“Ha! Now that’s what this Wasteland needs; More women with spunk! ...And explosives”

Pathetic.

I had been called pathetic many times throughout my life. You could say that it had practically become a second name to me. The first time somepony had dared to call me that was on the first day of school, just over 17 years ago. One of the more bold bullies in my class whom hadn't consider the repercussions of bullying the Overstallions daughter had said I was a ‘pathetic know it all that hid behind her daddy’. I’ll be honest, that had been so long ago that I don’t even remember the bullies name.

I can remember his face though. He had a brown coat with a turquoise mane and bright orange eyes. The colour palette had looked absolutely ridiculous on him, and I had reassured myself that anyone that looked as dumb as that surely had no right to be calling me pathetic and must clearly just be insecure about them self. Goddesses I was so naive back then.

Of course, once it got out that I would never become Overmare of the Stable, that word pathetic suddenly got thrown around a lot more. I was called pathetic for cowering behind my dad, pathetic for taking my punches instead of fighting back, pathetic for trying to stand up for myself on the off chance I tried to avoid a beating, pathetic for ruining my families legacy.

That last one was what always got to me the most. I could take being a coward, I could even take a beating or two, but I couldn’t stand knowing that I had failed so many others so badly. My father had never called me pathetic, but everypony in the Stable, including myself knew full well that that was exactly what he thought of me.

And now the bullies didn’t need to worry about the repercussions of picking on the Overstallions daughter, because the sad fact was that the Overstallion simply didn’t care.

I was slammed against the Stable wall with such force I nearly dropped the small stack of papers I had been carrying in my telekinesis. I had been thrown upwards slightly, my side smashing into the wall just high enough that my hooves couldn’t touch the ground. Almost as if in a cartoon, I slowly slid down the side of the wall and lay in an aching pile on the floor.

Two ponies stood over me. A dull grey earth pony stallion with a light green mane and a silver unicorn mare with an annoyingly cute, yet intolerably smug smile. I had thought they had both looked rather attractive when I had first spotted them; not anymore though, that was for sure.

The unicorn mare’s horn flared up in a small flash of green light and ripped the stack of papers from my magic; tossing the pages about the room and scattering all of my carefully organized generator schematics. I tried to reach for the falling pieces of paper, but before I could, the earth pony bucked my in the breast and sent my flopping back onto my back, my legs flailing above me like a flipped over Radroach.

The two ponies chuckled at my display of helplessness and turned from me, walking down the hallway in the direction they had been heading before they had decided to give me a beating. As they turned the unicorn mare’s tail flicked me across the face. It wasn’t painful, but it hurt my pride like crazy.

“Your daddy is a fucking cunt,” The mare said in a mocking tone, not bothering to look back at me as they two of them left.

I rubbed my face where the tail had hit me. I could have sworn that I still felt the soft hairs that had slapped me across the face only seconds before. I began sulking about the hallway, doing my best to pick up scattered papers. I could feel tears slowly forming in my eyes, though I was unsure if they were from pain or broken pride.

“Amber? What in Luna’s name happened to you?” I heard Shade say as she approached me from the direction the two ponies had just gone. “You look like you just got ploughed a few times the wrong way.”

I looked up at her, teary eyed. I caught her worried look and returned my gaze to the papers on the floor. “Nothing, I’m fine.”

“You could have fooled me,” Shade shook her head disapprovingly, her white mane bouncing atop her head as she did. She glanced down at a bottle of whiskey she had in her possession before raising it to me. “Here, I always have some whiskey when I’m feeling down.”

I eyed the bottle suspiciously. “Um, Shade… I’m like, 11 years old?” I informed her, pushing the bottle away from me with a hoof. “I’m pretty sure dad would kill me if he found out I was drinking whiskey.”

Shade made a weird spitting noise with her mouth. “Oh please, I drank plenty of times when I was your age. Your dad won’t even know.”

“Really?” As we talked I could hear the quiet vapors of the A.A.S.S. Seeping through the ventilation system and into the air as it gave the Stable its second daily dose of nutrition. Most ponies didn’t even notice the noise that it made, it was just something I had begun to notice more after having worked with the A.A.S.S. for so long.

Shade squished up her face. “Well, he probably won't know. I mean my dad didn’t run the place and have access to all the security cameras. So it was probably easier for me to get away with.”

I took a deep sigh and floated the bottle over to me, setting down the papers with my magic to allow myself to levitate the bottle more easily. I was still working on managing to levitate more than one thing at a time. I put my eye to the bottle and looked at the liquid inside.

“Amber, time to eat up,” Shade said with a grin, her voice slightly deeper than usual.

I looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “You mean drink up? Right?” Eat up? What does that even mean?

Shade looked confused. “Nope, this is definitely food,” wait a minute. That wasn’t Shade’s voice. It was Brisk’s!

I opened my eyes to see Brisk standing over me with a large grin on his face. Of course I wasn’t a filly back in Stable 25. Goddesses, dreams felt so real sometimes.

“Talking in your sleep huh?” Brisk commented, moving away from me and to a small fire he had made in the center of the tunnel. I was surprised he had been so successful setting up the fire with all of the sewage water on the floor.

I propped myself up and looked into the fire. To my surprise I saw two long stick with skewered pieces of meat on them. “What are you doing?” I asked, eyeing the meat.

Brisk picked the two sticks up with his mouth and gave one of them to me. “It’s food, to eat and stuff.”

I stared at him blankly. “Food?” What was he talking about? That stuff ponies used to eat back before the bombs fell? Besides, weren’t ponies vegetarian or something? My stomach seemed to growl at me as I thought about it, giving me a bit of a scare. I jumped a little as it made another menacing noise. “What the fuck! I think My stomach just growled!”

Brisk chuckled. “Yeah, mine too. I’m pretty sure it’s because we’re hungry.”

I gave him another funny look. “Hungry? But the A.A.S.S. should keep us from…” I trailed off as what he was implying hit me like a brick wall. We weren’t in the Stable anymore, and we didn’t have the A.A.S.S. keeping us alive! We were going to need to eat or we would starve and die! The thought of that scared me more than the endless vast expanse of sky that hung over Manehattan.

I grabbed the stick that Brisk had held out to me and began chewing on the weird lump of meat. It was oddly stringy, but not awful. I gnawed on the meat thoughtfully for a moment, trying to figure out exactly how to properly devour it. Do you swallow it like water? How long do I need to chew it before it is ready to be swallowed.

Brisk looked at me with mild amusement, as if I had just done something really weird. I weird feeling washed over me as I began to realize exactly what I had just taking a large bite out of.

It was a Radroach head. I had just bitten, chewed and swallowed a Radroach head. I tried to spit up the meat, but it was to late. Down my throat it went.

I stared up at Brisk in horror. “Oh goddesses, why did you make me eat that?” I gasped.

He chuckled. “I didn’t make you eat anything,” he cooed, looking down at his slab of Radroach meat in disdain. “And for what it’s worth, you probably would have had to eat that anyway, so perhaps getting some down before you knew what it was wasn't the worst thing.”

He was right, of course. I looked down at the charred insect head and gulped. Welp, here goes nothing. I bent my head down and took another bite. The taste hadn’t changed, but now knowing what it was I couldn’t help but gag.

Brisk turned his nose up in disgust and began eating his Radroach meat as well, though he seemed to be a little less disgusted by it than I was.

We ate in silence for a few moments, not really knowing what to say. At last, Brisk Spark spoke up. “So what were you dreaming about? You seemed to be grunting and moaning a lot, wasn’t anything to spicy was it?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

I blushed. “No! Of course not!” I snapped quickly, taking another bite of the mutated bug. “I just had a nightmare about some of the ponies that beat me back in Stable 25.”

“What? That’s all?” Brisk asked. I raised an eyebrow at him; he shrank back away from my gaze, clearly hiding something from me.

I quickly connected the mental dots and gave out a low sigh. “Tell me about it,” I said flatly, placing the small remainder of bug down beside me and looking at him closely.

Brisk looked both confused and nervous. “Tell… you? I… I don’t know what your talking about.”

I continued to give him my best suspicious face. “About your nightmare? I’m assuming you had one right?”

Brisk gulped. “Well, Uh…”

“Oh come on,” I demanded impatiently. “You can tell me. Was it about the zombie ponies? Raiders?”

Brisk glanced down at his forelegs. “It was about the fight we had yesterday,” his voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear him. I waved a hoof for him to continue. “The dream started off normal, I just re watched us arguing about if it was morally okay to rob ponies that attack us,” He continued. “But then, after I shot them and told you to grab their stuff, you just walked away. I tried to follow you, but I couldn’t move. Then you were gone and I was all alone out there.”

I stared at him blankly, not knowing how to take this. “So what? You’re scared of me leaving you out here?” I asked lamely.

