“Wait! Wait! I’m friendly!” Lyra raced after the young unicorn, and the unicorn ran faster.

Lyra realized that wearing raider armor and a bloody towel she might not look like the most trustworthy pony. “I’m trying to help!”

“Shut up shut up Shut up!” yelled the filly. “They’ll hear you!” The filly pounded through the snow, dodging around trees and under branches, leaping over fallen logs. How could she go so fast on three legs? Lyra struggled to keep up and soon had to stop and gasp for breath. When she looked up, the foal was gone.

“What am I ever trying to accomplish? This is none of my business,” Lyra muttered to herself as she stood there, panting. Who did she think she was? Some kind of hero? She didn't know what she was getting involved in, and anyway, that filly didn't seem to want her help. Feeling guilty but relieved, she turned to head back to her car.

She hadn’t taken ten steps before a squeaky scream tore through the air from deeper in the forest.

Lyra found the energy to run again. She leaped a rock to find the ground wasn’t on the same level on the other side. Landing on the slope of a hill, she skidded down it, four legs spread, spraying snow. At the bottom, an earth pony raider held the yellow foal in the crook of one foreleg, laughing at how she struggled and squealed.

“Hey!” called Lyra. He looked up, and she hit him in the face with a magic bolt. His head snapped back, breaking his neck. He fell, dropping the foal. Lyra’s heart sank—she hadn’t meant to kill him! That was supposed to be a non-lethal defensive spell! It was called a ‘self-defense bolt’, not an ‘instant murder bolt’. She’s never cast one in anger before yesterday. Apparently, she didn’t know her own strength.

“Don’t run! Don’t run!” said Lyra, skidding to a halt in front of the foal.

“Who are you?” she said, Looking up at Lyra with skeptical green eyes. One of her forelegs hung down limp, a useless flipper, but the other three were tensed and ready to run.

“My name is Lyra. I’m from a stable. I’m here to help. Where are your parents?” Lyra turned to look at the stallion she’d just murdered. She’d sworn to Littlepip she wasn’t going to kill again, and here she hadn’t even had coffee the next morning and she’d already broken her vow. A pistol hung at his shoulder in a leather rig. She pulled it from its holster and looked it over while she waited for the foal to answer. She recognized it as a Filly Arms 10mm, a nice gun in excellent condition.

The firing range had been a nice date for Beanpole and her, but she’d never owned a gun, and she wasn’t a great shot, even against paper targets. But SATS could help with that.

She turned the gun over and over in her magic. Was she really thinking of shooting people so casually? Everypony wonders what they’d be like when things get really bad. Lyra always worried she might be a coward. She didn’t seem to be. She was, instead, apparently fine with murder and looting.

Murder.

Her forelegs started to shake.

Deep breaths. Freak out about it later. This kid needs you now.

“Did you just kill that raider with magic?”

“Yes,” said Lyra, unable to meet the foal’s eyes.

The foal gasped. “Oh, my harmony that is so awesome!”

Lyra glanced sideways at her, shocked by her causal attitude towards violence. Well. The young were always very adaptable. “What happened to you? Do you have a family?”

“My name’s Paneer. Mom is hiding in the Fires of Friendship Museum with the other Minutemares. The raiders chased us, and I got scared and teleported away, and now I can’t get in. Because of the raiders. Can you kill them for me please?”

Lyra hesitated. “All of them?”

Paneer rose up on her hind legs and kicked her one good leg in a begging gesture, eyes wide and glistening. “Please?”

Lyra sighed. She decided to keep the pistol—it seemed less likely to inflict lethal wounds than her magic until she learned how to tone that down. She unbuckled the raider’s holster and strapped it on over her cloak. It had two extra clips in it. “I guess I’m going to get used to this. Fine. I’ll get you back to your mom, but I’m not killing anypony I don’t have to. Climb aboard.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Lyra had been to the Fires of Friendship Museum exactly once, on a college road trip. At the time she had been very high, and very focused on avoiding Seawinkle and Bow Tie, who’d found out she was bi and were nagging her for a threesome. The only other time she’d been in Sanctuary Hills then was when she and Beanpole had made a dry run of their stable evacuation route. That time she’d been ten months pregnant and focused mainly on waiting for the next restroom break.

