed to suggest they’d not followed my unique slang.

“It’s a fucked-up world beyond that door. You’re safer inside.” I translated, nodding. There were several gasps and the colt with the big mouth whinnied that I’d sworn, overcome with a touch of awe. Mrs. Block clearer her throat.

“Well! I think that’s all for now…maybe we should~”

“Have you ever had to shoot a pony?” Squeaked the smallest pony. I grinned tremendously and leaned down to her. I should not have answered the question, but I could not help myself.

“I’ve made at least one’s head explode.”

It was right here that I started to discover Stable foals were not like Wasteland foals. A Wasteland foal from Flea Town might sound impressed and dream of doing that one day. Another Wasteland foal from Glascow might just shrug their shoulders and grunt that they’d already blown off five faces this morning before breakfast. It was a regional difference.

I wasn’t prepared for the tiny girl from Stable T-Thirty to tear up and dash behind the teacher. Nor the filly with the glasses excuse herself to be ill in a nearby trashcan. The adults glared at me for my confession.

“Whoa. Don’t flap, hen, I’m not going to hurt any of you. Not unless you cross me.” Innocently, I’d assumed this would be enough to stabilize the situation.

With a horrified gasp, Mrs. Block drew question time to a close abruptly, sending the foals out before they’d had a chance to say goodbye. I gave them a cheery wave, receiving similar only from little-big mouth.

Once gone, Dr. Ache seemed to decide I was not potential dating material. He pushed a stale cheese sandwich my way and a glass of water, then said I could be discharged within the hour.

Seeing the Overstallion outside the hospital ward was like a mare catching you riding her unfaithful cowboy for a husband. I puffed myself up to full height, prepared for more annoyance.

“Are you here to give me a bollocking now?” Skeptically I padded along the corridor towards him. His mane glided with its own physics when he shook his head, and his wry smile put me off-guard.

“I have no idea what that means, Miss Crow, but I assume my answer ought to be no. I am here to offer you each the olive branch of friendship between our two Stable communities. You are the last new arrivals that I personally wished to check on. How are you settling in?”

“Kind of hard to tell you, I’ve only seen one room so far. Nice whiskey in this place though. So, you’ve got that,” I complimented genuinely, making him chuckle.

There was something unsettling about this stallion. I couldn’t put a claw on it, he was friendly, but something other than the strangely clinical nature of this leader made me uncertain about him.

“The Hopscotch family do make a lot of good whiskeys. We have a lot of comforts here that I’m sure even your Stable was lacking...”

My feathers fluffed as I asked whether I’d heard that right. They make whiskey here?

“Whiskeys,” he affirmed, “they have several flavors. However, there will be plenty of time for that. I’m certain you’ll be eager to get a warm bath or a shower and into fresh jumpsuit, after being out of one for such a while. We’ve commissioned one to be tailored just for you.” They’d made me my own Stable suit? I wasn’t sure whether to feel honored or grossed out. Those uniforms were not exactly the most tactical things to dress up in.

“Thanks. Sounds great,” I lied, then let out a squawk with a start.

A hulking stallion had managed to get into my personal bubble, without a single sound to alert me to his presence. Only after I’d collided with his brick-wall chest and nearly broken my beak did Overlook think to point him out.

“This is Chief Officer. Procrustean, the chief of the Stable Guard here at Stable T-Thirty. His duty is to ensure you and your fellow Stable Fifty-Four citizens are safe and secure here.”

The security here must have been tighter than my fellow Raiders had suspected. I had wondered why there hadn’t already been fresh chaos ensuing from a hostile takeover attempt. If these guards were all going to be as ugly, muscular and mean-looking as Chief Officer Procrustean, then our modest band of crooks had little chance of overthrowing the residents.

I gave him one of my most friendly greetings and offered a paw to be shook. He chose to ignore it, which I silently remembered. If he wanted to be an asshole, I could beat him in a ‘Assholes Got Talent’ contest, any day of the week.

“Allow me to show you through to the local bath house. Then the Chief Officer will show you around the rest of the Stables, particularly the warehouse where you’ll be staying. You friends are already there, I’m sure you’ll want to get back to them.” Completed the Overstallion. I let out a hollow laugh.

“We’ll see whether they deserve my presence,” and then, because I was thinking about it, “did you get a chance to talk to a pair of ponies, err… a green mare with a cutiemark of a garden path and a…. a lesser green mane? She might have been with the stallion, a black coat, a cutiemark of sticks, I think, and a brown mane.”

Overlook thought about it for a moment, before pulling his mouth up to the corner of his muzzle.

“The mare I recall. Garden Path. She is being looked after by a mare with an eggplant coat and a golden mane, decorated with ribbons of all colors. Jinxed Breath?” He suggested. I gave a long sigh.

“I don’t know what an eggplant is, but that sounds like Gypsy Breeze. Good, she’ll look after her... And the stallion?” We had begun walking now, following the lengthy, uninspiring corridor.

“I do not recall him. Chief Officer, can you check that this stallion been seen by our guard? I do hope he has not been locked up with the Raiders by mistake.”

“Sir, there was a stallion by that description earlier,” my wings instantly went over my ears as his deep voice shook us. He must have been the one making the command over the amplifier back at the Stable Door, “but we have not seen him since he was checked-in at the main gate.”

“Hmm, do you recall his name?” We paused briefly as Procrustean lifted his hoof, tapping at his own PipBuck for a brief check before giving an answer that he had registered as Brittle Sticks. The Overstallion began trotting ahead again as he deliberated on this problem.

“Have the guard keep a look out for him, ensure that he is safe and not in harm. We do not want a stallion walking around Stable T-Thirty without a clue where he is.”

“It’s not like he can go too far though, right?” I interjected, “We’re in a Stable. There’s a limited number of places he can go.” The pair stopped and looked at each other, Overlook grinning whilst Procrustean just looked annoyed. I came to learn that this was his default face and mood.

“We will take the scenic route to the closest bath house then,” offered the humble leader as he turned and flashed me an enigmatic pose. I followed along with a blow of air between my beak. The Chief Officer marched behind me.

The corridor we walked through began to look like more gray walls occasionally lashed with Stabletec’s blue. Only when we quickly reached a sliding glass door ahead did I start to get the hint that this was not the same.

It was not the same at all. Nothing like the old, broken-into Stables infested with the Wasteland horrors. Nothing like the soaked, rotten corridors and eerie, festering halls that we’d raided in the past. This was different. This was new.

As the glass doors slid apart, I hesitatingly crept through them, expecting my body to drop from the catwalk as soon as I stood upon it. It may have seemed strange that I had been worried about falling, but even us winged few do not want a solid floor to disappear from beneath us. I know it is difficult to believe, but heights were not my strong point. If I was on anything higher than a ponies head, I’d be sweating like a pig on bacon day.