Brisk’s usual smile returned, though this time the smile did look a little forced. He gave me a small, almost lazy shrug. “Who can say. For all I know, it was just a crazy dream. But yeah, it scared me a little I suppose.”

I gave him a small smile in return. “Just don’t do something stupid like that again and I promise I’ll stick around,” I reassured him, though I doubted I would leave him even if he did do something like that again. I don’t know what I would do in the wasteland if I was alone.

We returned to eating our roasted bug in silence, neither of us really knowing how to continue the conversation from there. Suddenly my face grew bright red as I realized something.

“Wait a second! What exactly did you mean by nothing to spicy?!” I demanded, lowering the stick and staring at him wide eyed.

He gave a small chuckle. “I just kinda assumed you were reliving some kinda sex thing you did back in the Stable, that’s all,” he raised his hooves innocently, trying to move the subject along.

“Sex thing I did back in the Stable? What?” I shouted in alarm, scooting back a little bit. “What kind of sex things do you think I did?!”

Brisk looked at me with a weird look. “Well I mean, I’m assuming you got a fair amount of action in the Stable or whatever.”

I blushed an even deeper shade of red. “What! Why the fuck would you think that! No one in the Stable even liked me with the exception of Shade! And she’s like… 20 years older than me!”

“Okay, okay, I get it! You never had any fun in the Stable,” Brisk replied smugly. “You’re just really cute and smart and shit, so I assumed that somepony would try and get a piece of that or something.”

I flattened my ears against the side of my head. “I am not cute,” I flushed. “And no pony wanted a piece of that, okay.”

“Noted,” Brisk grinned back at me. Who did this guy think he was anyway? Calling me cute like that.

I picked up my stick and quickly finished off the Radroach meat. We didn’t even try to start up a conversation after that train wreck. Once we were finished we grabbed our saddlebags, doused the fire and continued on down the tunnel.

The tunnel, we were quick to learn, was far longer than we had expected. The dark sludge like fluid that at one point had swirled around the bottom of our hooves had slowly risen until it reached just above out fetlock, slowing both of us down dramatically. The weight of the slime seemed to be effecting Brisk the most, making him struggle to pull his injured front legs forward. We had to take multiple rests down the tunnel to let him catch his breath. Within only a few minutes of walking we were already drenched, miserable and smelling like shit.

As if all that wasn’t enough, it was also pitch black in the tunnel. The only light that we had was the dim, flickering green light of my pipbuck. To my annoyance, Brisk’s pipbuck seemed to have gotten damaged somewhat in the elevator crash, and while most of its functions still worked perfectly, the flashlight was not among them.

Leave it to Stable-Tec to create a piece of technology that can survive being crushed under and elevator.

The eerie green light of the pipbuck cast unsettling shadows across the rounded, rust covered walls. I kept looking around to see what the shadows belonged to, but I was unable to spot whatever it was. I hated how the whole wasteland felt completely empty, yet for some reason you could never shake the feeling that you were being watched.

We walked in silence for a very long time, the only noise in the tunnel was the slashing of our hooves in the murky liquid and our ragged breath echoing off the walls. After a while, Brisk spoke up.

“So, tell me about those cyber ponies,” He said, staggering slightly to keep from falling. “What are they like? How many are there?”

I thought back, trying to recall the details from the Stable. “Well, there were four of them in the Stable,” I started. “Three cyber earth ponies and one cyber alicorn. They were… Well they were just really damn scary.”

“There was an alicorn cyber pony?” Brisk questioned, raising an eyebrow. “Like two wings and a horn sort of cyber pony?”

I nodded slowly. “Yup, and two really big Tesla canons attached to their side.”

“Are we sure we actually want to go and fight those things?” Brisk asked. “I mean, there might have only been four in the Stable, but who knows how many there will be out here.”

I shook my head. “We need to Brisk. If we don’t, everypony in the Stable will starve!” The thought horrified me. I picked up my pace, more determined to escape this tunnel. “We cannot let that happen.”

Brisk took a deep breath. I knew what he was about to say even before he said it. The same thoughts had been going through my head ever since I left the Stable. “But do we really need to? I mean, what has the Stable ever done for you?”

I sighed. I wasn’t even angry at him for suggesting that because in truth, the Stable hadn’t been kind to me. “Because this isn’t about me. It’s about doing what’s right,” I didn’t know where this heroic side of me was coming from, it just felt right.

“I suppose...” Brisk trailed off.

I slowed to a stop and turned to face him. “What is it?”

“Well, it’s just that,” He tried to figure out how to word what he was about to say. “Your dad isn’t just going to let everyone starve, right? They will figure out some way to eat, and if they don’t they would just be forced to open the Stable to get food. So they would have to be really stupid to starve out.”

I pondered what he said for a second. “True, but we are having a hard enough time trying to survive out here as it is. I don’t know how long they would be able to survive in the Manehattan ruins before some raider gang decided to go in and wipe them all out.”

Brisk simply nodded at my response, but he seemed unconvinced.

I turned to continue down the tunnel when I saw a shift in movement ahead of us. I glanced down at my EFS. Red bars. Shit!

I turned off my pipbuck flashlight and placed my hoof over Brisk’s mouth as he was about to speak. Unlike before, the tunnel didn’t go completely dark. Down the tunnel I could make out the soft flickering of firelight bouncing off of the metal walls.

It didn’t take Brisk long to spot the light and the red bars on his EFS as well. He very quickly kept his mouth shut on his own accord.

I motioned for us to move down the hallway towards the light as slowly and quietly as possible as to avoid detection. It was a lot harder than I expected to say the least. The sludge around us kept making splashing noises and I began to notice with creeping horror that the closer we got to the light, the larger our shadows became. Brisk turned out to be much sneakier than I was, not only moving a little faster and lower to the ground to prevent his shadow from showing, but the splashing sounds around his hooves almost sounded muffled. He even managed to pull out a tablet of Buck and place it in his mouth without making any noise.

As we grew closer we began to see that the light was coming from behind a corner in the tunnel. I gave a quiet sigh of relief. I wouldn’t need to worry about my shadow of the present moment.

We also began to make out the sounds of ponies talking. Raider ponies specifically.

“Cut out his tongue next!” We heard a raider exclaim joyously.

"Fuck you you bitch!" A second voice screamed, though the voice sounded pained.

I exchanged a quick look with Brisk before peeking my head around the corner of the tunnel.

The tunnel itself didn’t look much different from the tunnel we had just come from. What was different however was what was inside.

In the center of the tunnel was a large metal barrel spewing fire out the top. Around it, sat four large cages, each one almost a third submerged in the vile sludge on the tunnel floor. Multiple wooden platforms connected by plywood planks had been erected around the tunnel, supplying the seven raiders in the tunnel with a means of moving around without needing to be in the sludge.

Worst of all however were the bodies. I had been too shocked in my first encounter with raiders to notice them the first time, but now that I had time to process what I was seeing there was no hiding them from me.

Multiple mangled pony corpses hung from the roof of the tunnel by rusted looking meat hooks. A few of the corpses were missing limbs or had been cut open so that their innards would dangle from the ceiling like grotesque wind chimes. Multiple pony heads had been impaled on long pikes that nearly reached the top of the tunnel.

I had to cover my mouth to keep from vomiting.

In the cages were five or so ponies, three of which now lay in a puddle of filth as tortured and mutilated corpses. Only two of the prisoners remained alive, and even they seem like they weren't going to be alive for much longer. All of the raiders had their attention on the cages as the only female raider present slowly carved pieces of flesh off of a male prisoner whom she had aggressively tied to the cage.

Something about the female raider seemed wrong, but I couldn’t quite place my hoof on it.

“Cut out his tongue you say?” The female raider responded around the handle of her large knife, slowly sliding the blade along the prisoners cheek and leaving a thin cut from the bottom of his right eye to the corner of his lips.

The six raiders around her cheered and laughed as she drove the dagger into his mouth. The prisoner squirmed in protest, but he wasn’t going to be making noises again any time soon. blood poured from the ponies lips as the raider withdrew the knife.

"Much better," The female raider soothed, giving the prisoner a quick kiss on his bleeding lips. "Now that is the kind of mouth ya should be kissing your mother with."

I ducked back around the corner, not able to take anymore of the graphic sight. I found Brisk looking equally shaken and pale.

“Do we go back and try and find another way out?” Brisk whispered to me quietly.

I shook my head. “There isn’t another way out,” I responded. “This is the only tunnel,” I glanced back around the corner and spotted what we had been looking for. A crooked metal ladder ran up the side of the far wall to a circular opening in the roof. I quickly moved back behind the corner again. “And there is an exit on the wall behind there camp.”

