Chapter III: Bright Lights and Shining Stars

I awoke to a light kick to my back. I rolled over to see Rimfire standing over me. She had her saddlebag and rifle slung over her back. It must be time to go. She helped me pack up my things and we went to see Piston.

Piston was outside the walls of the outpost. He was standing next to some heavily armed ponies. They seemed to be talking casually. When he saw us he waved us over.

“Tin, these are two ponies that are accompanying you to New Pegasus. Please drop them off where they need to go, they did me a solid yesterday and I don’t want them dying too quick,” Piston said to the the other pony in charge.

The mare he was talking to stepped up and eyed us both. “Hmm, they don’t look that bad for being new to the Palomino.” She stepped up to me. “Why New Pegasus?” Tin asked. “Why not anywhere else? This city will chew you up and spit you out, and it won’t even be done yet. Greater ponies than you came to make it big. The Pegasus hates losing, and won’t think twice to make you gone.”

I scoffed. “I’ve done well enough in the east.”

“This isn’t the east. You think you know but you don’t, that’s a fact. I’ll take you to New Pegasus, you, her, and a brahmin. I’ll even drop you off where you need to go, but after that the two of you are on your own.” She backed away to the rest of her troop. There were twelve of them, all of them in more military gear than anypony I’d ever seen before. “We are leaving in 5. Get your stuff.”

I left Rimfire with Tin and her squad as I went to get the brahmin. I was almost glad to finally get rid of this thing. The goal was as simple as it was ever going to be now, bring the brahmin to The Three of Diamonds and ask for Crystal, he’ll give you the caps. Strange that it was going to one of the fancier casinos, but I wasn’t complaining.

From what I remembered of New Pegasus, it was made of 7 families who ran the casinos. Almost all of them resided on the Strip, the main street of New Pegasus. Two of them didn’t. Not many ponies went to those as far as I know. I brought the brahmin back to the group. One of the soldiers stood up to it and placed a pack on it’s back.

“Hey!” I shouted, “What are you doing?”

He looked back at me, “We’re looking after you, you can at least carry some of our stuff.” He and the rest of the squad began to move on.

Tin spoke up as we trotted off towards New Pegasus. “This march is going to take a few hours, there won’t be a break.” Rimfire and I kept in line with the rest of them. Tin and her eleven soldiers stood ahead of us. I was next to the brahmin. The NER pack looked very tempting. It was a simple bag, a single buckle held it shut. It’s strap was loosely thrown over the rest of my bags.

With my magic I carefully undid the clasp. No one seemed to notice. Rimfire had caught my glance and was looking at me nervously. I gave her a reassuring wink. She looked on ahead. I started to veer off towards the pack. My brahmin didn’t appreciate the closeness, but it kept quiet. I raised my head and took a quick peek inside.

It was a pile of Pipbucks. The NER were transporting five or so pipbucks. I looked back at the soldiers, none of them had noticed me yet. Rimfire was looking back at me. She mouthed “What?”

“Pipbucks” I mouthed back. Her eyes opened wide. There was no way I was letting this opportunity slide. I carefully slid one of the pipbucks out with my magic and stuffed it into my saddlebag. Carefully I closed the NER’s bag and sidled off towards Rimfire. She gave a nervous glance to my bag. I smirked.

There are a few things you notice about New Pegasus when you first see it. One thing is that it’s big. It must have been a mile in any direction. Another thing was that it’s tall too; casinos built like skyscrapers tapered into the sky. One in particular was built like a Roulette board, with a massive tower in the center. All this and more we could see shining ahead of us. We stood in front of the Gutters, the slums that surrounded New Pegasus’ Strip. The Gutters consisted of everything that had been outside the Strip before the war. A thick wall of concrete and carriages had been erected between the two. There was even a wall around the Gutters. The group of us stood outside on of the Gutters entrances. Tin turned to me.

“Looks like this is the end of the line. We received word that we need to return to base ASAP. I think you two can handle yourselves, right?” Tin asked. We nodded reluctantly. “Good...” One of the soldier took the NER bag from my brahmin. She and her squad turned and walked towards the south.