Mr. Smug and Mr. Angry remained at the doorway as I shuffled awkwardly along the platform, cautiously rested my paws on the railing and finally allowed myself to recover just enough to fully take in the view.

Below me stretched an underground city. Not a Stable, not Stable T-Thirty’s atrium as I had been expecting, but an entire subterranean municipality, with all the sounds and smells and even tastes that came with it. I’d been to several of the remaining ‘Jewels’ of Equestria, and this could easily have been any one of them. Only the steel ceiling above gave away of the illusion that this was just another busy town in the middle of the day.

I’d seen similar sights to this in soggy magazines and long-lost photographs of old Canterlot. Somepony, or ponies, had taken a lot of time trying to recreate what had been gone for a while now and preserve it.

Swashed in their navy uniforms with gold-leaf streaks, the other residents of the city went about their business without a fear or a worry. Some of these walked across many bridges like mine, whilst others cantered over different levels to this Stable-city. The floors, of which I counted at least five, were clad with cobble stones and street lamps. The rooms were made to look like clean, inviting thatched buildings.

Higher up, I saw that the Stable was lit by a giant orb of light. I imagined this was created to represent the sun, it even stung my eyes watching it. Someone had taken the time to detail it with triangular rays around the outside, but that was all I could notice before I really did have to stare away to the ground again. It took a few seconds for the spots to leave my eyes.

A shell-gray fountain sat in the heart of the huge, circular plaza, adorned by a pony, set in stone during the middle of a ballet recital. Her head was pointed to the metal sky with poise and grace, whilst she spat three jets of water constantly around her. I’d never seen a fountain like it, never mind one in working order.

Around that sat a ring of market stalls, dressed in their best clothes. Nothing like the sad and trashy markets of the Wastes. These were hole-less, bright canvases of many colors and invited all cheerfully in to see their wares.

Outside of the court, there stretched five extensive lanes, which disappeared into the ambient light before I could see the ends of them. Ponies were everywhere between the streets and levels. There was not one place beneath me where I would look and not see a blue minion wandering through my view.

I was lost for words. I might have watched the Stable dwellers move about their miniature set all day if Overlook hadn’t stepped in beside me and cleared his throat.

“Your fellow survivors told me that Stable Fifty-Four was far smaller than this, correct?”

“You could say that again. This… this is…” I could still not string a full sentence together.

“…This is your home,” he replied helpfully, “Come, follow me. I’ll show you to the bath house. I think you’ll enjoy this, the others did.”

Splash~!

Imagine bathing in pure sunlight, with the twittering of birds and the angelic song of some sweet, pretty mare strumming a harp. Sinking into the bubbled, steaming water felt exactly like that, in my mind.

My previous washes had been with chilly, cloudy water. It was many years ago that I’d managed to dip into a lukewarm tub, and even that certainly was not as clean as this. Heck, it even smelled good. A little minty, with another fragrance I didn’t recognize, however I was far from complaining at this point.

I ducked below the surface to immerse myself in the full cozy glow. My paws brushed the soap into my feathers and I relished the ideal of feeling cleaner than I’d been for far too long.

I gave a gentle sigh and relaxed slowly, closing my eyes with a ruffle of my feathers whilst the healing comfort soaked through to my core. I did manage to calm myself a little, except for the few odd reflections that slipped through the net, my fall out with Gypsy and the missing Snip being at the forefront of these.

Overlook had left shortly after delivering me to the bath house, claiming that he had important Overstallion business to oversee. He hadn’t entrusted me to be completely alone in this vast metropolis, having left the stimulating Chief of the guards to keep an eye on me. The excuse was that he could show me about town when I was done meditating in my bowl of joy, but I believed the true intention was to make sure I wasn’t here to cause trouble. The mien of utter disgust from the stallion watching me when I peeked seemed to confirm my theory.

I provided him with a glorious beam.

“I have to say, Pro… Procrew… Crusty,” Crusty growled at me for giving him a new handle, “you do not hold a conversation as well as your master does.” My body slipped down voluntarily into my moist, heated bed. Without deliberately doing so, my paw moved between my legs and took the pleasure to that easy to reach, and yet so pleasing, extra level.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he grumbled after a lifetime to think of a sensible comeback.

“Don’t be silly, the Overstallion invited me to come for a bath and I have to say it is~”

“You do not belong in this Stable.” He continued, raising his voice over me, although he didn’t need to do so, “None of you outsiders do, and when I have enough evidence to prove it, you will all be going back out into it. Whole or as dust, it matters not to me.” The memory of Rose Bed poofing into a pile of jade shavings jumped the queue of my concerns, causing my gleeful grinning to slacken.

“That’s not very friendly of you,” I sniveled effectively.

“I have no interest in friendship with any of you,”

“What happened to ‘the olive branch of kindness between our two Stable communities.’ Maybe you’d like me if you got to know me.” I’m not sure why that tickled my arousal in the way that it did, but making him seeth venomously it made me feel warm and fuzzy deep within my navel. I did not get chance to enjoy it.

His hooves smashed down by both sides of my head and he furiously demanded my attention, ceasing my wandering mind.

“You are not a Stable dweller. I know it, the Overstallion knows it, even if he infuriatingly denies it. A single griffon is one thing. But for you to retain your family accent, after living your whole life in a Stable with ponies who do not speak the same dialect, is an impossibility.”

“My family were murdered, Raiders d-destroyed everything…” until this moment, I had no idea I still had water works. Outside of my performance, I was impressed with my ability. ‘Crusty’ was not.

“I will find the evidence I need, griffon. Mark my words~” Something fizzed and dashed, then a fresh female voice rose from his PipBuck.

“Officer A-One-One-Three to Chief-Officer Procrustean, do you read, over?” He paused one last time over me to snort angrily, before he forced himself to step away. His magic lifted a wired clip from his Stable manacle and plugged it into his ear. He grunted an affirmative and listened to it from the privacy of one of his auricles. I didn’t try to follow it, I was still analyzing the threats he’d posed to me.

I did not realize he’d pushed a button that ended my orgasmic dip before I’d reached a satisfying climax until the chill reached below my fur. I had a film of bubbles draped over me as the water burped from the plug hole and my feathers still felt uncomfortably half-cleaned. I reacted too slowly to stop the towel slapping me in the face.

“Dry yourself now. I’m to assign you to a citizen who has offered to be your personal guide and, urg, ‘friend’ from the Stable. Hurry up about it,” Thankfully, he slipped out of the room after my orders so that I could dry in peace. I muttered a few angry words and lamented the orgasm I had been robbed of, whilst rubbing away the suds from my fur.