Brisk groaned. “Of course it’s on the other side. Why can’t it just be on our side?” He gave a second groan and put his broken hoof to his face. “Damn it. Alright, here is the plan, we stay low to the ground and sneak past them. Hopefully we can use this brown sludge to our advantage,” He quickly started rubbing the sludge into his mane and over his face.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he began covering the rest of his body.

“Making camouflage,” He whispered. “Do the same.”

I wrinkled my nose at the thought and began copying him. It didn’t take long to be completely covered from head to hoof in foul smelling sludge.

“And what are we going to do about the prisoners?” I asked as the two of us began slowly inching around the corner.

Brisk stared at me in shock again. What? Had he expected me to just let them die? Finally he just sighed.

“I’m not risking my neck for those two,” A round of laughing and cheering from the raiders drew our attention. The prisoner that they had currently been torturing now lay in two halves on the ground. “I’m not risking my neck for a prisoner,” Brisk corrected himself. “I’m going to go for the exit. If you want to risk your life to save some pony that you don’t even know then help yourself, just make sure I’m out of the tunnel first.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, but I understood. I don’t even know why I was risking my life for this pony.

I saw the female raider tapping her hoof on the edge of the cage, causing the prisoner inside to jump backwards in fright. “You’re next missy,” The raider said in a voice far more calming that I was comfortable with. The prisoner inside shrank farther back against the edge of the cage.

The female raider cackled and began dragging the remains of the prisoner she had just killed over to an empty meat hook that hung from the ceiling and began hanging him from the roof.

I gulped. I really did not want to get caught by these crazy ponies.

Brisk had almost completely submerged himself under the sludge and was moving fairly quickly across the tunnel. If I hadn’t known he was there, there is a good chance I wouldn’t have been able to spot him. Seemingly without difficulty, he managed to reach the ladder without any of the raiders spotting him.

Holy that pony was sneaky, I thought to myself. I supposed he must have been sneaky enough to steal all those passwords from security back in the Stable, so I guess it made sense.

I glanced back and forth between the ladder and the cage that held the remaining prisoner. It would be so easy to just leave her there and escape. If I were to die here, no pony would be able to get the A.A.S.S from the cyber ponies, and I doubted that Brisk would continue hunting them down if I were to die. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to everypony if I just cut my losses and left her?

But then who would I be? Not Amber Aura, that was for sure. I’d just be some cold husk of the pony I use to be. I couldn’t let the wasteland break me. Not so soon.

I began moving towards the cage, keeping as much of myself under the fluid as I could. None of the raiders seemed to spot me. Since the entertainment in the tunnel had shifted to a different location, all the raiders were currently busy looking at the mangled body being hung to the roof and had their backs to the cages.

That gave me time to get her out, but not long.

I pulled up to the cage and placed my hooves around the door. It was locked. Of course it was locked, it was a fucking prison cell, what had I expected. I examined the lock closely, it was just like the one that Brisk had picked when we freed Coco Pommel.

I gritted my teeth and pulled a bobby pin from my saddlebags. If Brisk could do it I could do it.

I was about to raise the bobby pin with my magic when I saw the pony inside staring at me and shaking her head quickly. Thankfully, what she was trying to tell my clicked instantly. My magic would produce both light and sound. I’d need to do this with my mouth.

Then I saw the pony inside, or at least what I had thought was a pony. She stood a little bit taller than me with dazzling green eyes and a beautiful, though understandably muddy white coat and mane. What really caught my attention however were the dark black strips that covered her body.

A zebra?

I almost dropped my bobby pin into the sludge in shock. I was risking my life for a zebra? I didn’t know very much about them outside of a small picture in my textbook I had seen years ago and how they had been Equestria's enemies in the war that had inevitably ended in balefire detonation.

Murderers, that’s what zebra were. Savages that believe in weird star gods and destroyed the beautiful land of Equestria. I had heard a story when I was younger that the war had begun because a zebra had released some form of bomb or something inside a school and killed everyone. I couldn’t remember the exact details, but just the thought made me a little queasy.

I glanced back at the cackling ponies as they hung their latest victim to the ceiling where they had displayed all of their other crude art.

Zebra’s weren’t evil just as ponies weren’t evil. But Zebra’s weren’t good either, just as ponies weren’t good. They are simply alive, and no living thing can be categorized with something as black and white as good and evil, because everything was a bit of both.

I could see fear reflected in the zebra’s eyes as she noticed my hesitation. No doubt other ponies had had the same thoughts about her that I had just had.

I gave her a reassuring smile and slid the bobby pin into the lock. She gave me a nervous smile in return and began pretending to not see me as to avoid suspicion.

Snap!

The bobby pin broke in my hoof. Seriously? Can’t I just not fail at something for once?

I glanced down at my bobby pins. I only had five left. Crap.

I placed another pin into the lock and began twisting it slowly. I heard a small tapping sound inside. Alright, that sounded like a good sign. I slowly began twisting the bobby pin back, copying what I had seen Brisk do the day before.

Snap!

Shit! I wanted to scream at the stupid lock. Just open damn it!

I spotted Brisk staring at me from the ladder. Our eyes met. We didn’t say anything, or even gesture for the other to do something, we both just knew.

Brisk sunk lower and began moving back towards the cage. I smiled a little. He wasn’t completely selfish.

I pulled out another bobby pin and my shock baton and waited for him to reach us. I might not be able to pick the lock, but I could defend him if the raiders spotted us. He quickly pulled himself up next to me and took the bobby pin from my mouth, sliding it into the lock and pulling out a red screwdriver that looked uncomfortably like my cutie mark.

I turned to face the raiders as he began picking the lock. They still didn't seem to notice us. This was going to well, something bad was bound to happen soon.

Ironically, that bad thing was actually Brisk successfully picking the lock and door of the cage open with a loud screech. The three of us froze and glanced over at the raiders. At the same moment the raiders froze and glanced over at us. All of our eyes locked for a solid five seconds.

“Make them bleed!” One of the raiders shouted, then everything went to hell.

The group of raiders charged us. Brisk leaped off of the wooden platform he had been standing on and dove into the murky water, obscuring himself from view. I glanced between the raiders and the zebra, trying to figure out what the best course of action would be.

The zebra sprang past me, slamming her hind hoof into the head of one of the oncoming raiders. Both of them fell flailing into the water. Okay, that left me and six raiders.

Great, just… great…

I dodged the swing of the first raiders machete, whacking my baton against one of his back legs, making him stumble. I didn’t however avoid the second raider who slammed a baseball bat over my head. The whole world whirled as the impact knocked me off my hooves and crashing into the water below.

My whole body was submerged, foul sludge pouring into my mouth and rushing into my lungs. I pushed up off the ground, pushing my head above water and trying to both get a breath of air and spit out large quantities of what I could now confirm as a mix between urine, shit and garbage.

Blam!

I bullet whizzed past me, splashing me with more sewage. I ducked back below the waves to avoid getting shot as I heard the muffled sound of gunfire above me.

Then a heavy force slammed into me from above, making me inhale more of the sludge. I rolled to the side and pushed upwards, knocking the raider who had jumped onto me onto his back.

The other raiders were beginning to jump down as well, pulling out their knives and lunging at me. I guess they realized it was hard to shoot a target that they couldn’t see very well.

The next raider to jump into the water was met with a powerful swing form Brisk’s machete as he jumped from the water and with one mighty stroke, severed the raiders head clean off. Blood spewing from the stump of his neck and covering both Brisk and I in gore.

Neither of us had time to celebrate however as the female raider swooped down at us with what looked like a tiny chainsaw. I did a double take as I took in her wings. That was why she had looked odd, she was a mother fucking Pegasus! Of fucking course she was!

I jumped to the side as the chainsaw came down at me, searing off a large chunk off the flesh on the side of my front leg. I screeched in pain and tried to swing my baton up at her, only for her to fly up above where I was able to reach.

“I hope you like the sight of your own blood!” the Pegasus screamed down at me as she flew back down for another swing at me. Really? Do these raiders just yell whatever screwed up thing they can think of?

I readied my baton as she approached. Instead of attacking my again however, the Pegasus lurched back upwards as soon as she got within my range.

“What the…” as I had readied for her attack, I hadn’t seen the unicorn raider with a knife charge up and stab at me. Shit, she had been distracting me!

The knife pierced my already skinned foreleg. Pain erupted throughout my body and I collapsed to the ground. I telekinetically ripped the knife from the unicorns grasp and jabbed it back at him and into his eye. Gross yellow fluid mixed with blood spurted from the damaged eye as the raider reeled back and tried to dislodge the blade.

“Sorry,” I muttered under my breath as I watched the unicorn struggle. I grabbed the handle of the knife with my magic again and shoved it further into the unicorns head, stabbing the blade into his brain. His body twitched uncontrollably as the bade dug into him before falling into the sludge and out of view.