The upshot being that she had absolutely no pre-war area knowledge to draw on, and she was lost. Right now she crouched in the alley behind a burned out ice cream parlor with Paneer on her back. The sound of gunfire rattled through the town.

“Do you know how close we are?” Lyra whispered.

“I don’t remember,” said Paneer. “I remember it was next to a park.”

Lyra pointed out the end of the alley towards a block-sized square of scrub brush and dirty snow with a statue of an earth pilgrim in the middle. “That park?”

“I don’t remember! Ugh!” She felt Paneer slam her face against her back.

Lyra gritted her teeth. The gunfire was coming from the other side of that park. Hopefully, there was only one battle in town right now, but with the way things had been going in the wasteland, Lyra didn’t feel like she could be sure. “Okay. I’m gonna run for it.”

“Okay, cool,” said Paneer.

Lyra held her breath and darted out across the street. Dozens of hooves had passed here recently, tromping down the snow to an ugly brown mush. She made it halfway across the side of the park before she had to stop and collapse to her knees, gasping. Her lungs burned. There was no denying it—she was really out of shape.

“Oh my Harmony, what’s wrong with you?” said Paneer. “Are you having a heart attack?”

“Huff I’m… huff fine,” gasped Lyra.

“That was a really short run,” said Paneer. “You’re the fattest pony I’ve ever seen.”

“Do you want my help or not?”

“Can’t you use your magic or something?”

“I said I’m fine!” Lyra ran another half block to a fallen post office box half. Her legs felt like jello, and the inside of her jumpsuit was slick with sweat despite the cold. She pushed her head down under the snow to cool off her face.

On her back, she felt Paneer squirm around. “I see one!” she whispered. “Quick! Kill him!”

Lyra peeked over the edge of the mailbox. She saw the raider Paneer was talking about, squatting behind a burned out car sighting down a long rifle on a shoulder mount. Lyra didn’t want to use up all her magic on one pony if there were as many raiders as she thought there were. She activated SATS anyway, just to see how feasible it was.

“15%?” muttered Lyra. “He’s across the freaking street!” SATS didn’t compensate for her poor aim as much as she would have liked. She tried again with the pistol, and that gave even worse odds.

She put away her pistol. Better to try and slip between the buildings to the raider’s right and hope he didn’t have any friends down that way.

“You’re not going to shoot him?” said Paneer.

“Listen, kid, I don’t know how you were raised, but where I come from killing isn’t considered a great thing to do. Hold on tight, I’m gonna try to sneak past him.”

“Lame,” muttered Paneer.

The raider looked through the scope on his rifle and started firing. Lyra hunkered down, but when no bullets whistled over them she decided that they weren't the target. She crept out from beside the mailbox, Paneer on her back. The snow muffled her footsteps, but if he turned his head he’d see them, so she had a spell at the ready. He kept firing. Lyra took a deep breath and ran into the alley.

Her EFS blossomed with red pips as she advanced. Some of them had little red arrows above them; she wondered what that meant? She couldn’t see them yet, and one of them had seen her, but…

“Hey, you hear something?” said a stallion’s voice from directly overhead.

Lyra Froze. She felt Paneer stop breathing. The little arrows meant the enemy was above her! Obviously! How had she not realized that? She looked up and met the eyes of two raiders looking down at her through an apartment building’s fire escape. One of them opened his mouth and went for the pistol holstered at his shoulder.

Lyra closed her eyes and cast the spell she’d prepared—not a magic bolt, but a common fireworks spell. Light and noise filled the alley, blinding and deafening the raiders, and she ran, dodging dumpsters and leaping over trash cans.

The alley ended in a parking lot littered with ruined cars. She could see the Fires of Friendship museum, a three-story building just block away, whose top story had been taken out by the vertibird crashed into its roof. She looked at the red pips moving on her EFS. As far as the could tell, a lot of raiders were moving towards the place she’d set off her fireworks spell a minute and a half ago. Since she wasn’t there anymore, she had a minute to think…

“There she is!” said a voice from up the alley.