“Where the fuck is my stuff?” My complaint came as I tried to return to my armor and, predominantly, a beloved cardinal bandana I’d worn for a decade. Instead, it had been replaced with the bland wardrobe of Stabletec, with the device for my foreleg to complete the ensemble. The Chief Officer gave a dangerous growl, which I retorted. He did not know how much that bandana meant to me.

“It has been locked down to be checked. You’ll get it back in a few days,” came the response through locked teeth.

“You’re paying me in cats, you bastard!”

“What?”

“You’re cheating me from my stuff and I want it back.” I stamped my demand with a paw.

“A. Few. Days.” We declared a full war between our stares, which lasted a discomforting ten seconds before I eventually withdrew.

“Fine. A few days, but I do not wear your junk in replacement of my own.” I puffed myself up to height, only for him to sneer at me.

“Then you’ll walk Stable T-Thirty naked,” I found it amusingly unusual that he found the suggestion humiliating to me, agreeing cheekily to the terms.

“I don’t know why you imagine that to be a threat, we walk around with nothing on all the… what are you doing with your horn?” I noticed the light gleaming from the bone pointing out of the top of his helmet. It was too late to comprehend his plan.

Cli-Clack!

I felt the unfamiliar pressure around the cuff of my left foreleg and lifted the fully sealed PipBuck into view. He provided me a sadistic grin and tapped on the screen as it flared to life for the first time.

“It must go everywhere your leg goes, so do try not to lose that particular limb or else we will have to come find you,” he relished having the upper hoof on me with a deep whicker, then he turned to the door.

“Come on, griffon, let us see if the Stable’s nudist colony is accepting new members.” His magic snagged me around the middle before I could protest further, and I was dragged along behind him on my backside.

I began to feel the shame before we had even reached the destination Procrustean had in mind. This was insane, in the Wastelands there were no end of ponies who wandered with nothing but a saddle bag on if they were lucky. In Stable T-Thirty, this aspect was flipped on it head, and I was gasped at by the prudish inhabitants for not wearing the garments of their people.

At first it was hilarious, especially when heads spun away in revulsion and foal’s eyes were covered. Then it began to get creepy and unsettling. By the time we reached our destination, it felt demeaning and isolating to be different to every pony else. It felt like I had been born in the wrong set of fur and feathers.

Begrudgingly, I was thankful when Crusty led me through a set of double doors, out of the public viewing. Signs everywhere told me this was Warehouse Seven, a building as tall as any atrium I’d been in before, sparsely decorated and still spotless. Dull concrete walls with a line of windows before it reached the ceiling, and three walkways leading to other, smaller rooms. There were enough lights to see where you were putting your feet, but compared to the cityscape behind me, this felt cold and unwelcoming. I’d seen a prison once, and this reminded me of it, which was a perception I shivered at after the Chief-Officer’s earlier cautions.

I was somewhat uncomfortable seeing my own people in this room. The anxiety that one might accidentally lift the veil on our true identities grew with each passing minute that I was under duress of Mr. High-and-Mighty himself. I kept my head forward and kept padding along.

Bunk beds had been laid out around the perimeter, each looking pleasant compared to the tainted mattresses and solid floors outside, although none of them held a candle to the bed I’d had in the hospital ward. Shiny silver tables dressed the center of the main floor, filled with food that was already being devoured with the wasteland rats I’d been hanging out with for so long.

I could see that Overlook had paired my fellow ‘Stable Fifty-Four denizens’ with members of Stable T-Thirty. Although all were dressed in a singular costume, you could tell the ruffians from the innocents just by seeing how eager, happy and scrupulous they looked. Which pony was doing the most talking was another key factor, although one couple broke that mold and I was not surprised to notice who it was.

Elm watched me stride past as he continued to chat away to a subsurface native. I did not need to look at him again to know he kept glancing across at me for several minutes. He had every opportunity to join me, but I believe the reason he didn’t is because he knew exactly what I would have in store for him when he did.

“Your bunk,” my chaperon announced as we came to a stop in the corner. I examined it thoughtfully.

“No mint?”

“What?”

“I read in a book once that before the war they used to lay a mint on the pillow, aye?” I wasn’t prepared for Procrustean to give a grunt of cynical laughter at that.

“You read?” He didn’t give me time to answer before he turned to a fellow officer, who had been feverishly taking notes as soon as I’d stood by my bunk.

“See that she stays until a pony is assigned to her and- No!!!” The bark he made stopped me from inspecting my bed and made me spin sharply. I quickly assuming our cover had been blown and that the entirely good folk of Stable T-Thirty would shortly turn into a mass of fearful hellhounds, livid at our infiltration.

Instead, it was a mare who was barely past her teenage years, that had made the Chief Officer cry out in annoyance. She was happily levitating neatly wrapped parcels with sparkling pink bows to the newcomers. It seemed like she was talking or interrupting them in mid-conversation, but then I saw that she was pressing each box to their noses and mouthing “thank you” over and over until they said it back to her. Only when she received a polite response, would she squeeze out a toothy smile and carry on.

“No, no, no, no! Molasses Candy, what are you doing in here?” observing somepony else winding up my tormentor without having said a single word yet pleased me greatly, but it was short lived as she cowered under his shadow. Somehow, her voice still jingled like a Hearth-warming bell when she spoke.

“Treats! They’re new ponies and I wanted to treat them to some of my treats! Treats of treats which will treat them to~”

“Stop.” His foreleg pushed up his helmet to rub his forehead, “we do not need the… these ponies to spend their first days in our Stable suffering from irregular bowel movements thanks to your… concoctions.” The words were spluttered out like a bad bite of a spoiled apple. Those close enough to overhear groaned and spat out any of the ‘treats’ they’d been eating from their boxes.

Molasses’ ears tumbled.

“No, but, I’ve perfected them since then, they’re not bad ones anymore they’re~” She began, trying to patch things up between my colleagues and stallion with a hard-on for authority. His hoof lifted, and he blasted his orders for her to leave once more with the inclusion of imprisonment for the day if she did not. I could not watch any longer.

“Molasses Candy?” I asked, with a cheekiness risen in my voice, “isn’t that the mare the Overstallion assigned to be my Stable-pal, aye?” Crusty’s seething hatred returned to me, but I could handle it.

“No. She is not, griffon.”

“Oh, no, I’m plum certain she is, but aye, if you’re unsure, we could always go have a powwow with Mr Overlook, if you so desire it,” Lord Dickweed of Dickweedington knew I had him beaten there. With our party currently being treated like royalty, Overlook would have no choice to grant such a simple request and the Chief of security had no leg to stand on.

He looked between us with such sharp jerks of his head, that I heard the bones click in his neck. Finally, he gave me a wide, false smile.