I spotted Brisk clashing machetes with another raider and the zebra dodging a multitude of attacks from three other raiders on the far side of the fire. How she managed to hold off so many at a time was beyond me. I saw her strike out with her foreleg and strike a raider across the chest, knocking him to his side. It was hard to tell, but it looked like she broke a few of his ribs with the kick. Alright then, that just left me and the Pegasus.

I looked around, trying to spot the insane chainsaw wielding flyer. I could hear the chainsaw, I just couldn't see… the sound was coming from above me! Shit!

I dove beneath the sewage and rolled to my right. Only seconds afterwards I saw the chainsaw cut through the water where I had just been standing. I rolled back to my hooves and swung my baton at her, using my telekinesis to extend my reach.

Unfortunately she was fast. Really, really fast. My baton met air as she swooped up and came flying back at me again. I flung my baton in the way of the chainsaw, sparks went flying everywhere at the spinning chain continuously battered my baton. The spinning blade stopped only inches away from my face. I had to put all my strength into keeping the chainsaw from knocking my baton aside.

The Pegasus gave a powerful shove with the chainsaw and sent me sprawling onto all fours, once again completely submerging me in opaque water. I began rolling away as fast as I could as she began stabbing the chainsaw into the water.

Not being able to see me, I managed to roll behind her and leaped up with my baton, swinging it as fast as I could at her head. Once again she proved to be too fast and soared up above where I couldn't reach her.

I was never going to be able to beat her if I just kept swinging at her, she was clearly faster and stronger than I was. If I was going to win, I was going to need to think of something else.

She dove at me again, her chainsaw coming scarily close to cutting my front legs off. I leapt to the side, glancing around the room looking for something to use against her. My eyes landed on the large pikes standing straight out of the murky water. They were to big to fight with and there was no way I could trick her into impaling herself. I started thinking about a spell I had started learning a few years ago. I had mostly only ever used it on myself, but I had been able to use it on my Stable barding once. Granted I had almost gone unconscious from the effort and concentration required to make the spell work.

The Pegasus did a loop in the air and began diving at me again. Well, I guess it was now or never. I flared up my horn and concentrated. I imagined the Pegasus and in my head and then pictured the large pike.

The Pegasus and her chainsaw came less than an inch away from my face when they disappeared in a small flash of light. I glanced over at the pike to find the Pegasus now dangling from it, the large pointed shaft protruding through the center of her now broken body. Her legs flailed for a few moments before finally going limp, the chainsaw dropping from her grasp and landing in the sewage with a splash.

I placed my hoof on my head to try and stop the world from spinning. From the bash over my head with the baseball bat and the use of using teleportation my head felt like it might just split in two. Or at the very least I was going to pass out.

I looked over at Brisk and the zebra who had managed to kill their respective raiders. Brisk had evaded the fight with only a few scratches along his back, and surprisingly the zebra had managed to leave the fight practically unscathed despite taking on and taking out the most raiders out of all of us. It would appear that I had taken the most damage during the fight.

I stared down at my injuries. They weren’t nearly as bad as the wounds that Brisk had received the night before, but the Pegasus had taken a large chunk of skin off of my foreleg and the knife cut in the same leg was making it really hard to walk. Black spots had began swimming before my eyes. I wobbled slightly on my hurt leg as I tried to take a step forward and the pounding in my head threatened to send me into unconsciousness.

“Remind me not to get on her bad side,” The zebra said to Brisk with a small chuckle in a soothing and exotic, yet strangely methodical voice. “Lest save myself from being teleported into a pike as well.”

“My thoughts exactly when I first saw her fight,” Brisk commented, taking in the zebra for the first time. I was surprised at how casually he took her appearance. “Once saw her bash her baton straight through a ponies face.”

For a weird second I almost felt proud, like I was some sort of wasteland bad ass that could kick serious butt in a fight. Then I fell unconscious and landed face first into the large pool of literal shit.

When I awoke my leg felt itchy. I reached down to scratch it only for Brisk to reach forward and push my hoof away. I looked up at him and saw him shaking his head.

Shit! I shouldn’t have looked up at him. We were outside again, sitting in the middle of the street by the looks of it. And above us was once again the goddess damned sky. I averted my gaze to my leg to avoid the horrifying sight and dizzying vertigo .

The itching it turned out was due to a large amount of bloody gauze that had been wrapped tightly around my foreleg. It looked like my leg had stopped bleeding, but only recently as much of the blood on the off white fabric was still wet.

“We couldn’t find any healing potions, so we just did our best to patch it up ourselves,” Brisk said, looking down at my leg as well. “I found some of gauze in the medic pack you found yesterday. Thank the goddesses for that Watcher guy, right?”

I nodded solemnly. “What did I miss while I was out?” I asked, looking around us. A small metal ponyhole was a few feet away from us and it’s top sat a few feet away from that. I assumed it was the entrance to the sewers we had just left.

“Not much,” Brisk replied evenly. “After you passed out Xayah helped me pull you out of the sewers. It’s a lot harder to pull a pony up a half broken ladder than you would expect.”

“Xayah?” I questioned.

He gave me a silly look. “The zebra you rescued. Don’t tell me you forgot about that already?”

I shook my head and glanced around again. “Where is she?”

“Back in the sewer,” Brisk answered. “Looting the raider camp. Hopefully we can find some healing potions or ammo. I stayed up here to keep an eye on you.”

I nodded. So not only was I a failure, but now I was being an inconvenience to ponies.

Brisk was quiet for a moment, chewing quietly on his bottom lip as he clearly tried working up the courage to say something. “By the way, for what it is worth Amber. I think saving that zebra was the right thing to do.”

I gave him a smile. Maybe I wasn’t the biggest failure and inconvenience ever.

I looked up at Brisk’s horn atop his head. “Hey, is it okay if I ask you a question? I'm not sure if it is personal or not.”

He raised his eyebrow, but nodded.

“Why didn’t you just levitate me out of the sewer? I’ve noticed you don’t use magic.”

Brisk gave me a sheepish smile. “That’s ‘cause I can’t use magic.”

Before I could question him on that any more, Xayah climbed out of the sewer holding a knife and a small handful of bullets and Sparkle-Cola bottle caps in her hooves.

“There were no health potions I am afraid,” The zebra said, walking over to us and placing the ammunition down beside me before taking the knife for herself. “But perhaps these can aid you in other ways.”

Brisk grinned down at the 10mm ammunition and began loading it into his pistol. “Thank you, these will help a lot,” I glanced down at the small pile of bullets. I was able to count about nine. Hopefully that would be more than enough to keep us alive for the next bit.

“No, thank you two,” Xayah said, bowing her head slightly. “For without you both I would be dead right now.”

Brisk gave a small cough. “Don’t thank me, I was just going to leave you there.”

Xayah smirked at him. “Then you are smarter than your friend here,” She said in her soothing voice, giving me a quick wink. “But I am thankful you saved me all the same.”

I pointed a hoof at the small pile of ten bottle caps that Xayah had pulled out of the sewer with her. "Why the fuck did you grab those?" realizing I sounded a little rude and blushed. "Sorry, just interested."

Xayah chuckled. "New to the wasteland?" She said sarcastically.

"What gave us away?" Brisk smirked, looking over the caps himself.

"Mostly the stable barding," Xayah shrugged. "But your lack of understanding for caps was a pretty big giveaway as well. You see we use bottle caps as currency in the wasteland."

Had I been drinking something, I would have spit it out everywhere. "You use bottle caps as currency? Why?!"

"They are plentiful and yet not endless, giving it value," Xayah replied, scooping the caps up and placing them in a blood soaked saddlebag she had thrown over her back. I assumed she had taken it from the now dead raiders in the sewer as well. "Save for appearance, caps are no different from the bits used back in the olden days if you really think about it."

“How did those raiders catch you?” I asked, slowly pulling myself back to my hooves and gesturing to her newly acquired saddlebag. My leg hurt a little, but the pain was tolerable. Brisk offered me a Buck tablet, but I shook my head. I wanted to be able to focus and he still needed them a lot more than I did. His legs, though healed on the outside, didn’t seem to be improving much. If anything they were only getting worse.

Those raiders attacked me and my family by surprise on our way to Friendship City. They killed my family very quickly. They were not much for fighting,” Xayah said softly. “I managed to take one of them out before that Pegasus took me down. Then I woke up inside that cage, you know the rest from there.”

Brisk and I stared at her in shook. She had just described the recent slaughter of her family so casually. Fuck, she was handling the recent slaughter of her family so casually.

“How, um… How are you holding up?” Brisk asked in concern, taking a cautious step towards the zebra. “With your family, um… gone and all.”