So she didn’t have a moment to think. She shot a firework spell straight backward, not even looking. Flashes and loud bangs swelled behind her. She raised a shield behind her rump and ran for the nearest car. The raiders in the alley shouted and screamed, but they were probably fine—that spell had been designed as a safer alternative to conventional fireworks—and they’d be after her in a minute. Lyra ducked from car to car, heading for a block of shops on the other side of the parking lot.

Bullets began to bounce off her shield. They also slammed into the cars around her. That wasn’t good—some of these cars had spark drives. If a bullet penetrated the engine block, the explosion would wipe this parking lot off the map.

She put a magic bolt through the glass door of a sub shop, leaped through, and raced behind the counter. Paneer trembled against her back.

“Are you okay, kid?” said Lyra.

“I’m fine,” said Paneer, sounding like she was about to start crying.

“I’ll keep you safe,” said Lyra, but she wasn’t sure she could. Bullets whistled overhead and thudded into the counter. Lyra had a clear path through the kitchen to the rear door, but red dots were already swarming her EFS compass, heading for that very door. Lyra gritted her teeth, put a dome shield over herself and Paneer, and pulled out her pistol. She wasn’t going to go down easy.

The back door flew off its hinges. Raiders came through in single file, armed to teeth, faces full of mean. Lyra’s heart stopped. She began to panic.

Then she had an idea.

She activated SATS and took a few seconds to place a simple illusion — just a green and blue vaguely pony shaped blur — in front of the door.

“What the hell?” said the first raider as the illusion turned him into a vague approximation of Lyra. Then the raiders outside the front of the shop shot him six times, and he fell with a soft groan.

“Got her!” said one of the raiders out front. Then another raider came through the back door. “No, shit! There she is again!” A burst of gunfire and that raider fell.

The raiders kept coming through the back door, and the raiders out front kept shooting them down until the back door was clear.

“That was so cool!” whispered Paneer, her voice still shaky.

“Raiders aren’t very smart, are they?” said Lyra.

“Nope.”

“Okay. Gonna run again.” She dismissed her illusion, and sneaked across the kitchen and out the back door, keeping low until she was in the alley behind the sub shop. The museum wasn’t far away at all now, just around the next building and across the street, but there were red dots everywhere. One came towards the mouth of the alley she was in. Lyra ducked behind a dumpster and held her breath, hoping Paneer had the sense to keep quiet.

Lyra watched the red dot move across the compass dial of her EFS.

“Guys?” the raider said. “Guys? Did you get her?”

Lyra leveled her gun, ready to blast the raider when they came around the corner. But when their armored face and breast came into view, she just couldn’t do it. She could not pull the trigger and put a bullet in a pony in cold blood. It was stupid! She’d killed three ponies already! Nine if you counted tricking raiders into killing each other.

The raider pony turned her head and met Lyra’s eyes. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” said Lyra, eyes wide. Her whole body shook. The pistol wobbled in her telekinetic grip.

The raider ducked her head towards the crude homemade revolver holstered at her shoulder. Paneer screamed. Lyra yanked hard on her pistol’s trigger, firing three times. Between recoil and Lyra’s unsteady magical grip, the pistol’s muzzle pointed skyward by the third shot.

But the raider went down, moaning. At least one of those shots had hit. Lyra grabbed the raider's gun with her magic and ran. She heard shouting and pounding hooves from inside the sub shop. The raiders had realized their mistake. Lyra turned down a narrow adjoining alley, the space barely wide enough for her to pass through. She blasted an obstructing trash bin out of the way and ran after it, summoning a dome shield as soon as there was enough room to cast the spell.

The Fires of Friendship museum stood diagonally across the street to Lyra’s left. Large double doors stood, bullet-pocked but intact, under a marquee decorated with statues of two windigos menacing the founders of Equestria. A ring of improvised barricades surrounded it, with at least a couple of raiders behind each barricade.

All gunfire stopped. For a few moments, the entire town of Sanctuary Hills was silent, except for Paneer’s high, thin scream. As one, the raiders turned towards Lyra. Then they started firing.