“Very well. Molasses Candy! You are now assigned to be the representative of Stable T-Thirty for Ms. Crow. If you leave her side for one moment, you will both be imprisoned. Am I clear? Officer Bones, ensure this is noted down,” Before he left, Procrustean leaned in to me.

“I am sure I will be seeing you very soon, griffon.”

“Aye, I’ve had a blast. On our next date, we should feed the ducks followed by a nice candlelit dinner. And don’t forget my bandana!” I hollered after the uppity pony storming away. Sniggering, I turned around to crawl into my bunk.

A moving force snatched me clean from my paws and flung me to the floor. I rose my talons to defend myself, only to discover that my attacker was the chocolate colored mare with the caramel glazed mane that I had defended.

“YAY! Friendship buddies, forever!” she squealed at a frequency high enough to wake the dogs in New Appleloosa. I rubbed my auricular beneath my feathers and squinted at her.

“Get off,” she followed my demand as cheerfully as a baby goat but continued nuzzling as I got up myself. The aforementioned-officer Bones donated a rueful nod when I caught her gaze.

“My apologies for the Chief Officer. He can be bullish with, well, everypony.”

“Don’t sweat it, Boney.” I patted her shoulder and let her do her job, cautioning Molasses every time the chirpy little creature got too close to me. Unlike her moment of fear of the authoritarian stallion who’d put her down, she seemed quite content to let me berate her. Soon, the security personnel had done her job and even promised to see if she could return my bandana when I mentioned my gripe about it.

I have no shame in mentioning that I tilted my head to glance at her flank as she trotted away. It was tight, but I imagined that I could tease her to loosen it. With Gypsy now in my bad books, I had found during my bath that I was in sore need of new material for the wank bank.

My daydream was interrupted by my new puppy. Molasses was still desperately trying to give away the rest of her boxes of indulgences, but now the other ponies were refusing and even throwing them back at her.

“Hey, that’s not very nice, why don’t you~”

“Molasses! Come over here a moment,” saving her rear was fast becoming a new occupation for me as she skipped over with a friendly hello, as though the last twenty seconds had not happened. I collected one of her boxes and showed it to her.

“These ponies are used to being given poisonous things – no, don’t tear up, I’m sure these are fine, aye, hen? Instead, watch me and you might learn something…” I took the full tray from her and wandered out into the hall, speaking to Molasses as though I was expecting nobody else to be listening in.

“You sure I can have the rest of these, Mole? That’s so sweet of you. I’m going to put them under here so no pony else eats them.” I slid them onto a chair, pushed it under the table, and then returned to her. I had hardly shown my back to the tray when a sneaky thief was already pilfering the boxes I’d attempted to conceal.

Mole’s eyes were glittering in awe as I returned casually to her with a prudent smirk.

“That’s how it’s done. These ponies have had to learn to want what others have, so if they think it’s worth something, they’ll take it.”

“You called me Mole!” She bounced from hoof to hoof like a canine in dire need of a restroom break. The cry was so misplaced in my lesson that I could only give her a puzzled shrug.

“Nopony has ever given me a nice nickname before!” I could not stop her giving me yet another embrace, this one even including a peck on the cheek, before I pushed her off.

“Hey, now!” I wiggled my claw at her with a frustrated huff, “we need to set some ground rules here! No PDOAs, that means public displays of affection, aye? You do what I say, when I say it, and if I say zip it, you shut your maw. Got it?”

“Ooh! Roleplay!” She gave an infant’s giggle and saluted me, “Aye Aye, Captain!” Part of me wanted to laugh with her, but I just rolled my eyes and slinked into my bunk to lie down. Out in the wastes, if you weren’t moving, fighting, eating, shagging, or fighting a lot more, then you spent the time sleeping. There wasn’t much else to do out there.

“Why don’t you buzz off to find somepony else to bother for a while, aye? I’ll call when I need you,” I tucked my head under my wing and waited. The sound of hooves leaving never came.

“Are you deaf?”

“I am not allowed to leave you,” peeped the tiny voice, “Chief-Officer Procrustean told us so. We’ll get thrown in to jail.” I let out a long sigh and rolled over, staring at the springs above me for an idea to get me out of this. None came.

“Fine. Alright. Aye.” I sat up and slipped back away from the small piece of refuge I had. “What do you do for fun around here?” She attempted to pull all the air within the warehouse into her lungs.

“I know! I know! I know! I knooooow!” She skipped, hopped, twirled and scampered to the doorway, halting when she saw I was not racing after her. “Come on, Captain! Let’s skedaddle!”

Since the only other past-time I could suggest was seeing if I could punch Deadwood’s head through a wall, I decided to let my legs follow lazily after her.

<sub>Footnote: Quest Complete - Bed, Bath and Befriend
Quest Perk added - Mend a Friend - Healing potions are 10% more effective on party members

Quest Begun - Mole’s Hole</sub>

Author's Notes:

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

Song for this chapter; White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane

Imagine you finish writing a particularly dark chapter of a story. You're proud of it and excited about where it is going, but you also feel concerned that the tale you're going to tell will only get darker with the current characters that you have. You feel a sinking sensation as you wonder whether you are piling too much bleakness into a tale that you want people to enjoy.

That's where I was at with the "Way In" chapter. Then I get a message from a friend of mine. We used to play as members of the altered-six, and I would be Bubble Berry. I was reminded of the fun I would have bringing him to life, and how he would make me feel better after a rough day.

I was excited, but I also realized I couldn't introduce Bubble Berry into this story, i had to build somepony new with enough of his idealistic nature to be a unique character.

Enter onto stage Doomande. Not only have they been helping with some awesome feedback and nitpicks for me to improve upon, but they notes that there is another 'Little Birds' song the I had not known about. I listen to it, and one line stands out to me;
"Find molasses candy"

I had found her. From there, the little brown munchkin stepped into the light with a squeaky giggle and an encouraging sense of endearment.

I also have to thank my friend Private Joke, who let me introduce her and a few of the other cast member to gauge her reaction. I wasn't disappointed.

Thank you again for reading up to this moment. Ask me anything.
If this is when you leave us, goodbye and safe travels.

If you're still strapped in for the ride, see you in the next chapter.

All good things,
Duskhoof

Entry 007 - Mole and the Minstrels (Part One)

Before I abdicate my throne, I wanted to speak with you one last time to offer some sense of hope for the future of all beings, not just pony kind. In the past, we were all capable of the desire to live with and help each and every one, no matter what lay on their fur or body and no matter what they called themselves. I wish and dream that one day those ideals return to us.

Entry 007 – Mole and the Minstrels (Part One)

Insanity found a small place in my brain to make camp and start a fire during the first hour spent with my fresh-faced companion around town.