Xayah gave him a sad smile. “I miss them, but my mother always told me not to fear death, for if we fear that, then what is the point is living? Living only makes you face that fear longer.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t exactly sure if I understood what that meant. “What are you going to do now?”

Xayah tapped her striped hoof on the bottom of her chin. “I am not exactly sure. Perhaps I will go to Friendship city, but without my family it seems a little foolish.”

“Well, you are always welcome to come with us,” I offered, extending my hoof to her. “We could always use some help.”

“She can?” Brisk gawked. I gave him a warning stare to make him back off.

Xayah glanced between the both of us for a few seconds. “If you two will have me, I will gladly accept your offer,” She replied, nodding her head thoughtfully. “Where are you two going?”

“Well, we aren’t exactly sure,” Brisk said bluntly, shrugging his shoulders.

“We are looking for a group of cyber ponies that invaded our Stable,” I followed up. “But we aren’t exactly sure where they’ve gone.”

Xayah thought for a moment. “Perhaps it would be wise to go to Friendship City anyway,” she said. “That or Tenpony Tower, but they are more exclusive and farther away I hear.”

“What is at Friendship city?” Brisk questioned, flicking a fly away with his tail.

“For you? Answers hopefully,” Xayah explained. “If you want to find somepony that might know where these cyber ponies are going, then a settlement is your best chance of finding one. At the very least it will give you a way to safely rest your head and stock up on better gear than what you currently have.”

That explanation made sense to me. “Alright, to Friendship City then,” I declared, pointing my injured hoof into the air. Of course that was when I realized I had no fucking idea where Friendship City even was. I turned back to Xayah and gave her a nervous grin. “Would you uh… lead the way? We’re kinda new to the wasteland.”

Xayah looked around at the towering remains of the Manehattan skyscrapers. “I would, though I fear I do not know the way myself,” Xayah responded. “My mother was the one who was leading us there, she had been there once before you see.”

Well shit, we still didn’t know where we were going. I looked up and down the road. It split into about four different direction in both directions and the height of all the ruins made it impossible to tell what was around each corner.

“Wonderful, now we just need somepony that knows where they’re going,” Brisk replied sarcastically, kicking a small rock with his hoof. “Any takers?”

As if answering his question, a sprite bot began bobbing up and down the street past us, playing it’s chipper tune. All of our ears perked up as we heard the noise.

“No way,” I uttered breathlessly, almost chuckling at our possible good fortune. I began running towards the Sprite bot, waving my injured foreleg frantically. “Watcher! Hey! Hey Watcher!”

From behind me I could hear Xayah turn to Brisk. “So this friend of yours, is she mad?” She asked softly. “She is aware that that is a sprite bot? Yes?”

I grabbed onto the floating bot and spun it around to face me. “Hey Watcher? You home?”

The music cut out. I grinned and tapped my hoof on the top of the bot. After a few seconds of waiting the synthetic voice I had heard before came from the speakers. “Hey… you. What do you want? Sorry, what was your name again, I don’t believe I caught it last time.”

I heard a small gasp of surprise escape Xayah's lips from somewhere behind me.

“Amber Aura,” I replied, quickly escalating the conversation forwards. “We are trying to find Friendship City, do you know where it is?”

“Friendship City? Yeah sure,” Watcher replied with his synthetic voice. “It’s not to far from here actually. If you just head north east for a bit you should be able to see the city. Giant statue of a pony, you can’t miss it.”

“Thank you Watcher,” I replied. I didn’t know who the hell his guy was, but damn I was thankful for him. Brisk and I hadn't been in the wasteland for two day and he had already saved us twice. A thought crossed my mind. “Hey Watcher, you haven’t seen any ponies made out of metal walking around have you?”

“What, like the Steel Rangers?” I just stared at him blankly. A metallic sigh escaped the machine. I wasn’t sure how you synthesize a sigh, but Watcher somehow managed to pull it off. “A group of ponies in a suit of metal power armor.”

I shook my head. “No, not ponies in a metal suit. We are looking for some cyber ponies. Ponies made out of metal.”

Watcher was silent for a moment, letting his sprite bot bob up and down in front of me. “None that I can think of. There are a few cyber ponies in Fillydelphia, and I can think of one causing trouble out in the Hoofington area, but nothing in Manehattan,” Watcher replied.

Damn, none of those sounded like they could be the cyber ponies we were looking for. “Well, thanks for your help anyways Watcher,” I said, preparing to turn back to Brisk and Xayah who were waiting patiently a few steps away from us.

“Any time Amber,” Watcher replied, his voice slightly obscured by a sudden buzz of static. Before I could turn away from him completely he spoke up again. “I see that you are already making friends in the wasteland. Not everypony is that lucky. Keep it up.”

“Keep it up?” I questioned, but the sprite bot was already floating away.

I turned back to my friends to see them low to the ground with scared expressions on their faces and gesturing for me to do the same. I looked at them in confusion. Understanding they probably saw something I didn’t I ducked down low and crawled over to them.

“What is it?” I hissed, keeping my voice low. Brisk pointed in the direction I had just come with a hoof. I turned back and saw what all the fuss was about. Not to far from where I had been standing only moments before were ponies. Lots and lots of ponies.

The fact that I hadn’t been spotted was a miracle that I simply could not explain.

They weren’t raiders. Or at least, I didn’t think they were. They were all dressed a little bit better. Instead of chains, leather straps and pony flesh, these ponies dressed in sturdy green combat armor and carried some pretty intense fire power, from machine guns to rocket launchers. A few carried large flag poles that held crimson flags depicting the image of a large eye.

I took a few steps back from the group. I was able to count about twenty ponies, all heavily armed. “Who are they?” I whispered, slowly pulling out my baton.

“Red Eye’s slavers,” Xayah replied, glancing down at my baton. “I would recommend we do not engaged in combat with them, I fear that would end out less than pleasant for the three of us.”

Brisk nodded vigorously in agreement. We began to creep away from the group when I saw it. Holy Celestia it was horrifying!

An alicorn stood amongst the Slavers. Tall and majestic with a flowing mane and huge elegant wings. Exactly how I had always imagined the princesses looked like. But this alicorn was not one of the royal sisters. It felt wrong and unholy. It’s hawk like eyes held slits instead of pupils and its coat was a dark shade of sickly green instead of the flawless white or beautiful blue I had been told that princess Celestia and Luna had had.

The alicorn slowly turned it’s head and stared directly at me. I froze, seemingly unable to move under the gaze of the creature. The two of us locked eyes and held our gaze for what felt like an eternity. Then, slowly the not goddess raised it’s hoof and pointed at us. The group of slavers all followed her hoof with their gaze until they spotted us as well.

“This is the part that we run, yes?” I heard Xayah whisper from behind me. I nodded in agreement. Then we were bolting down the road. Running, goddesses I hated running. My injured leg began seemingly screaming in protest as we charged as fast as we could down the street. I could hear the sounds of ponies shouting and hooves pounding on the cracked asphalt behind us.

Really? They couldn’t just let us go peacefully? Was two random ponies and a zebra that they didn’t even know really worth dropping everything and giving chase?

I glanced back to see the group of ponies galloping a few feet behind us. Yup, apparently we were worth the work… but wait? Where was the green alicorn? Then I spotted her flying above the rest of the group, closing in on us far faster than I would have liked. Damn it, I hated winged enemies! The ability to fly was so unfair!

I could see Brisk’s legs beginning to shake as we charged onwards. The buck must have been starting to wear off and there was no way that he could take another tablet while running for his life like this. My leg was also starting to hurt enough that I was beginning to wonder if I should have taken Brisk up on his offer and taken a buck earlier.

“How do we lose these guys!?” I shouted as we raced forwards and around a corner.

Xayah, who clearly didn’t seem to have very high endurance, simply panted as she struggled to keep pace with us. I turned to Brisk who looked just as concerned as I felt. “Same thing we did last time we needed to get somewhere safe?” Brisk suggested between pants.

“Right, because that worked out perfectly for us least time!” I replied. Xayah just looked confused. I would need to explain to her what had happened to us before we saved her at some point.

As we turned a second corner, Brisk slammed into my side, knocking both myself and Xayah into the doorway of a large nameless, faceless skyscraper. The three of us slammed the large double doors shut and ducked below all the windows just as the large group raced past. We took a moment, panting and out of breath.

I let out a slow deep breath and peeked over the edge of the window. It had been a miracle that the flying alicorn hadn’t seen us, however it was clear that the ponies had noticed something about our disappearance was wrong. They had all stopped in the middle of the street, looking around and peering into as many doors and windows as they could.

We had currently escaped them, but it was only a matter of time before they were on our trail again.

I turned back to my two friends. “Alright, we need to find a back door out of here or something.”