“Looks like we’re on our own,” I said to Rimfire.

As soon as Tin was out of sight Rimfire reached into my saddlebags. “What are you doing?” I practically shouted. she pulled out the Pipbuck.

“Are you crazy?” she asked. “They probably would have killed us if they saw you.” Rimfire looked the device over. It’s strap was undone and waiting for a new bearer.

“Don’t you think I should wear it?” I asked. “After all, I did take it.”

She looked at me with a frown and handed the pipbuck over. I grabbed it with my magic and held out my right foreleg. I slid on the pipbuck and closed it around my leg.

Systems normal heard in the back of my head. Faint etchings began to appear in my vision around the corners of my my sight. A small bar in the the center of my sight appeared, it looked like a compass of sorts.

“Oh wow,” I said. It was making me nauseous. I swayed a little on my hooves. Rimfire stood next to me and I leaned on her. Sorting Spell Activated. Eyes Forward Sparkle Activated. Little green marks began to appear on the compass. The pipbuck stopped saying things and I stood on my own hooves.

“That was weird,” I said aloud.

Rimfire nodded. “I want one of those.”

I took a quick look at the screen. It showed all the things on my person in an easy to read list. It also showed the quality of such things. My .32 seemed to be in a low state. I’d need to get that repaired soon. I looked back at the gate to the Gutters. A dirty mare was looking at me strangely. As my gaze met hers she turned and walked away.

I led Rimfire and the brahmin through the Gutters using the best guesses I had. Rimfire mentioned something of a map feature on the pipbuck. I navigated through the menus until I found it. For some reason the Three of Diamonds was highlighted on the map. It was strange, but I wasn’t about to complain.

There were ponies everywhere in the Gutters, behind boarded windows, on the streets, in the actual gutters. It was a madhouse. There were vendors selling their wares, anything from cooked meats to energy weaponry. I had to drag Rimfire from a particularly dangerous display of military surplus.

Soon enough we stood in front of the gates to the south side of the Strip, the side closest to the Three of Diamonds. I could see the gleaming, white casino from here. A few NER guards stood outside the gate. One of the was manning a machine gun turret. We approached confidently.

The guard in lead approached us. “Halt,” he said. We stopped. “Cards please.”

“Cards?” I asked.

The guard scowled at me. “I.D. cards. We can’t let any riff raff into the Strip.”

Inspiration struck me. “Well I think we left our cards inside. Maybe a few caps could get us in?” I asked in a low voice. The guard gave a look to the others.

“100 caps each,” he said, “including the pack beast.”

“50 each sounds fair,” I said.

“100,” he said firmly. I bitterly handed over the caps. He slipped them into his bag and waved to his fellows. Two on either side of the gate nodded and began to push it open.

There’s a startling change between the Gutters and the Strip. Rimfire and I looked in awe as we walked through the gate. All the ponies were wearing fancy clothes and an air of sophistication. Old newspapers and other debris didn’t tumble through the air. No one carried guns on them from the looks of it. The Strip looked to be one long, continuous stretch of road that was lined on either side by gleaming buildings. The first one to our right was the Three of Diamonds, to our left was a casino that was dark in design. Flames erupted at different intervals all over it. Above the door in great big letters was ‘Tartarus’. There were plenty of mares in skimpy outfits outside there.

We turned to the Three of Diamonds, no prostitutes danced outside the worn stone steps. The casinos was shaped like a horseshoe with the doors on either end of the shoe. An elegant reflection pool sat in the middle. Rimfire and I walked up the mostly deserted steps to the main entrance on the left side.

As we got closer a mare in a finely tailored suit stepped out of the building and trotted up in front of us.

“Hey-y,” she said to us with a smile. “You cool cats can’t bring that in this way.” She pointed at my brahmin. I had noticed that it had been getting looks from the ponies on the Strip, and even a few from the Gutters.