Ponies were going about their ordinary lives, from foals to adults, flower sellers to grocers to bakers, maintenance ponies to lawyers. She acted as though she recognized everyone that passed us in the streets. It grew to the point that I wasn’t sure whether she was talking to me, them, or herself.

“Oh, golly! The Minstrels are coming back today! Hello! That’s going to be a lot of fun. Hey, it’s you! How are the kids? Do you know many songs? Hi there! If you were an onion, what kind of onion would you be? I’m a Vidalia but I think you’re more of a Walla Walla. How you doing, Mr. Piemaker! Are you always going to be naked? I don’t mind, but if ponies ask I’d like to know what to tell them because…”

Mole was chattier than a fried chem-addict in an empty chemist store. Coupled with the repetitive stares of the public at my nude feathers and fur, and an itch developing behind the light weight but irritating clamp around my leg, I was really struggling to have a good day up to this point. I was actually starting to lose my cool.

“… For a while I thought I was a nudist, but it turned out I was just forgetful.” The cheerful little fuzz ball chirped, on my decision to stand bare naked against all that was good in the name of fashion and degradation.

“It wasn’t my choice,” I said, before my mind corrected me, “I mean, it was my choice, but it’s more complicated than that.”

I stopped as my PipBuck made yet another noise, distracting me for a moment. I was being congratulated every few steps for discovering this, that, or the other. The latest was “Twilight’s Corner’.

I peeped in, seeing that it was just a library. The back of Mole’s head then blocked my view and she cheerfully greeted the librarian inside. She giggled at the hush she received whilst quietly trying to introduce me.

This ditzy little unicorn was friends with everypony, although not necessarily everypony’s friend. Many of the ponies she introduced me to either humored her or looked at her with reserved distain. I couldn’t blame them, I wasn’t immediately interested in being friends with a noisy, cuddly critter who, I assumed, had no idea what hung between a stallion’s legs.

“Are you Procrustean’s special somepony?” Oh, good Goddesses! That was not something I ever wanted to be suggested, by anypony, ever again in a million years.

“Shit! No! Why would you even think that?”

“You said you enjoyed your last date and you were looking forward to the next one,” She offered innocuously. I rolled my eyes, something that would be habitual with the kind of whimsical comments that escaped from Mole’s mouth.

“That was called banter. It is what you do when somebody, who is a prick like Procrustean, really needs winding up.”

“Winding up?”

“When they deserve to leave more annoyed than they were when they met you.”

“Oh,” She paused a moment, “I think I already do that with most people.”

“I can see that,” I confirmed.

We ascended a ramp onto the next level of the multi-layer city. The suspension of my disbelief was improving in each step, although it came with a loathing for the bumping, shuffling crowds and insistence to make as much noise as possible to make up for the extra space.

I was accepting that this was less of a Stable and more like Town Tee-Thirty with homes and streets and shops, but some parts about that were still irking me. Some more solvable than others.

I found the cobbles harder to walk on than the grass, rock and dirt of the wider world. They were slippery, irregular and partially-elliptical. It became so uncomfortable to walk on that I accepted my still aching wing and leaped up to hover over Mole, something she happily marveled at.

“Wow! Look at you up there, Captain Flappity flap flap!”

“Mole?”

“Aye Captain?”

“Zip it.”

“Aye aa~ opps! I mean~” she ran her hoof over her lips quickly, “mmmf mmm mm!” It was a comedic sight, and a I let myself chuckle shortly. It made her smile, but I didn’t let her relish on it.

An unfamiliar mare was in the path, having spotted me and flagged me down. I landed in front of her, glad to at least see somepony not gasping at my lack of attire.

“Oh, hello, I’m Semi Skimmed,” she hurried her introduction, not seeming too concerned with who I was, “you came from outside, right?”

“I…”

“Tell me, have you seen this mare out there? She ascended a year ago…” She thrust a picture into my face. On the glossy image was a blue mare with a lighter shade of aquamarine in her mane, grinning from ear to ear and a floating teapot in her magical grasp. I shook my head slowly.

“Um, no, sorry, I…”

“Are you sure?” she pressed with a little more urgency, “look again, could you?” The annoyance rose in me when the photo was shoved against my eyeballs. I wasn’t going to miraculously remember a pony I never met just because their face was shoved into mine. I ripped the portrait from my face and waved it at her.

“Listen, lady. I’m certain I’d remember somepony this clean out there, okay? The only ponies wandering through Equestria today are filthy, ugly and out of practice when it comes to teatime etiquette, aye?” I gave the picture one last look before I tossed it back to her not caring that she had to scoop it quickly off the floor.

“Why would I see a stable dweller out there anyway? None of you have stepped out of that door. I’d suggest you keep it that way, aye? Your blue friend is probably just hiding from whack jobs like you.” It was mean of me to say, but with the ache in my head and the prickling behind my PipBuck, I wasn’t in the mood to play nice.

I gave her a sharp nod and kept moving, even when she barked bitch at me from behind. She was allowed that one. I’d have made sure she didn’t get chance to say it a second time if I wasn’t anxious that Procrustean could be watching. In my mind, I already had him down as the chief culprit for arranging this mare in my path just to have an excuse to point a hoof at me when I floored her.

“Crazy mare, huh, Mole? Did she think I was born in a Balefire cloud? What made her think I’d have seen anyone from here out there?” I got a squeak and a couple of muffled sounds as the brown horse attempted to communicate through closed lips. I held up my claw to silence her and looked to my strapped-up leg.

My PipBuck had buzzed again, and not only gave me the satisfaction of relieving my itch but also offered me something instantly to my tastes.

The cartoon pony on my device was still waving next to the name of my destination as I made a beeline towards it.

Below that, in red, flashed,

“Mmpf mm mmmm!” Groaned my vexing little barnacle as she scampered after me, struggling through the throng of ponies.

“What’s that? Next time try speaking with your mouth open.” I sneered down at her.

“I said, this isn’t exactly wha~”

“Ah, ah. Zip, Mole.” Frustrated whinnies followed me, but I didn’t let it stop me from arriving at my desired destination. I’d found my idea of fun, my calling in the Stable.

As I pushed through the door eagerly, the jingling bell above me was transformed into the magical twinkle of a portal to paradise. Inside, row after row after row, several shelves high, of bottles and barrels of alcoholic beverages. I had died and gone somewhere I could finally get cheerfully rat-arsed drunk.

Ahead, a stallion called my attention to him with a wave whilst the cappuccino furred filly follower wandered in behind me. I could almost feel the desperate expressions she was making behind me as she uncomfortably looked around the store.

“Oh, hey! It’s you!”