“Don’t think you can hide, little ponies,” I heard a sinister voice whisper in my ear. All three of us jumped as we heard the voice. “I know you couldn’t have gotten far. I will find you,” The voice was so calm, yet so very, very threatening. To my growing horror, I realized the sound was coming from within my own brain.

I glanced out the window to see the green alicorn standing in the center of the group of ponies, her horn ablaze with light and her eyes glowing an ominous white. The other slaves were scratching at their head, clearly hearing the spooky voice within their own brains as well.

Well this was just perfect, the alicorn had fucking telepathy. Because why wouldn’t it? Damn it, I hate the wasteland!

Brisk crept away from the front of the building. “Yeah, lets get as far away from that thing as fast as we can,” we all quickly nodded in agreement.

Turning to face the large room we had entered, I found myself staring into the huge face of Pinkie Pie plastered onto the wall, her mouth twisted into a playful and yet uncomfortably devious smile. ‘Pinkie Pie is Watching You!’ The large sign read. And above that, in smaller letters read. ‘Ministry of Morale Headquarters’.

I turned and scowled at Brisk. “Really? You couldn’t have chosen a building that is just a building? Why do you always need to pull us into creepy places,” Brisk just shrugged at me innocently. That was it, I was picking what building we entered next time.

There was no obvious back door to the building, because once again the wasteland was incapable of just letting us have the easy way out. We found ourselves slowly climbing the stairs to the floors above us. I wasn’t sure exactly what exit we were going to find upstairs, but I supposed if worst came to worst we could just hide up there until the alicorn and slavers decided to give up on chasing us.

The further into the building we went the more posters seemed to clutter the walls. As if the decrepit building wasn’t creepy enough, every poster just so happened to depict the exact same thing. A smiling picture of Pinkie Pie reminding us that she is always watching. I shivered every time my eyes made contact with the long dead, smiling ministry mare.

“Why do you think those slavers were so determined to catch us?” I asked as we finally hauled ourselves up the last bit of stairs and entered the third floor.

“I am unsure, as I am not a slaver,” Xayah replied. “Though I have heard rumors that unicorns are particularly useful to their cause.”

“Their cause?” Brisk asked, peering into the first room he saw before quickly moving onto the next. “What exactly is this cause of theirs?”

Xayah shrugged. Propping open the next door and entering it. Brisk and I swiftly followed her. “I do not know. I have not talked to very many slavers as it would be foolish of me to spend any time around such company.”

The room Xayah had lead us into held what appeared to be a large pile of labeled safes. A few crooked shelves lined the far wall covered in burned and water damaged folders. My eyes lingered on the multitude of safes scattered about the room.

“What is this place? A treasury?” I joked trying to knock a safe over with my hoof. To my embarrassment, it was far too heavy for me to move and refused to budge even and inch.

“Looks like a storage locker of some form,” Brisk replied, giving me a small grin and knocking over a safe. I narrowed my eyes at him. Damn, why did I have to be the weak one. “Though honestly, a treasury would be a lot cooler.”

“Not a treasury,” Xayah stated, scanning her green eyes over the safes. “This looks like some form of file and information room used to keep tabs on all of the ponies and zebras in Equestria.”

That was less funny.

Xayah walked over and looked at a very specific safe with a large dent in the side. The label, though mostly covered in dust, read ‘Zarina’.

“Zarina, I heard about her back when I was young,” Xayah said, tapping the door or the safe with a hoof. “She was a pre-war assassin, tried to kill the white ministry mare.”

“Rarity?” I offered, trying to picture the different ministry mares in my head. I remembered the statuette in my saddle bags and pulled it out. “Her?”

Xayah nodded. “Yes, that is the one. Zarina was apprehended by Rarity fairly early in the war. Her capture and alleged death saved many pony lives and cost many zebras theirs,” she tapped the safe with her hoof again. “It is a shame these are locked, I would find seeing what the Ministry of Morale had about her very interesting.”

Brisk grinned deviously. For a second I could have sworn his grin matched the picture of Pinkie Pie behind him. “Well it’s your lucky day,” The green unicorn declared. “Because picking locks that I probably shouldn’t be picking is my specialty.”

Before long the three of us had crowded around the safe and watched as Brisk began working his magic.

“Do you mind if you teach me how to do that?” I asked, looking over his shoulder as he worked.

“I am surprised you do not already know,” Xayah stated, watching Brisk with equal interest. “With your cutie mark being a red screwdriver and everything.”

I sighed. “Nope, never picked a lock before.”

Brisk looked up at me. “Yeah, sure I’ll teach you,” He said with a grin. “I mean, this is like, what? The fourth lock we have had to pick in the last two days? I’d say it’s about time you learned.”

I knelt down and watched carefully as he explained what he was doing.

“Alright, so step one is easy, just slide the bobby pin and the screwdriver into the lock,” Brisk started, his actions copying his words. “Once placed, just kinda wiggle the bobby pin around until you hear a click. That means it’s close to being in the right spot.”

I nodded and watched as he wiggled it around. He abruptly stopped and began rotating the bobby pin and screwdriver. I hadn’t heard a click, but he apparently had.

“Then just slowly turn the screwdriver counterclockwise. If you feel the lock starts to resist you, you know that while you were close, you were in the wrong spot,” sure enough, the lock began to shake a little. Brisk quickly stopped moving the bobby pin and slowly placed it in a slightly different position. “Then just try a slightly different spot and….” He twisted the bobby pin again, but this time the safe swung open. “Voila!”

Inside the safe sat only two things. A sheet of paper with a long list of names and a black cloak that the paper rested upon. I pulled out the piece of paper and scanned a bunch of the names.

“What are these names?” I asked as I held the page up to Xayah, assuming she would understand it’s contents best.

The zebra chuckled darkly. “A list of the ponies she had killed I assume.”

The paper slid out of my hoof and gently drifted towards the floor. Holy shit that was a lot of names.

Xayah reached into the safe and pulled out the cloak. “It is this that I am more interested in,” She said, holding the fabric between her hooves before draping the dark material over her body. She looked over it for a second before tapping a purple gem on the cloaks clasp and disappeared from view.

‘What the hell!” Brisk exclaimed, taking a step back in shock as our zebra companion vanished from sight. I wasn’t any less surprised.

A few seconds later, Xayah flickered back into view. “Zebra stealth cloak,” She explained. “Very useful for sneaking,” Now we just needed to find two more of those handy things.

Brisk handed me a bobby pin and the screwdriver. “How ‘bout you give one of those safes a shot? Get some practice while we aren’t being shot at.”

“That alicorn could still be looking for us,” I replied, but I took the lock picking tools from him anyway and moved over to a safe labeled ‘Silver Ace’ that had been shoved into the corner of the room.

“Maybe,” Brisk grunted. “But she hasn’t found us yet, so I think we should be fine.”

I knelt down in front of the safe and placed the bobby pin inside. I was about to move on to step two when I spotted an orange holotape resting on top of the safe.

It couldn’t hurt to have something to listen to while I embarrassed myself, right?

I inserted the holotape into my pipbuck and listened to it as I began to follow the steps Brisk had just told me.

“I don’t trust him!” A grumpy, yet bubbly voice said from the recording. “He is a bad bad pony, I’m telling you! He is up to no good!”

“Calm down Pinkie,” Another bubbly voice said. The voice was very similar to the first one, though clearly belonging to a stallion. “How do you know he is a baddy?”

“My pinkie scene goes crazy every time I see him!” Pinkie exclaimed, making an exasperated huff. “I haven’t been able to catch him at anything yet, but I will! Hear me! I’ll get him!” The mare broke into an unsettling psychotic laughter. An abrupt hiccup ended her chuckle.

“What do you need me to do?” The stallion said.

“I need you to use your cheesy sense on him,” Pinkie instructed. “He is already watching out for me, so whenever I’m around he has his guard up super high. But he doesn’t know you. You might be able to get something on him.”

There was silence between the two voices for a second, allowing me to pick up on the subtle sound of static in the background.

I was about to take out the holotape, thinking it was done when the stallion spoke up again. “Alright, I’ll use my cheesy sense, but where can I even find this no good pony?” my bobby pin snapped as I tried to open the safe. I groaned and pulled out another one. I noted that I only had three left. Better try not to break any more.

“He has been working with Fluttershy a lot lately,” Pinkie answered, her voice almost a low growl. “I don’t know what he has to do with the Ministry of Peace, but I know it can't be good.”

I began turning the bobby pin in the lock again. Once again I was met with resistance. I wanted to yell at the lock and storm away; how the hell did Brisk make it look so easy!?

“I don’t know Pink, the Ministry of Peace seems like one of the less suspicious places for him to be working in,” the stallion said.

I heard Pinkie huff and stomp her hoof on the ground. “No, Working with Twilight in the Ministry of Arcane Sciences would make sense! But with Fluttershy? What does the MoP want with a magic expert?!”