Bullets slammed into Lyra’s shield in every direction. Transferred kinetic energy made her feel like her body was being pelted with rocks. Her horn pulsed with pain with every bullet impact. It was the strongest shield she could cast right now, but it was an eggshell compared to what she’d cast on the Bad Day. Her magic still hadn’t recovered from that.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably about three seconds, the gunfire petered out as the raiders emptied their clips. Clicking sounds filled the street as they reloaded. Up on the museum marquee, a seventh pony rose from between the founders of Equestria, red-coated, with a pink mane and magenta eyes. She wore a dark blue jacket and wielded a combat rifle mounted on a military shoulder rig.

“Crispy!” the red mare roared. “Open the door! It’s Paneer!” Then she sighted down the top of her rifle. Raider’s heads began exploding.

One of the museum doors cracked open, and a brown stallion with a curly mane and a combat shotgun poked his head out and started firing.

Lyra had just enough magic left to teleport, and a clear line of sight through the door. She visualized the spell matrix and her horn began to glow. A moment before she folded space she heard the sound of breaking glass and a half dozen burning bees drilled into her body. Three tore hot lines across her sides. Another three tore right through her body, in the belly, the hips and the chest.

Light flashed, and she landed in the museum lobby. Paneer fell off her back. Was Paneer dead?

She hadn’t fallen. She’d jumped, and she now ran in circles, screaming, “Mom, Mom, Mom! Lyra’s hurt? Get a stimpack!”

Lyra looked at the wooden floor. Old fashioned unfinished hardwood held down with big iron bolts. Blood sprayed across it in spurts. Her blood. She tried to talk to say she was okay, it didn’t hurt at all, but she just coughed up blood. She couldn’t breathe—her lungs were full of blood and she was drowning in a dry room. The floor rushed up towards her and punched her in the jaw.

Gunfire kept up outside until a couple of explosions hammered at Lyra’s eardrums.

“Yeah! You’d better run! There’s plenty more where that came from!” said Crispy’s voice from nearby.

It was very dark in here. Ponies milled around her, some hanging from the ceiling. A pony with the cross-shaped grip of a stimpack in her mouth loomed over her. Yes. Yes. She needed that. She tried to reach for it but she couldn’t move her legs.

“Trail Mix! Put that down!” said the red mare’s voice from out of the darkness. “Don’t waste a stimpack on her! We don’t know who she is!”

“Mom, no! She saved me!” whined Paneer, her voice trembling near tears. “She saved me!”

“The stimpacks are for Minutemares!”

Actual sobs now. “Mom, please!”

“Really, Vindaloo?” said Crispy. “She saved your damn kid. Trail Mix, give me that!”

Lyra’s back arched as a spike drove into her chest. The stimpack hissed, forcing a cocktail of healing potions and pain killers directly into her heart. An uncanny cold, tingling sensation spread through her body.

She could move again. She rolled over, coughing up blood. She felt a presence looming over her and rolled her eyes upward. The earth pony mare called Vindaloo loomed over her, her rifle at rest against her chest, glaring lasers at Lyra. Lyra noticed she had a gold pin in the shape of a leaf on the shoulder of her ragged jacket.

“You know the rules, Major,” said Vindaloo. “Stimpacks are for Minutmares. Not for civilians, and definitely not for foal-stealing spies.”

“She ain’t a spy, Major,” said Crispy. He was tall and big-boned—rail-thin like every pony she’d seen outside the stable, but he looked like he’d be a tank if he got a few square meals in him. The mane on his neck was pulled back in a sort of puffy ponytail. He wore the same blue coat as Vindaloo, with the same gold leaf pin. “And I doubt she stole your foal.”

Vindaloo stamped. “Somepony teleported her away from us!”

“No, Mom!” shouted Paneer. “I teleported myself away!”

Vindaloo turned her searing gaze on her daughter. “You can barely cast levitation spells. Since when do you know how to teleport?”

Paneer’s ears laid back against her head and her tail, which had been whipping fiercely, fell. “I don’t. I don’t know how I did it. I was afraid of the raiders, and I wanted to be somewhere else and… and… I just was!”

“Likely damn story. Why are you protecting her? What did she do to you?” said Vindaloo.

Lyra had enough blood out of her lungs that she could speak up for herself, and she didn’t hesitate. “Wild magic. Unicorn foals sometimes manifest powers they haven’t learned.”