I stumbled back in alarm, bumping my hind into Mole as he vaulted the counter. Without missing a step, he hurried over to us, snatched my talon and shook it fiercely. His crimson ‘tache bounced heavily as he squeezed it and I stared at him in shock, whilst the excitement of meeting me never faded from his face.

“You’re the griffon! I’m Oaky Hopscotch, welcome to our store. Great day for a Minstrel parade, isn’t it? It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he looked at me again as though he was seeing me for the first time, “I see you’ve decided to go… naked?” From the back of that dropped a nervous laugh, “Oh, ha-ha, I guess that’s a griffon thing? Come, come, take a seat, my wife is just talking to another member of your stable right here.”

My heart jumped into my throat the moment Oaky Hopscotch mentioned somepony I should know was here. As I moved around the aisle towards the back counter, it only partially dropped back to my chest when I saw who they were referring to. The limp maned mare with tear tattoos turned on a barstool between a second stallion and a curly maned lady.

“Crow!” She leaped up to hug me and my body hunched to hug her back, both of us knowing this was mostly for the show of the others here. Only one of us squeezed back regardless.

“Hey, Poxy. How you doing?”

“I’m amazing, kid,” she laughed, patting me a bit sharply on my back, “we survived, we made it. Can you believe it?” She sighed, giving me more of an affectionate nuzzle than I was interested in receiving.

“Aye... aye. We’re the lucky ones,” I mumbled, using my new-found powers of acting to perform another show of mourning. Mole gave a soft apologetic sound and rubbed my back, whilst Poxy used it as an excuse to squash me closer.

“S’okay, I’m h’okay... who’s these fine fellows you’ve been befriending?”

She quickly pranced back to the front desk to introduced me to Mr. and Mrs. Hopscotch, first names Oaky and Smokey, and their business partner, Whiskey Jack. Smokey the wife of the fella who pounced me before I’d gotten a foot through the door, whilst Whiskey was Poxy’s minder, although I felt somewhat jealous of her tour guide considering the au pair fate landed me with.

“This is Molasses Candy.”

“She calls me Mole!” called out the named filly, “and I call her Captain!” Then, with a silencing look from me, she re-invisi-zipped her mouth back up and shrugged to the others.

“We do know Molasses,” I could tell Smokey was not pleased to see this pony in her shop and I waited for her to send the oddball home, but instead she added, “don’t touch any bottles this time, young lady. We don’t want a repeat of last time.”

“I won’t ask,” I teased, looking to Mole as she pawed at the imaginary fastenings on her mouth. However, our hosts evidently wanted me to know just what I’d let myself in for, thanks to a misjudged sense of heroism.

“There was a group of fillies, some of Molasses’ sisters, and she’d just become of age for a tasting session. The others handled their samples without any complications, but this Miss Candy wasn’t content with what we put in front of her. She kept mixing, sipping, grumbling, and retrying. Soon she was getting bottles of liquor we hadn’t even suggested to her and was adding it to her concoction. We just could not stop her if we tried.

“Eventually, she slammed the last empty glass down, yelled ‘I’ve made it,’ for the entire Stable to hear, and chucked her guts up over our nice, clean floors.”

“Ruined a real good rug,” lamented Oaky, glaring at Mole. Something unusual inside me encouraged me to stand up for the screw loose kid once more, but I was learning to ignore this strange moralistic inner-monologue I was developing. Even if the cocoa pony’s pitiful droop did bite me in the emotions.

Poxy wrapped a leg around me.

“That is hilarious! ‘Mind if I borrow my friend a moment? I’ll bring her back. Could you pour her a... which number was it? Fifty-eight! Thank you, Whiskers.”

She pulled me over to the window of the shop, which was loaded with ornaments, old bottles and paraphernalia, where the group couldn’t hear us whisper, then she threw me into another cuddle.

“This should make ‘em think we’re just having a moment,” at least, those were the words she used, but every crush told another story, “Captain, eh? Kinky.”

“She calls me that, I didn’t ask her to.” I replied coolly, trying not to catch Mole’s eye. Something gave me the feeling that if any of these ponies could lip read, she would be the one with the ability.

“Have you bucked her yet?”

“Buck, no! For starters, only met her half an hour ago. Secondly, she’s not my type and thirdly, she’s bucking mental. She’s been play-acting pirates like we’re bucking five-years-old.” Weirdly, I felt as bad about making Poxy laugh at the expense of Mole as I did about letting the Hopscotchs belittle her. I had no idea what was happening to me.

“Then she’s probably a virgin... what a treat,” the leading mare waggled her eyebrows at me. I’m certain she kept talking to stop me from arguing further.

“I feel like I need to tell you that this place is amazing, Crow,” that made me look at her with renewed confusion. She was serious.

“It’s different, aye, but~”

“Buck.” She rolled her eyes, “I knew it. You don’t accept gift horses when they stare you in the mouth. You could have me, but you drool over Breeze. You could have that baby-faced cutie over there, but you’re hung up on what she isn’t in relation to you. You -we- could live here for the rest of our lives. Safe, well-fed and together, but Breeze told me about your spat with her over how Elm got us in here. As far as I recall, you were championing the idea the other night, so you need to change your tune.”

“Change my tune?” I glared at her, “at any point, any of our ponies could spoil the secret, and get us all in the pig shitting-”

“The only one in danger of doing that is you, Crow,” she offended as well as interrupted me, and in so many words I told her as much. It didn’t stop her verbally slapping me back.

“Every other member of our team is sucking up to these stable-dwellers, even Deadwood. Everypony expect for you. Get with the crowd, Crow. I love you. I don’t want to throw you under the apple-cart.”

The last flicker of a yearning yet treacherous look in her eyes stopped me from launching a fresh bout of righteous fury upon her. I could do nothing but gawp as she skipped back, becoming the embodiment of her stable dweller persona in the time it took her to twist and face her new buddies.

"Sorry about that. We have lost so much..." sighed Poxy, spreading the grief on thick and allowing the others to feel true sorrow for our fake loss.

"Not at all," Mr. Hopscotch said, sharing out tumblers of golden swishing liquid. I took it, still in a slightly confused fume at the current events. Why was I now the liability, when there were other raiders willing to buck or kill in the public eye quite happily? Something was screwed about this game we were all playing, and it was frustrating me that I didn't understand it.

So, I did the next best thing. I looked to my spectators, and then I stepped in to play dangerously.

"I want us all to raise a drink..." I stopped with my jar above my head and glanced across the room at the youngest mare, "can we all get a drink here, please?"

"Oh, well, Molasses doesn't..." Mrs. H began, but I was not going to lose two battles of words today.