“There is actually a lot of magic involved with…” The stallion started, but Pinkie quickly cut him off.

“I don’t trust him! I don’t trust him! I don’t trust him! I don’t trust him!” Pinkie shrieked. I could hear her stomping up and down as if she was having a fit. “I don’t trust him and I want to catch him now!”

The recording cut out; at the perfect time too because as soon as it did, the lock clicked and the safe swung open. I stared at the open safe for a few minutes before giving a wild whoop with glee.

“Oh my goddesses! Did you two just see that!” I exclaimed, bouncing on the tip of my hooves. “I just picked a lock! The lock is open!”

Both Brisk and Xayah who were currently busy looking at a particular sinister poster of Pinkie Pie turned their heads and looked at me.

“Oh? Uh… congrats,” Brisk answered nonchalantly before turning back to the poster.

I turned back to the safe and looked over the contents excitedly. Like the last safe, this one only held two things. A piece of paper and a glowing orb. I stared at the orb, unsure exactly what it was.

“What is this thing?” I asked myself, reaching out with my magic to pick it up. The second my telekinesis enclosed around it the whole world swirled away into oblivion.

I was in some sort of jungle. Wait? What the fuck? How did I get here? And why do all the plants look so alive? I tired to express my wonders verbally, but found myself unable to speak. What the fuck was happening!

I turned my head to look at the group of four ponies that walked beside me. Except I didn’t turn my head, it just moved on it’s own accord. Celestia fuck me, I was freaking out!

My body felt weird as well. Slightly bigger and heavier. The space between my back legs also felt… what the fuck! Was I a stallion!

“I’m not exactly sure why you need my expertise?” I said, or rather the pony I was looking through the eyes of said to a light brown mare that was leading the group. He had a calm, soothing voice that made me feel more relaxed just listening to it. “You say you found some sort of temple?”

The brown mare nodded. “We found a large amount of magical runes, we thought that you might be able to give us some insight on them Silver.”

My host frowned, but continued walking forwards.

Ahead of us I could see a large clearing in the overgrowth. The trees parted for us and I found myself standing at the edge of a massive pit with multiple caves speckling its steep sides. Long bridges comprised of seemingly living roots connected many of the cave entrances together, while a few other entrances led to beautifully crafted wooden balconies. Two foaming waterfalls cascaded off the sides of the pit and pooled somewhere far below me beyond my sight.

“What is this place?” My host questioned. He sounded almost unimpressed, though clearly interested. I on the other hoof was having trouble even comprehending the beauty of what I was seeing. “Some sort of ancient zebra temple?”

“We aren’t exactly sure,” The brown mare responded. “And the zebra’s aren’t either. If they knew what this was, it is doubtful they wouldn’t have let us come to their homelands so easily. Especially not after what happened with the Wonderbolts last month.”

My hosts eyes scanned the walls of the temple until his eyes came to rest on a small stone by his hoof. Multiple glowing blue runes had been carved onto the stone. I couldn’t seem to make any sense of the strange shapes.

My host picked it up and turned it over. “These runes are old,” My host muttered, looking over the stone again. “Predating any pony or zebra language I’ve seen.”

I saw the group of ponies exchange a glance behind me. The brown mare turned back to me. “But can you read it?”

My host grunted. “Perhaps, if given time. Do we have permission from the zebra’s to take samples back to Equestria?” The brown mare shook her head at my hosts words. “Alright then, I guess we had better start deciphering these now then.”

I hadn’t even placed the stone back down when a large shadow flew over my head. A second later, the shadow was accompanied by an ear-piercing roar that shook the surrounding area.

The group of ponies stared up at the sky in horror as a massive red dragon flew above them and landed with a mighty crash on the path they had just come from. I could hear a scream of terror from one of my four companions, though I was unsure which one it was. Not that it mattered, I was more focused on the humongous monster that now towered above us.

The great dragon curled back it’s neck and I could see a burning gold light glinting from behind it’s scales as it prepared to breath fire down upon us.

“Scatter!” my host shouted, diving off of the trail and into the thick vegetation that surrounded us. I saw the brown mare and one of my other companions do the same right before the dragon let loose a blast of scalding fire. The two ponies that had frozen in fear at the sight of the dragon went up in a blaze of light, their flesh quickly burning away and leaving behind little more than two piles of charred bones.

The dragon approached closer, it’s heavy claws making the ground shake with every step. It brought it’s head closer to me, until it’s eye stared directly back into mine. My host started backing away, trying to get away from the beast.

The dragon opened its maw again, golden light shining from the back of its throat. My host shut his eyes, waiting for death.

A large javelin was sent flying through the air and impaled itself in the dragon's eye. The monster reeled back, trying to claw the large shaft out of its face.

A group of seven or so zebra, all wielding javelin’s of their own burst into the clearing and charged the dragon. Two more javelins were thrown, each one piercing the dragons muscular front legs.

Clearly taken by surprise, the dragon flapped its wings and took off from the ground. To my surprise, two of the zebras managed to leap vertically upwards high enough to grab onto the dragon and begin climbing their way up to its wings.

The dragon began spewing random bursts of fire from its maw as the two zebras straddled its back and began cutting at its wings with large daggers. The three creatures struggled against each other in the air for a long, suspenseful moment, then the dragons wings fell from its body, causing the dragon to begin free falling towards the ground.

The two zebras leaped from its back and landed softly on the tops of the trees.

The dragon spiraled downwards, until at last it crashed into the ground, its severed wings landing beside it. The dragon attempted to rise, slowly hauling itself back onto its feet.

The monster let loose a blast of fire that rocketed towards the group of zebra. One zebra got caught in the fire, meeting a very similar fate to my two deceased companions. The rest of the group managed to leap to the side, only suffering minor burns from the beast lethal attack.

A zebra clad in sturdy leather barding rushed at the dragon, a long, thin sword clutched tightly in his mouth. The dragon lashed at the oncoming zebra with his whip like tail, only for the zebra’s sword to slice through it and sever yet another one of the dragons limbs. Blood spewed from the stump that had once been the dragon’s tail.

The dragon roared, preparing for another blast of fire. The zebra too the opportunity and stabbed his sword through the dragon’s mouth and up into the creatures brain. The dragon lashed from side to side, hopelessly trying to dislodge the sword.

After struggling for a few moments, the dragon finally collapsed to the ground, it’s blood spilling from its body like a waterfall and staining the ground red.

My host watched in awe from the cover of the overgrowth. There was no denying it… zebras were awesome!

I found myself lying on the cold, dirty floor of the MoM building. The first thing I did upon returning to my body was reach my forelegs between my haunches and make sure everything was in order again.

I had a pussy again! Oh thank Celestia I had a pussy again! I don’t know how Stallions managed to walk around all day without any space between their legs. I'd have to ask Brisk about it... or wait, maybe I shouldn't do that.

I took a moment to enjoy the feeling before noticing that Xayah was standing over top of me and looking straight into my eyes with her stunning bright green ones. I blushed and gave her a small nervous chuckle as I slowly moved my hooves back to my sides. “Uh… hi?”

“Hello,” Xayah replied flatly, continuing to stare down at me.

My eyes darted around the room. “Um… why are you staring at me?”

Xayah was quiet for a moment. “Brisk got bored of waiting for you to wake up, so he told me to watch over you while he goes and explores the building.”

I nodded as I listened to her explanation. “Okay… you can um… you can stop staring at me now.”

Xayah averted her gaze and walked away, leaving me lying on the ground.

“What happened?” I asked, slowly pulling myself back to my hooves. “I saw this really weird thing with a dragon and some jungle temple…”

“You went into a memory orb,” Xayah explained, pointing to the glowing orb that now lay beside me with her striped hoof. “If you interact with those orbs with magic you will see the memories of a pony or zebra that has been placed inside of the orb.”

I picked the orb up and looked it over, careful not to use any magic on it. ”So I just experienced a memory from a pony before the megaspells?” I asked. Xayah gave me a quick nod. Interested in the piece of technology, I gently placed the glowing orb into my saddlebags.

Xayah walked towards the door. “Come, we should probably meet up with Brisk. That pony seems to get bored very quickly. It would be foolish to allow him wander off to far on his own. ”

Before I followed her out I grabbed the piece of paper that had been inside of the safe with the memory orb and scanned the page with my eyes. At the top of the page it read ‘Silver Ace’, the rest however was covered over in black ink.

Finding the page to be useless, I placed it back into the safe and joined Xayah outside the room. We walked through a handful of hallways in silence together, stopping only to check inside rooms to see if Brisk was within.