“Did I ask you a question, foal stealer?” growled Vindaloo, pressing in until she was nose to nose with Lyra.

Crispy stamped a hoof irritably. “It’s over, Vin. She’s with us now. One of us needs to get back to guarding the door.”

Vindaloo kicked her rifle up to a ready position with her knee.”Fine. If no one’s going to respect my authority, I’ll go back to popping skulls. Paneer. Come with me, and keep your head down. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

Paneer put her head down and lashed her tail. “No! I don’t wanna talk to you! You’re mean!” She turned and charged off into the depths of the museum.

“PANEER!” Vindaloo screamed after her fleeing daughter. “You get back here!”

Crispy sighed. “She’ll be fine, Vin.”

Vindaloo blew out through her nose. It wasn’t hard to imagine fire flying out of her nostrils. She spun around and stormed off to her perch over the marquee.

Lyra looked herself over. Her jumpsuit was ripped up and full of holes. Her body was in better shape—raw and tender where she’d been shot, but the bleeding had stopped and if her internal organs were still perforated, they weren’t essential ones. She’d never been on the receiving end of a stimpack before, but they sure did their job.

Satisfied she wasn’t dying, she turned her attention to the museum. The only elements of the old foyer that survived were the husk of the welcome desk and a naked rotting mannequin whose sign said it was supposed to represent a Unicornian Sun Acolyte.

Thirty or forty filthy, rawboned earth ponies slouched or lay sprawled around the edges of the room, sitting on grubby bedrolls or duffel bags and scratching at their mangy bodies. There truly were ponies hanging from the rafters; that hadn’t been a hallucination. They were thestrals! Lyra had rarely seen a thestral before—they mainly went out at night and kept to themselves. Apparently, they were more common now. One of the three wore a blue coat like Crispy and Vindaloo’s; the only other pony here wearing one. She was fat, too! Incredibly fat!

No. Wait. She wasn’t fat. She was pregnant. Very, very pregnant.

Lyra turned to Crispy, who was watching her with an evaluating gaze. “Minutemares,” she said. “Like the old earth pony militia. Are you all Minutemares?”

“Nope,” said Crispy. “These are all refugees. The only Minutemares are Vin and me. Plus Specialist Blue Note, but she’s on maternity.”

“Blue Note is still able to fight, sir!” she said. Her slit-pupiled eyes picked Lyra apart with a predatory glare—she must be on Vindaloo’s team.

“You decided you were makin’ us a new soldier,” said Crispy. “You’re welcome back in the front lines when you’re done. Anyway, we’ve only got two guns.”

“Blue Note is happy to use either one, sir. Or both at once, if need be.”

Crispy laughed. “Tell you what. I need to round up Paneer and debrief our captive. You’re on grenade duty until I get back.”

“Blue Note is pleased.” She glided over to sit on her haunches between the doors and an ammo case labeled ‘warning high explosives’.

Crispy nodded her towards the inside of the museum and started walking.

“Captive?” said Lyra, following his lead.

“Just ‘cause I didn’t want you to die doesn’t mean I trust you. Stay where I can see you. If you try to sneak off or if your horn starts glowing without my say so, I will cap you,” said Crispy with a gentle smile. “Nothing personal, but General Horse Teeth told Vindaloo and me to keep these civilians safe, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

“Okkaaay,” said Lyra walking close by Crispy’s side. “So, you have two Majors and one Specialist in your militia? That’s a funny kind of army.”

Crispy’s face fell. “Things went bad. They went really bad."

“What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Well, Lyra Heartstrings, the Ponysmith happened.”

“I’ve heard that name before. Who is he?”

Crispy gave her a skeptical sidelong look. “You new around here?”

Lyra pointed at her jumpsuit. “I’ve been out of the loop. I hear he collects unicorns.”

“He sure does. I was wondering about the stable suit. And the PipBuck. You know how to use that thing?”

Lyra grinned proudly. “I sure do.”

Crispy nodded. “Sounds like we’ve got a lot to talk about. But I think we’ve found who we’re looking for. Paneer?”

Paneer ignored him. She leaned on a display case in the Clover the Clever room, her horn glowing with a fitful and flickering light.

“You gotta come back with us, kid,” said Crispy.