"Molasses would learn to drink sensibly with practice," I poured so much sugar into my sarcasm that it sounded more like a friendship lesson. I watched them uneasily find sense in my reasoning, the ponies floated something that looked like liquid chocolate to my new accessory. Mole took it, blinked at it, then beamed to sweetest, happiest expression I'd ever seen on anypony as she politely thanked our hosts. It was as though this was the first time she'd been spoken to or acknowledged as a living, thinking pony.

"Thank you," my glass rose, "I would like to toast our fallen comrades, our lost families, and our absent friends." I sniffed for effect, even rubbed a damp eye, and everypony joined the tribute, then drank. Some sipped, some took a mouthful. I almost swallowed mine whole, glass and all.

Oh gosh, it was good! it was really bucking good. I shared the feedback and asked if I could get a bottle, only to remember to my dismay that I wasn't going to get anywhere with no caps on me.

Clatter!

"What she said, but I’m paying for it! A bottle for my new bestie!" Mole almost yelled in Mrs. Hopscotch’s face, slamming down enough coin on the table for my request.

I'm a simple griffon. Feed me, I'll remember you. Feed me twice more, I might say hello when we pass on our journeys.

Buy me booze and I will be anything you want me to be. Best friend, Prench maid, whore, anything.

"Ahw, thanks 'bestie'! A new toast; to Mole! She might be a little screwy but yay to whiskey and drinking it!"

We tried samples and drank steadily for the next hour, whilst I learnt more than I could possibly have wanted to about my hosts.

The distillery had belonged to the Hopscotch family for five generations, ever since their first ancestor had stepped into the stable. The shop transferred to the oldest sibling each time their fathers ‘ascended’. The word tickled me at the time and I caught myself sniggering before I apologized. They didn’t get upset.

Oaky met Smokey over a bourbon seventy-six right at that very counter. A year later the pair were married. They’d been together for nearly fifteen years now with three foals together. The very idea was alien to me! I could count the number of ponies I knew who’d lived into their thirties on one foot, and they were so grizzled and broken that the kindest of creatures couldn’t love them. Seeing these two deeply besotted was disconcerting for me, I was waiting for something to ruin it.

Whiskey Jack had worked for the Hopscotchs ever since they had inherited the shop, and he’d been responsible for some of the more exotic of flavors in the store, including the chocolate liquor Mole was sipping like hot cocoa. He looked after the place when the family had to see to their foals or when they were incredibly busy. Until now, he had never met his own special somepony yet the way he looked at Poxy, I believed he might have hoped that was about to change.

The kids were nearly fully grown and would soon be due to inherit the shop. Even then that struck me as odd, with these folks still so young and in no danger as far as I could see. I saw two of their offspring bustle in to stack shelves and serve customers, but I never recollected their names. Half-grown yet so responsible.

Poxy opened herself to these ponies next, sloshing her whiskey around in her glass. Some of the things she told them belonged to her fabricated life but interwoven into it like a good jumper were strands of truth.

“I had a half-brother, we were really close. Different moms, same dad. When we were foals, we’d write each other small notes and place them around our home where we knew the other would find them with a bit of effort. It became a game trying to find them all.” When Poxy had developed more confidence in me, she had divulged into a few details about her brother to me. We’d even played the same notes game together from time to time, which turned out to be a lot of fun. It wasn’t all bumping uglies and following orders between us. There was a friendship, it just wasn’t strong enough to develop.

“…But he died, trying to protect my daughter from a hellhound.” The last gulp of my current glass of whiskey caught in my throat, burning my gullet. No pony was looking at me whilst I was choking thanks to that additional revelation to all of us.

“I lost both in barely a second, and all that-that thing left me with, was this,” she showed them the deep purple streaks along her left shoulder. Her face showed the genuine hurt buried within her, yet she couldn’t bring herself to tears anymore. Her soul had drained itself dry long ago.

This was the first time she had confessed that she had been a mother in front of me. She’d had the confidence to tell me about her abusive mother, the hit-and-miss problems on their farm, even the incestuous love her brother and her shared. It wasn’t hard to guess who her daughter’s father had been.

I’d never asked how she’d gotten the scar. I’d seen it several times, but scars were part of wasteland existence. I had several on my legs alone from a rogue grenade, currently hidden under my PipBuck, and she’d never probed or questioned them. It just wasn’t a thing we did out in Greater Equestria.

“What was her name?” Smokey’s hoof stroked her shoulder. Poxy gave her a rueful smile.

“Fragile… Fragile Heart,” Smokey raised her glass and the group followed a sentimental memorial to the lost Hearts. I might have joined them subconsciously, however I found myself staring at Poxy. She turned to take a slow glimpse of me and cut me down mortally with her next words.

“She’s gone, her daddy’s gone, my brother is gone, and all I’ve ever wanted is somepony to hold me and tell me they need me again…”

Mole’s chestnut legs wrapped around her, as the mare they belonged to sobbed. Despite having not met Poxy before, she was quickly promising she’d always need her whilst sloshing her chocolate drink perilously close. Luckily, Poxy took it in good nature and smiled, patting her tenderly with appreciation. We shared another glass to remember and forget the worst of our pains in one go, and I waited for Mole to share her stories next.

“Why don’t you tell us about yourself, Crow?” Whiskey suggested with a gentle pat at my leg. I winced, but it wasn’t at the touch.

“We haven’t heard from Mole yet. I’d be extremely interested in hearing about her life,” I attempted.

“No way, Captain! I can wait, you are one hundred percentage points more interesting than me!” I let my beak break into a smile as I imagined tying and gagging the annoying little fuzzball to a railroad track, but I relented and as a substitute tried to decide what I could tell them.

“There’s really not that much to tell you about,” I took in a long breath, not looking at any of them, “my parents were heads of security at the place where we- at the stable we grew up in. Our neighbors were speaking with different dialects and my Pa was nervous that our family would lose our Trottish accent. He played Trottish recordings and comedies to me daily to make sure I never lost my way of speaking.

“Growing up, I knew I wasn’t like everypony else-”

“Because you’re a griffon?” Mole was swaying a little as she interjected, her alcoholic drink kicking in. I touched the glass so that it returned to her lips.

“Well, yes, that’s obvious. But also, because I liked fillies a lot more than I liked colts,” I froze as I caught our guests gasping slightly at that. I had heard intakes like that before. I’d heard them all my life.

“I like fillies too!” cheered Mole, splashing her drink across the floor. She’d completely misunderstood my admission, but as Mrs. Hopscotch hurried to clean up the spillage, she recommended that maybe our youngest friend should stop drinking now. As a matter of fact, she said it was time to ‘knock it on the head’ and I only assumed she meant Mole’s drinking. I still got the hint and finished my stories with an embellished one about owning a cat who could open any door.

I thought I’d lost another room by speaking before thinking, but they seemed to warm to me again after a heartwarming lie or two, superseded by a lesson in how to speak Trottish. Hearing them all cry, “You're a wee scunner,” and “Yer bum's oot the windae!” was the funniest experience of my life up to that point.