“We’re to meet Crystal,” I told her.

Her smile flickered, but it came right back. “Right entrance, five minutes.” The mare hurried back inside the casino.

“Bitch,” Rimfire muttered as we turned to the other entrance and began to walk towards it.

“I don’t think she was a bitch. She was just doing her job,” I told her.

“You might know ponies back west, but they’re different here.” She stopped talking as we neared the right entrance. This entrance was incredibly less magnificent than the other one. It was a white painted metal door with a slit at eye level. I approached it.

“You got the packages?” a voice asked from behind the door.

“Are you Crystal?” I asked.

“I’m the one asking questions. Do you have the packages?”

“Yes,” I said. The slot slammed shut and the door opened and three armed stallions stood behind it. Behind the door was a dimly lit room. The three of us entered cautiously. The room was bare except for a door on the other side and a desk in the corner. As soon as the last hoof was through the threshold they shut and locked the door. The stallion with a grey mane spoke up.

“I’m Crystal. This the brahmin?” he asked.

“Yes,” I told him. He nodded to the others and they began to pick around the bags on the animal. After a couple of minutes that began to take out small boxes. Boxes of mint-als.

“Hey, I didn’t know we had mint-als,” Rimfire said.

Crystal glared at her. “Don’t talk about the goods. The NER would have no trouble shooting us on sight if they saw these mint-als, and with the amount they’re taking out, they’d probably get a promotion for doing it.” I looked at the small pyramid of boxes the stallions had amassed from the brahmin. There must have been twenty boxes at least. “mint-als are big on the market these days. You might have just netted us millions of caps,” Crystal said. He ordered his friends to take the boxes elsewhere, then he turned to us. “Now for payment. I can’t believe you came here yourself to deliver the drugs, kid. When they said you were the best I had no idea how right they were.”

“What? Bring them myself?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’d have just gotten some flunkie to do the hard part. Now about payment.” Crystal went into a drawer of the desk. He pulled out a clipboard and set it on the desk. “It says here you’re getting ten thousand caps for the ‘tats.”

“Don’t you think ten is a little low?” I asked. He looked up from the clipboard.

“It certainly seems fair to me and my associates. It also seemed fair to you when we discussed this,” Crystal said.

I took a step closer. “Well it just seems that it was little more dangerous than I first thought, what with the rampant NER control around here. I just think that maybe fifteen thousand caps would help heal my nerves.”

“Fifteen... thousand,” Crystal said through clenched teeth.

I nodded. “I got them here and all, and on reasonable time too. You wouldn’t even believe how close the NER got to seeing those boxes. We were lucky I could distract them long enough for them to lose interest.”

Crystal glared at me for what felt like forever. He picked up a pencil and made a mark on the clipboard. “Eleven sounds fair,” he said “I’ll have to get more caps, excuse me.” The stallion left the desk and exited further into the casino.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were carrying mint-als into New Pegasus?” Rimfire asked me.

“I didn’t know!” I told her.

“Well I sure hope I’m getting more than 200 caps out of this now,” she said.

There was a knock at the door and Crystal opened it. In his mouth he wa carrying a sack bearing the Three of Diamonds symbol. A blue diamond with a 3 overlaid on top. He dropped it in front of us.

“Eleven thousand caps,” he said. I quickly stuff the bag into one of my own. A small ding came from my pipbuck as I closed my saddlebag. I look at the screen. A small window had opened saying ‘11k caps added’. I looked back at Crystal.

“Anything else you need?” I asked.

“We’ll let you know. Good day.” He ushered Rimfire and I out of the room.

As he pushed us out the door I asked, “What about the brahmin?”

“Oh there’s a few boxes inside that we need to get out. I hope you didn’t get too attached.” He retreated back behind the door and shut it. It was evening in New Pegasus.

Quest Completed: Hold Onto This For Me

End of Chapter III
Level up!
Perk Gained: Confirmed Bachelor. Gain unique dialogue option with members of the same sex and do 10% more damage to them in combat.