"So what did you see inside of that memory orb?" Xayah asked. "You said there was a dragon?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I was in the body of some Stallion called Silver Ace, I think. He was some kind of magic expert before the war," I said, checking inside the next room. The room was empty save for the large quantity of Pinkie Pie is watching you posters taped to the wall. "I was exploring some temple in the zebra homelands or something when a dragon attacked us. thankfully I was saved by a group of zebras."

"Yes, some zebra tribes had mastered the art of dragon slaying," Xayah commented. "I was told it was because of the zebras incredible ability to kill dragons so easily that the dragons chose to side with the zebras during the war, simply out of fear of death."

"Can you kill a dragon?" I asked, fairly surprised by my striped companions words.

"Me? No," Xayah said with a small smile. "The art of dragon slaying was not as well known by zebras as most of the dragons thought. Only a few zebras actually had the knowledge and skill to pull off such a feat. Furthermore, the art has been dead for almost two hundred years; I would be surprised if any zebras were still able to attack with such ferocity."

We ascended another set of stairs to find Brisk Spark trying to hack a terminal that was keeping him locked out of a room.

"Unlock damn it!" He grunted, slamming his hoof on the top of the terminal.

“Need a hoof?” I offered, moving up next to him and looking the glowing green screen over.

Brisk rubbed the back of his neck with a hoof and backed away to let me at the terminal. It wasn’t a hard terminal to crack, it’s password only being five letters; ‘Party’.

I pushed enter and the large door slid open, and to my growing anger at the wasteland, a zombie pony lunged at us from behind it.

Damn it! I need to remember to check my EFS more often.

Unlike the last zombie pony we had fought however, this one was dressed in mud stained yellow shirt and was wielding a large triple barrel shotgun in its mouth.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Brisk, Xayah, and I all dove different directions as the explosive shells burst form the gun and sprayed us all with shrapnel.

I pulled out my baton as the zombie pony began reloading and bashed him across the head. I was surprised to see the zombie pony had a high enough intelligence to reload the shotgun. So far I had seen two types of zombie ponies, ones that were crazy and tried to eat your face off, and intelligent ones like Coco pommel that might just as well have been ponies if not for their decaying skin. Unfortunately for us, this one must have been somewhere in between. Not quite mindless, but mindless enough to want us dead.

The zombie pony fell back as my shock baton came in contact with its head. As it climbed back to its hooves, I saw that the strike had left a large dent in the side of the zombie ponies head. It growled and began firing another three rounds from its triple barreled shotgun.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Once again, the three of us managed to dodge the violent barrage of fire. This time Brisk leaped forward, swinging his machete at the zombie ponies head. The zombie pony shivered for a second, then dodged the attack with uncanny speed and agility.

Brisk stumbled forward as his swipe missed, using all of his effort to keep himself from falling flat on his face. Xayah and I rushed past him, our own melee weapons drawn. Once again the zombie pony vibrated slightly before swiftly evading both of our attacks.

The creature lashed out with hits hoof, scrapping me across the side. I called out in pain as I twisted away to avoid any further injury.

Brisk finished stabilizing himself and joined me at my side. I glanced around the room as the zombie pony reloaded and approached us. Where had Xayah gone? She was here just a second ago.

I spotted a ripple in the air behind the zombie pony. Xayah popped back into view and stabbed at the creature with her knife. Before the blow to hit however, the zombie pony whipped around and bashed her in the face with the end of his shotgun.

Xayah stumbled back, grabbing at her nose to stop the blood that had begun to flow freely from it.

Brisk and I rushed forwards; swinging both the machete and the baton at the zombie pony. As I had expected, the zombie pony lurched out of the way, but this time I was one step ahead of it. I telekinetically slammed my baton against the barrel of its shotgun as the creature tried to move out of our reach, knocking it from its grasp and sending the weapon spinning across the floor.

The zombie pony dove for the weapon, but no amount of speed was faster than magic. I picked it up in my telekinetic grasp and spun it around to face the oncoming zombie pony. Clearly aware of what was coming, the zombie pony leapt into the air seconds before the shotgun fired. While the creature narrowly avoided death for the moment, it could not avoid injury.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

The shotgun fired three times, three shots made their mark. The front two legs and the back leg of the zombie pony were ripped from its rotting body and reduced to little more than bloody piles of flesh. The zombie pony shrieked and fell to the floor, attempting to lash at us with its remaining back hoof as it flopped around like a fish out of water.

Brisk approached it and quickly slid his machete across its throat, ending the tormented creatures suffering. There was a gurgling noise in the back of its mouth followed by a large amount of yellowish red blood spilling from its throat and pooling around the legless corpse.

I looked around at the group. Save for a bloody nose and a small gash on my side we had managed to get out of that fight pretty unharmed.

I admired the triple barreled shotgun that I held in my magic. It was a beautiful thing, with elaborate golden pattern down the three barrels. Along the side of the gauge read the word ‘Boneless’ in equally elegant writing to match the designs.

I approached the body of the zombie pony and searched through the pockets on it’s yellow shirt for ammunition. I found seven shells tucked neatly inside of the front, three of which I quickly loaded into the gun.

It wasn’t until after I had looted the body that I actually looked at the pony like creature that I had killed. It had once had a curly brown mane that looked like it had been falling out for quite some time and a small damaged name tag on the front of his shirt. I leaned forward and read the name. ‘Cheese Sandwich’.

‘I need you to use your cheesy sense,’ I remembered Pinkie saying in the audio recording. This must have been who she was talking to.

I looked over to see Brisk and Xayah eyeing me suspiciously. "What?” I asked turning to face them. I swear, if they had spotted another goddess damned thing that was about to attack us-

“It’s just that…” Brisk started, looking at the shotgun in my magic. “Are you planning on fighting with that gun?”

I looked down at the beautiful triple barrel shotgun. “Yeah, why? Do you want it or something?”

Brisk shook his head. “No, it’s just that… Never really imagined you as the kinda pony to fight with a shotgun.”

I blinked, not fully understanding. “What do you mean?” I asked in confusion, holding the gun up higher.

“Well, it’s just that you’re the small, smart one, so I assumed you would use something more precise or whatever,” Brisked tried to explain, stepping nervously back. “You know, like a pistol or a sniper or something.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What...”

“I think he is trying to say you are cute and that the shotgun is not very becoming of you,” Xayah bluntly stated, confirming my suspicion.

I snorted. “I’ll use whatever type of gun I want,” I replied with a huff. “Besides, I think this is a very elegant gun.”

Brisk shrugged, showing that I had made my point.

I approached the door that the Cheese Sandwich zombie pony had come from. The room beyond seemed to be some form of security control room. It was a large pentagon shaped room with three windows facing out in different directions. Metal owls lined the top of the room and multiple terminal covered desks lined the walls. A large monitor in front of the largest window displayed hundreds of static filled images of the Manehattan ruins. I quickly realized that I was looking at video camera footage from all over the area.

Yikes, I guess Pinkie really was always watching!

I turned to a window facing out the eastern wall of the building. Far in the distance I could see a large tower connected to the monorail that loomed over the city ruins. I pointed it out to my friends.

“What is that?” I asked, trying to make out the details.

Brisk and Xayah approached and stood on either side of me. “That is Tenpony Tower,” Xayah explained, nodding to the massive tower. “I hear it is one of the few habitable structures in the Manehattan area,” after all that had happened to me in the wasteland the last two days, I could believe it.

I turned and looked out a second window. Not to far away I saw a massive pony statue towering above the wrecked skyscrapers. Small wooden and metal houses seemed to have been built into the sides of the statue, primarily around the base.

“That must be Friendship City,” I commented, pointing the large statue out as well. “It’s not very far from here.”

I turned to the third and final window that overlooked the street we had entered from. Instantly my eyes connected with the slitted eyes of the green alicorn hovering behind the pane of glass.

“There you are,” The alicorns malicious voice pounded in our heads as the monstrosity drew closer to the window. "The Goddess is always pleased to invite more unicorns into unity with us.”

Shit.

There was a blinding flash from the alicorns horn. I felt Xayah push both Brisk and I to the ground as the window exploded, shards of shattered glass flew over our heads, many shards cutting long scratches into our backs. Xayah took the worst of it, many of the pieces lodging themselves into her striped hide.

The green alicorn gracefully glided into the room and landed before us. “Now tell me,” The alicorn mocked in her cruel and booming voice, a thin smile slowly carving its way across her face. “Will you join us in Unity willingly, or will I need to force you to join us myself?”

Footnote: level up.
New perk: Black Widow -- You have been the other sex, +10% damage to the opposite sex and unique dialogue options with certain characters

Author's Notes:

This chapter took me longer than I expected. Originally I was worried it was going to be to short, but the farther into the chapter I got, the more I realized that it was way to long.

As usual, huge thanks to kkat for creating the wonderful world of Fallout: Equestira

I hope you enjoyed and have a better day then the characters in my story!