I was starting to understand why the trip into the stable had been worth the struggles and betrayal.

Mole never got around to telling us much about herself in the store. The Hopscotchs didn’t seem too interested in including her in their meet and greet, but there was something in my head that was warming to the friendly loner, despite her spasmodic attitude to everything and unpredictable behavior.

I guess that is why I suggested we should go do what she wanted after I finished my last glass of scotch.

Poxy offered herself to me again on the whiskey house’s doorstep.

I refused, again.

We were all merry from the consumption of alcohol in our systems, so it wasn’t any surprise that Poxy leaned to me and murmured coitus. The look she gave me, after I declined her seductive whisper into my ear, was what I perceived to be crushed and disappointed.

It was a heavy weight in my swimming mind and I quickly added a reason. I couldn’t go anywhere without Mole, and I didn’t want a traumatized filly running around Stable Tee-Thirty telling folk that all “Stable fifty-four” ponies did was buck each other all day.

My old raiding leader looked like she didn’t believe the lie and I could tell she wanted to say more, but she was interrupted by an offer from Mole for her and her stallion friend to join us. Poxy’s eyes turned us over in her mind, and when she sighed exasperatedly, it was aimed at me rather than my tag along.

“No, thank you, Mole. Whiskey has offered to show me something else.” If I had missed any other sign that she was threatening to replace me as her point of infatuation, this was the big flashing red light. Whiskey Jack either didn’t know or didn’t care as he responded by hugging the grey-maned mare by her shoulders and giving us a dirty wink.

Goofily, Mole gave him a wink back and cheerily told them to enjoy themselves, promising that we would be having far more fun with a one-hundred percent guarantee. I didn’t have the same high hopes as her, I was in as great a need for sexual relief as a bear was in need to shit in the woods. I just couldn’t let myself get into a place where Poxy felt roses would grow amongst weeds in this relationship.

We went our separate ways, after one last punishing gaze from my commanding Raider. I hurried to look the other way as we stumbled along the bumpy roads towards Mole’s chosen destination. My head tried to dwell on the last draining conversation, but my PipBuck had other ideas.

“I cannot stop it jingling at me!”

I shook the glorified watch with a groan of irritation as we stopped on a corner. Mole’s ears were ever so slightly bigger than ordinary ponies, enough that it was noticeable to me when she swayed her head, from left to right, to the overly cheerful plinky-plonking tune from my PipBuck. It took a few shoves to get her to look at it.

“Ohhhhh! I know this one! Twist this, turn that, boop and~” my arm sang happily to her and she joined in with it delightedly.

“You did it, you did it, you really, really did it! You’re the best, you’re great! Never, ever forget~! Yaaaaaaay! ”

I snatched my weighted appendage away from her as she clopped a hoof in applause, grinning from ear to ear.

Looking down, I could see that the jolly green avatar on my PipBuck was dancing around a flapping ticket promising me, “ONE free Ice Cream! Subject to availability, terms and conditions apply.”

“Why?” I couldn’t get my mind into gear to ask a smarter question. Luckily, the mare understood and nickered gleefully.

“It’s the ‘PipBuck Boop’ game! You gotta twist the knobs when it tells you to and boop the button, so that you can get a special prize!” Her nodding was so fierce that it was making me feel slightly seasick. I grasped her head and she see-sawed ever so slightly on the spot.

“How does everypony deal with this noisy piece of shit here?” I knocked it against the wall a couple of times, and I’m certain all it did was giggled at me. Mole mimicked it.

“Oh, no, you’re lucky! That game is not on the adult PipBucks, only on the FunBucks like yours, for foals! Most ponies grow out of their first PipBuck. Mine doesn’t have any of the cute little games that yours does anymore,” she released a sullen lament, pouting, “I miss my FunBuck.”

"Fun... Buck...." Seething, I reeled my leg back and threw it towards the wall with more force this time. The blow did nothing to the device, and as an added insult sent a painful shockwave along my arm, making me squawk in fury and glare at my tingling claws.

It should not have been a surprise. Crusty seemed to have a vendetta against me from the moment my feet stepped on stable Tee-thirty’s brushed metal doorstep.

This, however.

This was ridiculous, and petty, and offensive. It was the latest nail on a spiky bed of intimidation he was making for me, to buck me out of his house, and I knew it. I growled, pulling back to go for another whack, which was quickly grabbed and halted by Molasses.

“That’s not a PipBuck game!” She whimpered, cuddling the Foal-sized wearable terminal with her lobes flat. Maybe it was just the comprehension that my anger had spooked her, but she looked really cute with her face full of worry and innocence. It was enough to reduce my frustration to a low boil of rage.

“I have a child’s plaything strapped to my arm that is itching like mad. I have ponies gasping at me because I’m not in a stupid jumpsuit. I have the biggest dick in this stable controlling my every move and~” I took a deep breath and sighed, shaking my head. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I felt her hooves slip away from my leg.

“You’ve got me following you around instead of your much cooler stable buddies?” Damnit, that voice. She’d use it many times after this, and it always had the same effect. After everything else that I’d gone through so far, I really wanted this kid on my side.

“Mole…” She shook her head and turned, walking a few steps away from me. Not far enough to make me chase after her. Looking back now, I don’t think she really wanted to get away from me. I took her shoulder and spun her around, telling her what I believed she needed to hear.

“You are cool. You bought me whiskey and helped me with this heap of hellhound dung. I’ve just been outside of a stable for too long I guess. Radiation has melted a bit of my brain.”

“Mouse poop,” she retorted softly, “I know what ponies think of me. I’m dumb and loopy and a spaz.”

“Well, yes. You are,” I watched her deflate at the first words, “you’re a weird little… word that rhymes with runt, but that makes you far more interesting than any scavvy in the Wastes that I’ve ever met. I admit, I don’t know how to understand you yet, but I guess I want to try~AAGH! Hugging!”

“Not sorry!” She sang, her mood changing at the drop of a cap as she squeezed those legs around my neck. Damnit, she even smelled of chocolate. I resisted a lick.

Instead, I demanded she took me wherever her little heart was set upon before she suffocated me. She responded with a cheery “Aye-aye Captain,” before clutching me and galloping.

Author's Notes:

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

Song for this chapter; "Life's a Happy Song" from "The Muppets" soundtrack Listen to it fifteen times and you might actually get into Mole's mentality...

Big thanks to Private Joke for letting me know when to stop writing this chapter.

Thank you again for reading up to this moment. Ask me anything.
If this is when you leave us, goodbye and safe travels.

If you're still strapped in for the ride, see you in the next chapter.

All good things,
Duskhoof