“I don’t wanna,” said Paneer, not looking up from reading. The artifacts here had all been looted, but the plaques describing them were still here, and Paneer was reading them with an expression like a starving pony who’d just found a granola bar.

Lyra’s stomach rumbled. She could go for a granola bar herself. Or anything. Anything would be good.

“Your Mom’s rough, kid. But she loves you. That’s why she gets mad,” said Crispy

“I know,” said Paneer. “I still hate it.” She gestured at Lyra with her flipper. “So, now that we have her, can we get out of here?”

Crispy raised his eyebrows at Paneer. “She’s just one pony, kid.”

“She’s an amazing wizard! You should have seen her!” Paneer waved her foreleg and her flipper in mystical gestures. “She used so much magic! It was insane! She was like, ‘WOOSH! BANG! POP!’ And then she made a shield! And she made the raiders shoot each other and… and…!”

“Deep breaths, kid,” said Crispy.

Lyra raised an eyebrow at Crispy. “Are you trapped here?”

Crispy nodded. “Under siege. This raider gang picked us up not long after we left Breeder’s Hill. They’ve been following us for two days, picking off our soldiers one at a time. Figure they want the civilians for slaves.”

“Why don’t they just storm this place?

“Because we’ve got that box of hoof grenades,” said Crispy. “We can’t watch every entrance, but we’ve barricaded the windows, and set up some nasty surprises at the other doors. Raiders aren’t gonna die for a payday, but they’re not going to leave until they starve us out.”

“So we use her magic!” said Paneer. “Hello!”

Lyra wanted to laugh at Paneer’s enthusiasm. The little filly had pluck, and she bounced back quickly. Trauma must be a way of life for kids in the wasteland. “There’s a Vertibird crashed on your roof, you know.”

Crispy snapped his head towards Lyra, eyes wide. “Whoa. No shit?”

Lyra blinked. “Yeah. It’s sticking right out there, I don’t know how you could have missed it…” she trailed off. “Wait. You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

Crispy smirked. “You gonna make it fly again?

“I bet she could!” said Paneer.

“Probably not,” said Lyra. “But is there anything useful up there?”

“Oh, it’s a fucking treasure trove. Minigun; but it’s bolted to the deck and facing the wrong way and we don’t have the tools to get it off. Plenty of 5mm ammo that somehow hasn’t been looted, but the minigun is literally the only weapon in existence that uses that. A full suit of P-45 power armor that doesn’t work. Why? You a mechanic or something?”

Lyra hesitated. What was she? A wannabe inventor who never finished anything? A horsewife? A delivery driver? A dreamer? A loser? Prickly as they were, Crispy and Vindaloo were probably as friendly ponies as she was going to find out here. Better put her best hoof forward, and if she couldn’t live up to her own hype she’d deal with the fallout then. “I’m an inventor.”

Crispy looked at her down the top of his snout. “Can you invent a way to fix that power armor?”

“Yeah,” said Lyra, with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel. “I mean, I think I can. I even have tools…” She facehoofed. “No, I left them in my car.”

Crispy’s eyes widened again, with genuine shock this time. “You have a car?”

“Not a working one. It’s a long story. I have a multi-tool, some duct tape, a towel, and my magic. It should be enough. Where’s the armor?”

“I’ll take you.” Crispy pointed at Paneer with a hoof. “You. Go back to your mom.”

Paneer hopped up and down in a wobbly three-legged hop. “But I wanna help!”

“It’s too dangerous. We’re gonna be exposed up on that roof, and if you’re gonna get shot it’s not gonna be while I’m watching you.”

Paneer stomped furiously. “Fucker!” But she stomped off towards the front of the museum obediently.

Crispy and Lyra headed for the third floor, but before they had even reached the elevator, ragged waves of gunfire began to sound from the front of the museum, broken by the regular single shots that seemed to be Vindaloo’s signature style.

Then came the blast of a hand grenade, followed by another.

“They’re trying to fight their way in. We’d better hurry,” said Crispy.

Level 4.
Perk: Avoidant behavior. Add 20% to stealth against targets you just don’t want to deal with right now.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5: Earth Ponies OP, Plz Nerf+ Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours, 56 Minutes